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Dictator on Day One

The New Neo Posted on by

During the campaign, the Democrats were fond of saying that Trump was going to be a dictator and that he’d said so. But what he really said was that he’d be “a dictator on day one” – planning to issue executive orders:

“We love this guy,” Trump said of Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”

Well, yesterday was the long-awaited day one, and he signed about 200 orders. The list is at the link, and although there aren’t 200 there, one of the links is to another list that consists of Biden’s previous executive orders that Trump was reversing. They are so many there that I got tired of counting them. Among them are the orders about drilling.

One of the most noteworthy orders Trump issued yesterday was to shut down the CBP One app:

The Trump administration has canceled the CBP One cell phone app parole program used by Biden to allow more than 900,000 migrants to enter the US. Existing appointments have been cancelled.

Then there was one that restricted birthright citizenship. I’ve written in favor of doing this, and explained Trump’s point of view in this post from 2018. It’s longish, but here’s the most important part:

In fact, the US is the only highly-developed first-world country that (a) gives birthright citizenship, and (b) shares a border with a relatively undeveloped and crime-ridden country, and is therefore in a position to give relatively easy access to citizens of that country (Mexico, in the case of the US, as well as impoverished and crime-ridden Central America). Canada does not share that situation. All other countries in the world who do have a situation even remotely like ours forbid birthright citizenship of illegal immigrants. And most of the countries of the world that allow birthright citizenship are not what you’d call magnets for immigration or birth tourism. Au contraire. …

I have yet to locate exactly what those lines of a Trump executive order on this would be, but I assume that no one—not even Trump—is proposing an end to birthright citizenship. He is proposing placing some limits on it. I assume that the children of legal immigrants would still automatically become citizens, the children of tourists would not, and the children of illegal immigrants would not.

That’s very close to what Trump has done, over six years later. Trump recognizes that the courts will probably be ruling on this.

Then there are things such as withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, once again.

And the very long-awaited J6 pardons and commutations. There are 14 communtations – almost certainly for the more serious offenders – and “full, complete, unconditional pardons” for the rest. It amounts to about 1500 individuals. And there’s also this:

I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Good.

There’s plenty more, too. Trump’s energy is incredible. Yesterday, in addition to the speeches and the rally-signings and the balls, he gave a one-hour press conference. What a contrast with President #46.

Comments

Dictator on Day One — 36 Comments

  4. The EO on birthright citizenship is very reasonable, and I hope it will be challenged and that courts will uphold it.

  5. I completely agree that birthright citizenship is being horribly abused and should be changed. However, the 14th Amendment begins “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.” There are some very legalistic arguments that amount to “but that isn’t what they meant” or “that only applied to freed slaves” or something or other. Given how the Left manages to ignore the clear meaning to the Constitution when it suits them, it is hard to see how this can be overturned in good faith without an amendment.

  6. Freedom for the Jan6 Ralliers was my #1 concern for Jan 20th and thankfully it happened.
    Still looking for confirmation it was done or have some been held for BS reasons the Garland Goons only know?

  10. I don’t see how Trump could withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, since I don’t think the U.S. was ever a party to this agreement. Obama or Biden are no more able to make the U.S. party to this agreement than I am. It requires congress.

  11. Donald ‘Dictator’ Trump does have a nice ring to it – DDT? 😉 I didn’t know about these five—can you pardon the dead?

    Five J6 defendants committed suicide while awaiting trial

    Some AI’s and my new’s searches say “no” or “not that many” or have nothing at all about it_Grok – did Five J6 defendants committed suicide while awaiting trial?:

    Yes, according to various reports and posts on X, five defendants involved in the January 6th Capitol riot committed suicide while awaiting trial. The individuals named are Matthew Perna, Jord Meachum, Mark Aungst, Chris Stanton, and David Kennedy Homol.

  12. An Episcopel Bishop went political at the prayer service today. Totally Woke. That is why my Wife left, no the Church left her.

  13. What do you call the 51 intelligence officers, who signed off that the Biden laptop was Russian disinformation and have now lost their security clearances?

    A good start.

  15. Charlie Kirk was talking about this today and called it “Shock and Awe.”
    You go, Mr.President!

  16. Time to break these left-wing deceitful Progressive #MeToo cloned women from lying in public.

    Pete Hegseth’s ex-sister-in-law makes scathing accusation against him hours before he’s set to be confirmed

    Something should’ve already been done after that sicko Christine Blasey Ford’s lies from the “1980s” – “1980s” as in she couldn’t even remember what year in the 1980s, if I recall correctly. 30 or more years ago. Where are the Statute of Limitations for such accusations?!

