September 27, 2024

10 critical priorities for Trump’s first day back in the White House

Donald Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last year that he wouldn’t be a dictator “except on Day One.” On that first day back in office, he said, “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

It was clear what he meant — and he even added, “After that, I’m not a dictator” — but liberals across the country at least feigned outrage over such “authoritarian” comments.

They conveniently ignore the whirling dervish nature of Joe Biden’s early White House days.

Biden, of course, unilaterally canceled the Keystone Pipeline; dictated masks be worn on federal property (and on planes and trains); moved to rejoin the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords; froze student debt collections; set stricter emissions limits for vehicles; suspended oil drilling leasing on federal lands; terminated Trump’s 1776 Commission; revoked Trump’s efforts to exclude illegal immigrants from the U.S. Census; reinforced the protections for illegal migrants brought to the U.S. as children; abolished the ban on travel to the U.S. from (at that point) 11 countries with serious terrorism problems (the so-called “Muslim ban”); paused deportations of people in the U.S. illegally; stopped building the border wall; banned workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender employees; restored collective bargaining power and workplace protections for federal workers; undid Trump’s regulatory approval process; and approved a whole slew of measures addressing the COVID pandemic.

This day of unilateral power was of course celebrated by the media, which cheered Biden’s efforts to undo pretty much everything his predecessor had done, including closing our southern border.

So if Trump is reelected, what should be his top priorities for his first 100 days? Here are 10 of them:

Restoring order at the border comes first, as Trump has already indicated. Illegal immigration is a top concern for voters, and rightly so; allowing more than 10 million unvetted people to enter our nation has become a nightmare for towns and cities across the U.S.

In towns like Aurora, Colo., Venezuelan gangs attracted to next-door Denver’s sanctuary city status have caused mayhem, forcing locals to cough up millions of dollars to beef up law enforcement. In New York City, residents are paying $5 billion to house and feed tens of thousands of migrants who reportedly account for some 75 percent of arrests for violent crimes. It is not fair and it must end.
Trump must also reduce incentives for people to come illegally by eliminating Sanctuary City laws. After all, what are sanctuary cities protecting illegal immigrants from? From our own laws! The idea that illegal residents who commit serious crimes are not always turned over for deportation is a scandal.

Along the same lines, Trump should call on Congress to eliminate birthright citizenship, which automatically makes any child born on U.S. soil a citizen. This principle is widely abused and is a serious magnet attracting illegal entrants and birth tourism. Nearly every other developed country except Canada has abandoned birthright citizenship; we should too.
Trump should also change the Census so that it does not count illegal immigrants. Democrats in charge of states that are losing populationdue to high taxes, rampant crime, poor schools and a deteriorating quality of life, like California and New York, face little penalty for their ideological excesses and mismanagement. As legal residents move elsewhere, the states should lose seats in Congress, Electoral College votes and financial handouts. But because they have welcomed large numbers of illegal immigrants, the impact is muted and they aren’t held politically accountable.
Trump must also “drill, baby, drill,” rescinding the many Biden-Harris regulations that have made it harder and more expensive to drill for oil and gas. Most important is putting back in play the millions of acres in Alaska’s Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge, which industry experts say could eventually boost U.S. production by some 1 million barrels per day.

U.S. oil output is at record levels today, but studies show we could be producing much more. On balance, more production means lower prices, and consequently less income for adversaries such as Russia and Iran.
Another priority should be to enforce the tough sanctions that Trump levied on Iran during his presidency. The Biden-Harris White House has allowed Iran’s oil output to surge, along with their income. This foolhardy empowering of the Middle East’s most aggressive sponsor of terror has put the region on the brink of all-out war.
The Government Efficiency Commission proposed by Trump and Elon Musk has been enthusiastically endorsed by many, including JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who called it a “very good idea.” Given the ever-growing bloated federal bureaucracy, he is right.
Canceling Biden’s executive order mobilizing all federal agencies to register voters fits with the efficiency drive. This is not the role of government. It is also ripe for abuse, as it lets Democrats target districts rich with their own unregistered potential voters.
Trump should revoke the security clearances of the 51 former intelligence officials who lied to interfere with the 2020 election. Trading on the perception that they knew something, they falsely accused the New York Post of falling for Russian disinformation and “smearing” Hunter Biden with its election-eve story about the “laptop from Hell.” Not only was the Post story vindicated, the laptop was also used as evidence against the younger Biden in his trial on federal gun violations.
Trump should cancel all Department of Defense initiatives regarding DEI, or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. These cost taxpayers $114 million this year.
Last, and most importantly, the former president should move heaven and earth to make our elections secure and transparent. Nothing could be more important to our country than re-establishing confidence that the vote is fair. Some 81 percent of Americans approve of requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote; that should be the law.

