The election and pre-inauguration activities were deranged enough to fill the pages of a thousand history books, but in the first six days of his presidency Donald Trump has already sought to make a bigger splash than any president before him. Barack Obama, George Bush, and Bill Clinton issued the most executive orders at 364, 291, and 275 apiece… but all three of them served two terms. Six days in, Donald Trump has issued 12 executive orders. To put that in perspective, Obama issued an average of 34 a year. Winter is coming. Maybe we’ve been spoiled by eight years of a more gentle faced Obama, lulled into a false sense of security with our government and Trump is just “in your face” like his supporters say. Or maybe Trump really is a different sort of evil, out to fatten his pockets with sheer audacity and relying on America to be collective bystanders as he catapults us into the events of a sick dystopian novel. Or perhaps we are already in a dystopian novel, and Trump is being controlled by some evil group of crusty and cantankerous billionaires who want to enslave us all. Regardless my mood doesn’t waver for any of these scenarios.
Gorging myself daily on the antics of Donald Trump and his administration over the next four years will not be a pleasant task.
But I will resist. I will help whoever is reading this resist. Resist what, you ask? The alternative facts (the plain person pronounces this as lies)and borrowed fascism that are ripening in the Trump administration as I type these very words. Every Wednesday you can count on a ledger of his malignancy and incompetency, with no filters because I’m not invited to press conferences anyway.
This is the Trump Tracker. Lets get to it.
On January 20th….
Trump ordered a freeze on all new federal regulations that had not been finalized.
Then he began to officially chip away at Obamacare when he signed an executive order calling on government agencies to “ease the burden” of the policy. Keeping it nice and vague, he claims to want to “prepare to afford the states more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market.” The GOP still has not announced exactly how it plans to replace the Affordable Care Act.
Homeowners insurance: President Dump also suspended a scheduled insurance rate cut for new homeowners, lingering legislation from the Obama administration. The cut was going to reduce annual insurance premiums for new Federal Housing Administration loans by 25 basis points — from 0.85 to 0.60. Basically, things have gotten slightly more expensive for homeowners.
On Saturday the 21st, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer erroneously said “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” On January 23rd…
- Perhaps to scrape up some more money for his majestic wall, Trump mandated a temporary hiring freeze for federal employees, except for the military and certain security positions.
- Trump signed a presidential memorandum bringing the Mexico City Policy back to life, which prohibits U.S. funds from going to certain world health organizations that talk about or give abortions. This policy was first implemented by Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been reversed with each democratic president.
- Trump signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing the United States from a trade deal that took Obama eight years to broker. The TPP linked 12 countries including Canada, Japan, and Chile in a group effort against China, which is getting lit economically. This is a very good move for China, but questionable for us. For one thing, it gives China more economic control over the region. Additionally, the withdrawal gives countries in the region a negative opinion of America, which may make them turn to China. You can read more about that here.
Then, on January 24th…
- He signed executive orders that approve the Dakota Access Pipeline. He also signed an order that restarts a previously closed construction for the Keystone XL oil pipeline in Canada.
Yesterday on January 25th….
- Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to prepare for “immediate construction” of his dumb ass wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican President is ardently refusing to pay for the wall, and Trump is claiming that taxpayers will later be reimbursed by Mexico.
- Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Resort’s membership cost doubled. This tells us that Trump’s businesses are benefitting from his presidency. Additionally, he has yet to show his tax returns or reveal how exactly he will separate himself from his business interests.
- Then, behind the scenes he put a ban on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture from “providing updates on social media or to reporters.” This is the start of fascism. This was after he suspended the Department of Interior’s social media privileges because they posted comparison pictures of Obamas inauguration versus Chump’s inauguration.
- Trump ordered that any studies or data from scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public. Science has officially become partisan.
- In a thinly veiled attempt to provoke legislation for harsher voter restrictions that will certainly set Trump and Republicans up for smooth sailing in 2018 and 2020 elections, Trump has been talking about rampant voter fraud. In an interview with David Muir that seems like a fake reality tv show because of its absurdity, Trump once again demonstrated that truth is not important when he claimed that millions of illegal votes have been cast. He is expected to issue an executive order today regarding voter fraud.
