First lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance attend the Commander in Chief Ball, part of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, in Washington on Monday. | AP/PTI
LIVE | Day 1 of Trump 2.0: Migrants stranded as US tightens security on southern border
No move yet on F-1, H-1B visas; undocumented migrants anxious as Trump moves to realise pledge of mass deportations of 11 million people living in US illegally
Freshly inaugurated American President Donald J Trump on Monday (January 20) promised a blitz of executive orders as he announced the beginning of a "golden age" of America.
In a fiery inaugural address, 78-year-old Trump laid out his vision for the next four years, described January 20, 2025 as the "liberation day" for the US and declared that "America's decline is over" as he will bring changes "very quickly".
Trump signed executive orders to beef up security at the southern border that began taking effect hours after he was inaugurated, making good on his defining political promise to crack down on immigration and marking another wild swing in White House policy on the divisive issue.
Some of the orders revive priorities from his first administration that his predecessor had rolled back, including forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico and finishing the border wall. Others created sweeping new strategies, like an effort to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in America, pulling the military into border security and ending use of a Biden-era app used by nearly a million migrants to enter America.
However, there is no word yet on the policy changes in the issuance of H-1B and other work visas.
In locations like Tijuana in Mexico, migrants from Haiti, Venezuela and around the world were seen waiting for their appointments to legally enter the US.
But US Customs and Border Protection announced Monday that the CBP One app that worked as recently as that morning would no longer be used to admit migrants after facilitating entry for nearly 1 million people since January 2023. Tens of thousands of appointments that were scheduled into February were canceled, applicants were told.
Here is Trump's speech's full text
TK Arun's Opinion | The return of Trump: From Pax Americana to a new imperium
10 things Trump said in his inaugural address
Trump 2.0: 5 geopolitical shifts to watch out for
Why is Trump keen to 'acquire' Greenland? There's a method to the madness
Read updates below
Live Updates
- 21 Jan 2025 5:15 PM IST
Trump signs orders to rename two landmarks
President Donald Trump signed an order to rename two significant natural landmarks: the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's highest peak, Denali. The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali will revert to its original name, Mount McKinley, which was changed by Barack Obama in 2015.
- 21 Jan 2025 5:12 PM IST
Bitcoin rally cools as Trump makes no new mention of crypto
Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies and even the newly minted token bearing Donald Trump's name cooled on Tuesday, after the US president's first set of policies following his inauguration made no reference to the asset class.
Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, hit a record high $109,071 on Monday when Trump was sworn in as the 47th US president, but later started falling. By 1001 GMT on Tuesday, it was trading at $102,546.13 - still up around 9.5% so far this month. (Reuters)
- 21 Jan 2025 5:00 PM IST
Trump says Putin ‘destroying’ Russia as Ukraine war drags on
US President Donald Trump has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to come to the negotiating table to end the war on Ukraine.
“He should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal. I think Russia’s going to be in big trouble,” Trump said, pointing to the economic impacts the war is having on Russia.
The US president indicated he plans to meet Putin again, saying, “I got along with him great” during his first term in office.
“He can’t be thrilled he’s not doing so well. I mean he’s grinding it out, but most people thought that war would have been over in about one week, and now you’re into three years, right?” Trump said, adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “wants to make a deal”.
- 21 Jan 2025 4:58 PM IST
President’s order suspends foreign aid dispersal for months
The Trump administration has announced a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance.
“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” an executive order said.
“They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
The three-month suspension will allow an “assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy”.
- 21 Jan 2025 4:45 PM IST
China expresses firm support for WHO after Trump decided to quit UN health body
China on Tuesday expressed its firm support for the World Health Organisation (WHO) after US President Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal from the UN health body, accusing it of mishandling the Covid-19 crisis and failing to carry out reforms.
Soon after his swearing-in on Monday, Trump signed an executive order beginning the process of withdrawing America from the WHO, the second time in less than five years that the US has ordered to withdraw from the world body.
Reacting to Trump’s move, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Tuesday that China will continue to support the world health body in fulfilling its duties.
Guo said that as an authoritative international organisation in the field of global public health, WHO plays a central coordinating role in global health governance, and its role should be strengthened, not weakened.
China will, as always, support WHO in fulfilling its duties, deepen international public health cooperation, strengthen global health governance, and promote the building of a global community of health for all, Guo said.
Trump has long been critical of the WHO and sought to pull out the US from the UN body during his first term Presidency, but his successor Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision.
The executive order signed by Trump said that the president was sending a presidential letter to the United Nations secretary-general to formally notify him of the US plan to withdraw.
“The US noticed its withdrawal from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2020 due to the organisation’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states,” said the executive order.
During his previous term, Trump alleged that the pandemic, which had a devastating impact all over the world, was leaked from a bio lab in Wuhan.
China has mounted a massive propaganda offensive in response to counter Trump’s allegations. PTI
- 21 Jan 2025 4:31 PM IST
EU climate chief on Trump's Paris deal decision
European Union's climate policy chief Wopke Hoekstra says that it is unfortunate that US President Donald Trump has once again withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate deal.
"It is truly an unfortunate development that the world's largest economy, and one of our closest allies in the fight against climate change, is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement", Hoekstra writes on social media platform X.
- 21 Jan 2025 4:23 PM IST
Trump launches sweeping border crackdown, mass deportation push
Shortly after President Donald Trump inauguration, the US border authorities said they had shut down Joe Biden's CBP One entry program, which had allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the US legally by scheduling an appointment on an app.
- 21 Jan 2025 4:22 PM IST
Germany calls Trump's vow to take Panama Canal 'unacceptable'
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Tuesday criticised Donald Trump's "unacceptable" pledge to seize the Panama Canal, which the returning US president repeated in his inaugural address.
Baerbock was asked in an interview about Trump's comments Monday on the waterway and on his desire to control Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
"Any threat against a NATO member or other states is of course completely unacceptable," Baerbock told German broadcaster RBB. AFP
- 21 Jan 2025 4:15 PM IST
Israel’s far right praises Trump move on settler sanctions
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has welcomed President Trump’s decision to rescind sanctions on violent settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“I sincerely thank President Donald Trump for his just decision to lift the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration against settlers and activists in right-wing organizations,” Smotrich wrote on X.
“These sanctions were a severe and blatant foreign intervention in Israel’s internal affairs and an unjustified violation of democratic principles and the mutual respect that should guide relations between friendly nations.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former national security minister, called Trump’s cancellation of the sanctions “historic”.
