First day in office, Biden signed 17 executive orders. They are not good for unity, restoring trust, or soothing fears Democrats plan to “run the table.” Frankly, they are executive overreach.
Biden’s orders – sure to be challenged – are significant. He was not renaming the Rose Garden for pansies, not announcing a pardon for America’s turkeys, or a new National Unity Day.
Many orders upend longstanding laws, reverse regulations, and push limits on executive action. There is more. He knew this was his plan while quoting Lincoln, talking peace, said saying his “soul is in it.” One wonders, in what? If these were ready to be signed, whither the harmony?
What do these orders do? Rather than pausing to explain and move legislation, he shouted “pull” and started signing. His orders command “immediate termination” of funding for the popular border wall, “putting an end to a key Trump campaign and administration promise.” His order includes “immediate pause” in construction, redirection of funds – somewhere.
He revokes Trump’s immigration law enforcement priorities, ordering agencies to set “civil immigration enforcement policies that best protect the American people … in line with our values and priorities” – as if protection of borders, treaties, citizenship, health and safety, avoiding COVID, homelessness, sanctuary cities, drug trafficking and election concerns are not “in line with our values and priorities.”
He suspends deportation, ends third-country aid, undermines deterrence of caravans, restarts a citizenship for Americans illegally here before adult age, and rather than working with Congress, dispenses with them. Boom-tick, simple scribble, done.
Metrics of concern vetting for possible terrorists from countries with metrics “concern” –identified during Obama – Biden plays the demagogue, ending Trump’s “Muslim ban,” which was never a Muslim ban. He has staff say no more “religious animus and xenophobia.” So, vetting for Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran is lifted.
The State Department is ordered to restart visa processing. Look up those countries, terrorism indicia. Non-partisan assessments of terror sponsorship pop these countries. Ironically, Trump’s State Department defended Chinese Muslims, saying their mistreatment – based on their Muslim faith – was genocide. If this is unity, one wonders what disunity looks like.
Contrary to common understandings of law, historical precedent, concerns about resource distribution and electoral representation, Biden also ordered the Census to include non-citizens, including illegal aliens. The decision reverses standing policy. It also casts a long shadow.
In another executive order – ignoring Chinese influence at the World Health Organization (WHO) – Biden “re-engaged” WHO. As American tax dollars go there, one wonders. Without legal review, congressional dialogue, or transition discussions – which last month – Biden “re-entered” the flawed, income redistributing, highly questionable Paris Climate Accord, disregarding calls for legal review. Textually, the accord is anti-Western – ah, well.
For good measure, Biden revoked a range of Trump’s presidential proclamations, saying they “do not serve the U.S. national interest.” More seriously, assuring high energy prices, less energy independence, lower energy employment, angering tens of millions of Americans and Canada, Biden unilaterally revoked the permit for completing the Keystone XL Pipeline. Ah, well.
In an Orwellian twist, Biden dispatched staff to say the move was “imperative” to “address the climate crisis,” create “good union jobs” and promote “climate justice.” The truth is opposite. Cheap oil for Americans, will simply go to foreign markets – and get burned. “Good union jobs” were and will be killed by that pipeline revocation.
And, okay, call me ignorant. For the life of me, I wonder on “climate justice.” What a word! Is that equality between clouds and sun. What would America’s Founders, so intent on real justice, or Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Bentham, or Mills say? They would be stumped.
The idea is that different people – “groups of people,” you know identity politics – get more and less rain, wind, sun, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. This inequality is America’s fault, all man-made factors, carbon. As America is rich – having nothing to do with our noble history, hard work, struggling economy – we must pay. Yeah, okay. Watch for climate privilege” next.
What else? Biden signed orders creating an “us and them” in housing, demanding “affordable housing,” delayed payments, no evictions. On one hand, that appeals during COVID; on the other one wonders how, like shuttered small businesses, those who live on rents survive? Presumably, more rent-payers vote Democrat than rent collectors. Wither harmony?
Biden pushed student debt cancellation. Okay, two-edged sword. Education depends on access, which requires loans if a student believes in himself, aims to learn and rise economically. But what lesson is taught by ending responsibility for debt, and what do the lenders get, and who repays the loan? Answer: You, taxpayers under a heap of debt. Easy answer, but right? No.
Other orders hit “racial justice and equity,” interesting as West Coast cities are attacked by ANTIFA. One order redefines “equity” (equality), as if a new word. It lists identity groups, really voting blocks, that Biden will now help. Uniting Americans? Hard to see that.
Add reversal of Trump’s regulatory relief, framed as regulatory “freeze” – but truthfully, a freeze on regulatory reduction, Orwellian twist on words. The irony is that reduced federal regulation created the best US economy in 70 years and helped every demographic.
Then – you knew it – Biden went for social engineering in the military, putting readiness – as defined by those responsible for assuring it – below access to service by the “transgender community.” Hmmm. The natural extension is subordination of readiness-centric discriminators, weight, height, strength, intellect, age, mental fitness, moral character, psychological fitness (e.g., for security, spec-ops, submariner) to social equity. Wars are not won on equity; they lost for readiness.
Likewise, Biden sidelined historic policy blocking US dollars for foreign non-government organizations promoting abortion, the Mexico City policy or Hyde Amendment. Biden – putatively a practicing Catholic, albeit condemned by cardinals – greenlighted abortions on taxpayer dollars. That will also be challenged, but it does not spell unity.
One must ask – is this how a “unifying” president acts, on a dubious mandate? How a president seeks to lower the temperature, assuage fears of those who doubt him, did not vote for him? One wonders what the future holds. This is overreach. Let us hope listening, respect – start soon.