    Danielle writes in a sworn affidavit that Samantha Hegseth, Pete Hegseth’s spouse from 2010 – 2017, was scared for her safety due to her then-husband’s volatile behavior.

    She cites private conversations the two had at the time as the basis for her claims.

    8-17 years ago – Ditto on the Where are the Statute of Limitations for such accusations?!

    This Danielle Dietrich (divorced from Mr. Hegseth’s brother) should have the full force of the Federal Govt put on her arse…whatever Lawfare one can come up with should be placed upon this women.

    Yes, interfering with the executive branch can be a crime. Federal laws prohibit obstructing the activities of the government, including the executive branch.

  17. Re: Citizenship

    …and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

    The argument, as I understand it, is that illegals aren’t properly ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ by virtue of being illegal.

  19. Regardless of whether birthright citizenship is in the Constitution, most countries in the world either do not have it, or have restrictions on who qualifies. European countries either do not have it, or only apply it to people who have at least one parent a citizen or permanent resident.

    Even in the US, there’s an asterisk. American Samoans born in American Samoa are not US citizens, for example, unless at least one parent is a US citizen.

  20. Very interesting article by Turley and n birthright citizenship (thanks for the link LordAzrael). He suggests that Trump might be overstepping his bounds by unilaterally defining birthright citizenship but that Congress could do so in a way to deny it to illegal aliens. And indeed the 14th Amendment has a clause, “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”

  21. As for the Jan6 pardons it’s not like most of these people are getting off with no punishment at all. Many hundreds have served or are serving jail sentences and then you have the financial ruin and stress inflicted by all this.

    So even if they are pardoned or commuted they have been punished for their ‘crimes’ unlike Hunter.

  22. Someone else posted this link yesterday; it appears to give the official EOs, in reverse chronological order. It was up to 5 pages long when I looked.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/

    I have noticed that the orders don’t just give a curt notice of “do this because I said so,” but often an extensive explanation of WHY the EO is being given, very much like a legal brief.

    They have obviously been churning along in the hopper for the last four years, with some high-level thinking and writing behind them.

    Not all of them, mind you. The one on Aviation safety (the last one published as of this moment), ends like this: “The Secretary of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administrator shall review the past performance and performance standards of all individuals in critical safety positions and take all appropriate action to ensure that any individual who fails or has failed to demonstrate requisite capability is replaced by a high-capability individual that will ensure top-notch air safety and efficiency.”

    However, I appreciate the EO itself, and after it’s had time to be effectively implemented, I may think about flying again.
    Hopefully in time for summer vacation!

  23. About Schedule F being re-cycled (sure wish he had gotten that through the first time):
    https://instapundit.com/697514/

    January 20, 2025
    TRUMP EO EASES FIRING FED MANAGERS: They called it Schedule F the first time around, but President Donald Trump has a tougher version of an Executive Order that makes it considerably simpler and quicker to fire incompetent senior managers in the federal workforce.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-accountability-to-policy-influencing-positions-within-the-federal-workforce/

    You can read the text at the WH link, or many others around the web; the key change to the original, which has been refined and extended, is this clause:

    (ii) insert a new subsection (b) that reads:
    “(b) Employees in or applicants for Schedule Policy/Career positions are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration. They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.”

    Some of the comments at Insty:

    This is just me, but I don’t think it should be easier to expel a British Peer from the House of Lords than it is to fire a US bureaucrat.

    I like that wording, it basically says you don’t have to like the president or his policies, but you still have to perform your duties to implement his directives. If you don’t do your job, good bye.
    Reply
    In theory, that was the entire point of the Civil Service Act. To provide an apolitical federal bureaucracy. … Well. It was a good theory.

    Essentially, Trump emails the OMB, and your laptop, door card and phone are bricked.
    /That’s how you find out you are fired on Wall Street.

    This one deserves its own section.

    ““The civil servants who make up our federal workforce are the engine that keeps our federal government running. They are our country’s greatest asset.” (Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-Va.) said in a Jan. 16 statement announcing a bill to nullify Schedule F.)

    A bunch of bureaucrats are our nation’s greatest asset? Only a Leviathan-government Democrat could say that with a straight face.

    The contrast between the new Trump administration and the statist, authoritarian Democrats could not be more clear. They mean to rule us. Resisting them is our duty and our privilege.

    The only way to make progress against them is to be bold. Overload the media and leftist activist outrage machine. Give them so many things to b!tch about that they just become background noise.

    When choosing between two strategies, choose the one that outrages them the most – it’s almost guaranteed to be the one that makes the most progress.

