President Donald Trump burst out of the gates into his second term with the speed of a Kentucky Derby winner. Executive orders turning the status quo upside have flown in gusts from the Oval Office ever since Mr. Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20.
Nothing like this has been witnessed since former President Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days in 1933 amid the Great Depression. Roosevelt summoned Congress into a three-month special session during which he presented and convinced the legislature to enact 15 major bills to revive the economy. At Roosevelt's urging, Congress passed 77 laws during the first 100 days and revolutionized the role of government.
Trump has by and large ignored Congress with his blizzard of executive orders. That is a risky approach. Trump's successor can repeal them with the stroke of a pen, just as Trump has already revoked many of former President Joe Biden's executive orders, such as DEI training.
Immigration has been a priority of Trump fortified by the support of the American people. On the heels of his inauguration, Mr. Trump issued a pioneering executive order declaring that children born of parents who are neither citizens nor permanent residents are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and thus are not citizens notwithstanding Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Its text contradicts the executive order and for more than 150 years has always been understood to confer birthright citizenship but for children of diplomats immune from U.S. laws. One federal judge has already preliminarily declared the executive order unconstitutional, and companion litigation is pending.
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But Mr. Trump should be congratulated for his boldness and energy. Many of Roosevelt's early initiatives, such as the National Recovery Act, were also held unconstitutional without deterring Roosevelt's New Deal.
A sister executive order addressed the professed invasion of the country by immigrants, the first invasion of American soil since the War of 1812 with Great Britain. The only difference is that the British invaded with weapons and, among other things, burned down the White House.
Trump's proclamation "Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion" decreed that illegal aliens crossing into the United States along the southern border with Mexico are indistinguishable from a military invasion of border states, which the United States is constitutionally obligated to defeat under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. The proclamation prohibits entry of any alien through our southern border until Trump determines that the invasion has ended.
To defeat the invaders, Trump has dispatched 1,500 troops to the border to block entry in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security. He simultaneously issued the executive order "Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists," putting drug cartels in the same category as ISIS, Hamas, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, and exposing them to drone attacks or assassinations. The designations are well deserved. Mexican drug cartels are killing Americans at unprecedented levels by distributing fentanyl to U.S. users. Vastly more Americans have died from the cartels than from 9/11. Trump is spot-on to respond accordingly.
Trump's executive order ending government censorship, vindicating the First Amendment right of free speech, is long overdue. The Biden administration threw its weight against speech dubious of its COVID-19 nostrums. The government needs to be viewpoint-neutral and eschew pressing its thumb in favor of or against debatable propositions. As former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. advised, the speech that we hate is most in need of a defense. Time has upset many fighting faiths. The reflection that "I could be wrong" is the pillar of wisdom.
Perhaps Trump's most urgent executive order ended the nonsense and sacrilege that there can be more than two sexes: male and female. "Defending Women From Gender Ideology and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" recognizes the unique division of the species between men and women. Just as you can't be half pregnant, you can't be half female and half male.
Genesis is definitive. Eve was made from Adam's rib. God did not conceive of a third or hybrid sex, i.e., transgender people. The latter present a clear and present danger to females. They invade their bathrooms and locker rooms. They compete in women's sports with a biological advantage. They undermine the concept of womanhood that is the centerpiece of civilization and survival of the species. There was a good reason why Trump in 2024 slashed the Democratic Party edge in attracting female voters, notwithstanding his arguably boorish words and behavior.
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 70 celebrated an executive earmarked by "energy, secrecy, and dispatch." Trump bursting out of the gates has displayed all three. The United States will soon be the envy of the world again as Trump's executive orders take hold. He understands Machiavelli's instruction in "The Prince": "It is better to be feared than loved." The president of Colombia has already backed down to Trump over the return of illegal immigrants to his country.
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