Trump signs order on birthright citizenship – as it happened

Thank you for following our live coverage of president Trump’s momentous first day in office. This blog is closing but you can continue to follow live updates on our new blog here.

Here is a summary of the day:

On day one, Donald Trump set into motion a slew of executive orders seeking to make good on his campaign promises to pardon January 6 defendants, crack down on immigration to the US, deny federal recognition of transgender identities and undo Joe Biden’s executive actions.

Trump signed multiple executive orders in front of a crowd of his supporters at the Capital One Arena in DC and then signed more during a press conference in the Oval Office. Among other actions, Trump has:

• Pardoned about 1,500 January 6 defendants facing prosecution for their role in the 2021 storming of the US capitol. Among those pardoned is Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison on seditious conspiracy charges. Trump also commuted the sentence of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison on sedition charges.

• Issued an executive order requiring federal agencies revoke the use of “gender” and “gender identity” and instead use a binary definition of “sex” in implementing policy – including in issuing passports, a move that LGBTQ+ rights groups have vowed to challenge in court.

• Signed an executive order seeking to revoke birthright citizenship – automatic citizenship for people born in the US – for the children of undocumented immigrants. Birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th amendment and the order will almost certainly be challenged in court.

• Rescinded 78 executive actions enacted by Joe Biden.

• Signed an executive order to, for a second time, withdraw the US from the Paris climate accords.

• Issued an executive order to remove the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). “World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen any more,” Trump said at the signing. The withdrawal of the US would dramatically cut funding from the global public health organization.

• Donald Trump has signed an order to rename the 617,800 sq mile Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s 20,000ft Denali. The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali, the highest mountain in North America, will revert to Mount McKinley, which it was called before Barack Obama changed the name in 2015. The order will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.

For a full list of executive orders issued on day one, click here:

The Democratic National Committee has released a statement regarding president Trump’s decision to pardon those facing prosecution for their role in the 2021 storming of the US capitol.

“Donald Trump just pardoned the violent insurrectionists he rallied to storm the Capitol on January 6 — rioters who assaulted police officers and attacked our democracy,” said Alex Floyd, the DNC’s rapid response director.

“On Day One, Trump is already making clear that he’ll follow through on his dangerous campaign promises of revenge and retribution that put violent criminals over law enforcement,” he said in an emailed statement.

In a one line comment accompanied by pictures of Los Angeles engulfed in flames during the recent wildfires, California governor Gavin Newsom.

“If you don’t believe in science, believe your own damn eyes,” he said.

The mother of American journalist Austin Tice said on Monday that the Trump administration had offered support to help find her son, who disappeared in Syria in 2012, the Associated Press reported.

Debra Tice made the remarks at a news conference in Damascus on her first visit to the country since insurgents toppled President Bashar Assad last month. She did not present any new findings in the ongoing search.

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Austin Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men. Tens of thousands are believed to have gone missing in Syria since 2011, when countrywide protests against Assad spiralled into a devastating civil war.

International leaders have responded with a mixture of wariness, anger and enthusiasm to Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, with Panama pushing back on his pledge to retake the Panama Canal and Mexico vowing to defend its people ahead of a crackdown on migrants.

The Guardian’s Helen Livingstone has this handy wrap-up of how global leaders have reacted to Trump 2.0 so far.

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Among the most notable of comments was one from Hungarian prime minister, Victor Orbán, who said in a post on X: “Now it’s our turn to shine! It’s our turn to occupy Brussels!”

Among the flurry of executive orders Trump signed after his inauguration, one is set to impact more than 1,600 Afghans who had hoped to enter the US as refugees.

Their entry, writes the Guardian’s Andrew Roth, will now be blocked under an executive order signed by Trump on Monday evening that suspends the resettlement of all refugees to the United States for an indefinite period of time.

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The decision has led to panic among prospective Afghan refugees, including family members of hundreds of active-duty service personnel and children waiting to be reunited with family members already in the US, according to a leading refugee resettlement activist and a US official who spoke with the Guardian on condition of anonymity.

Read the full report here.

At the Commander in Chief Ball, one of three inauguration day balls that Donald Trump attended on Monday, the president and first lady Melania Trump shared a first dance – an inauguration day tradition.

The couple danced to Battle Hymn of the Republic, and were joined by JD and Usha Vance.

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On his first day in office, Donald Trump set into motion a slew of executive orders seeking to make good on his campaign promises to pardon January 6 defendants, crack down on immigration to the US, deny federal recognition of transgender identities and undo Joe Biden’s executive actions.

Trump signed multiple executive orders in front of a crowd of his supporters at the Capital One Arena in DC and then signed more during a press conference in the Oval Office. Among other actions, Trump has:

• Pardoned about 1,500 January 6 defendants facing prosecution for their role in the 2021 storming of the US capitol. Among those pardoned is Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison on seditious conspiracy charges. Trump also commuted the sentence of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, who had been sentenced to 18 years in prison on sedition charges.

• Issued an executive order requiring federal agencies revoke the use of “gender” and “gender identity” and instead use a binary definition of “sex” in implementing policy – including in issuing passports, a move that LGBTQ+ rights groups have vowed to challenge in court.

