President Biden has been in office just days, but already, there are indications of a leftward lurch on policy that belies his campaign promise to govern as a centrist. Illustrative examples can be picked almost at random; the new administration sent a terrible signal that it will truckle to union bosses at the expense of jobs and the economy when it sacked, in an unprecedented fashion, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel, Peter Robb; it also used a startling number of executive orders on Day One to weaken America’s southern border and encourage illegal immigration. These moves, among others, show what the Biden administration’s top priorities really are, and it bodes ill for the next four years.
With this tectonic shift underway in the federal government, I want to reassure readers about what will stay constant. The Washington Examiner will be steadfast in its commitment to accurate news reporting and conservative values. This will not change. As we go through a difficult and unwelcome transition to total Democratic control of the levers of power, principled conservatism will continue to be this publication’s guiding star.
It is what led us to endorse President Donald Trump for reelection despite what seemed to us a great deal of simplistic caviling from others. Despite our strong reservations about Trump’s demeanor and conduct, we acknowledged, as many refused to, that his first term included fine achievements that any conservative president might have desired but that his immediate predecessors, both Democratic and Republican, did not even attempt. His tax and regulatory reforms fired up American business, ignited economic growth, and cut unemployment to record lows; his outstanding judicial appointments reshaped federal courts, including the Supreme Court, making them what the Founding Fathers prescribed; his brave Middle East policy transformed that dangerous region dramatically for the better.
By any objective measure, the incoming administration is the most left-wing in our history, and the Washington Examiner will unswervingly hold it to account, exposing the damage done by the radical policies that are already being unveiled. And we will advocate for conservative government. Real news, however, is not always good news; the best reporting respects readers enough to tell it like it is, and that is our commitment to you. You deserve the truth, not least because it is the only solid foundation upon which to build. The Washington Examiner doesn’t relish the prospect of Biden’s presidency, and we are concerned that the call he made for national unity in his inaugural address, welcome though it was, will prove merely rhetorical rather than substantive.
Our cover illustration this week captures the fact that today’s Democratic Party is not really Biden’s party at all, but the ugly creation, like Frankenstein’s monster, of the extreme Left. Joseph Simonson reports on the continued power exercised by Bernie Sanders, who will never be president but is the man who threw the switch that brought the monster to life. Jay Cost argues that Trump’s political incompetence cost him a second term, and Tevi Troy explains where White House rivalries go now.
