Trump did indeed swear to be “retribution.” But that is too small a word to capture the magnitude of his actions over the initial 30 days of his return to Washington, D.C. There has been a vehemence, a ferocity, even a kind of rage to his conduct that transcends the mere pursuit of vengeance. Damnatio memoriae, the Romans called it, the blotting out of a name, an idea, even an era as though it never existed. And so Trump’s first month back in the White House has been one long purge — of the fact he ever left it in the first place. 

Erasing Joe Biden’s presidency meant, to begin with, unraveling his policies. A few hours after his inauguration, Trump signed a raft of executive orders. Among them was one that rescinded 78 “harmful executive orders and actions” issued by his predecessor. The deleted orders included ones concerning the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in government, a few about climate change, others that established Biden’s priorities for managing the illegal immigration crisis, and a handful aimed at curtailing discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

The goal, though, wasn’t merely to tear down Biden’s policies. It was to stamp out the ideas behind them. To do that, Trump had to offer his own proposals, which he did and continues to do with gusto. The most notorious is his order, signed on Jan. 20, denying citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants.

The attempt to override the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship was the most prominent, but it was far from the only move Trump made to fulfill his pledge to eliminate illegal immigration. He also proclaimed an invasion of and declared a national emergency at the southern border. He ordered the military to make border security a top priority and, to that end, instituted plans to send 10,000 troops to the border. He began the process of reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires migrants who wish to claim asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico until their cases are heard. Yet he also barred the ability to claim asylum at the southern border. To enforce this change, he had the CBP One app, which the Biden administration created to let illegal immigrants make appointments to seek entry to the U.S., shut down. 

Trump authorized immigration authorities to begin repatriating people from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela who had been allowed into the country on a kind of parole, and he ended temporary protected status for citizens of those nations who had already been in the U.S. and were allowed to stay on various grounds. He placed a moratorium on the refugee resettlement program. The Department of Justice sued Chicago and the state of New York for their sanctuary policies toward illegal immigrants. Trump also designated several Mexican drug cartels, which have a significant hand in fostering illegal immigration, as foreign terrorist organizations. As part of Trump’s crackdown, the government started deporting migrants to Panama and Guantanamo Bay. Last but not least, he stripped illegal immigrants of eligibility for many federal benefits. 

Trump’s antipathy for the legal system and especially the Department of Justice and FBI is well known. Unsurprisingly, then, he began immediately to roll back the investigations of himself and his supporters that consumed so much of the nation’s political oxygen for the last four years. One of the orders he signed on Jan. 20 commanded the attorney general to investigate the DOJ and other federal agencies for political bias and “set forth a process to ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people.” To put this decree into effect and make amends to the victims of this weaponization, Trump pardoned everyone convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 riot and had the cases of those yet to be tried dropped. The DOJ also withdrew the charges against his two co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. 

Trump spent much of his time on the campaign trail railing against the depredations of “transgender insanity” and “gender ideology.” Both were targets of multiple executive orders promulgated over his first month. He ordered the federal government to recognize only two sexes, male and female. The White House decreed federal agencies end all programs that “promote or inculcate gender ideology” and forbid employees from including pronouns in their email signatures. He directed that transgender prisoners be housed in jails that accord with their sex. Federal officials were told to eliminate the option to choose a marker for a third gender identity on documents such as passports. 

Following the lead of over two dozen states, Trump imposed a federal ban on any medical intervention for transgender youth. He also moved to prohibit any federal funding to school districts that allow transgender girls (i.e., boys) to participate in girls sports. The administration has already commenced investigations into school districts in Maine, California, and Minnesota that have refused to comply. A related order warned K-12 schools they could lose federal funding if they continued to “indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies” such as critical race theory or gender identity. Perhaps the most dramatic step Trump has taken against transgenderism has been the reintroduction of the ban on transgender people serving in the military he attempted to implement in his first term. 

