Taking Care of Business- President Trump’s First Week
The mainstream media has gone into a veritable tizzy, and all of the politicians who opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy from the start have grown apoplectic, all because President Donald Trump is taking care of business by keeping his campaign promises on a multitude of fronts. In less than a week since becoming the forty-fifth President of the United States, the new president has signed executive orders and memoranda on the following:
Abortion-
Re-instituted Mexico City memorandum prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortion counseling and services in foreign countries;
Signed an executive order which proscribes public funding for organizations that provide abortion services in the United States;
Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare)-
Signed executive order to authorized agency heads to waive requirements to the maximum extent of the law as they relate to employer and individual mandates, in preparation for anticipated repeal and replacement of ACA;
Commerce-
Ordered the Secretary of Commerce to review manufacturing regulations with the aim of speeding up the approval of permits for factory construction and related operations;
Energy-
Signed executive order and memorandum that green-lights the Dakota and Keystone Pipelines, respectively;
Signed executive order that further mandates the use of American- made steel in the construction of these pipelines;
Federal Workforce-
Signed memoranda to freeze all pending and new hires in federal government, excepting military and critical public safety hiring;
Immigration-
Signed an executive order to commence construction of a wall on the southern US border, beginning with funding from 2006 legislation, and directs the hiring of 5,000 additional border patrol agents;
Signed memoranda that ends the Obama “Catch & Release” policy, and orders agencies to step up deportations, and directs the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to block federal grants from sanctuary cities who refuse to enforce existing laws pertaining to illegal immigration;
Infrastructure-
Signed an executive order to speed up environmental reviews for high-priority infrastructure projects, and approve such projects within a thirty-day window;
Regulatory-
Signed an executive order to freeze all federal regulations, including recent Obama-signed regulations yet-to-be-implemented, until each can be reviewed and either implemented or rescinded following said review;
Trade-
Signed executive order to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Trade Agreement;
…and that’s just for starters.
On Friday, President Trump will be meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom, and it is anticipated that a new trade deal between the UK and the US will be discussed. Recalling his predecessor’s warning that by voting to exit the European Union, “Britain would be sent to the back of the line,” yet another edict of the Obama presidency will be tossed on the ash heap of history.
While liberals are incensed that Trump is pursuing an agenda he set out during the campaign, and shocked that he is doing so, post haste, their allies in the mainstream media continue to beat the drum that says “he can’t do this, and he can’t do that,” a drum that Trump has ignored for the past twenty months since he announced his candidacy. In their attempts to distract the public by emphasizing dust-ups on inauguration viewership and popular voting, they ignore the fact that the new president is off to a flying start in acting as…well…a president should act. In doing so, he drives them to distraction, much to the delight and pleasure of his supporters.
In short, Trump plods on while his opponents wring their hands and, in the first week of his presidency, is managing to do what few politicians ever seem to do- keeping his promises.
Soldier on, Mr. President, soldier on!
-Drew Nickell, 26 January 2017
© 2017 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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