As promised, on day one of his administration, Donald Trump took pen in hand and signed a mound of executive orders in a flurry of cursive penmanship.
Here are my favorites. I hope all will become permanent law someday. Of course, that will be up to Congress.
In the meantime, you can bet your booty that many of them will face plenty of opposition and lawsuits from radical leftist organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom Socialist Party, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Bring it on, I say.
But for the time being, we have a rational president with common sense who is not afraid to take on the socialists and communist buffoons who are working overtime to turn America into a Marxist cesspit.
One of the most critical executive orders Trump signed was one overturning the scourge of government censorship, which the Biden administration employed under the guise of “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
Those two terms became the Biden administration’s favorite synonyms for censorship as it attacked the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans.
Trump’s executive order correctly clarifies that “government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society. ” Most of all, it dismantles the unbridled and illicit censorship practiced by Biden and his collaborators over the past four years.
Of course, for me, and I suspect the 77 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, the number one issue was our open borders and the 10 million or so migrants who invaded our country–thousands of whom are criminals, murderers, and rapists.
Trump signed several executive orders that deal with illegal immigration, including one that declared a national border emergency. Another authorized deployment of the U.S. military forces on the border. Others ordered that cartels be categorized as foreign terrorist organizations, that construction of the border wall be fast-tracked, that refugee resettlement programs be paused, and that birthright citizenship be terminated.
Of all his executive orders, ending birthright citizenship will undoubtedly be the most problematic because it would likely require modifying the 14th Amendment.
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment states:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Legal scholars suggest that the only way to eliminate birthright citizenship is to amend the 14th Amendment to include a passage requiring it to be conferred only on those whose parents (or at least one parent) are legal U.S. citizens.
Currently, 33 countries (and two territories) have unrestricted birthright citizenship, also known as jus soli (right of the soil).
Without going too far into the weeds here, a landmark 1898 Supreme Court case (United States v. Wong Kim Ark) ruled that Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese parents, was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. The case arose when Wong was denied re-entry into the United States after a trip abroad under laws that restricted Chinese immigration at the time. The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed Wong’s citizenship by birth, interpreting the jurisdictional clause in the Amendment as implying that anyone born on American soil, excluding children of foreign diplomats or enemy soldiers, is subject to U.S jurisdiction and thus an American citizen.
So, even though I think birthright citizenship in America is a severely abused principle, Trump will play hell in abolishing it.
Another executive order ends caustic Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) programs throughout the federal government. DEI does nothing more than pick winners and losers by inculcating race and gender ideology into all government agencies and organizations—including our military.
As Trump’s order says, “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect. DEI is a proven failure ridden with legal risks and destructive division.”
Trump’s order reestablishes the federal government’s guarantee of equal treatment under the law. Amen to that.
Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated executive order was the one acknowledging biological reality and a return to common sense regarding gender issues.
“In my administration, there will only be two genders—male and female,” Trump said, taking pen in hand.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order reads. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
Finally, we have a president and an administration that wants\ to prohibit men from using women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, as well as banning biological men from competing against women in athletic contests.
For millions of Americans—especially those with daughters—Trump’s order couldn’t come soon enough. The cult of transgenderism was dealt a severe blow with this order, and it was about time.
But despite Trump’s executive orders, the psychosis of transgender nonsense continues to infect schools, universities, and many other institutions in America. The only way it will be driven out of those places is by cutting off the flow of federal funds that many of these institutions expect or depend on.
One executive order that may raise a few eyebrows calls for the swift detention and deportation of citizens of certain countries based on their nationality. It would be implemented by exercising the old Alien Enemies Act, which was created during World War II and used to intern thousands of Japanese American citizens.
Trump officials say Tren de Aragua and MS-13, gangs that primarily operate in South and Central America, are targets for these new designations. So are Mexican cartels. Officials insist the designations would allow the Trump administration to treat the gangs and cartels as “irregular military forces conducting a frontier incursion and invasion into the United States.”
As I asked in the title of my commentary, “What’s not to like?” about any of these executive orders?
All of them scream “common sense.”
The American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”
Given the dearth of common sense emanating from the Biden administration during the past four years, I would say all of Trump’s executive orders are properly garbed.
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