On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed 26 executive orders in the Oval Office before a crowd of donors, bypassing Congress, committees, and agency review to impose a sweeping agenda by decree. One directive withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. Another froze all federal hiring. He reinstated Schedule F, reclassifying roughly 50,000 career civil servants as at-will political appointees. Another order suspended refugee admissions for 120 days and barred entry from seven majority-Muslim nations, reviving his 2017 travel ban. He declared a national emergency at the southern border to redirect Pentagon funds toward wall construction. That was exactly the maneuver Congress refused to authorize in 2019. All 26 orders skipped committee review, agency comment periods, and a floor vote.
The Return of Schedule F
Under Project 2025, Schedule F would reclassify as many as 50,000 career civil servants into at-will employees. A single executive order would strip them of merit-based job protections. The Trump administration created Schedule F by executive order in October 2020. President Biden rescinded it on January 22, 2021, before mass firings could occur.
Project 2025, drafted by over 400 former Trump officials and published by the Heritage Foundation in April 2023, calls for reinstating Schedule F immediately. Its chapter on the Executive Office of the President, written by former Office of Personnel Management chief of staff Paul Dans and former OPM director Michael Rigas, directs the next president to identify and remove employees deemed insufficiently loyal to the administration's agenda.
The 920-page blueprint explicitly lists target agencies. They include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education. Loyalty tests, not competence, would determine who remains.
Pardons for January 6
On January 20, 2025, Trump granted full, unconditional pardons to 1,500 people charged in the January 6 Capitol attack. Enrique Tarrio was among them. The Proud Boys leader had been sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy. So was Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who received 18 years. More than 600 of those pardoned had been convicted of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police. Daniel Rodriguez drove a stun gun into Officer Michael Fanone's neck. He walked free after serving less than two years of a 12-year sentence. Trump also commuted the sentences of 14 others, all tied to militia groups. The order erased convictions for attacking officers with flagpoles, chemical spray, and stolen shields. It ended every pending January 6 prosecution.
The order erased convictions for attacking officers with flagpoles, chemical spray, and stolen shields.
The Threat of Military Force
On June 1, 2020, Trump told governors in a call, “You have to dominate,” and threatened to deploy “thousands and thousands” of active-duty troops unless they crushed protests over George Floyd’s murder. That evening, federal officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Square so he could hold a Bible outside St. John’s Church. Days earlier, his advisers had drafted plans to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, a statute last used for domestic unrest during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley publicly opposed the move, and Trump never signed the order, but his threat alone pushed the military into partisan confrontation.
Election Certification as a Battleground
Since 2021, MAGA majorities on county election boards in at least eight states have attempted to block certification of results they disliked. In Georgia, the State Election Board in August 2024 empowered local officials to conduct “reasonable inquiry” before certifying. A Fulton County judge called it “a new and unchecked” delay power. Arizona’s Cochise County refused to certify its 2022 results until a court ordered it to. By 2024, Republican activists in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan had pushed bills requiring hand counting of ballots. Studies show hand counts are slower, costlier, and less accurate than machine tabulators. In Texas, Harris County’s 2022 election was targeted for a legislative takeover after Republican losses. The cumulative effect is not election security but administrative sabotage: rules changed after votes are cast, certification treated as optional, and local boards converted into veto points for losing candidates.