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Hello, Today, Explained readers! Sean Collins here — I hope you’re having a good day so far. 

It was Inauguration Day yesterday, and President Donald Trump wasted absolutely no time in signing executive orders. There were a slew of them, and if you have time, you can check them out here. If you don’t have time, you’re in luck: Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has broken down a few of the most important. Here we go:

Four specific moves — illegally attempting to end birthright citizenship, reviving the Schedule F order that could initiate a civil service purge, pardoning January 6 rioters, and ordering multiple investigations into the Biden administration — deserve particular attention.

The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution makes it achingly clear: Anyone who is born in the United States is a citizen. 

Trump attempts to overturn this constitutional right by executive fiat, ordering US officials to stop issuing citizenship documents to any future children born to undocumented migrants. 

When given an illegal order, government employees are within their rights to refuse it. The extent to which the federal bureaucracy ignore this order will test just how willing they are to defend against unlawful Trumpian behavior.

And the extent to which federal courts step in to stop Trump’s efforts to amend the constitution unilaterally will test how willing Republican judges and justices are to put the rule of law over Trump and the GOP’s interests.

At the tail end of Trump’s first term, he issued an executive order creating a new classification for federal civil servants called Schedule F — essentially, a tool for converting a bunch of protected civil servant jobs into political appointments he could fire at will. The order got nowhere before Biden repealed it.

Well, Schedule F is back. Trump restored the 2020 order and added a few tweaks, one of which is an inquiry as to whether “additional categories of positions” should be included in Schedule F beyond the ones considered in the first executive order.

In theory, this could be as damaging to democracy as the birthright citizenship order. But at present, the scope of the threat is hypothetical.

We don’t know how many positions Trump will come after, or how effectively he can get around the legal roadblocks Biden erected to prevent such a purge. All the executive order does is create a tool that Trump might abuse; how much it'll be abused, and whether its abuse can be stopped via litigation, remain very unclear.

Trump commuted the sentence of 14 insurrectionists, including Oathkeepers leader Stewart Rhodes, and then issued “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” 

All told, that’s roughly 1,500 insurrectionists whose convictions were wiped out. He also instructed the Department of Justice to dismiss “all pending indictments” related to that day’s events.

The threats to democracy here are threefold:

• Incentivizing future political violence: Extreme right-wingers now have at least some cause to believe that the president will shield them from legal consequences. 
• Abusing pardon power: Trump going this far this early suggests he might be willing to push his (nearly unlimited) power to limits.
• DOJ meddling: The DOJ is supposed to have independence from the president; Trump’s involvement in decisions on which specific cases ought to be pursued reminds us that he sees the DOJ as the president’s personal lawyer.

Two Trump executive orders, covering “weaponization” of government and “federal censorship” respectively, initiate formal inquiries into government conduct during the Biden administration.

What this means, in brief, is that the attorney general and the director of national intelligence are instructed to start looking into actions taken by the government in areas ranging from January 6 prosecutions to FBI investigations of threats against teachers. Once the inquiries are complete, these officials are to recommend unspecified punishments for any wrongdoing uncovered.

In theory, this could amount to nothing, but it could also create a pretext for prosecuting Trump’s political opponents.

Which of these two outcomes is more likely depends on cabinet officials in question. If confirmed, Tulsi Gabbard (DNI) and Pam Bondi (DOJ) will be in charge of interpreting these orders. Their choices will determine whether or not this ends up being a nothingburger — or a harbinger of a democratic crisis to come.

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Kenny Holston/The New York Times/AFP

Wannabe supermen: Sigal Samuel offers a fresh take on why America’s richest men are so infatuated with Trump — and it doesn’t have anything to do with money.

Pardon me: Biden pardoned a bunch of people Trump had criticized as one of his last acts as president, but that decision will only help them so much, Ian Millhiser explains. 

Birth, right?: Nicole Narea has everything you need to know about birthright citizenship, and whether the Trump administration might be able to end it.

Chicago deportations: My beloved hometown is reportedly a top target for an early Trump deportation push. Immigrants are readying themselves. And fearful. [AP]

China worries: Trump’s first term was rough for China; now, the country is bracing for — and scrambling to prepare for — his second. [Reuters] 

Congressional congestion: Trump wants, and needs, a lot from Congress to accomplish his goals. But can lawmakers actually move quickly on the MAGA agenda? [Politico]

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

If you tuned out after Trump's official inauguration speech, well, turns out you missed his real inauguration speech. He spoke to supporters after the rotunda ceremony wrapped, and he got into grievance and policy in equal measure. Zack Beauchamp has the download.

Melina Mara/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by me, news editor Sean Collins. I hope you had an excellent Martin Luther King Jr. Day. See you tomorrow!