Pen is put to paper on filling Cabinet, repealing health law

Surrounded by family members, President Donald Trump formally nominates his Cabinet and other members of his administration.
Surrounded by family members, President Donald Trump formally nominates his Cabinet and other members of his administration.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump began setting up his new administration Friday, signing a bill that allowed retired Gen. James Mattis to serve as his defense secretary, as well as the nomination papers for his other Cabinet choices.










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Later, with a swift stroke of a pen, Trump signed an executive order on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that his spokesman, Sean Spicer, said would require government agencies to "ease the burden of the law."

The order declares that Trump's administration will seek the "prompt repeal" of the law and that the government should prepare to "afford the states more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market."

The immediate effect of the order was not clear. Enrollment for insurance plans sold under the Affordable Care Act for 2017 closes at the end of the month.

[INAUGURATION DAY: Full coverage, including map, photos, videos]

Spicer also said Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, would issue a memo to government agencies ordering a freeze on new regulations. Trump has pledged to repeal two existing regulations for each new one his government issues.

Asked about his first day as president, Trump said, "It was busy but good -- a beautiful day."

Although Trump campaigned on a detailed 18-point plan of things to do on day one, he has since backed off some of his promised speed, downplaying the importance of a rapid-fire approach to complex issues that may involve negotiations with Congress or foreign leaders. Trump has said that he expects Monday to be the first big workday, his effective day one.

On Friday, he switched between the official business of governing and the pageantry of his inauguration, making his first official moves as president in an ornate room steps from the Senate floor. Flanked by Pence and congressional leaders before his congressional luncheon, Trump praised each of his Cabinet nominees as he signed the papers formalizing their nominations. He also engaged in banter with his new congressional rivals, including Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

[GALLERY: 70+ photos from Inauguration Day]

Trump also signed a proclamation declaring a national day of patriotism, according to a tweet from Spicer.

Shortly after Trump became president, the Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended the previous administration's planned reduction of mortgage insurance premium rates, a move that had been intended to make buying a home more affordable.

Trump ran for president on a vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Congress has passed a budget resolution allowing for a partial repeal to advance. Republicans have not yet agreed on a policy to replace or amend the law, and there are internal divisions in the party about how extensive any changes should be.

The Congressional Budget Office said in a report Tuesday that as many as 32 million Americans would lose their insurance coverage over 10 years if the health law is repealed without an alternative policy in place.

Priebus' memo says that agencies shouldn't submit any regulations to be published in the Federal Register unless a Trump-selected agency head approves them. That appears to mean that some regulations that had been approved by President Barack Obama's administration would be halted. It also freezes any regulations that are already in the pipeline to be published and allows time for other pending regulations to be reviewed by Trump's administration.

The memo is similar to one that Obama's chief of staff issued the day Obama was inaugurated in 2009.

To allow Trump to build his national security team, Congress passed a bill last week granting Mattis a one-time exception from federal law barring former U.S. service members who have been out of uniform for less than seven years from holding the top Pentagon job. The restriction is meant to preserve civilian control of the military.

Mattis, 66, retired from the Marine Corps in 2013. He was confirmed by the Senate as Trump watched his inaugural parade from a stand outside the White House.

Trump's spokesman has said the president intends to withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which he views as detrimental to U.S. businesses and workers. He has also promised to renegotiate the two-decades-old Clinton era North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from it.

Trump also faces an early choice of naming a Supreme Court justice to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump has said he will announce a nominee in about two weeks.

websites updated

Federal websites and agencies were immediately updated to reflect Trump's presidency, and whitehouse.gov was revamped for Trump's policy priorities.

The Trump team kept a section of the website from the previous administration that lets voters petition the White House. Two new petitions were posted Friday: one calling on him to release his tax returns and verify that he is not receiving payments from foreign governments, the other asking him to divest of his holdings or put them in a blind trust.

The whitehouse.gov website as it existed under Obama will be available at obamawhitehouse.gov, while social media posts by the Obamas and Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, will be archived at new accounts.

Trump now controls the @potus account on Twitter, the site he used to spearhead the communications arm of his campaign and has continued to use enthusiastically since his election.

NBC News has reported that Trump plans to continue to use his own account. Less than an hour after delivering his inaugural speech, he tweeted from his @RealDonaldTrump account.

A new website, obama.org, emerged Friday, with a video featuring Barack and Michelle Obama, in which the 44th president and the first lady announced their intentions going forward as private citizens.

"First," Michelle Obama said, "we're going to take a little break."

But afterward, Barack Obama said, the couple would start work on several projects, most prominently the Obama Foundation, which will be based on the south side of Chicago, and will be a "living, working center for citizenship" that will work on unspecified projects in that city, as well as the rest of the country and all over the world.

The Obamas then asked viewers for their input on the projects that the new organization would undertake.

In recent days, the Obamas had announced their new Twitter handles, using their names, @MichelleObama and @BarackObama.

Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas, Josh Boak, Alicia A. Caldwell of The Associated Press; by Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times; and by Anna Edney and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 01/21/2017

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