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Almost immediately after being sworn in as US president on Monday, Donald Trump rapidly issued one executive order after another.
As far as human rights are concerned, it was like turning on a firehose of terrible policies, soaking to the bone anyone who still had even the slightest hope that Trump’s second term might not be as awful as his first.
This Daily Brief will no doubt be looking at some of these policies in the coming weeks and months, but right now, here’s an overview of some of the more troubling ones.
First, a set of immigration-related executive orders has trashed the right to seek asylum in the US and other forms of humanitarian protection.
It’s important to recognize here that, despite all the campaign rhetoric about “illegal immigration,” Trump is also attacking legal pathways. The online app asylum seekers had to use to make appointments with US authorities, CBP-One, has been disabled.
Even recognized refugees who were on their way to the US – people fleeing war and persecution who have already been security cleared by US authorities – will be blocked from entry.
As part of his overall anti-immigrant push, Trump is also trying to restrict birthright citizenship, by which anyone born in the US automatically becomes a US citizen. Other orders use war language to try to justify involving the US military in civilian immigration enforcement. There will also be increased use of immigration detention and fast-track deportation without due process.
All that covers just some of the new executive orders targeting migrants and asylum seekers.
Other presidential decrees target transgender people. Once again, they are to be prohibited from serving in the US military. In an even nastier new policy, transgender people are to be prevented from even being acknowledged as transgender by the US government.
Moving from the domestic to the international, Trump also issued a number of executive orders that will have grim global impact.
He’s called a pause on US foreign development assistance. This will have far-reaching consequences for international humanitarian and development aid, disrupting vital life-saving assistance to millions of people. It will also put many human rights defenders around the world and the people they help protect at greater risk, because they depend on that support for their work.
In a move that affects everyone on the planet, Trump has also withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Accords. This could increase climate-related devastation on people and communities in countless places.
The executive orders keep coming; the firehose keeps gushing. This short review hardly covers a small fraction of it.
There’s far more to look into, and this newsletter will be doing so in the coming months: not only the awful policies and their damaging impacts, but also, hopefully, some solutions.
