Trump Dismantles Federal Climate Change Efforts
President Trump signed an Executive Order seeking to nullify President Obamas climate change efforts, including the Clean Power Plan. The Executive Order directs the Environmental Protection Agency to commence the process of suspending, revising, or rescinding the Clean Power Plan, which would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants and replaced them with renewable energy projects.
The plan was considered essential to meet emissions targets that the United States agreed to as part of the landmark 2015 Paris climate change accord. The order signals the Administrations intent not to comply with the accord.
United States Notifies Unesco Of Intention To Withdraw From Body
The State Department notified the UNESCO Director-General of the United States intention to withdraw from the body. The withdrawal will take effect on December 31, 2018. The US stopped funding UNESCO in 2011 as a result of the admission of Palestine as a member state and lost its voting rights in 2013. The US has accrued significant payment arrears to the body. Irina Bokova, the outgoing Director-General of UNESCO, has issued a statement regretting the U.S. intention to withdraw, describing it as a loss to UNESCO and noting that niversality is critical to UNESCOs mission to strengthen international peace and security in the face of hatred and violence, to defend human rights and dignity. Ms. Bokova emphasised UNESCOs work around the world empowering women, improving education and protecting free expression.
State Department Invites Anti
The State Department invited anti-LGBT group, Center for Family and Human Rights to join the US delegation to the 61st Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The organization has called for the criminalization of homosexuality, and is classified as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. C-Fam is one of two groups invited to join the US delegation. The second organization, the Heritage Foundation, has also advocated against the rights of LGBT persons and called for the repeal of the U.S. Violence Against Women Act.
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Biden’s Promises To Undo What Trump Has Done
All of the above represent issues on which Trump or his administration have issued orders, reversed Obama-era rules, or taken legal and policy stands in ways that aim to protect Americans freedom to live in a culture they desire, not a culture imposed on them by progressive overlords. Some of the changes Trump has wrought during his four years in office are perhaps mostly symbolic: there arent that many nuns or transgender children. But they represent tens of millions of ordinary Americans values: their patriotism, their religious beliefs, their respect for fairness and equal treatment regardless of race or sex, their aspirations to live and raise their families in civil order. Its not surprising that a recent Gallup poll revealed that 51% of Americans supported the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, a deeply religious mother of seven.
Cynicism is healthy for democracy:Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden deserve a honeymoon from cynicism
Yet, for a brief interlude four years, to be exact Trump will have given ordinary Americans a gift. It will have been the gift of being free of the yoke imposed on them by the ideological progressives who dominate and control all of Americas institutions: its universities, its schools, its media, its major corporations. And who knows? Perhaps, after Nov. 3, it will be eight years of freedom.
Charlotte Allen is a writer in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter
How Did The National Debt Increase After Trump Took Office
At first, it seemed Trump was lowering the debt. It fell $102 billion in the first six months after Trump took office. On January 20, the day Trump was inaugurated, the debt was $19.9 trillion. On July 30, it was $19.8 trillion. But it was not because of anything he did. Instead, it was because of the federal debt ceiling.
On Sept. 8, 2017, Trump signed a bill increasing the debt ceiling. Later that day, the debt exceeded $20 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. On Feb. 9, 2018, Trump signed a bill suspending the debt ceiling until March 1, 2019. By February 2019, the total national debt was at $22 trillion. In July 2019, Trump suspended the debt ceiling until after the 2020 presidential election. On Oct. 1, 2020, the debt hit a new record of $27 trillion.
Trump oversaw the fastest increase in the debt of any president, almost 36% from 2017 to 2020. Trump did not fulfill his campaign promise to cut the debt. Instead, he did the opposite.
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Things Trump Got Right
Nobody does nothing as president, not even someone who watches television for five or six hours a day.
About the author: David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy. In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
In his single term as president, George H. W. Bush negotiated the peaceful reunification of Germany. He liberated Kuwait while losing few American lives. He signed legislation to end acid rain. He did a budget deal that reduced federal deficits, enacted the Americans With Disabilities Act, and successfully resolved the collapse of the savings-and-loan industry.
Jimmy Carter, in his one term, deregulated passenger aviation. He updated the regulation of rail freight, shipping, and trucking, laying the foundation for Americas modern delivery system. He negotiated the Camp David Accords, ending belligerency between Egypt and Israel. He avoided a major crisis in Central America with his Panama Canal Treaty.
William Howard Taft also achieved much in his one term as president. It was his Department of Justice that busted the Standard Oil monopoly. Taft forcefully advocated a central bank for the United States, although that project was not completed until the year after he lost the presidency to Woodrow Wilson. Taft urged free trade with Canada and negotiated the treaty that ended a century of rancorous North American waterway disputes.
Failure: Family Separations And The Deaths Of Migrant Children
Trump in 2016 campaigned on reducing undocumented immigration, pledging to take a hardline approach.
He made good on that promise when coming into office, but was accused of human-rights abuses and violating international law by the UN.
The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal border crossings led to the separations of at least 5,500 families and saw children placed in cages.
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics at the time described the practice as “nothing less than government-sanctioned child abuse.”
After widespread backlash, Trump issued an executive order in June 2018 to halt the family separations, and a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite all those it had separated. But the fallout from the separations is ongoing.
Trump falsely blamed his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for the policy that saw thousands of children separated from their parents.
At least six migrant children died in US custody, leading to widespread condemnation of conditions in detention facilities.
The UN human-rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, in July 2019 said she was “shocked” by the US government’s treatment of migrant children and the conditions they faced in detention facilities after crossing the border from Mexico.
