AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump took office less than a week ago, and his flood of executive actions, pardons and threats of tariffs and sanctions are already making waves. NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson is here to talk us through some of these early actions. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So we've been hearing a lot about the executive orders President Trump signed on Day 1 in office, plus a bunch of other changes that he's made already.
LIASSON: That's right. The immigration orders, for instance, had an immediate effect. The asylum system is shut down for now. People who are at the southern border who had appointments no longer have them. So on that one, politically, Trump chose one of his most popular promises to enact first because the majority of Americans say they agree with Trump, at least in general, that people who are here without legal status should be deported. What we don't know yet is, will the deportations be big enough to actually affect the labor market, or are they more symbolic?
Something else that he did that was consequential - he fired the independent inspectors general at 12 major federal agencies. He did that late Friday night. These IGs identify fraud, waste and abuse in government agencies. They will be challenged in court because Congress requires a 30-day notice for the intent to fire IGs. He's also trying via executive action to get rid of birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. to parents that don't have permanent legal status. Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. It's in the 14th Amendment, and that move has already been challenged in court.
So every president issues executive orders, often to undo the actions of the previous president. Some of them are symbolic, the equivalent of a press release. But - so we'll have to check back in a while to see how many really went into effect. But I would say that Trump's pardons for the January 6 rioters are different. They were very significant because these are people - many of whom were convicted of violent actions. They were convicted by a jury of their peers. They tried to overturn a free and fair election, so Trump pardoned people who committed acts of violence on his behalf.
RASCOE: You know, on another topic, Pete Hegseth, the president's nominee to run the Defense Department - he faced a rocky confirmation process, having to answer for allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking. He denied all those allegations and was confirmed on Friday night. How did that ultimately go down?
LIASSON: Well, you know, his nomination looked shaky for a while, but Trump and his MAGA base exerted a lot of pressure on Republican senators. And Republican senators now live in a world where even if they have qualms about some of the things that Trump does or people that he nominates, there's very little political room for them to dissent and still keep their jobs, avoid a primary challenge. Hegseth could afford three no votes, and that's what he got. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted no. They come from states where their kind of independent brand has been tested and succeeded.
And the other no vote against Hegseth was Mitch McConnell, former majority leader who has clashed with Trump in the past. Although, there's always a limit with McConnell. He said he wouldn't vote to convict Trump on the January 6 attacks even though he criticized him very, very harshly. We also know that Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem have been confirmed as secretaries of state and Homeland Security, and it looks like Trump will get the vast majority of the people he's nominated.
RASCOE: What does Hegseth's nomination say about the bar for being confirmed? - because there was a time when confirmations would be denied over, like, unpaid taxes or hiring, you know, undocumented workers as, say, a nanny.
LIASSON: That's right. I think we're in a whole new ethical universe. I think Republicans would point to Bill Clinton and his sexual affairs as the beginning of the decline. But Donald Trump also set the stage. He's a convicted felon. He was elected by a plurality of voters despite that. And I think once you have a convicted felon as president, not paying your taxes or having an alcohol problem or a womanizing problem just doesn't seem so disqualifying.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much for joining us as always.
LIASSON: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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