The first two and a half weeks of Donald Trump’s second term have featured a whirlwind of outrageous, chaotic, and horrible decisions.
Trump has begun the process of withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Accord, attempted to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, chosen to deny transgender and nonbinary Americans accurate federal identity documents, attempted to freeze huge swaths of federal government spending, and separately frozen foreign aid spending.
We’ll talk about all five of these stories today, but this is only a partial list of the many horrible things Trump has already done in his first few weeks as president.
These are preliminary summaries of chaotic, quickly developing stories.
I have done my best to ensure these summaries are accurate and up-to-date at the time of publication.
If you are looking for a more complete accounting of these important stories, I recommend researching them yourself, including through the links in this article.
Climate Change
Trump has signed an executive order that begins the process of withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Accord.
Under the international agreement, countries pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming and combat climate change.
Trump signed the order during a public event where he discussed his decision.
“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord rip-off,” he said. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries, while China pollutes with impunity.”
Even though Trump’s executive order claims the US withdrawal will be effective immediately once his administration submits formal notice, the Paris Agreement requires countries to wait one year after submitting written notice before they can withdraw from the pact.
Signing the Paris Climate Accord is a symbolic act that shows a country is committed to working with the international community to combat climate change.
Regardless of whether a country commits to limiting its greenhouse gas emissions in theory, it’s more important that they take efforts to do so in practice.
And Trump hasn’t just initiated the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, he has already taken action to reverse Biden administration policies that limit greenhouse gas emissions.
National Public Radio (NPR) has written a great article about Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
According to NPR, Trump has revoked many of Biden’s executive orders on climate change.
Trump revoked an executive order that required government regulators to evaluate the risks climate change poses to the financial system.
He also instructed agencies to review any regulations that might, “burden the development of domestic energy resources.”
That could include EPA rules limiting emissions from coal and gas power plants, and fees on oil and gas companies for releasing methane into the atmosphere.
Denying the need to take action to combat climate change is particularly egregious considering the intense heat waves across the US over the past two years.
Climate change also makes natural disasters, like the deadly and destructive wildfires in Los Angeles last month, more likely.
I wrote an article in 2021 about the history of the Paris Climate Accord.
The article discusses Obama’s decision to sign the agreement, Trump’s decision to withdraw during his first term, and Biden’s decision to rejoin the accord.
World Health Organization
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency that works to combat disease and improve the health of people around the world.
Trump has criticized the WHO for how it handled the COVID pandemic.
In 1948, Congress enacted a joint resolution authorizing President Truman to allow the United States to become a member of the WHO.
As part of this resolution, Congress created a right for the US to withdraw from the WHO after one year’s notice.
The WHO accepted this condition on US participation.
While US law allows the US to withdraw from the WHO, it’s unclear whether Trump can do so without Congressional approval.
The Congressional Research Service has written a short report about the legal questions posed by Trump’s decision to leave the WHO.
Regardless of these formalities, Trump’s decision has already had real world consequences.
The Trump administration instructed employees of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop engaging with the WHO in any way.
The US is the WHO’s largest donor. US funding accounts for nearly 15 percent of the organization’s budget.
Trump’s decision to leave has prompted the WHO to initiate a hiring freeze to cut costs.
The New York Times has written a great article about Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO.
Trump’s decision to leave the WHO could have dire repercussions for public health in the US and around the world.
Disengaging with the WHO could prevent the US from learning about emerging outbreaks like monkeypox and the potential reemergence of diseases like malaria and measles.
As the COVID pandemic has shown, once a disease outbreak begins in a foreign country, it can quickly spread to the rest of the world, including to the United States.
That’s why it's so essential to have an organization like the WHO that monitors diseases that pose a global threat.
Countries around the world rely on the WHO to achieve important health goals, including routine immunizations, outbreak control, and nutrition programs.
Countries without their own health agencies also rely on the WHO for public health guidelines, childhood vaccinations, and drug approvals.
I wrote an article about Trump’s attempt to withdraw from the WHO during his first term, and Biden’s decision to rejoin the organization.
Trump has also appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent years spreading dangerous misinformation about vaccines, to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The US Senate will vote on whether to confirm him for the position.
