It’s been quite the week with Donald Trump back as president of the United States. A flurry of executive orders, policy reversals, advances in Trump’s cabinet and much more have given us plenty to chew on.
Over this past week, we have criticized and praised uses of the pardon power by both Trump and his immediate predecessor. Joe Biden overreached with his preemptive pardons of his family and political allies, while Trump went too far in blanket pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, including violent offenders. Both presidents set a poor precedent that future presidents will no doubt take advantage of, opening the door to even more politically protected criminality.
On the other hand, both deserve credit for freeing drug war prisoners. Biden commuted the sentences of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders while Trump freed Silk Road operator and libertarian cause célèbre Ross Ulbricht. The drug war has been an unconstitutional assault on individual liberty, a boon to mass surveillance and mass incarceration and a total failure all at the same time. Piecemeal pardons and commutations are nice, but comprehensive reform is still needed.
On a related note, Trump rescinded a proposal from the Biden administration to ban menthol cigarettes. The last thing the country needs is an expansion of the drug war to tobacco. Meanwhile, Trump’s pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has indicated he would guide the federal government to be more open to psychedelic drug therapies. Interesting developments from a GOP president to say the least.
Speaking of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump also made news in announcing the release of federal files relating to the assassinations of Kennedy’s father and uncle, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest,” Trump’s order explains.
Many Americans, including RFK Jr., have long believed there was a conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, while members of the King family have even gone so far as to consider King’s convicted assassin James Earl Ray to be a patsy. We have consistently favored the release of the Kennedy files, regardless of whether there actually was a deeper conspiracy. The American people have deserved to know what the government has been withholding one way or another.
On other fronts, Trump has also delivered some fodder for people concerned with culture war matters, including his shuttering of federal programs on diversity, equity and inclusion.
On the latter matter, this editorial board has long criticized collectivism of all sorts, including the fixation with identity politics over the last decade. This editorial board was one of the only newspaper boards in the state to oppose California’s effort to restore affirmative action, for example, and so Trump’s rollback of DEI programs doesn’t trouble us in the slightest. Governments should focus on getting things done, not discriminating for or against people on the basis of immutable characters, nor peddling identity politics where it does not belong. Americans are Americans with equal rights under the law. Period.
We will have much more to say on Trump’s orders on immigration and the border. But we’re not particularly impressed with what we’ve seen so far.
Border crossings have fallen massively over the past year back to historical norms, so many of Trump’s actions are responding to a border crisis that doesn’t exist anymore. Meanwhile, his strike at birthright citizenship, aside from being constitutionally dubious, reveals a misguided prioritization. As Alex Norwasteh of the Cato Institute notes, “The revocation of birthright citizenship not only goes against almost 420 years of legal precedent but also will raise practical difficulties for native-born Americans regardless of their parentage.”
Alas, for better and worse, this is but a small sampling of all that has gone on in the last week.