Mike Phipps looks at  the first raft of measures from the new US administration.

On his first day in office, President Trump signed a slew of executive orders on a wide array of issues. Some, like the order to end “birthright citizenship” are already being challenged in the courts while others, like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, look pretty childish. Here is a far from comprehensive list of some of the decisions that will have an immediate and significant impact.

Mass pardoning of January 6^th rioters

Trump’s decision to pardon or commute the sentences of all the January 6th rioters, roughly 1,500 people, including those who violently attacked police officers, was a spur of the moment decision, it is now being reported.

The pardons include leaders of far right organisations given long sentences for seditious conspiracy. They fly in the face of what leading members of the Trump team have previously argued, including his Vice President and Secretary of State. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vice-President JD Vance said a little over a week ago.

The country’s largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has spoken out against the pardons, as have the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a number of judges and many traditional Republican conservatives who attach some value to the rule of law. Only 20% of Americans approve of the pardons, polls suggest.

Jackson Reffitt, who reported his father Guy’s participation in the January 6th riot and was a key witness against him, told reporters he fears for his life now that his father is free. Others will be in a similar predicament.

One commentator noted: “One of the pardoned individuals is already back in prison on a gun charge, illustrating, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance said, why Trump should have evaluated ‘prior criminal history, behavior in prison, [and] risk of dangerousness to the community following release. Now,’ she said, ‘we all pay the price for him using the pardon power as a political reward.’ On social media, Heather Thomas wrote: ‘So when all was said and done, the only country that opened [its] prisons and sent crazy murderous criminals to prey upon innocent American citizens, was us.’”

Trump also signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, a dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison, but Trump joined libertarians in claiming the conviction was an example of government overreach.

Diversity

Trump has shut down all federal government diversity, equity and inclusion offices and has put all federal employees working in such programs on leave. He overturned the executive orders of not just President Biden, but even President Johnson, who in 1965 signed an order to stop discriminatory practices in federal government hiring and in the businesses of those who were awarded federal contracts. 

The Trump administration has also frozen all civil rights cases currently being handled by the Department of Justice and ordered that none of the civil rights attorneys file any new complaints or other legal documents.

In a blatant attack on trans rights, Trump signed an order revoking “gender ideology guidance”, stating: “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable.” The order also incorporated tenets of “foetal parenthood”, the notion that life begins at conception, long pushed by anti-abortion activists.

Manipulating control of the government

The Trump team has told the staff at Department of Health and Human Services —including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health — to stop issuing health advisories, scientific reports, and updates to their websites and social media posts. 

Trump has also suspended all funding for projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which invested billions of dollars in construction of clean energy manufacturing and the repair of roads, bridges, ports, and so on, primarily in Republican-dominated states.

Meanwhile, all remote working is ended: federal employees must be in their workplace full-time. Another executive order reclassified thousands of federal employees as political appointees, making it much easier for them to be fired.

Immigration

On migration, Trump has declared an emergency on the US’s southern border. He revived a number of measures from his first administration, including forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for decisions in the US immigration cases, implementing “extreme vetting” of immigrants coming into the US, and cracking down on “sanctuary cities” and states that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents. The sending of large numbers of military personnel to the Mexican border is another feature of his policy.

A full analysis is provided by the American Immigration Council, which noted: “The executive orders signed on the first day of President Trump’s second term radically expand the legal authorities used to enforce immigration law against immigrants already in the U.S., while calling for an equally radical expansion of the infrastructure that would be needed to accomplish the ‘mass deportations’ the president has promised. Furthermore, they signal efforts to immiserate unauthorized immigrants living in the United States, depriving them of the ability to work legally and punishing them for being unable to ‘register’ with the U.S. government – something they have no way of doing.”

It added: “The expansion of expedited removal alone could subject millions of recent arrivals, and others swept up by error, to potential deportation without a court hearing, depriving them of the chance to demonstrate that they qualify for legal status.” It predicted “increased racial profiling, while the funding threats and threats of criminal prosecution to ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions may successfully intimidate localities who would otherwise seek to avoid entangling their local law enforcement with Trump’s mass deportation campaign.”

One particularly pernicious measure is the order under which nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared to resettle in the United States, including family members of active-duty military personnel, have been removed from flights to the US.

Foreign policy

Trump has cancelled sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The increase in Israeli violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank may be understood in this context.

Trump has also reinstated an executive order allowing him to impose economic sanctions against the international criminal court (ICC). The powers were used in 2020 to impose asset freezes and travel bans against the ICC’s former chief prosecutor.

He also restored the nonsensical designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” which Biden had lifted. “No one has bothered to explain what ‘terrorism’ Cuba is responsible for,” observed one analyst.

Trump also pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement with immediate effect.  The US is responsible for around 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions and Trump has promised to boost domestic oil and gas production. He also revoked a non-binding executive order signed by Biden aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.

He also withdrew from the World Health Organization, a decision seemingly motivated by both cost – the US contributes a fifth of its budget – and anti-China rhetoric.  Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has clinically demolished both these arguments. Global public health experts describe Trump’s decision as “catastrophic”.

What’s next?

All this is even before Trump gets started on the global economy. A recent report claimed “Trump’s new administration believes it has Sir Keir Starmer’s government ‘over a barrel’ on trade as Britain becomes increasingly reliant on a US deal.” One Trump aide said it was time “to remind Starmer who holds all the cards in this relationship.”

“The US has long wanted the UK to lift its ban on chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef, a move former UK ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, warned would destroy British farming,” reported the Independent.

Global Justice Now Director Nick Dearden tweeted: “Couldn’t be clearer – a trade deal with Trump means handing economic sovereignty to the White House.”

It’s unclear how alert the UK Labour government is to these dangers. Speaking this week, Foreign Secretary David Lammy described Donald Trump as “a man who had incredible grace, generosity… very funny, very friendly, very warm about the UK.” He added that most of the world welcomed his return to power.

Lammy’s comments are in stark contrast to remarks he made about Trump in the past, when he called him a “tyrant in a toupée – a woman hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath.”

How times change. Yet Lammy’s new-found sycophancy will be met with derision from the US administration.

If Trump’s first term is anything to go by, there will be a great deal of media coverage of the President’s unpredictable outbursts over the next months. In fact, this is his intention: to set the agenda by social media posts. Bernie Sanders understands this and warns: “In the coming months, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Trump makes. That is what the Trump world wants us to do. He wants to define the parameters of debate and have us live within his world. We should not fall into that trap.”

The left globally will need to map its own path forward in the coming months and not be diverted either by the taunts and grandstanding of the Trump project or by the corrupting influence of its power, which is already turning people who should know better into appeasers and enablers.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

Image: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/02/10/trump-vows-to-undo-bidens-gun-restrictions-if-re-elected/ Creator: Matt Rourke | Credit: AP Copyright: Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Licence: Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0