Denying trans and nonbinary Americans accurate passports
The Trump administration has implemented policies preventing transgender and nonbinary Americans from receiving identity documents from the federal government, including passports, that accurately reflect their gender identity.
Time Magazine wrote a great article on this topic.
Trump signed an executive order that criticizes people who deny “the biological reality of sex” and dismisses gender identity, calling it “disconnected from biological reality.”
The order declares that all federal agencies and employees will use the term “sex,” not “gender,” in all applicable policies and documents, that the US will only recognize “two sexes, male and female,” and that government-issued identity documents will, “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
This prevents transgender people, who identify with a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, from receiving identity documents that correspond to their gender.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a memo to State Department staff requiring them to suspend all gender marker update applications, and to suspend requests for identity documents with an “X” gender marker, used by nonbinary people.
Nonbinary people have a gender that isn’t exclusively male or female.
I have covered the Biden administration’s decision to allow transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans to receive federal identity documents that accurately reflect their identities.
Intersex refers to people who are born with physical traits in between those traditionally considered male or female.
I have also exhaustively covered the two lawsuits, one by an Intersex American, and one by a Transgender American, that prompted the Biden administration to adopt those policies.
That's not the only way President Trump has harmed the rights of transgender Americans in his second term.
Trump has also signed an executive order banning transgender troops from serving openly in the US military.
Federal Funding Freeze
A Trump administration official issued a memo ordering the federal government to pause huge swaths of federal spending, while government agencies complete a comprehensive analysis to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be impacted by Trump’s executive orders.
“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the memo said.
This unprecedented and illegal power grab abrogates Congressional authority over federal spending and violates the Impoundment Control Act.
The spending freeze temporarily prevented state Medicaid agencies, Heart Start early education programs, and community health centers from accessing the Payment Management Services web portal run by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Federal Courts have temporarily suspended the funding freeze while they consider legal challenges to the Trump administration’s authoritarian power grab.
Foreign Aid Freeze
Trump hasn’t just created chaos with his spending freeze at home, he has done the same with a separate spending freeze for US foreign aid abroad.
Virtually all foreign aid programs around the world that depend on US funding ground to a halt due to a “stop work” memo from the State Department, following a Trump executive order to freeze foreign assistance for 90 days, while the administration determines whether the programs comply with Trump’s foreign policy agenda.
In the executive order, Trump stated, “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases (are) antithetical to American values.”
“They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
I added the parenthetical “are” in the quote above, because the sentence in a formal executive order doesn’t make grammatical sense without it.
As part of that freeze, the Trump administration instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing HIV medications purchased with US aid, even if the drugs had already been obtained and were sitting in local clinics, according to the New York Times.
Another New York Times article lists other programs harmed by the Trump administration’s foreign aid freeze.
“In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.
In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.
In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.”
Trump’s commitment to putting “America First” apparently means innocent people in other countries have to die.
In the “stop work” order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained he had given a waiver for military aid to Israel, which allowed that spending to continue, despite the broader foreign aid freeze.
After the initial “stop work” order, the US State Department issued waivers to allow some US foreign aid projects to continue.
Trump must be removed from office
Trump’s nascent second term is already an authoritarian nightmare.
Trump is antithetical to every positive thing the United States has ever stood for.
He must be removed from office.
The US doesn’t have a “vote of no confidence” option available in parliamentary democracies.
My alarm and dismay about Trump’s unfitness for office isn’t concentrated around a single, discrete policy decision.
It’s about his overall pattern of behavior.
The only legal mechanism for removing a US president from office is impeachment.
I believe the Trump administration’s federal spending freeze and foreign aid freeze can be fairly described as abuses of power that warrant impeachment.
But Congress, in its current form, won’t impeach Trump or even pass legislation to reverse any of the policies I discussed today.
Republicans run both chambers of Congress.
A Republican House won’t impeach Trump, and a Republican Senate won’t convict and remove him.
What you can do
Many people are despondent by this constant drumbeat of outrageous and unacceptable behavior.
They are looking for a way to “do something” in response to these provocations, even though they don’t know exactly what they can or should do.
In my next article, I'll discuss the “Democratic Victory Fund,” which will raise money for Democrats in important and competitive races in 2025 and 2026.
Challenging Trump and his Republican enablers will be a long-term project, and there’s no better time to begin than the present.
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