A few hours after returning to the White House, the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, signed several executive orders and directives to put his stamp on the new American administration, on issues including energy, criminal pardons and immigration.

Among the first orders was a blanket pardon for over 1.500 people accused of crimes in the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol, REL reports.

Among those who will benefit from this pardon are those convicted of attacks on police officers.

Trump's action, just hours after returning to the White House, paves the way for the release from prison of those found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power after he lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden.

Democrats sharply criticized the decision to include violent protesters in the pardon, many of whose crimes were caught on camera and broadcast live on television.

Trump had suggested in the weeks before returning to the White House that instead of blanket pardons, he would review all the cases of the January 6 defendants one by one. While Vice President JD Vance had said just days earlier that the people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot "of course" should not be pardoned.

Trump, 78, was sworn in as president on Monday at the Capitol building and, during the ceremony, he portrayed himself as a savior chosen by God to save a nation in decline.

"I was saved by God to make America great again," he said.

Shortly after he was sworn in as president, U.S. border authorities suspended a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling an appointment through a phone app. Existing appointments were canceled.

Nearly 1.660 Afghans who had been approved by the US government to immigrate to the US, including family members of active-duty US military personnel, saw their flights cancelled as a result of a Trump order suspending US refugee programs, a US official and a refugee resettlement advocate said.

At the White House, Trump also signed an order declaring a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, which would free up funds and allow him to deploy troops there.

He signed an order to end a policy that grants citizenship to those born in the United States, a move that is sure to spark a long legal battle. Another executive order declared Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

Trump again withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, thus removing the world's largest historical polluter from global efforts to combat climate change for the second time in a decade.

"We are removing all the cancer ... caused by the Biden administration," Trump said as he signed a series of executive orders in the Oval Office.

Other orders revoked the Biden administration's policies on artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. He also ordered government employees to return to the office, instead of working from home.

Trump also signed documents to create a "Department for Government Efficiency," an outside advisory board headed by billionaire Elon Musk, aimed at limiting large parts of government spending.

At the State Department, dozens of senior nonpartisan diplomats were asked to resign as part of a broader plan to replace nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists.

Trump said on social media that his team was in the process of removing over 1.000 appointees from the Biden administration.

He also said he would issue orders to dismantle federal diversity programs and require the government to recognize only genders assigned at birth.