7 Things Donald Trump Has Already Done As President

President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Friday, and already he is taking action to shift the course of the federal government. With Republican majorities in the House and the Senate and the power of the executive branch at hand, Trump has considerable latitude to pursue his and his party's priorities.

Some of his actions so far reflect campaign promises, while others are standard operating procedure for an incoming president. He has also shown that his adversarial relationship with the press, a consistent feature of his presidential campaign, seems likely to continue while he is in office.

Here's what he's done so far in just three days:

1. Ended involvement in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership

On Monday, Trump signed an order ending U.S. participation in the TPP negotiations, the trade agreement President Obama failed to push through Congress. Though many Republicans supported the deal, Trump made opposition to TPP, and most American trade deals, a cornerstone of his campaign. He has said he wants to negotiate better deals for the country, but no specific plans on this front have yet been released.

2. Issued executive order on Obamacare

Trump cannot undo Obamacare with the mere stroke of his pen; he will need Congress to act if he intends to repeal the Affordable Care Act in any way. But on Friday, the new president signed an executive order demonstrating his commitment to rolling back the law.

His order directs the Department of Health and Human Services to minimize the financial burden of Obamacare on citizens, states, providers, insurers and others affected by its regulations as far as possible under the existing statute.

It's not clear exactly what affect this will have in the short term, but it shifts the priority of the agency running the law from actively promoting Obamcare's aims to reducing its impacts. Even without full repeal, this could mean significant changes for those affected by the law.

3. Reinstated the Mexico City Policy

The Mexico City Policy prevents the federal government from providing funds to foreign non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortion services. By reinstating the policy Monday, Trump solidifies his conversion to pro-life Republican orthodoxy. (He was once avowedly pro-choice.)

The Mexico City Policy was enacted by Ronald Reagan, rescinded by Bill Clinton, reinstated by George W. Bush, and rescinded again by Barack Obama.

4. Regulations and hiring freeze

In an expected move, Trump issued an executive order Friday night telling all agencies and departments in the executive branch to freeze any pending or forthcoming regulations. Given the shift in party control of the administration, it's no surprise that the president would halt rule-making by people acting under the direction of the former president.

On Monday, he added another executive order to freeze all non-military hiring of federal employees.

5. Made nice with the CIA

In a speech in front of the CIA's Memorial Wall, Trump downplayed his prior criticism of the intelligence community. He said he would aggressively back the CIA, and he blamed the press for any appearance of animosity between him and the agency.

"They [the media] are among the most dishonest people on earth," he said. "They made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community."

Of course, the media did not concoct the feud out of nowhere. The evidence of it still exists on Trump's Twitter feed:

6. Lashed out at media over size of crowds

At the CIA, Trump also falsely accused the media of lying about the size of his inauguration crowd. He asserted, without evidence, that the crowd probably probably consisted of as many as 1 million or 1.5 million people.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer also called a meeting with the press that day and falsely said the 2017 inauguration was the most watched around the globe and in person ever. He provided no evidence for this assertion, and all the available evidence indicates otherwise.

7. Worked on confirming Cabinet

Trump is moving forward with installing his Cabinet. On Friday, he signed a waiver that will allow Gen. James Mattis to serve as secretary of defense, which is necessary because he only recently retired from the Marines. Trump also signed a series of executive orders to formally nominate his candidates for the heads of various federal departments.

Photo credit: Michael Vadon