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Israel And The Recognition Of Jerusalem
On December 6, 2017, Trump announced that the U.S. was formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and would move the American embassy there from its current location in Tel Aviv. The declaration broke decades of precedent, in which the U.S. refused to take sides in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over territorial rights to the city.
Fulfilling one of his campaign pledges, Trump referred to the move as “a long overdue step to advance the peace process,” noting it “would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.” He also stressed that the move would not interfere with any proposals for a two-state solution.
The announcement was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but not as warmly received by American allies France, Britain and Germany, which called it disruptive to the peace process. Leaders of the predominantly Muslim countries Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon all condemned the move, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the U.S. could no longer be considered a mediator in the region.
On December 21, the U.N. General Assembly voted 128 to 9 to demand that the U.S. rescind its formal recognition of Jerusalem. Britain, France, Germany and Japan all voted for the resolution, though others, like Australia and Canada, abstained from the symbolic vote.
Trump Signed The Biggest Wilderness Protection & Conservation Bill In A Decade And Designated 375000 Acres As Protected Land
This is misleading.While Mr. Trump did sign the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act of 2019, he has stripped protections from far more land than he has preserved. Most notably, he removed some two million acres in Utah that had been part of the Bears Ears National Monument and the Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah. According to a study published in May 2019 in Science, Mr. Trump is responsible for the largest reduction in the boundaries of protected land in U.S. history.
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Cuba And Travel Restrictions
To pressure Cubas communist government to reform and end its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump tightened travel restrictions to Cuba in April 2019.
In June 2019, Trump announced that the State Department would no longer allow private or public ships and aircraft to visit Cuba. The U.S. will also no longer allow people-to-people educational travel, which previously proved to be a popular travel exemption. Tourist groups may still be able to get around the ban by applying one of the other 11 travel exemptions that are still allowed. In September 2020, Trump announced new sanctions aimed at curtailing U.S. travel to Cuba.
President Obama loosened travel restrictions to Cuba following decades of detente between the countries, initiating a short-lived travel boom to the area.
Combatting The Opioid Crisis
Brought unprecedented attention and support to combat the opioid crisis.
Took action to seize illegal drugs and punish those preying on innocent Americans.
- In FY 2019, ICE HSI seized 12,466 pounds of opioids including 3,688 pounds of fentanyl, an increase of 35 percent from FY 2018.
- Seized tens of thousands of kilograms of heroin and thousands of kilograms of fentanyl since 2017.
- The Department of Justice prosecuted more fentanyl traffickers than ever before, dismantled 3,000 drug trafficking organizations, and seized enough fentanyl to kill 105,000 Americans.
- DOJ charged more than 65 defendants collectively responsible for distributing over 45 million opioid pills.
- Brought kingpin designations against traffickers operating in China, India, Mexico, and more who have played a role in the epidemic in America.
- Indicted major Chinese drug traffickers for distributing fentanyl in the U.S for the first time ever, and convinced China to enact strict regulations to control the production and sale of fentanyl.
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Justice Department Argues That Title Vii Of The Civil Rights Act Does Not Protect Lgbtq And Transgender Workers Against Employment Discrimination
The Department of Justice reiterated its position, articulated by then-Attorney General Sessions in 2017, that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not apply to protect LGBTQ and transgender workers from employment discrimination. The DOJ argued that while Title VII prohibits discrimination because of sex, this clause does not bar discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity. It contended that when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, sex was only intended to mean biological sexes.
If the Supreme Court accepts DOJs interpretation, it will be legal for employers to fire people due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, further eroding equality under the law for LGBTQ and transgender people.
Tax Relief For The Middle Class
Passed $3.2 trillion in historic tax relief and reformed the tax code.
- Signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act the largest tax reform package in history.
- More than 6 million American workers received wage increases, bonuses, and increased benefits thanks to the tax cuts.
- A typical family of four earning $75,000 received an income tax cut of more than $2,000 slashing their tax bill in half.
- Doubled the standard deduction making the first $24,000 earned by a married couple completely tax-free.
- Doubled the child tax credit.
- Virtually eliminated the unfair Estate Tax, or Death Tax.
- Cut the business tax rate from 35 percent the highest in the developed world all the way down to 21 percent.
- Small businesses can now deduct 20 percent of their business income.
- Businesses can now deduct 100 percent of the cost of their capital investments in the year the investment is made.
- Since the passage of tax cuts, the share of total wealth held by the bottom half of households has increased, while the share held by the top 1 percent has decreased.
- Over 400 companies have announced bonuses, wage increases, new hires, or new investments in the United States.
- Over $1.5 trillion was repatriated into the United States from overseas.
- Lower investment cost and higher capital returns led to faster growth in the middle class, real wages, and international competitiveness.
Jobs and investments are pouring into Opportunity Zones.
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Trump Recently Signed 3 Bills To Benefit Native People One Gives Compensation To The Spokane Tribe For Loss Of Their Lands In The Mid
True, but tribal leaders credit bipartisan efforts in Congress for those bills. In 2019, Mr. Trump signed the Spokane Reservation Equitable Compensation Act for the loss of land that was flooded by the Grand Coulee Dam. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited the reservation and pledged to support the bill. But Carol Evans, chairwoman of the Spokane Tribal Business Council, said most of the credit for the law goes to two members of Congress from Washington, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican. Mr. Trump also signed the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Programs Reauthorization Act, which revises an existing grant program. That bill was introduced by Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico. Lastly, Mr. Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, which included a provision that gave long-overdue federal recognition to the Little Shell Tribe. Tribal Chairman Gerald Gray credits the bipartisan efforts of Senators Jon Tester, a Democrat, and Steve Daines, a Republican, both of Montana, for tucking the tribal recognition provision into the military spending bill.