    BTW, the ball is already rolling.
    https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/01/21/if-the-coast-guard-commandant-can-be-fired-for-pushing-dei-can-the-usmc-commandant-be-fired-for-lying-n2184646

  24. Another hit via Instapundit, on the Leviathan of the Deep State; Trump will have a tremendous task to cut out all of the kudzu that has taken root in the federal buildings.

    https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/20/woketopushow-bidens-administration-became-national-nightmare-what-trump-has-do-stop-happening-again/

    America wasn’t “back” when Biden took office, the woke elites were.

    My new book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” (published Tuesday) explains how the ideology of the far Left entrenched itself in the federal bureaucracy under Biden and why it will be extremely difficult for President Donald Trump to uproot it.
    …
    It is the height of hypocrisy when the Left screams about “democracy,” all the while supporting a bureaucratic apparatus that intentionally insulates the Mandarins who actually write the rules Americans must live by, protecting them from the people’s elected representatives.

    Yet this preference for experts to call the shots—even after the public health experts repeatedly lied and attempted to silence debate during the COVID-19 pandemic—forms a centerpiece of the comprehensive worldview of woke activists. It explains why former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe would say, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

    This ideology is deeply rooted in America’s elite institutions, from academia to Hollywood to corporate boardrooms. It reared its ugly head most strongly after the death of George Floyd in police custody in 2020, when the legacy media ignored or covered for Antifa riots, parents watched teachers pushing CRT on kids, and companies rushed to release diversity, equity, and inclusion statements.

    Thankfully, this ideology is in retreat after Trump’s victory in November, but its roots have sunk deep.

    “The Woketopus” exposes the woke activist groups that infiltrate and brainwash the federal government, getting their agenda enshrined in regulations while often circumventing Congress and the people’s elected president.
    …
    A recent RMG Research poll found that 64% of Washington, D.C., federal bureaucrats who voted for Kamala Harris said they would refuse to follow a lawful order from Trump if they considered the order bad policy. This is the deep state in a nutshell, and my book shows how the Left got itself entrenched in the bureaucracy. “The Woketopus” is a powerful tool to help combat this nefarious influence campaign.

    As Biden leaves office, many of the top bureaucrats pushing his agenda are finding their homes in the woke activist groups that make up the Woketopus. Others will entrench, however, seeking to continue the woke Biden policies that made life worse for Americans these past four years.

    That’s why Congress must work with Trump to restrain the deep state. My book recommends some key legislative changes to hobble the deep state and make the bureaucracy more accountable to the American people.

    I hope his book is as good as he claims.

    Also recommended: TIMELY BOOK: From Ned Ryon, American Leviathan: The Birth of the Administrative State and Progressive Authoritarianism.

  25. Re: Executive Actions – some good, some bad, mostly good.

    The bad – birthright citizenship for children of illegals is a dumb policy, but you can’t change it by executive order. There are Supreme Court cases holding that the language of the 14th amendment requires it. Turley has a theory that it can be changed by Congress. Maybe it can, but Trump’s EO on the matter is a dead letter. It will be quickly enjoined by the courts and that will be that. And using illegal executive orders for political messaging is grossly abusive. We screamed when Biden did it over COVID mandates, student loans, and more. It can’t be OK just because our guy is the one doing it.

    TikTok – Really? We all criticized Obama for purporting to “waive the enforcement” of statutes. The executive doesn’t get to “waive” statutes except by the terms of the statute. Trump didn’t do that here. (Incidentally, Trump’s strongest arguments against the 2020 election were about governors, secretaries of state, and the like purporting to “waive” statutory law about election procedure. We live in the era of “It’s ok when my side does it because we have very good reasons.” OK, great, but Democrats have a whole bunch of “very good reasons” too, and Trumpers have no grounds to complain now.) Finally, why is Trump preserving a Chinese propaganda and spying tool? It makes no sense.

    J6 pardons – I have no problem at all with pardoning non-violent offenders. There is a strong argument that justice required that. Pardoning people who were violent with cops and destroyed property, however, is ridiculous. (And the fig leaf of the 14 commutations is very skimpy indeed. As many as hundreds of the 1500 pardons were of people who were convicted of offenses of violence.) When the left gets violent during Trump’s term, which you know they will, how is the Trump DOJ going to prosecute those people with a straight face now? It’s “selective enforcement for me, but not for thee.”

  26. @ Bauxite

    🙂 Executive Orders seem to be an offshoot of the Rule of Law (AKA King’s Law) – on steroids, which allows an easier way to cram your opinions down the throats of others.