- Donald Trump also endorsed Fox news, which is how he is establishing a biased news source for his blind supporters to latch onto.
- He also said that Chicago needs help. As in feds. Chicago needs better paying jobs, schools, and housing. They need cops who aren’t racist. But Trump is being quite the sensationalist, latching on to Obama’s hometown and saying that it was ok for it to be a war-zone while somebody else was president, but not while he was president. The cycle of racism disguised as concern for moral decay rears its ugly head. Chicago’s problems are deeply rooted from disadvantages created by racism- what Trump is threatening to do will have blowback.
- Trump signed an executive order to defund sanctuary cities, or places that protect undocumented immigrants from federal prosecution. This order will also hire 10,000 additional immigration officers, build more detention centers and start lining up detainees for deportation.
Trump is doing everything he can to symbolically appease his supporters. Trump’s baby, the wall that he wants to be erected as the legacy that will remain after he takes his last breath, is being built with taxpayer money. Mexico is rightly refusing to reimburse us for it. He also took America’s favorite dead horse, abortion, and set it on fire when he reinstated the Mexico-City policy. It is a fake win for his moralic supporters but truly about money. Money that is being strategically jostled from various corners. Where is the money going? War? Deportation? What environmental atrocity is in the works that Trump needs the EPA and DOA to stay mum on? Perhaps 10 years ago during the Bush presidency asking such questions would make one a conspiracy theorist- but in 2017 with Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief, all of these questions are warranted. Trump demonstrated that he is willing to lie about trivial things- like how many people attended his inauguration, meaning that his entire presidency will be nothing but smoke and mirrors. This is a tactic that serves a larger purpose- making the majority of the population grow tired of his activities quickly into his presidency so that they stop paying attention. With the apathetic out of the way it leaves those who care and those who are stupid. There will be those who see him for the snake he is, and others who will laud him as Mt Rushmore material. Trump has made very blatant jabs against objective knowledge and facts, obviously attempting to provoke a new age of American intellectualism framed in camo fabric, cheeto dust, and splashes of mountain dew… where white ego comes before even the most obvious of facts. Trump has waged a war on intelligence and critical thinking, and those of us with enough sense to recognize it need to prepare the masses for battle.
Dahir Hassan
February 22, 2017 3:26 pm
As a Muslim Somali-American, I would have to argue that Trump’s ban on Muslims affects me the most. But at the same time, I am not saying that his other executive orders do not impact my life in some way shape or form because, in fact, it does. First and foremost, Trump’s executive order to defund Plan ParentHood was a dangerous move for the country because it allowed for the introduction of religious views to be incorporated into politics. These religious views have little to no business in the politics simply because this is a “country” that was initially built as a religious asylum. Furthermore, this will threaten the livelihood of many Americans who do not practice Christianity such as myself. In short, by incorporating Christian values into politics do nothing for millions while appealing and reassuring WASP that USA is still their’s. But back to Trump’s Ban on Muslims and even the deportations of thousands of immigrants, these programs are deeply rooted in the ideology that immigrants or Muslims pose a threat to national security. Yet, this ideology seems to have little to no basis. If we want to be real, most terror attacks/ crime committed on US soil come from white people. For you to dub a person a terrorist because they scream lines of the Quran when they committing horrifying acts while another doing the same shit screaming Christan rhetoric is a lone wolf is nothing but hypocrisy. It is this ban of immigrants and the deportation of immigrants that’s going to slowly cripple this so called country before our eyes. It’s the hard working immigrants that help run this country as it was greatly demonstrated in the “Day without Immigrant” Protest. Although I may seem very concerned with these two particular executive orders, I do also see how this impacts the broader community such as the black community which I heavily identify with. I would love to talk about that as well but I feel like I have been ranting way to long about those issues. This comment is about to be hella long and I appologize in advance for that.