The Trump team is preparing a flurry of executive actions for Day 1

WASHINGTON — Within hours of taking office as president, Donald Trump plans to roll out a flurry of executive actions in line with his campaign promises, imposing more socially conservative health policies on the US military and initiating the wholesale deportation of people living in the country. land illegally.

NBC News spoke with more than half a dozen people familiar with transition planning who outlined a series of swift actions Trump plans to take to signal a dramatic break from President Joe Biden’s administration, which Trump claimed led country to destroy.

Americans will see the new Trump administration enact change at a pace “like nothing you’ve seen in history,” a Trump campaign official said.

Trump is preparing on Day One to overturn specific policies put in place by Biden, with plans to end travel reimbursements for military members seeking abortion care and to limit transgender service members’ access to gender-affirming care, two people familiar with the plans said .

But much of the first day is likely to focus on stopping illegal immigration — the centerpiece of Trump’s candidacy. He is expected to sign up to five executive orders aimed at dealing with that issue alone after he is sworn in on Jan. 20, three Trump allies said on condition of anonymity.

By contrast, that’s as many orders as he signed on all issues in the first week of his last term.

“There will undoubtedly be a lot of movement quickly, probably Day 1, on the immigration front,” a top Trump ally said. “There will be a push to make a huge early showing and assert himself to show that his campaign promises were not hollow.”

Transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “The American people can trust President Trump to use his executive power on day one to deliver on the promises he made to them on the campaign trail.”

Advisers based at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort or in nearby offices in West Palm Beach, Florida, are also strategizing to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and prepare for Trump’s return to the world stage after a four-year absence.

During the campaign, Trump promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine in just 24 hours – a time frame that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has cast doubt on.

Trump’s transition team is also fielding requests from overseas to host his first foreign trip.

With a decisive victory on November 5, Trump has moved quickly to build the Cabinet and a senior White House team that will carry out his plans.

By Wednesday, he had selected 32 people for senior positions in his administration, compared to just three at a similar point in his transition in 2016. At this point four years ago, Biden had selected just one person for a senior role in his incoming administration: Ron Klain to White House Chief of Staff.

Trump may enter the White House better positioned to both clarify and enact his agenda than in his first round.

A government-in-waiting of sorts for Trump administration alumni and allies has spent years working in Washington think tanks since he left office crafting policies to be enacted upon his return. A group started after Trump left office, the America First Policy Institute, which is led by a number of his former appointees, has drafted proposed orders for the transition team to consider.

Transition aides are sorting through dozens of proposed orders, while Trump’s eldest son attends some meetings to select staff, said two people close to the transition.

Donald Trump Jr. was among those who privately expressed opposition to rehiring Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state and CIA director in the first Trump administration, the person close to him said.

“He saw him as ideologically out of sync with regard to foreign policy. Too hawkish and internationalist,” the person said. “Don wants to see as many people in the administration who reflect his father’s worldview because he believes that is the best way to protect his father’s interests.”

Trump needs to move quickly to enact his agenda given the realities of the election calendar. Under the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, he can serve only one term. In 2026, Congress will be focused on midterm elections that could erode Trump’s narrow GOP majority or wipe it out entirely.

“The thing to realize is that Trump is no dummy,” said Stephen Moore, a senior economic adviser to Trump’s campaign. “He knows he has at most two to three years to get something done. And then he becomes a lame duck and we start talking about (the presidential election in) 2028.”

“So he really wants Secretariat right out of the gate,” added Moore, referring to the champion thoroughbred racehorse.

It’s easy enough to announce new policies when the starting gun sounds; bringing them to reality will take time. Big questions surround separate pieces of Trump’s agenda, including the tax cut package he promised. Will Trump follow through on his promise and remove taxes on tips or Social benefitsfor example?

“We’re not even sure what’s going to be in the plan,” Moore said.

Passing a tax cut would be such a daunting challenge that after securing the border, Trump would have to make it a top priority, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a Trump ally.

Gingrich said he has spoken with Trump advisers about making the tax cut package a centerpiece of the new administration.

“You get overwhelmed by how many things you do,” Gingrich told NBC News. “They need to take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book and focus the entire cabinet on passing the tax cuts.”

Deporting people on the scale Trump envisions in numbers will be a logistical challenge that will take years to accomplish. What he has in mind goes way beyond what he did last time.

During the first term, the Trump administration deported about 1.4 million people. Biden is on track to deport about 1.6 million people by the time his term ends, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The president is moving with clarity and purpose with his choices around DHS and the border in general,” said Chad Wolf, acting secretary of homeland security in the Trump administration. “It was a campaign promise, and I think polls show that the American people didn’t like the direction of the Biden-Harris administration on this issue, so it made perfect sense to put together a team and do it quickly and have that team to start moving out.”

A key figure in the effort will be Trump’s choice for Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. As governor of South Dakota, she has not remotely managed a bureaucracy like the Department of Homeland Security, which employs more than a quarter of a million people and whose portfolio also includes cyber threats and terrorism.

Noem campaigned for Trump, though one person close to Trump was surprised he picked her for the job. Trump had not “spoken very positively about her” after her book came out this spring, in which she revealed that she had killed her overly aggressive dog, Cricket, the person said.

Trump was in disbelief that she would choose to write about the episode because of people’s emotional attachment to their pets, the person added. He was surprised that she “didn’t understand what the reaction would be,” the person said. Trump is “no bitch man, but he’s like the ‘Good Lord’!”

Trump campaigned heavily on the promise of mass deportations and will be judged in part on how he addresses an issue he claims threatens American sovereignty. If the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States rises, he will likely face ridicule for not living up to his promise.

At the same time, he endured a fierce backlash for separating families who entered the country illegally during his first term, and he invites a potentially similar backlash if he takes such an approach again in his second.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Trump won, and won big, on the idea that cracking down on illegal immigration is not only a priority, but the priority,” said one Trump donor who has been in talks with his transition team.

Another Trump ally said the focus will be on how to speed up deportations through an executive order, but the political details are still being hashed out.

“This is our focus. This is what we ran on,” the person said. “It will be quick, but I think a lot of what that looks like is still being discussed.”

Advisers are trying to think through how to repatriate those who would be deported, said a person working on Trump’s transition. It will be difficult.

Among the first people to be targeted for deportation are those deemed to pose threats, possibly including military-age Chinese men living illegally in the United States

But sending them back to China would involve diplomatic negotiations that would likely require some give and take. Another option Trump advisers are considering involves deporting people to third-party countries.

As Trump navigates these issues, he has what his allies see as an advantage that all his predecessors lacked except Grover Cleveland, the last president to lose an election and then return to the White House four years later. Both Cleveland in the 19th century and Trump in the 21st had pauses to consider what went wrong and what went right.

“These are the only two guys who had four years to think about their first four years and then go back and play,” Gingrich said.