President Donald Trump signed over 200 executive orders on Monday, his first day in office. “With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said in his second inaugural address. While some of the orders will fail, such as the one ending birthright citizenship, and some are largely symbolic rather than substantive, such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” the sheer number and scope of truly substantive orders is a reflection of how extreme and bizarre the federal government had become in the grip of former President Joe Biden’s radical White House staff.
Imagine telling an average American a decade ago that it would be necessary for a president to declare on his first day in office, as Trump did Monday, that it is the “policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female. These are sexes that are not changeable, and they are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
Many of Trump’s executive orders and comments in his speech were, at bottom, statements of truth evident to all people not blinded by ideology. But that is the thing about the Biden administration, which, with its figurehead unaware of or indifferent to what was happening in his name, kept doing things that were based on manifest falsehood. For example, Biden tried to reduce inflation by spending trillions of dollars, tried to save the world’s climate by boosting dirty fuel production in enemy nations, and proclaimed it was a mark of humanitarian tolerance to open our borders to violent foreign criminals.
You wouldn’t think it necessary to say that such policies are absurd and to order them to stop, but it is, and that is a measure of the depths to which the Biden administration has taken America. Trump called his mass of executive orders a “revolution of common sense,” and that is how most voters and honest citizens will regard it.
“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse the horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place,” Trump said. “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”
Trump’s first step in reversing America’s decline was to declare a national emergency at the southern border. “As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” he declared in announcing his intention to halt the practice of catch and release immediately and to reinstate his successful “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Next, the new president said he would declare an energy emergency to help bring down prices. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said. “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.” Maximizing energy production is common sense, but it was not the policy of the Biden administration and the green militants around him, who only favored “clean” energy at the expense of reliable nuclear power and fossil fuels.
Noting it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Trump pledged he would “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. … We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.” Trump noted that for too long, the federal government has encouraged an education system that “teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves and, in many cases, to hate our country.”
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“We will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed,” Trump said. “For American citizens, Jan. 20, 2025, is liberation day.”
It is deeply regrettable that the country had to endure the largest influx of illegal immigrants in history, generationally high inflation, and cities overrun with crime and homelessness. It is that picture of incompetence that made Monday a dramatic turning point. Outside Washington, there does seem to be what Trump has called “a tide of change … sweeping the country.” That tide is a reaction to the deranged policies of Biden and the Democrats. Trump’s executive orders signed Monday were an excellent start toward undoing that damage.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