Among the executive orders Trump has signed since returning to office have been several erasing Biden’s climate agenda and promulgating his priorities on energy production, such as vastly expanded oil exploration and drilling in Alaska. Trump halted approvals for new wind farms and told federal authorities to end subsidies for electric cars, while new Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ordered a review of fuel economy standards the Biden administration had issued to promote electric cars and combat climate change. New EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced that his agency would submit the Biden administration’s approval of California’s proscription of gas-powered cars to Congress so it could kill the rule using the Congressional Review Act. The president also reversed Biden’s plan to phase out plastic straws in favor of paper ones in the federal government and told Zeldin to roll back efficiency standards on household goods and appliances such as light bulbs, shower heads, and dishwashers. Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord for the second time. 

Trump signed a Day One order ending the “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’” which were “forced” by the Biden White House “into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.” To make sure DEI was cleansed from the government, he ordered all federal employees working on DEI to be placed on administrative leave so they could subsequently be fired. A separate order told departments to “terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies,” etc., in the government and root them out in the private sector. The nascent Trump DOJ also issued a moratorium on filing any new civil rights cases. 

Under the Biden administration, the Defense Department had reimbursed servicewomen stationed in red states who had to travel outside of them to obtain abortions. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth axed this policy shortly after assuming his post. Trump stated even before being sworn in that he would not enforce the statute outlawing the social media app TikTok, effectively rendering it a dead letter. Also nullified was a rule released in the waning days of the Biden administration that name, image, and likeness money received by student-athletes and university revenue-sharing payments must be proportionate between men’s and women’s sports under Title IX, as well as a National Labor Relations Board opinion that student-athletes are employees. An order on “Protecting Second Amendment Rights” strongly suggests any regulation the Biden White House issued to restrict guns is likely destined for the trash heap, too. That is where Trump also wants to send the penny (whose production he has ordered ended), District of Columbia home rule, and New York City’s congestion pricing scheme, federal approval for which Duffy revoked last month. A host of Biden rules and regulations are likely to join California’s gas car ban in the CRA tumbril. 

There’s nothing Trump has been trying to expurgate from the federal government more than whatever smacks of “woke.” His administration has been doing so in big ways as well as through symbolic gestures. No more, for example, will flags belonging to political causes — which were almost exclusively those of the Left, such as BLM and gay pride — be allowed to fly at U.S. embassies. Hegseth ordered the name of the once and future Fort Bragg be restored, something he was able to do despite a law ostensibly forbidding such a move by renaming it for a World War II hero and not its original Confederate namesake. Trump, of course, had already gotten in on the act by dictating that Alaska’s Denali once again be known as Mt. McKinley and rechristening the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” 

Federal websites that promoted issues out of favor with the new regime, such as diversity, climate change, and gender, have either been revamped or shuttered entirely. Shut down, for example, was a database established by the Biden DOJ to track police misconduct. And no more will one find references to “pregnant people” and “birthing people” on anything with a .gov address. 

Trump’s purges even extend beyond the nation’s borders. The order on combating antisemitism he issued at the end of January had the clear intent of eradicating that noxious doctrine from various institutions in which it has lodged since Oct. 7, particularly those of higher education in which it has taken deep root. It is hard to read the accompanying threat to deport pro-Hamas campus protesters any other way. His proposal for the U.S. to take control of Gaza envisioned the removal of the entire native population of about 2 million Palestinians. The sanctions he imposed on the International Criminal Court for charging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with crimes against humanity are meant to cripple that body and even drive it to extinction. 

Trump’s eye, though, has always been focused close to home, especially on that vast leviathan, the federal government, he finds himself once more leading. He ordered federal workers back to the office full time and wants to end work-from-home policies. He even threatened to invalidate labor contracts signed in the last days of the Biden administration, some of which guaranteed such policies would remain in effect. Trump has vowed to dismantle the Department of Education. The funding freeze he imposed on the U.S. Agency for International Development during his first week was done with the express purpose of blowing up that body. 

