Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump plans on signing 25 XOs on Day 1. He wants to hit the ground running and give the impression that there is a new sheriff in town and from now on, things will be different.
One batch relates to immigration. He will give immigration officers more authority to arrest people, send U.S. troops to the border, start building more wall, and more. He will also send Congress requests for legislation to do things that cannot be done by executive orders. One specific item is a new budget that includes much more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for more and stronger barriers, more technology at the border, and more agents and equipment. The budget bill will use the reconciliation process, which cannot be filibustered. The border will be overseen by Tom Homan, who actually understands this stuff. Stephen Miller has said this could be the biggest policy achievement in 50 years.
The next step is mass deportations. Could it happen? Sure. President Eisenhower deported over a million undocumented immigrants during Operation Wetback in 1954. Here is a photo of some of the deportees:
However, Trump is talking about doing deportations on a scale 10x bigger than Eisenhower did. That will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and decimate entire sectors of the economy. A large fraction of slaughterhouse workers are undocumented. They are easy to round up to deport. How will people, even Trump voters, respond when meat prices skyrocket? There are also many undocumented workers in agriculture. How will those Trump voters respond when the price of veggies also heads toward the moon?
Nevertheless, Trump is clearly intending to try. Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham (R) has offered to lease a 1,400-acre ranch on the Texas-Mexico border near Rio Grande City to use as a holding pen for deportees. The Land Commission purchased the ranch in October and has already started construction of a mile-and-a-half wall on the border. Buckingham is eager to work with the federal government to build holding facilities on the ranch to help speed up deportations.
Also related to immigration, another thing Trump wants to do on Day 1 is start the process of abolishing birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This is not something Congress can do, and even the current Supreme Court is not likely to allow it to be abolished by anything short of repealing (part of) the Fourteenth Amendment. Trump hasn't specified what he actually wants done.
Nevertheless, immigration-related matters aren't the only thing for Day 1. He also wants to "drill, drill, drill" and "frack, frack, frack," to increase domestic energy production. At the very least, he could order the bureaucracy to approve all drilling permit requests within 30 days. He also wants to ban the teaching of critical race theory in all K-12 schools—even though virtually no school even mentions it. Also on the list is banning D.E.I. programs run by federal contractors. Lifting some of Joe Biden's XOs relating to special protections for transgender students is also on the list. It will be a busy first day. It will be an equally busy day at the U.S. District Court in D.C. on Day 2, when all the lawsuits against the XOs are filed. (V)