Trump’s executive orders (and Melania’s hat)

Trump is back in the White House and many if not all of his 200 executive orders were to reverse actions taken by the Biden Administration. It is tit for tat. When Biden came into office the first thing that he did was to issue 42 executive orders reversing Trump’s actions. I guess that the process will repeat itself in four years. I fully expect the House to flip to the democrats in two years and that JD Vance will not be president in four years. BTW the last president with a beard was William Taft.

Here are some of his executive orders in his being dictator for a day.

Trump changed Denali back to Mount McKinley, I guess because McKinley was pro-tariff. Denali was the mountain’s Koyukon name, but the mountain is also in Dena’ina territory who call it Dghelay Ka’a. So is it Denali or Dghelay Ka’a? Regardless, both Alaska’s senators oppose the change. Lisa Murkowski said “I strongly disagree with the President’s decision on Denali. Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.” Sen. Dan Sullivan said he “prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabaskan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago.”

I guess Trump will reinstitute the confederate names of military bases which I strongly oppose. When the names changed, I was disappointed that they did not pick names like Ridgeway, Patton, Chamberlain, Sheridan, Thomas and Sheridan. There never should have been a Fort Benning, Bragg, Gordon, Hood, Pickett, Polk or Rucker (I don’t mind Lee).

Trump also ordered that the “Gulf of Mexico” be called the “Gulf of America.”  It’ll be interesting to see if maps are changed to bear the names of Mt McKinley and the Gulf of America. Personally I prefer Denali and the Gulf of Mexico. I wonder why he didn’t try to rename California and New York while he was at it.

What happened to the inaugural protests? I thought thousands of lefties were going to show up and shut down DC? 

How come there is not more written on the pollution caused by the LA wirefire and the battery plant fire in Los Angeles spewing pollutants into the atmosphere? There harmful toxins and particulates spewing into the air and not a peep from the greenie weenies.

Urban fires torch transformers which contain PCBs. There’s copper piping, asbestos, electrical wires coated in toxic polyvinyl chloride, EVs with lithium-ion batteries, furniture full of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and household products made with volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Household and business hazardous substances such as paint, gasoline, cleaning products, pesticides, compressed gas cylinders and chemicals burned and their toxins have been released into the atmosphere. There were over 450,000 EVs in the Los Angeles MSA and they and their home battery storage systems add to the toxic mix. The battery plant facility that burned to the ground was the world’s largest battery storage facility and released hazardous gas emissions causing an evacuation of 1,500 local residents. Of course, lithium batteries are notorious for being unsafe, inherently dangerous, prone to catching on fire and exploding.

What’s up with Melania’s hat?

Trump ended the global tax deal that imposed a minimum effective tax rate of 15% on multinational firm profits. The purpose of the tax was to discourage firms from sheltering their profits in tax havens such as Ireland. Trump objected to it because tax policy on American firms should be governed by America rather than a bunch of foreigners. The tax originated at the OECD with 140 countries signed on to it.

Trump, being a mercantilist, is obsessed by trade deficits and ordered that the U.S. Trade Representative “investigate the causes of our country’s large and persistent annual trade deficits in goods, as well as the economic and national security implications and risks resulting from such deficits, and recommend appropriate measures, such as a global supplemental tariff or other policies, to remedy such deficits.” Again, trade deficits are more often good for a nation rather than bad. For example, consider that I have a trade deficit with Sam’s Club. Why is that a bad thing?

Trump, thank goodness also ordered withdrawing all areas of the Outer Continental Shelf from new or renewed offshore wind leasing agreements. Wind turbines should be banned. If they were not the darlings of the greenies, they would have been banned long ago.

Trump withdrew (again) from the Paris Accord. 

Trump ordered a regulatory freeze instructing all executive departments and agencies to not propose or issue new regulations until they can be reviewed. In Trump’s first year in office his administration added 61,308 new pages to the Federal Register. That may sound like a lot but that page total was 42 percent lower than Obama’s last year in office. Mind you Biden added over 95,000 pages in his final year!

Trump ordered resuming building the wall, ending catch and release and reinstituting stay in Mexico. He also ended Biden’s migrant parole programs that allowed over 500,000 aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the country. 

Speaking of which, did you notice that we are back to calling the illegal aliens, illegal aliens? What happened to “undocumented migrants”?

Trump revoked 67 executive orders and 11 “Presidential” memoranda covering gender identity, the climate “crisis” and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.” 

He reinstituted Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism which Biden had just ended. 

He liberated the political hostages from the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

He ordered a “One Flag Policy” mandating that U.S. facilities at home and abroad not fly a flag other than the US flag. You mean no more flying of pride and Black Lives Matter flags over U.S. government buildings?

Trump signed a declaration of a national energy emergency to expand energy production and oil drilling.

There is an order to “protect women from radical gender ideology” and that the government would only recognize the two sexes rather than the 72 or so “genders”.

He rolled back regulations targeting home appliances and gas cars. What about small engines and pizza ovens?

He ordered that all disbursement of funds under the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act be ended. Recall the stories of how government officials were rushing to allocate billions to “green” programs before Biden left town for good.

He rescinded Biden’s dictate that EVs must constitute 50 percent of all new vehicle sales by 2032.

Trump also ended California’s waiver that  gave them the power to limit the sales of gasoline powered vehicles. This also applies to the 17 states that have foolishly decided to follow California’s Air Resources Board’s zero emissions vehicles regulations. Because of these rules, one large RV manufacturer shut down their California manufacturing facility. I presume that California’s rules on diesel trucks and Class A RVs are also rescinded.

He ended Biden’s pause on permitting for liquefied natural gas export projects.

Trump ended automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of immigrants in the country illegally. Not surprisingly the democrat attorneys general from 22 states have sued the order. That the 14^thAmendment says that 

“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.”

The legal question revolves around the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”.

The 14^th Amendment settled the question as to the citizenship of American born US slaves reversing the putrid Dred Scott decision of 1857 that ruled that the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.

There has been one test of the 14^th Amendment. In 1898, the US Supreme Court affirmed that birthright citizenship applies to the children of immigrants in the case of Wong Kim Ark v United States.Wong was born in the US to parents who were not naturalized citizens. However, the question is whether Wong’s parents were illegals because Trump’s order states that only children born to illegals would not be conferred citizenship. It says children born in the U.S. are not citizens if their “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth,” or if the mother was in the U.S. on a “lawful but temporary” basis—like a student, tourist or work visa—and the father isn’t a citizen or “lawful permanent resident.”

I’m not a lawyer – thank goodness – but this seems that birthright citizenship will once again be resolved by the Supreme Court. Stay tuned.