Week after week, by executive order or administrative action, the Trump administration is implementing policies that please conservatives and improve the public weal.
This is not to say that all of Trump’s policy preferences are wise. It is not to excuse his sorry record for actually pushing good, lasting legislation into law. It is not to say that government-by-executive-order is a good practice, or even that it is in all respects a legitimate practice. It is, however, to give credit where due.
When tailored narrowly and appropriately to legitimate presidential or executive-branch authority, and especially when used to undo prior executive actions (and thus not to expand executive power but just to use the same power already accepted, but in reverse), many of the Trump team’s orders and decisions represent serious and welcome shifts in policy.
The four most recent examples, all in the past week, include a wide range of subject areas: 1) the recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over much of the Golan Heights; 2) protecting free speech, usually against left-wing censorship, on college campuses; 3) expanding an existing ban on providing U.S. foreign aid to organizations that perform or promote abortions; and 4) better coordinate and implement countermeasures against possible electromagnetic pulse attacks.
The first is largely symbolic, but important. It takes off the table an issue over which Islamic states formerly were able to insist was a “concession” for them in peace talks with Israel, thus necessitating some other concession from Israel.
The second addresses a serious, sickening problem on college campuses. Granted, the feds ought to take care that their attempt to guarantee free speech does not somehow entangle federal bureaucrats in replacing campus thought police with their own. That possibility is real, but remote, and can probably be avoided.
The third, an extension of the so-called “Mexico City policy” that guards against using confiscated tax dollars to finance abortions abroad, would now ensure that foreign entities do not accept American aid through the front door and then finance abortions through the back. Just as allowing abortion in the United States to be legal is a far different thing from making taxpayers fund it, the same principle should apply for American taxpayer financing of foreign abortions. The U.S. government can promote humanitarian assistance without paying for what half the American people consider to be murder.
Finally, this executive order on electromagnetic pulse is quite important. For years, conservatives especially and quite rightly have warned about U.S. vulnerability to EMP attacks that could, almost immediately, wipe out Internet, communications, and electricity almost nationwide. Earlier this decade, the conservative Heritage Foundation produced a superb film called “33 Minutes,” which is the short time-frame it would take an anti-ballistic missile with EMP capability to go from launch to devastating explosion over the U.S. mainland. It was part of a concerted conservative effort to make policy-makers work harder to protect U.S. citizens from this deadly threat.
Instead, the Obama administration quite arguably retarded, rather than advanced, this nation’s ability to stop EMP attacks. Trump’s new order, wisely and crucially, reverses that oversight, and likely will indeed better concentrate and coordinate anti-EMP efforts.
The president’s team should be commended for using executive power in these appropriate ways. These truly are matters of properly administering existing law, not trying to assume legislative powers. And all four orders highlighted here advance traditional American values, virtues, freedom, and life. Well done.
