Trump’s New Presidential Actions and Executive Orders
January 21st, 2025I’ve just started looking through Trump’s new Presidential Actions. I’m trying to pick the most important ones to read first because… There’s a lot.
Trump took many emergency and executive actions within hours of the start of his second term, some of which are extremely significant:
GUARANTEEING THE STATES PROTECTION AGAINST INVASION
ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S “DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY”
PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST INVASION
DECLARING A NATIONAL ENERGY EMERGENCY
CLARIFYING THE MILITARY’S ROLE IN PROTECTING THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF THE UNITED STATES
DECLARING A NATIONAL EMERGENCY AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER OF THE UNITED STATES
WITHDRAWING THE UNITED STATES FROM THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
ENDING THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Keep in mind, this is a small fraction of what happened on just the first day. There’s much more.
As you might gather, from my archives going back decades, it’s difficult for me to believe that anything meaningfully positive will happen. The long term decline of the U.S. is an indisputable fact. The Biden administration’s primary goal appeared to be to accelerate this decline. Large swaths of the U.S. are already in a post collapse situation.
Here’s a very general definition of a failed state from Wikipedia:
A failed state is a state that has lost its ability to fulfill fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing, and infrastructure maintenance. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and outside the state are much more likely to occur.
If you live in U.S., some of that might hit close to home.
Kleptocracy is another useful term:
Kleptocracy… is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population. One feature of political-based socioeconomic thievery is that there is often no public announcement explaining or apologizing for misappropriations, nor any legal charges or punishment levied against the offenders.
Kleptocracy is different from plutocracy (rule by the richest) and oligarchy (rule by a small elite). In a kleptocracy, corrupt politicians enrich themselves secretly outside the rule of law, through kickbacks, bribes, and special favors from lobbyists and corporations, or they simply direct state funds to themselves and their associates. Also, kleptocrats often export much of their profits to foreign nations in anticipation of losing power.
To sum up, the U.S. Government is a kleptocracy that has created a proto-failed state (armed with nuclear weapons).
Is it possible to turn this situation around?
I don’t know, but the new Trump administration appears to want to try.
In order for any meaningful change of course to occur, the U.S. would first need to re-establish control over its borders. As is typical in failing states, military forces increasingly become involved in attempts to prevent further declines and chaos domestically. Indeed, as of today, this is about to happen in the U.S.
If the U.S. actually manages to re-establish control over its borders, perhaps other corrective actions are possible. Trump took emergency action along these lines in the opening hours of his second term.
Whether or not it’s clear to average Americans, the United States is in (and has been in) an extremely dire emergency, mostly caused by a criminal class that moves in and out of government and corporations. The kleptocracy in the U.S. (which I’ve also called the American Corporate State), is deeply established and has been the status quo at least since JFK was assassinated.
My guess as to why some elites flocked to Trump is that, to put it simply, the host was about to die. They couldn’t continue to extract wealth from a carcass. Facing near certain collapse with Harris at the helm, why not go with Trump?
Is there a reason for optimism? I’ll try my best:
While I don’t know how much Trump will be able to move the needle, what’s for sure is that Harris would have moved the kleptocracy in the U.S. to the terminal phase.
Trump’s inauguration speech, delivered a few feet from Biden and Harris, the criminals who did their honest best to destroy the U.S., was extremely powerful. That didn’t feel like Trump the entertainer, or Trump the bullshitter. That speech was very different.
It’s one thing for me, with virtually no audience or impact, to write:
This is a military operation against the United States, no doubt about it. The part that will be difficult for most people to comprehend is that the the U.S. Government is facilitating the attack by funding NGOs and leaving the border open.
It’s an entirely different situation when the President of the United States references these crimes, with the perpetrators in the room:
Our recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal, and all of these many betrayals that have taken place…
Never mind that Trump nearly got his head blown off, or all of the absurd prosecutions. My guess is that he looked at his own grandchildren and thought something like, “Nobody is exempt from what’s coming. Change course, or we’re all doomed.”
We’re about to find out if that’s possible.
Related: An Overview Of Trump’s Day One Executive Actions
Well said Kevin. I was blown away watching that speech (while simultaneously being pummeled by waves of hegalian feedback).
To quote Alex Krainer, “I’m wrecklessly optimistic.”
Kevin, I am less optimistic.
Like Trump, Elon Musk makes fair-sounding statements about liberty, freedom of speech, immigration and so on. But he has some interests that ought to be alarming, notably the DOGE (Department Of Government Efficiency) digital ID system that he says would initially be “voluntary” and designed to prevent the fraudulent claim of benefits and to stop general identity theft, and perhaps even to stop illegal immigration.
And after all, he can be trusted because he has championed liberty and freedom of expression on his X platform and defends populist causes such as the UK’s anti-immigration advocate, Tommy Robinson, so why should we expect him to be following a nefarious agenda with this gentle, softy-softly introduction of a digital ID, right?
But wait. Musk has gone a little further and suggested that the DOGE ID be designed to dovetail with a mooted “DOGE-coin” cryptocurrency.
Now what we would have would be a slow-boil digital ID + digital currency, primed and ready to be exploited by someone with less-than-altruistic aims for the American people. With most of the population locked in, the American people would suddenly find themselves in a checkmate scenario, beholden to the arbiters of the “temporary” DOGE system.
