The small mahogany table and red leather upholstered chair looked ridiculous in contrast to the huge, packed Capital One Arena. Just as the Roman emperors threw captured enemies to the lions to amuse their subjects, Donald Trump has signed the first eight executive orders of the avalanche that he approved this Monday. Among them are the exit from the Country Climate Agreement and the repeal of 78 decrees implemented by former President Joe Biden.
Flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Trump has been signing the executive orders that his personal secretary Will Scharf read over the public address system. “The first item that President Trump signs is the revocation of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda and decrees,” Scharf said. “Thank you,” Trump responded with a smile. A movement of the wrist and the president raised the document in the air so that the public could see his stamped signature. As if it were a war trophy.
The sequence has continued like this until having signed: an order that prevents officials from issuing more regulations until Trump takes full control of the government; another that freezes federal contracting, except in military and/or essential cases; the end of teleworking for civil servants; a directive for each department to address the rising cost of living; two orders on exit from the Paris Agreement; and ending the “use of the government as a weapon against the political adversaries of the previous administration.”
Once he had finished, the Republican left the stadium amidst applause to head to the White House, where he continued approving a mountain of executive orders that were piling up on the Oval Office table.
Among those that he has signed are: the pardon of 1,600 convicted for the assault on the Capitol, the declaration of an “energy emergency”, the declaration of a “national emergency” on the border with Mexico, the categorization of cartels as terrorist groups, revoking automatic citizenship for anyone born in the United States, “protecting women from transgender ideology,” leaving the World Health Organization, and a moratorium on banning TikTok.
In response to questions from the journalists who accompanied him, the president assured that he plans to impose tariffs of 25% on products imported from Canada and Mexico on February 1.
Immigration, in the spotlight
Trump signed his signature while commenting on the documents he approved. When signing the decrees on immigration issues, the Republican has assured that he is “in favor of legal immigration.” “We need people in our country,” he stated. The Republican had not yet been sworn in this Monday morning when the CBP ONE website, the page to make an appointment to request asylum, stopped working and reported that “existing appointments were cancelled.”
CBP ONE is the immigration program established by former President Joe Biden so that asylum seekers could make an appointment with US immigration services instead of crossing the border illegally and then request asylum from the border patrol. It was one of the few legal and orderly immigration processes there were.
Declaring a national emergency on the southern border is key to carrying out the promise of the “largest in history” mass deportation. By doing so, the use of military forces on the border with Mexico is authorized. This is a measure that the Republican already tried to execute in his previous mandate, but that ran into opposition from Congress, which ended up leading to a constitutional conflict. Although this time the Republican’s xenophobic speech has displaced the political framework from which border management is addressed.
In mid-January, the House of Representatives and the Senate advanced a bill to deport undocumented people who have been accused or convicted of minor crimes. The draft, which threatens to encourage arrests for racial profiling, not only passed the round of voting with the support of Republicans. Some Democratic congressmen were also in favor of this. So it remains to be seen what the reaction will be now to the declaration of a national emergency at the border.
The decree that ends the right to citizenship for being born in American territory is one of the first that will end up in court. The president cannot modify American citizenship because it is regulated by the Constitution, specifically by the 14th amendment and says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens.” Either the Supreme Court will have to reinterpret this line, or Trump will have to modify the Constitution, which requires a supermajority that Congress does not have.
In his inaugural speech (and throughout the campaign) Trump has placed a lot of emphasis on referring to immigration as an “invasion.” He even assured again from the Capitol Rotunda that “we will not be conquered.” Trump’s hyperinflated rhetoric may seem like an extension of his histrionic character, but it is not. The Republican seeks to create the climate that justifies the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that he has promised to recover.
To restore the authority of that law, the United States must either be at war with another country or be under invasion or threat of invasion by another government. Trump’s surreal lies about Congo “emptying” its prisons within the United States take on a completely different light under the Alien Enemies Act. Declaring cartels that operate within the United States “terrorist organizations” goes in the same direction.
The Paris Agreement and the WHO
Ordering the withdrawal of the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) is a clear message to the international community: the unilateralism of the America First and isolationism. The United States abandons one of the largest international pacts, where numerous countries committed to fighting the climate crisis, as well as the organization that was key to fighting the pandemic.
The withdrawal of the WHO is not so surprising when taking into account that the future head of Health will be the anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy. Leaving the Paris climate agreement is a first step in his promise to end the Biden administration’s climate policies.
In June 2017, Trump ordered to abandon the Paris Agreement for the first time. Curiously, this decision generated the first clash between the Republican and his now ally Elon Musk.
“Protect women from trans ideology”
In the cultural war that the Republican Party is waging, the LGTBIQ+ group has been another focus of Trumpist hatred. In his inaugural address, Trump has promised to forge “a color-blind, merit-based society. Starting today, the official policy of the United States Government will be that there are only two genders, male and female.” Once in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order to “protect women from radical transgender ideology.”
This will involve determining in official documents, such as passports, that only the male or female gender will be recognized and eliminating the third box. It will also have similar repercussions for officials and the functioning of schools. In this area, the president promised to end the “woke” agenda and remove trans women from women’s sports leagues at the school and university level.
Trump’s team has also announced an end to protections for trans people in federal prisons and for transgender immigrants in US custody. In the United States, there are about 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, as well as about 300,000 people between the ages of 13 and 17, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA.
These measures will face opposition in the courts from the groups. Before Trump’s presidency began, a law on trans minors that could be key to the rights of the group began to be debated in the Supreme Court. The high court must rule next June on the ban on gender-affirming treatments for children and adolescents in the state of Tennessee.
Pardons for the Capitol attackers
When Trump gave his speech at the Capital One Arena, he made public the pardons for the Capitol attackers. The president has insisted on rewriting that day as a “peaceful” day and in which those convicted of attacking the Capitol are harmless grandmothers. “A 76-year-old grandmother who was arrested the other day because she was watching what was happening,” Trump said. The president has forgotten to mention that among those convicted there are also members of the far-right Proud Boys group who were on the front line of the people who stormed the building that day.
Trump has granted blanket pardons to nearly all of the 1,600 Capitol stormers and commuted the sentences of several others. Among the beneficiaries of this order is Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys whom prosecutors described as a cunning extremist and street fighter who helped his compatriots in “Trump’s army” launch an assault on the Capitol.
The president has also signed an executive order to grant the extension to TikTok. Even so, it is not clear that the magnate will have it so easy to apply the extension or if he really has the authority to establish it once the ban has already begun.
The law provided for the possibility of applying a 90-day extension only once. But, to activate it, it is necessary to demonstrate that TikTok’s separation from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is underway. Among other things, the president would have to demonstrate to Congress that a path to carry out the divestment has been identified and present evidence of significant progress in executing it. For now, Trump has only asked that half of the platform be American owned.
Source: www.eldiario.es
