Trump has actually had a dynamite first month in office.
10) Freezing all Federal Hiring Outside of the Military: Trump followed in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps by putting
a federal hiring freeze in place almost immediately after he became president.
That’s big, because the first step to shrinking government is to stop adding
more people to it.
9) Pulling Support for the Obama Drive to Force Women to
Allow Men in Their Bathrooms: This
was a bit surprising, because Trump has generally been supportive of allowing
transgender women to use women’s bathrooms, but he also said he believes the
issue should be left to the states. Towards that end, he ordered the DOJ to “withdraw
a motion filed by former President Barack Obama seeking to allow transgender
students in public schools to use the restroom with which they identify.” That
will probably lead to the issue being left to the states, which is how it
should be.
8) Reinstating The Mexico City Policy: Barring U.S. government funding to international
non-governmental agencies that promote or perform abortions is a big deal for
pro-lifers. Because of Trump, your tax dollars are no longer going to be used
to murder children overseas.
7) Ordered Federal Agencies To Cut Two Regulations For Every
New One They Propose:Not only will this lead to fewer
regulations, Trump has also decreed that the net cost of any new regulation
that is added after cutting the old regulations should be zero. In other words,
the regulatory burden on the American people can only go in one direction:
down. If you want to help the economy, one of the best ways to do it is to stop
strangling American businesses with red tape. Trump understands that.
6) Putting Out An Executive
Order Asking The DOJ And Homeland Security to Withhold “Federal Funds, Except As Mandated By Law” From
Sanctuary Cities: Trump talked a lot about sanctuary cities on
the campaign trail and it’s great to see him taking action against these
lawless cities. The fewer sanctuary cities we have, the fewer Americans like
Kate Steinle will be raped, robbed or murdered as a result. There is no such
thing as the “rule of law” when a protected class of foreign trespassers don’t
live under the same laws as the rest of us.
5) Approving The Dakota Access Pipeline And The Keystone
Pipeline: Not only will both those
pipelines produce jobs without harming the environment, over the long haul
they’ll help reduce gas prices. Liberals may not care about Americans spending
less on gas, but it’s great that Trump does.
4) Killing The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal: As Jeff Sessions has noted, the TPP was a bad
agreement that dangerously eroded America sovereignty,
"The TPP is about a goal of creating a new global
regulatory structure, what I have called a Pacific union, transferring power
from individual Americans and power from Congress once more. Eroding Congress
to an unaccountable, unelected international bureaucratic committee. In other
words, we are empowering the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries to create
really a new Congress of sorts, a group with delegates that goes and meets and
decides important issues that can impact everyday life of Americans. So the
American representative in this commission, which will operate in many ways
like the UN, will not be answerable to voters anywhere."
For liberals, transferring American sovereignty to an
unelected international group is a feature. It’s great that Trump sees it as a
bug.
3) Undermining Obamacare: While
there’s still lots of talk about how the GOP should repeal and replace
Obamacare, Trump has already stuck a shiv in the heart of the program by
ordering the government to “exercise all authority and discretion
available to them” to delay the law and grant exemptions. There are
still legal questions to be answered about the long term impact of this
executive order, but as a practical matter, it appears to have already done
away with the IRS enforcing a penalty on people who don’t have healthcare.
Technically, the law is still on the books, but if you no longer have to report to the IRS whether you have
health insurance or not, that makes it nearly impossible for
it to be enforced. Obamacare is already in a death spiral and this executive
order will speed things along.
2) Ordering The Construction Of The Border Wall: If you had to pick a central promise of Trump’s
campaign, it was building a border wall. He’s already ordered construction to
begin and as an extra added bonus, he signed an executive order increasing the
number of border patrol agents and staffers for deportations. Of course
ultimately, Trump will be judged on getting the wall finished, but you have to
start somewhere and it’s good to see him taking that big first step right out
of the gate.
1) Selecting Neil Gorsuch For The Supreme Court: Gorsuch is an eminently qualified 49 year old
originalist and if conservatives were fantasy league picking their top five
selections for the court, he’d be on it. Trump did his job; now it’s up to
Mitch McConnell to get Gorsuch confirmed via hook, crook or nuclear option.
