After Taking Office, Trump Pardons 1,500 6 January Defendants

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump pardoned about 1,500 of his supporters who attacked the US Capitol four years ago as he moved swiftly to impose his will on the US government just hours after reclaiming the presidency on Monday 20 January 2025.

After a day of ceremony, Trump signed a series of executive actions to curb immigration and roll back environmental regulations and racial and gender diversity initiatives. He did not take immediate action to raise tariffs, a key campaign promise, but said he could impose 25% duties on Canada and Mexico on 1 February 2025.

That sent the Mexican peso sliding 1% against the dollar while the Canadian dollar tumbled to a five-year low of C$1.4515.

The news also quickly reversed gains in global stock markets and sent the greenback strongly rebounding across the board in choppy trade.

Trump's decision to pardon supporters who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 is sure to enrage police, lawmakers and others whose lives were put at risk during an unprecedented episode in modern US history.

Roughly 140 police officers were assaulted during the attack, with some sprayed with chemical irritants and others struck with pipes, poles and other weapons. Four people died during the chaos, including a Trump supporter who was shot dead by police.

Trump ordered fourteen leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militant groups, who were serving long prison sentences, released from prison early, but left their convictions intact.

Earlier in the day, Trump, 78, took the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda, where a mob of his supporters had rampaged on 6 January in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

At the ceremony, Trump portrayed himself as a saviour chosen by God to rescue a faltering nation. His inauguration amounts to a triumphant return for a political disruptor who survived two assassination attempts and won election despite a criminal conviction and a prosecution stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. 

"I was saved by God to make America great again," he said.

Trump is the first president in more than a century to win a second term after losing the White House and the first felon to occupy the White House. The oldest president ever to be sworn in, he is backed by Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Trump moved quickly to clamp down on illegal immigration, a signature issue since he first entered politics in 2015.

Shortly after he took the oath of office, US border authorities shut down a programme that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the US legally by scheduling an appointment through a smartphone. Existing appointments were cancelled.

Nearly 1,660 Afghans who had been cleared by the US government to resettle in the US, including family members of active-duty US military personnel, were having their flights cancelled under a Trump order suspending US refugee programmes, a US official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.

Border emergency declared, climate deal nixed

At the White House, Trump signed an order that declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, which would unlock funding and allow him to dispatch troops there. He signed an order that would end a policy that confers citizenship to those born in the United States, which is certain to trigger a lengthy court fight. Another executive order designated Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organisations.

Trump once again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate deal, removing the world's biggest historic emitter from global efforts to fight climate change for the second time in a decade.

"We're getting rid of all the cancer [...] caused by the Biden administration," Trump said as he signed a stack of executive orders in the Oval Office.

Other orders revoked Biden administration policies governing artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. He also imposed a freeze on federal hiring and ordered government workers to return to the office, rather than working from home. He also signed paperwork to create a "Department of Government Efficiency", an outside advisory board headed by billionaire Elon Musk that aims to cut large swaths of government spending.

In the State Department, more than a dozen nonpartisan senior diplomats were asked to resign as part of a broader plan to replace nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists.

Trump said on social media his team was in the process of removing over a thousand appointees from the Biden administration.

He also said he would issue orders to scrap federal diversity programs and require the government to recognise only genders assigned at birth.

While Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier during his half-hour speech, his tone was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into America and voiced familiar grievances over his criminal prosecutions.

With Biden seated nearby, Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor's policies from immigration to foreign affairs.

"We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defence of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders, or more importantly, its own people," Trump said. 

Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favour with the incoming administration - including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg - had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump's family.

Trump said he would send astronauts to Mars, prompting Musk - who has long talked about colonizing the planet - to raise his fists.

Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among US allies.

Return to power

Trump took the oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend" the US Constitution at 12:01 ET (18:01 CET), administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.

Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November 2024, was seated next to Biden in a section with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, sat with her husband Bill. Obama's wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.

The ceremony was moved indoors due to the extreme cold gripping much of the country.

Trump skipped Biden's inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.

Biden, in one of his last official acts, pardoned several people whom Trump has threatened with retaliation, including General Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who Trump has suggested should be executed for holding back-channel talks with China. Milley's portrait was removed from the Pentagon shortly after Trump's inauguration.

He also pardoned five family members minutes before leaving office, citing fears that Trump would target them.