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Trump Signs Executive Orders in the Oval Office, Feb. 4, 2025

February 4, 2025 · The White House · 0:31:13

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What happened

President Donald Trump signed executive actions in the Oval Office on Feb. 4, 2025, carried on the White House channel, on the day of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit. The first order, as presented at the desk, withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council and from UNRWA, ordered a review of American involvement in UNESCO, and called for a broader review of U.S. involvement and funding in the United Nations in light of what the presenter called a deep anti-American bias in several UN bodies and wild disparities in funding levels among countries. The President said he had always felt the UN had tremendous potential but was not living up to it and was not being well run, as he stated it.

The President also signed a national security presidential memorandum restoring maximum pressure on the government of Iran, directing departments and agencies to sanction and control Iranian activities, particularly its nuclear program and its support for terrorism, as the memorandum was presented. At the same session he signed the commissions appointing Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy and Doug Collins as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and told reporters he was there to listen to Netanyahu, whom he would meet later that day.

Why it matters

The Feb. 4 signings pair the term’s first UN retrenchment with the return of the maximum-pressure Iran doctrine, executed hours before the Netanyahu meeting they frame: the desk presentation and the President’s words are the dated baseline for both files.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the Feb. 4, 2025 order withdrawing the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council and UNRWA and the maximum-pressure memorandum on Iran - flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Signs Executive Orders in the Oval Office, Feb. 4, 2025” (YouTube, 2025-02-04) - official description and broadcast transcript as aired.