    Think – Ego

    Humans fight over any ‘n everything — including the ownership of ‘God’__which is about as Egotistical as it can get.

    Enjoyed the comment, Thanks!

  27. its depends what the purpose of an executive order is, obama and biden used them to reorder the country in untoward ways, that could not be approved by the legislature,

    shutting down the pipelines, opening the borders wide open, are among those elements,

    the Court record re January 6th, has been so corrupted with the cooperation of compliant judges that one cannot ascertain who was nonviolent and who was not,

    much of the corporate media has not made the distinction,

    this has given the security services cover to continue the witchhunt, while they fail at their appointed duties

    once upon a time, birthright citizenship might have had a legitimate purpose, but it has been used to dilute the Republic, to turn us into a turbulent mob, the corrupt the institutions, that were foundational

  28. Bauxite always wants conservatives disarmed, and the ratchet always moving leftward. But the quickest way to restore the norm is to remind the norm breakers why the norm is there, by doing to them what they did to others.

    Not retaliating in kind is how we got Obama and Biden. How much more damage can this country take? The damage needs to be undone, not left in place for another leftward advance, and the people who broke the norms need to feel in their bones why it was a bad idea to do that, or they’ll just do it again.

    Biden, Harris, and the ABA just tried to amend the Constitution by tweet and they’re complaining about an executive order? Repeat until the lesson is learned.

  29. Nikietas Choniates – I disagree. Retaliating in kind is what leaves conservatives disarmed, while normalizing bad behavior.

    How “armed” are conservatives going to be if (when?) there is leftist political violence in the next four years and Trump’s DOJ need to prosecute? How about when a subsequent Democrat president pardons all of them?

    How “armed” are conservatives going to be when the next time a Democrat president fires off a flurry of clearly illegal EOs? (And this one is particularly dumb for the right because conservative judges tend to make decisions on the law rather than working backwards from political values.)

    How “armed” are conservatives going to be the next time a Democrat purports to “waive” a statute?

    This isn’t “arming” ourselves, its actually the exact opposite.

  30. @Bauxite:How “armed” are conservatives going to be if (when?) there is leftist political violence in the next four years and Trump’s DOJ need to prosecute? How about when a subsequent Democrat president pardons all of them?

    How “armed” are conservatives going to be when the next time a Democrat president fires off a flurry of clearly illegal EOs?

    How “armed” are conservatives going to be the next time a Democrat purports to “waive” a statute?

    Did you miss the last four years? All that already happened.

    We need Dems to agree that it’s not okay to do these things, and they will never agree unless it’s done to them how it was done to us.

    They still might not agree, but then at least it’s a fair fight going forward if both sides are doing it.

  31. the Journal indulges in this level of absurdity, where they ignore all the underlying facts we discovered about January 6th

    admittedly most of the video record was obscured for the first two years, but what’s the excuse for the press not to inform them, the narrative is too easy for them to give up,

    too much money was made on backs of people victimized by a cruel and indifferent government,

  32. those corrupt judges I mentioned before,
    https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1882114438825660470

    among the judges only aileen cannon seems to have read the law, re the documents case,

    hence she won’t allow jack smith and his cronies to get away with more molarkey, (to be diplomatic)

    there are so few observers that have even bothered to revise their stories,

  33. CC™ advocates being very careful because the left may be mean and nasty in the future. Four years of lawfare have taught CC™ nothing.

  34. Trump’s EO on birthright citizenship serves 2 purposes – it will end up in the Supreme Court and in the court of public debate, and going forward, a magnet for illegal immigrants has been put in limbo, at least temporarily.

  35. I am not in favor of the Trump administration pursuing the sorts of bogus prosecutions which were unleashed on conservatives. I do favor resolute prosecution of actual criminal behavior. Trump let H. Clinton walk, as a gesture of conciliation and to promote national unity. That didn’t work. Prosecuting provable wrongdoing is not “retaliating in kind.”

  36. @ Kate > “I do favor resolute prosecution of actual criminal behavior.”

    What Kate said.
    And the Republicans don’t even have to make things up to do it.

    “Trump let H. Clinton walk, as a gesture of conciliation and to promote national unity. That didn’t work.”

    The Democrats should have just stepped back, hid as much evidence of corruption as they could (most of it already was), and left Trump alone for four years (in public; they could have continued obstruction sub rosa as they did anyway); then they could have started where they left off with the next Democrat president.

    Continued smears of Trump for his actual behavior and policies would probably have nudged the electoral needle back to the left, and they still had rigging for close states without having to be so blatant about it.

    Fighting so hard, and so openly, to keep Trump out is a lot of what got him back in.

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