• Signed an executive order seeking to revoke birthright citizenship – automatic citizenship for people born in the US – for the children of undocumented immigrants. Birthright citizenship is protected by the 14th amendment and the order will almost certainly be challenged in court.

• Rescinded 78 executive actions enacted by Joe Biden.

• Signed an executive order to, for a second time, withdraw the US from the Paris climate accords.

• Issued an executive order to remove the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). “World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen any more,” Trump said at the signing. The withdrawal of the US would dramatically cut funding from the global public health organization.

• Donald Trump has signed an order to rename the 617,800 sq mile Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s 20,000ft Denali. The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali, the highest mountain in North America, will revert to Mount McKinley, which it was called before Barack Obama changed the name in 2015. The order will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.

For a full list of executive orders issued on day one, click here:

Trump, who made anti-transgender rhetoric a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, has signed an executive order that seeks to limit legal recognition of trans people in the US.

The order stipulates that federal agencies use its definition of “sex,” (“an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female”) rather than “gender” or “gender identity” in enacting policy.

The LGBTQ+ legal group Lambda Legal warned the order could limit trans and intersex people’s “access to essential public facilities, school programs, and the same medically recommended health care that is readily available to their cisgender peers” and has vowed to take legal action to stop its implementation.

The order directs the secretary of state, the secretary of homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to require official documents like passports to “accurately reflect the holder’s sex” and not their gender identity.

It stipulates that agencies submit a review of the implementation of these policies to the Office of Management and Budget, which will be chaired by Russell Vought, if the president’s nominee for the position is confirmed. Vought, an architect of Project 2025, has used extreme anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, including claiming that “transgender sewage” is “being pumped into our schools and institutions” according to reporting by ProPublica.

In a flurry of first-day-in-office penmanship, Donald Trump has signed an order to rename the 617,800 sq mile Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s 20,000ft Denali.

The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali, the highest mountain in North America, will revert to Mount McKinley, which it was called before Barack Obama changed the name in 2015.

The order directs the secretary of the interior, nominated by Trump to be North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, to change the change names in federal communications and on official maps. It will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.

“President McKinley championed tariffs to protect US manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive US industrialization and global reach to new heights,” the order reads.

Mount McKinley was officially named in honor of William McKinley in 1917, 16 years after he was assassinated during a public appearance in Buffalo, New York, though it was unofficially named McKinley in 1896 by a gold prospector.

Obama changed the name to Denali – the name given it by Koyukon speakers of the Koyukon Athabaskans in western interior Alaska.

The name change is said to be of special significance to the new president because he sees a kinship with McKinley. At a rally in December, Trump praised McKinley as “a great president, very good president. At a minimum, he was a very good businessman. He was a businessman, then a governor, very successful businessman.”

Trump discussed the Gulf of Mexico name change earlier this month in a speech on tariffs.

“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring. That covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name – and it’s appropriate,” Trump declared.

Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship seeks to end automatic citizenship for the children born to undocumented immigrants in the US starting 30 days from today.

Birthright citizenship, which guarantees automatic US citizenship to people born on US soil, is protected by the 14th amendment and Trump’s efforts to upend the right will almost certainly be challenged in court.

The order specifies that it would limit birthright citizenship if a person’s “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth,” or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary.”

The order seeks to implement a policy of denying documents recognizing US citizenship for individuals who meet that criteria and are born in the US 30 days after the order was signed.

Former police officers who were stationed at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 condemned Donald Trump’s move to pardon about 1,500 defendants facing prosecution for their role in storming the Capitol.

One of the former capitol police officers, Harry Dunn, said in a statement Monday that the pardons amounted to a “betrayal to the officers who were severely injured – and died – as a result of the insurrection,” and called the pardons “a reflection of what abuse of power looks like and what we the people are bound to witness over the next four years”.

Aquilino Gonell, also a former Capitol police officer, called the pardons a “miserable miscarriage of justice” and said that “the scars of 6 January 2021 are seared in my mind and body, and I will never truly recover from the events of that day”.

Gonell and Dunn, who testified at congressional hearings investigating the January 6 attacks, were themselves granted last-minute pardons by Joe Biden before Trump took office, in anticipation of possible legal retaliation by the new administration.

The United States will exit the World Health Organization, Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic and other international health crises.

The mother of Enrique Tarrio – the former Proud Boys leader who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy relating to the storming of the US Capitol – claimed in a post on X today that her son would be released from prison.

According to the New York Times, Tarrio’s lawyer said Tarrio was being processed on Monday for release from the federal prison where he has been held. Since then, Trump signed an executive order granting clemency en masse to January 6 defendants convicted on charges relating to the storming of the Capitol.

Trump, who promised to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, has signed an executive order he says does just that.

By leaving the WHO, the US would dramatically cut funding for the global public health organization.

Donald Trump told reporters on Monday night that an order related to the social media app TikTok gave him “the right to either sell it or close it”.

It is not immediately clear what Trump’s executive order, which he said would suspend the TikTok ban that went into effect on Sunday, entailed specifically. TikTok went offline in the US briefly before a ban passed by Congress and upheld by the supreme court went into effect on Sunday.