Three orders Trump released as his first month drew to a close strongly indicated there would be no letup as he settles in. One asserts his plenary authority over independent agencies by requiring them not to take any action that has not been approved by the White House. The second initiated a review of the federal government’s entire regulatory regime in order “to commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state.” The last announced his intention “to dramatically reduce the size of the Federal Government,” meaning expunging vast swathes of the bureaucracy. 

Whether it was something woke, a program targeted for erasure because Biden implemented it, or a manifestation of the “deep state” he has long been an avowed enemy of, Trump spent his first month taking a sledgehammer to it. And often a flamethrower for good measure. But as the adage goes, personnel is policy. Which is why, for all the attention, energy, and zeal he devoted to purging these policies, he devoted even more to purging the people responsible for them. 

Nowhere was this more apparent than with regard to his bête noire, the Department of Justice. Trump made the Jan. 6 and other cases disappear. Then, he turned to making the DOJ prosecutors and officials behind them vanish, too. From the Mueller inquiry to Jack Smith’s investigations, Trump has long felt targeted, even persecuted, by federal authorities. Payback was swift and brutal.

To start with, 20 senior career DOJ attorneys were reassigned to new positions, often with considerably less power and outside their areas of expertise. A dozen lawyers who were seconded to Smith’s team were terminated, as were two to three dozen prosecutors from the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office who worked on the Jan. 6 cases. While most of the U.S. attorneys appointed by Biden resigned, several remained in office until they, too, were canned by Trump. DOJ also paused all, and reassigned four career attorneys who handled, environmental litigation. 

Trump’s overhaul of federal law enforcement didn’t spare the FBI, against which he bears a special grudge. Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed to run the agency after he fired James Comey in 2017, resigned before Trump took office to be spared the same fate. Others were dumped once Trump was back in power, including eight senior executives at the bureau and the heads of multiple field offices. Agents in charge of the national security, cybercrime, and other divisions were demoted. The White House also asked the acting director of the FBI to turn over the names of every employee who worked on the Jan. 6 and Trump investigations. Nearly 5,000 did, though the White House conceded after pushback that only those running the inquiries were in danger of being fired, not agents who were merely following orders. 

Fearing a repeat of Alexander Vindman’s megalomania, which led to Trump’s first impeachment, the Trump administration expelled over 150 National Security Council staffers from the White House. Trump stripped Biden, the surviving signers of the Hunter Biden laptop letter, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of their security clearances. He forbade Biden from receiving the daily intelligence briefings all former presidents get and ended the security details of Mike Pompeo and Anthony Fauci. In an example of an actual damnatio memoriae, two portraits of Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were removed from display at the Pentagon. Hegseth also suspended his security clearance and protective detail and ordered a review of Milley’s conduct, which could result in his court-martial. One of Trump’s earliest actions was relieving the commandant of the Coast Guard. 

Trump sacked over a dozen inspectors general at various federal agencies despite a statutory requirement that he do so only for cause and after giving Congress 30 days’ notice. Within hours after taking the oath, he terminated the head and three other senior officials at the DOJ office that oversees America’s immigration court system. A few weeks later, he fired 20 immigration judges.

From political appointees to rank-and-file grunts, no one has been immune. Trump fired the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He requested the resignations of all Democratic appointees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which supervises the intelligence community to ensure its activities don’t violate Americans’ rights. Trump also axed the directors of two government watchdogs, the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Special Counsel. The latter has sued to overturn his dismissal.

So, too, has a Democratic member of the NLRB, whom Trump removed along with the agency’s general counsel. Trump also booted two Democratic members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Supreme Court is likely to decide just how far Trump may go in replacing the heads of independent agencies, especially those run not by a single director but by a multi-member board. Further culls within the executive branch are likely. Already, DOJ’s new leadership has stated that it believes the protections insulating administrative law judges from being fired directly by the president are unconstitutional and will no longer defend them in court. 