Trump wants to enact many outside-the-box ideas that could make our country work again. Let’s hope he gets the chance.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4901314-trump-second-term-priorities

Published on The Hill

Liz Peek

15 hours ago

My Morning Rant:
I am alternately peeved and sympathetic with Chip Roy, Ralph Norman and the others who torpedoed Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. But after reading the fine print this morning and realizing that reforms to Medicaid don’t kick in until 2029 !!!! I am disgusted. I get that states need some time to adjust to a change in rules regarding Medicaid eligibility – maybe a year or 18 months — but do they really need four years? No, they do not. The extended timeframe is an obvious play to put political repercussions off until after the midterms. Legislators from swing districts fear losing their seats because able-bodied adults lose their free ride. They want to put off any change as long as possible.
On the other hand, those vulnerable legislators will almost certainly get canned if the 2017 tax cuts don’t get extended and Trump’s agenda crashes. We need both to get the bill passed, and to make it tougher.
The conservatives calling for bigger spending cuts are completely correct. Just ask Moody’s, which in recent days downgraded U.S. debt. Imagine, the United States of America has lost its triple-A status. (The other two major ratings agencies had already made this downgrade.) This would be a wake-up call except that most of our country is asleep, lulled into a false sense of complacency by hours spent on Tik-Tok or watching the NFL. We all need downtime, for sure, but we also need to pay attention to what’s happening with our country’s fiscal outlook. It isn’t good. Even the Fed, no friend to the Trump administration or to fiscal austerity, has announced it will cut staff and overhead. Of course, why the Fed has a headcount of 24,000 is a mystery. How can they employ so many people and still get it wrong most of the time? This is the group that never spoke out against Biden’s reckless spending; it’s quite the switch.
Simply put, the country endorsed a huge surge in government spending to compensate for the wrong-headed directives during Covid that shut down schools, businesses and churches. The government under Trump wanted to keep Americans employed and the economy ready to rebound, which it did. Biden kept the spending at max level, refusing to let a crisis go to waste. Democrats in Congress and the Fed went along, spurring the highest inflation in decades.
Now we have to go back to the trend-line pre-Covid spending; the bill on the table doesn’t do that. Republicans must do better if they want to keep the majority. … See MoreSee Less

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Right on, as usual! Thanks for all your clear-headed messages.

We need a balanced budget amendment! Deficit spending needs to end!

Just sick of BOTH parties. Neither are there for the Working Americans. BOTH parties responsible for the theft going on. Repubs should have read the bills that gave away money..

Nailed it

Liz Peek Well written, my friend!

Convention of States is looking better everyday.

Honestly you should be somewhere in Trumps administration Liz.. Just sayin

As much as I want a win on the BBB, I’m torn. I find it very difficult to believe that they can’t find more to cut spending

Is TERM LIMiTS in this big beautiful bill? Everything else is.
If not, why not?
Past time to cut the deadwood and get “servants” of We the People seated who will do the job more responsibly..

Following.

CUT MORE SPENDING!!!

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2 days ago

What happened to DOGE???
… See MoreSee Less

DOGE isn’t meeting its goals — you can thank the political establishment

DOGE chief has been thwarted at every turn — by judges, Democrats and their media allies, even Republicans.

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The Uniparty doesn't want their gravy train turned over.

Democrats are Americas virus.

4 days ago

My Morning Rant:
John Hawley, Senator from Missouri, is out with a blistering attack on Republicans in Congress who want to “cut” Medicaid spending. He declares those in favor of Medicaid reforms contained in the House bill “a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing” who are not on board with working-class Americans and who want to “build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor”. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/opinion/josh-hawley-dont-cut-medicaid.html
What rot. Working Americans of all classes are sick and tired of an ever-growing amount of their hard-earned taxes going to fund those who are not working. This is not a Wall Street issue- it’s a fairness issue. Though some groups say most Medicaid recipients are working, that is not true. A study by AEI showed that “In December 2022, 44 percent of non-disabled working age Medicaid recipients without children worked at least 80 hours” per month, compared to 72% not receiving Medicaid. Focusing on “prime working ages of 25 to 54, the share working at least 80 hours was 51 percent among Medicaid recipients and 84 percent among non-Medicaid recipients.” So why would 49% not be working?
Here’s the problem: the Medicaid changes that GOP legislators want to make don’t target “the working poor”, they target able-bodied men and women who are not working, and who historically would not have qualified for Medicaid benefits. Only when Obama rescinded the work requirements for Medicaid did the program blow up entirely and become the drain on the fiscal purse that we see today. As he states in his op-ed, Hawley’s problem is this: “Today [Medicaid] serves over 70 million Americans, including well over one million residents of Missouri, the state I represent.” Hawley, who was elected last fall by a 14-point margin, fears he’ll lose ground with those million recipients if he embraces fiscal common sense. Or maybe he fears losing the support of healthcare professionals, who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/josh-hawley/summary?cid=N00041620
Our country has seen a long-term decline in able-bodied men working. The labor participation rate for that group is 89.1% which sounds high until you realize that it was 97.1% in 1960. That’s a huge slide, with troubling implications for U.S. productivity. If you believe, as I do, that work is healthy, it is also bad news for the individuals who are, at least in some cases, gaming the system.
Instead of railing about sincere efforts to reform an out-of-control entitlement, why doesn’t Hawley turn his attentions to improving job opportunities and training in his state? Or attracting more employers? And, where are his ideas for cutting federal spending, which is too high and which is hurting our nation? Some $50 billion in Medicaid outlays funds fraud or constitutes “improper payments.” What is Hawley doing to confront that?
Maybe I would be more impressed with his arguments but for his having published his screed in the New York Times- is that the most efficient way to speak to working-class Americans? Bernie Sanders probably thinks so, and so does Josh Hawley. … See MoreSee Less

Sen. Josh Hawley – Campaign Finance Summary

Fundraising profile for Sen. Josh Hawley – Missouri

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We have to end the idea that working for McDonalds at the counter is the end game career wise. It’s what you do in high school and college to pay your bills. If you want to be in that industry, you need to think manager then owner as that is the career.

Uniparty in action. They are there to Take money, not help The People.

10 critical priorities for Trump’s first day back in the White House

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