Then, imagine some what ifs. What if Trump were to pass away / be assassinated, and he were to be replaced by a less libertarian-minded successor?
What if, short of that, a crisis were to arise that would require a Federal emergency response in a drastic, totalitarian sense? Bearing in mind that Trump has not surrounded himself with genuine anti -establishment advisors and is distressingly pliable and vulnerable to manipulation, on what basis ought any of us to be confident that he will keep his promises?
Trump might use his strong stance on gender normality and his opposition to wokeness as a moral platform from which, paradoxically, homosexuality would be protected as a “reasonable” alternative lifestyle, compared to the far worse trans agenda. Under such protection, Christian criticism of it would be censured. This could be why TPTB concocted the trans-agenda in the first place; so that it could be pushed back leaving the less grotesque thing of the more “vanilla” gay agenda to be portrayed as “good”.
So, I predict a lot of evil under Trump being pushed in the name of justness. A new ID + CBDC system, special protection for the homosexuals (such good people compared to those evil genital-mutilators in the tranny camp!), and preps for WW3 masked behind isolationist pretensions. I think conservatives have been set up and are going to be plucked, stuffed and roasted.
As I see it…
Winter is coming. This is an Indian summer, I pray a long one.
Yeah, pretty grim. Agree with all the above. What seems to buy time accelerates the anti-human trend.
Wrecklessly optimistic makes me smile. Prudently pessimistic is a better fit. Winter is coming. Something is coming.
Agree and appreciate all that’s written above–and even though most here see things as extremely dire, I would like to give the expression wrecklessly optimistic a big thumbs-up! I do believe at least, the number of full-on psychopaths in the US government is in the process of going down a few notches.
Things like the following clip are something I like running across–seems non-fake to me:
https://x.com/varshaparmar06/status/1881668386704474524
Great list, Kevin! But sadly, it sounds like somebody is following a template for how China does things these days and is applying it in the US.
The over all long-term plan hasn’t changed. It’s just a different-colored sugar coating on the same poison pill.
Most psychopaths can control their behavior. They only show their bad side when they figure there will be no bad consequences to themselves. Maybe there were so many of them in the Biden admim. that they came to feel their group was invincible. Maybe Trump is their Plan B.
I don’t think in terms of optimism or pessimism, but in terms of how best to deal with the situation, whatever it is and whyever it is this way. Where there’s life, there’s hope. Accompany it with pre-planned action, and I feel I’m doing the best I can. I feel good about this even when I make a wrong move because I know I gave it my best shot. Also, I have my own Plan B and a possible C and D, and I’m constantly updating them all. And I take more pleasure in little things now than I ever did before, especially the little things that we used to be able to take for granted.
I hesitated to post the following, but what the heck.
FWIW, for now I see three non-mutually exclusive possibilities. The first, I’ve considered a long while, the second for several years, but lately I’ve been mulling over a third:
If the US fails, it fails. The rest of the West will pick up the pieces and continue their New Roman Empire project.
If it sets course for true north, amen. But eventually it will draw the ire of other powers for doing so and be targeted.
But it could prevail catastrophically, seeding Babylon the Great.
@Dennis–prevailing catastrophically, seeding Babylon–it seems like that’s what’s been happening, slowly, grindingly, for the last 35 years. In watching Trump’s Davos speech:
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1882504368097988706
and him declassifying the JFK files:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1882530545256775744
it just makes me want to be wrecklessly optimistic for a minute–I think the vast majority of the people of the US and the World are decent, and would prefer win-win interaction between countries–and that maybe the great awakening of the masses to how the World really works will be enough to change our course away from catastrophe to JRR Tolkien’s concept of eucatastrophe:
“J.R.R. Tolkien coined “eucatastrophe” to describe the sudden turn of events from dire to wonderful, often seen in fairy tales or mythologies, essentially a “good catastrophe” or a sudden joyous turn.” (Grok)
@dennis regarding your second possibility–this Trump EO, designed (in the words of David Sacks) “To make America the world capitol in crypto”, doesn’t seem likely to be setting a course for true north, so it will likely draw the ire of other powers, with its money out of thin air premise. (non-proof of work coins)
https://x.com/MMCrypto/status/1882539376137404493
The language does seem pretty impressive though–clear regulations for crypto are extremely overdue.
https://x.com/Ashcryptoreal/status/1882526639491600861
Well, Kevin, you summed up the reason I voted for Trump apart from pure spite. (It really is weird just how very *hard* the urban Professional-Managerial Class is trying to make everybody else absolutely *hate* them.) I’m an aging type 2 diabetic, and the minute the game of musical chairs is over, I will very likely die a lingering and unpleasant death (for which I am as psychologically prepared as one can possibly be for such an eventuality) after that.
And if you will forgive me for getting a bit metaphysical, I suspect one reason my elderly mother is still hanging on to physical existence is because as soon as she passes, part of me is going to be like, “Okay, I care a lot less about what happens from now on.” I really think that the Universe would rather that I not adopt that kind of mindset because I am something of a spiritual anchor in this world. (Pardon the conceit, but you should know that being such an anchor really doesn’t make me all *that* special. It just means I have a role to play in the human spiritual game that is necessarily highly affected by whatever attitude I choose to harbor.) All this, of course, is just my intuitive read of my own situation, and you can take it for whatever it’s actually worth.