Trump to Host GOP Leaders as Early Actions Upend Washington
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump is kicking off his full first day in the White House with high-level congressional consultations and a high-profile infrastructure announcement, as he begins to chart out his legislative and political strategy for his second term.
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Early in the afternoon, Trump is meeting with his two most important congressional partners, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to discuss the approach to passing one, or two, reconciliation bills, officials familiar with the plan said. Then the group will be joined by the larger Republican congressional leadership as the party weighs its approach for extending the president’s signature tax cuts and securing other legislative priorities.
Trump later will be joined by Softbank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI LLC’s Sam Altman, and Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison to announce an initial $100 billion investment, which could scale up to $500 billion over the next four years, to build up infrastructure for artificial intelligence, according a White House official.
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Separately, border czar Tom Homan said during an interview with CNN that targeted immigration raids were underway across the nation. And the president is also likely to roll out additional executive actions as he looks to reshape the federal bureaucracy with an eye toward his agenda.
But even as Trump barreled ahead with an eye toward additional accomplishments, some of his most controversial initiatives were already generating outrage that threatened to overshadow his agenda.
At a service at the National Cathedral on Tuesday morning, Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded with Trump to protect the rights of transgender people and immigrants, a day after the president signed orders to rollback protections for those groups.
“Let me make one final plea, Mr President,” Budde said. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
“The vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” she added.
Asked later what he thought of the service, Trump said it was “not too exciting.”
“They can do much better,” he added.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats seized on Trump’s decision to pardon or commute the sentences of individuals involved in the January 6, 2021 attempted insurrection, arguing that the president had prioritized his political supporters over standing with law enforcement officers injured on that day. Prisoners released included former Proud Boys head Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, who were serving lengthy sentences for their roles in the attack.
“President Trump’s abuse of the presidential pardon system is appalling,” Peter Welch, a US senator from Vermont, said in a statement. “More than anything it displays disregard to the men and women of the Capitol Police who bravely defended the Capitol and stood in the breach to allow for the transfer of power to the president newly elected by the citizens of the United States of America.”
On Monday, Trump issued dozens of orders that sought to tighten the border, narrow citizenship eligibility, remake trade ties, empower him to award security clearances, withdraw the US from the World Health Organization and Paris Accords, and grant a temporary reprieve to TikTok, all in line with campaign pledges.
Trump has claimed a mandate from his election win, and is planning sweeping legislation including to renew tax cuts passed during his first term while enacting new ones promised during his campaign. At the same time, Republicans hold narrow majorities in the House and Senate, and have needed Democratic help to get through essential bills like those funding the government or to extend the debt limit.
Trump’s inauguration day was a re-imagined spectacle of pomp, forced inside due to cold weather for the first time since 1985. And Trump himself was at center stage — delivering his inaugural address and a second, longer speech at the Capitol, before an indoor parade and, ultimately, his return to the Oval Office.
It also was a sign of shifting times: the Democratic outcry of 2017 and Trump isolation of 2021 gave way to a display of bipartisanship Monday. Outgoing President Joe Biden hosted the Trumps for coffee before attending Trump’s inauguration, a contrast from four years ago when Trump skipped Biden’s.
Trump wanted to hit the ground running, and on Monday signed executive actions at three separate occasions — once at the Capitol, appointing staff and ordering flags to full staff; once at the arena that held a makeshift parade to escape the cold; and finally Monday evening at the White House.
Trump announced that he would dramatically tighten rules at the border. A Biden-era app used to schedule asylum claims went offline shortly after he was sworn in, and Trump signed an order looking to end automatic, or birthright, citizenship to babies born in the US in certain cases.
He pledged to curtail regulations on energy production and refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Trump also designated cartels as foreign terror organizations and left the door open to military strikes in Mexico. “Stranger things have happened,” he said. He also signed a series of orders related to the federal workforce, including one ending work-from-home leeway and another freezing federal hiring in certain departments.
“We’re doing all of this on our very first day in office,” Trump told supporters at his arena speech.
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Other moves are yet to come. He largely held his fire on tariffs, after pledging to use them widely on friendly nations and foes alike. Trump directed agencies to begin studying key issues, including trade deficits and whether the US should quit the renegotiated Nafta pact that Trump signed in his first term.
Trump also didn’t outline the extent of his plans on China, which he repeatedly has threatened with additional tariffs. He did say he’d consider it if they balk at any deal to give the US a stake in TikTok, which Trump is seeking in exchange for letting the app live on.
Trump began the day with a church service that also laid bare some of his allegiances: some of the world’s wealthiest people and heads of its biggest firms joined him for the service and, later, had prominent seats to his swearing in. They included Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, among others.
Trump’s stately tone of his inaugural speech, his first of the day, soon gave way to other issues gnawing at him. He hinted in a second speech, delivered extemporaneously and lasting longer than his inaugural address, that he was talked out of expressing sympathy for those convicted of the Jan. 6 demonstration, when Trump was disputing the election results, from this year’s inaugural address.
Hours later, Monday night, he pardoned 1,500 people convicted in the riot, calling them “hostages,” save for 14, who had their sentences commuted. It was a swift and immediate abandonment of the prosecutions stemming from that day, and his clemency didn’t exempt those convicted of assaulting police officers, as some Republicans had hoped.
--With assistance from Billy House and Stephanie Lai.
(Updates with details on AI announcement, additional Trump remarks)
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