Orders
A summary of presidential Executive Orders
Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the USA. You may have heard! Although a miscommunication meant he didn’t swear on the Bible (the First Lady was carrying two Bibles but Chief Justice John Roberts jumped the gun and began the recitation before Trump was ready), the President acknowledged that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet for a reason – hopefully, he always remembers that. The President wasted no time shaping his second term in the White House, issuing dozens of executive orders. He even set up a little desk at his inauguration event he could get started straight away.
You can read all the Executive Orders at the White House website. But here are some of the ones that caught the most attention:
One of the most significant is the order to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the government and any entity that takes federal funding. While we have gotten used to corporations using discriminatory policies to hire and fire, it is a bit outrageous that our own government was also putting aside merit in favor of other characteristics such as race, gender and sexual identity. A number of outlets predicted that the Order sets up a fight with higher education institutes. Wording within the Order noted that professors are free to criticize the policy all they like, but if universities wish to keep federal money, they need to hire and intake based on merit, not quotas or affirmative action metrics. (Washington Examiner, Daily Mail, Fox)
President Trump has issued an order that the US government will only recognize two genders, defined as the one that produces eggs and the one that produces sperm. This will likely affect transgender bathroom policies and also transgender people in the military. (Sydney Morning Herald)
The Department of Homeland Security will scrub the term “undocumented person” and refer to illegal immigrants in the more traditional “alien”, bringing much-needed clarity. (The National Desk)
President Trump has once again withdrawn America’s participation in the Paris Climate Accords. He also pulled America’s membership in the World Health Organization. Apart from its record of rubbish information during covid and its proposed pandemic treaty where nations cede their power to the global body, Mercator points out that (like the UN), WHO is promoting sexual debauchery of every imaginable stripe. (NPR, Mercator)
One order opens investigations into how the previous administration used the pretext of "misinformation” to censor speech. Another order revoked the security clearances for those intelligence personnel who denied the voracity of claims around Hunter Biden’s laptop. (Reclaim the Net)
The President declared that documents about the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK must be declassified. (CBS)
While it is been pointed out that President Trump does not have long to get things done, considering 2026’s mid-terms could render him a lame duck, I heard more than a bit of consternation at the apparent new default of governing by executive fiat and a spoils system of politics. There is a divide on the political Right: do we stick by principles of not punishing, of following the Golden Rule, and just hope our enemies just back down? Or do we wield power while we have it to send messages and teach lessons? I am glad not to be one making those calls, but I guess, if it’s a good order, Americans will see its value and it will stick – apparently the Orders were crafted well before Trump took office, and experts say they are carefully worded to stand legal scrutiny... We could pray for a better day. As Jeffrey Tucker argues at Epoch Times, Trump’s orders should not be necessary because many are just restating what the Constitution says.