**Editors Note: Add “nonbinary, and intersex” before “existence,” on print, it says “nonbinary, intersex and transgender women to stay in men’s prisons and detention centers.”
It has been 43 days since Donald Trump took office as the 47th U.S. President, and democrats were, understandably, left reeling. As he has settled back into the presidential seat, we’ve seen Trump’s “concepts of a plan” unravel into something sinisterly similar to The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which he claimed was not his intention during his second presidential campaign.
This election was especially polarizing — a vision of the two-party system at its lowest. AP News tallied the results of the popular vote for the 2025 election as 77,303,564, or 49.9%, for former president Trump, and 75,019,268, or 48.4%, for former vice president Kamala Harris. President Trump won the popular vote by 2,284,296 votes. That shocked a lot of people, to say the least, myself included. I felt angry, hurt, betrayed and overwhelmed.
Some of us needed time to come to terms with the change and administration, but the time for licking our political wounds is over. Understand that Trump signed a myriad of executive orders immediately after taking office, and has continued to advance plans in a variety of directions that are immensely concerning to many democrats. Too many things are happening politically right now for us, as individuals, to reasonably expect ourselves to stay informed and take action against every injustice.
That is why we must recognize and embrace each other’s intersectional political identities. That’s not to say we should trivialize the unignorable and harsh reality of the two-party system, but that we should look deeper into that system and prioritize our individual political values, because many of them are under attack. The slew of executive orders Trump signed are not the death certificate of the Democratic Party, but tons of smaller declarations of war. It’s time for each of us to decide for ourselves what we are willing to fight for, and to know that though we may feel outnumbered, we are not alone.
According to the Federal Register, as of March 4, 2025, Trump has signed 76 executive orders. From Executive Order 14147 to Executive Order 14222, he has begun unfolding his plot for the next four years. These range from listing plans to restrict access to gender affirming care for transgender youth, in Executive Order 14187, to establishing the White House Task Force on Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday, in Executive Order 14189.
So many specific plans are being hatched at once — and so many of them seem to fall outside of Trump’s constitutional authority or are simply vague and unrealistic — that it’s almost impossible to keep track of each political action, but we can dig into some of the notable executive orders and themes. Some of the most concerning of which are assaults on: foreign relations, immigrants, environmental protections, healthcare and LGBTQ+ rights.
Foreign relations:
In Executive Order 14209, President Trump moved to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Policies Act, which forbid U.S. entities and citizens from bribing foreign government officials for personal business gain. Trump’s orders involving foreign relations also include Executive Order 14199, which further distances the United States from the United Nations and an order which imposes 25% tariffs on goods imported from Canada, Mexico and China, as well as orders pausing those tariffs for the first two countries listed. Against Mexico in particular, Trump signed executive orders declaring a national emergency at the southern border, designating cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations or Specially Designated Global Terrorists, ending taxpayer subsidization of open borders and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He also signed Executive Order 14211, which states, “All officers or employees charged with implementing the foreign policy of the United States must under Article II do so under the direction and authority of the President. Failure to faithfully implement the President’s policy is grounds for professional discipline, including separation.”
Immigration:
Trump signed multiple orders regarding legal and illegal immigration. He revoked the protections and aid for immigrants established during the Biden administration. In Executive Order 14160, Trump denied birthright citizenship going forward “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.” He also called for increased vetting during the immigration process, a new screening baseline for immigration and a report on what countries’ citizens should be completely denied immigration, as well as those countries’ past immigration statistics. Trump wrote a separate executive order to secure the borders, which includes continuing work on a border wall, deterring potential illegal immigration, detaining people who immigrated unlawfully “to the maximum extent authorized by law,” removing them from the United States, pursuing legal charges and enforcing “Federal immigration priorities.” He also suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States,” in Executive Order 14163.
Environmental protections:
In Executive Order 14162, Trump officially listed orders to submit a formal notification of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and cease financial commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as dispose of the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan. He instead established the National Energy Dominance Council. In Executive Order 14154, Trump rescinded tons of climate-protecting executive orders from the Biden administration, as well as terminated the Green New Deal, and encouraged use of national lands and waterways for resource extraction, including the Outer Continental Shelf.
Healthcare:
Executive Order 14155 describes Trump’s intent to withdraw from the World Health Organization and “cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and actions taken to effectuate such agreement and amendments will have no binding force on the United States.” He also signed an order to end school COVID-19 vaccine mandates. He signed another to reinvoke the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of federal funds for elective abortions — and another still to “rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” gender affirming care for transgender youth.
LGBTQ+ rights:
In Executive Order 14168, titled, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” Trump attempts to erase the reality of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex existence by enforcing “sex-protective laws” that promote a two-sex policy under the guise of protecting cisgender women. This order also requires transgender women to stay in men’s prisons and detention centers, gives citizens the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” and rescinds all gender-affirming government documents. Multiple executive orders were put in place to revoke a laundry list of diversity, equity and inclusion policies and prevent future DEI legislature from being put in place, including policies for protecting LGBT+ people. Trump signed another order strictly for barring transgender people from military service. He also required the erasure of gender identity from educational discourse in K-12 schools within the attacks on “radical indoctrination” Executive Order 14190.
Despite these disheartening political moves, many people never stopped fighting against injustice — and most people who took a break from politics after the election never stopped caring. To get information or get involved with immigration justice, I encourage you to look into the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice at https://www.iowammj.org/. For civil rights in general, check out the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa at https://www.aclu-ia.org/en/action. For LGBTQ+ rights, research One Iowa at https://oneiowa.org/. Wherever your priorities lie, there are others who want to help you — and whatever you choose to focus less on, someone else can invest more of their energy into. Do not despair, hopeless citizens do not fight back.
