Week One of Trump 2.0

Securing the Border

President Donald Trump wasted no time in launching his campaign to deport illegal aliens starting with the worst of the worst – those convicted of heinous crimes. And he is having significant success. However, you wouldn’t know that because the mainstream media seems to be focused entirely on the “what if” game of mass deportation. And in doing so they miss the whole point of what is going on.

For instance, in the first series of raids, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested a member of the notorious MS-13 gang but the media seemed to focus on another illegal alien housed in the residence and for whom no warrants were outstanding. That despite the fact that Border Czar Tom Holman had been telling the media that it would happen – any illegal alien in the company of those on the high priority list would also be detained and deported. In doing so the media missed two important points. First, by arresting and deporting those who provide shelter for the “worst of the worst” a strong message is sent to the community to close your doors to these thugs – minimize their ability to allude ICE. And the second is that although there are no felony warrants outstanding for these collateral immigrants, they are in fact here illegally and should be removed. The news media and the progressives are doing their damnest to cast this as disrupting the lives of innocents when there are none.

You next hear their stories that ICE has entered schools to tear children out of the classroom. Their proof is, as usual, baloney. The case in point did not involve ICE but rather the Secret Service which was not there to detain or remove students but rather to investigate a threat against the school. Given how quickly the progressive politicians, including the governor of Illinois, released their press statement condemning ICE, one wonders whether it wasn’t the progressives themselves that reported the school threat knowing that some federal agency would show up and they could make their false claim about ICE and removing children form the school. There is nothing to which the progressives won’t stoop to create yet another false narrative.

Use your head. That’s not going to happen. If there is an illegal alien who is an accused rapist in a school, ICE is going in – just as if there was an active shooter in a school. Apparently some of the members of these international gangs, such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, have members as young as twelve and thirteen years old. They carry weapons and are just as likely to use them as their adult counterparts. They may be in our schools but they sure as hell aren’t there to learn bur rather to further the goals of the gang. There are just under 90,000 elementary schools in the United States. The chances of such an entry in these schools is practically negligible – unless of course the teachers unions decide they want to encourage using the schools as sanctuaries or gin up an incident like that in Chicago. In such a case, Mr. Holman would be well served to arrest the teachers and their union leaders first and then deal with the illegal immigrants later. Thwarting the law for political purposes is about as low as you can get – particularly when you expose children to the danger that ensues. And in those rare cases where there are illegal aliens wanted for violent acts, you want ICE or any other law enforcement agency to remove them as quickly as possible.

So when you listen to the television anchors, the new readers, the hair spray wonders, and the vacuous five-inch stiletto wearers wring their hands about the “what ifs” of the deportation efforts, know two things. First that they have not checked the accuracy of their accusations but rather have just taken the word of some progressive political activist; and two, that they are, in reality, trying to kill a necessary and valuable program in a fit over having lost yet another election.

The Pen and the Phone

After suffering a number of legislative losses, former President Barack Obama infamously said:

“I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.”

It was a pretty cryptic and stupid pronouncement. I don’t know what role the “phone” had in it but what it meant is that Mr. Obama decided to bypass Congress and usurp authority that he did not possess when he could not get his way. Former President Joe Biden continued the practice – well actually the cabal running the White House and acting as if they were president continued the practice. Ol’ Joe was pretty much clueless about what was going on around him. Mr. Obama was successful during his presidency mostly because the United States Supreme Court remained in the hands of the liberals and he was confident that they wouldn’t upset a liberal agenda even if they knew it was wrong. Mr. Biden failed because in the interim President Trump installed a conservative majority in the Court which thereafter began to accept and confirm challenges to the exercise of executive authority – even dating back to orders entered unlawfully by Mr. Obama. With each passing decision, the Court has demonstrated the executive authority is bound by the Congress and the Constitution.

Mr. Trump complained loudly about Mr. Biden’s excesses and swore to turn them around which he then did beginning on January 20, 2025. But the ink was hardly dry on those order than Mr. Trump himself exceeded his authority on at least two instances. First, he suspended a decision of the United States Supreme Court declaring that Congress acted lawfully in banning hostile foreign ownership of TikTok. I understand his rationale but he was wrong and he has tainted the legitimacy of any subsequent transaction involving ByteDance’s sale of TikTok to a domestic company in America. Under the Congressional law and the Supreme Court decision, TikTok is no longer an operational enterprise in America and Mr. Trump’s action cannot and did not revive it.

Next, Mr. Trump in his zeal to rid the federal government of “deep state” obstructionists terminated a number of agency “inspectors general” – the people charged by Congress to oversee the operations of executive agencies for compliance with law. He did it in spite of a law requiring a thirty day notice to Congress of his intent to terminate. Again, he did the right thing in terminating these worthless bureaucrats that have been universally co-opted into preserving the power of their agencies at the expense of serving the public. It would have been just as easy to suspend the inspectors general, send notice to the Congress and thirty days thereafter fire them. You can argue that the President shouldn’t be required to perform a pointless act – giving thirty days’ notice – when he is going to fire them anyway and, that may carry the day. However, I expect that if either of these actions are challenged the Supreme Court will overturn his orders and continue to exact adherence to the Constitutional limitation on the authority to act.

So, in the end, Mr. Trump gets am “A” for effort and another “A” for execution in beginning the removal of illegal aliens. But with regard to these other two executive orders, Mr. Trump get an “A” for effort in ‘cleaning the swamp” but an “F” for acting within the scope of presidential authority.