Trump’s scythe has cut widely. But it has also cut deeply. Trump fired the archivist of the United States and expunged the boards of visitors of every service academy. He also ordered the elimination of several obscure advisory bodies, such as the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Inter-American Foundation. One of his most surprising acts was firing the leadership of the Kennedy Center and naming himself its chairman. He also kicked every Democratic appointee off its board. 

The Trump administration has moved to make significant reductions in the federal workforce. It did so first by offering employees buyouts in the form of the Department of Government Efficiency’s deferred resignation program. Nearly 80,000 signed up for Trump and Elon Musk’s bargain of eight months pay in exchange for quitting. After that, it moved to dump hundreds of thousands more workers across the government. Almost all of them have probationary status — that is, they’ve been in their current posts for less than two years and thus lack civil service protections. The Federal Aviation Administration, the departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development, the Pentagon, the General Services Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the IRS all saw mass layoffs over the last few weeks or will over the next few. Even the CIA was expected to undergo its biggest cuts in several decades. 

At least those agencies will survive, unlike USAID, which Trump has moved to abolish by freezing its funding and placing its employees on leave pending termination. When its inspector general objected to Trump’s efforts to kill it, Trump fired him, too. Nearly the entire workforce of the CFPB was put on administrative leave as a way of sticking that agency Republicans love to hate in purgatory. 

Not all the firings have gone smoothly. After the Department of Agriculture accidentally fired several hundred employees who monitor the spread of bird flu, it tried to reverse the dismissals, with mixed success. The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the safety of the nation’s nuclear stockpile, found itself in a similar predicament after it sacked workers who shouldn’t have been and then was unable to reach them to let them know they were being rehired. 

It’s unnecessary to carry out purges if you never hire people in the first place. The DOJ canceled job offers in a program for new law school graduates, while the Trump transition imposed strict vetting criteria to ensure loyalty by keeping out undesirables who had criticized the president or worked for his perceived enemies. If all this isn’t enough, Trump is seeking to restore “Schedule F,” which would allow him to reclassify tens of thousands of high-ranking career civil servants as political appointees, enabling him to fire them and replace them with staffers more attuned to his desires. 

Trump’s purges extend even to those outside the government. The Pentagon introduced a new arrangement for its media spaces, kicking out some outlets that had been present for decades and inviting ones seen as more amenable to the administration to take their places. The White House also restricted the Associated Press’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One over its refusal to go along with Trump’s renaming of the “Gulf of America.” One might even argue that mass deportations can be characterized as a kind of purge, literally, of a cohort of the country’s population, whether here legitimately or not. 

Taken together, the Trump administration’s efforts to starve academia and the nonprofit sector of money and greatly diminish the size and scale of the civil service represent nothing less than “a frontal assault on every center of left-wing institutional power it can reach,” in the words of Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle. That’s a purge every conservative can get behind. With his embrace of tariffs and a foreign policy more openly grounded in the national interest, Trump can even be said to be purging consensuses on how things are done that have dominated Washington for decades. Not least the outmoded idea that Republicans, when in power, shouldn’t use every available lever to implement their agenda.

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As Trump’s first month ended came news that he had fired the general counsel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Trump also mused about dissolving the board of the Postal Service and merging it with the Commerce Department. Trump opened his second month in office with one of his most dramatic and controversial moves yet, dismissing Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and several other senior military officers. If Trump has any intention of relenting, there’s no sign of it yet. 

There may never be. Because there can’t. For the thing Trump wants to erase most of all, wants the country to believe never happened, are those four years when he wasn’t president. That rupture, that interregnum, that indignity he can’t forget, let alone forgive. Given the way half the things Trump did have already faded from the national consciousness (anyone remember the Jan. 6 pardons?), by the time he’s vacating the White House for the second and last time four years from now, he may very well have gotten away with it.  

Varad Mehta is a writer and historian. He lives in the Philadelphia area. Find him on X @varadmehta.