Trump’s first day back on the job should over­whelm the Left

Few pres­i­den­tial clichés are wea­ri­er than “Day One.” Prepar­ing for his 2009 inau­gu­ra­tion, then-Pres­i­dent-elect Barack Oba­ma vowed to work for Mid­dle East peace from “Day One” of his admin­is­tra­tion. In 2016, Don­ald Trump pledged for his own first day a whole suite of exec­u­tive actions, rang­ing from reg­u­la­to­ry changes to a dec­la­ra­tion that Chi­na manip­u­lates cur­ren­cy. 

Can­di­date Joe Biden, Day One’s irre­press­ible king, promised near­ly more than a sin­gle sen­tence can con­tain: to “get COVID under con­trol,” reen­ter the Paris cli­mate accord, “make smart infra­struc­ture invest­ments,” send an immi­gra­tion bill to Con­gress, rescind the “Mus­lim trav­el ban,” reform gov­ern­ment ethics, address “sys­temic” racism, and begin appoint­ing a fed­er­al work­force that “look[s] like the coun­try” — all in his first 24 hours on the job. Per­haps chas­tened by her boss’s malarkey, Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris made only one first-day pledge dur­ing her ill-fat­ed cam­paign. Alas, it promised an action, reduc­ing degree require­ments for fed­er­al work­ers, that the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions had most­ly tak­en care of already. 

“Day One” is the “First 100 Days” for an age of hyper­par­ti­san­ship. It is Roo­seveltism for Dum­mies, absurd yet sad­ly nec­es­sary. Where­as pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents could count on three months of good­will before the trap­door opened beneath them, con­tem­po­rary exec­u­tives have no such lux­u­ry and know it. On Mon­day, Jan. 20, Trump will take his sec­ond oath of office and bask in the soul-warm­ing glow of tri­umph. On the 21st, he will wake to a frac­tious Con­gress and press that wish he were dead. Per­haps save a few Mon­day night hours for gov­ern­ing? 

It wasn’t always like this. Assum­ing office on a cloudy 1953 Tues­day, Dwight Eisen­how­er spent his open­ing hours watch­ing the inau­gur­al parade and host­ing 57 guests for a White House tea. Jim­my Carter bare­ly had time to add Yass­er Arafat to the Oval Office speed dial before whisk­ing away to lun­cheons and balls. Though Ronald Rea­gan insti­tut­ed a Day One hir­ing freeze for the exec­u­tive branch, his most imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors large­ly wait­ed until lat­er in the week to flex their pres­i­den­tial mus­cles. George H.W. Bush’s first exec­u­tive order came on Jan. 25 and estab­lished the President’s Com­mis­sion on Fed­er­al Ethics Law Reform. (Be still, my wonk­ish heart.) If the Clin­ton Dig­i­tal Library is to be believed, Ol’ Bill did almost noth­ing until the after­noon of the 21st, hav­ing stayed up, in char­ac­ter­is­tic style, until 3:05 the pre­vi­ous morn­ing. 

If Day One is a moment in time, it is also a gov­ern­ing ide­ol­o­gy, brought about by the slow-motion col­lapse of our con­sti­tu­tion­al order. For a sea­son, Amer­i­ca was a nation of laws, ordered by statutes duly passed and signed. Today, we are a nation of men and, increas­ing­ly, of reg­u­la­to­ry inter­pre­ta­tion. Take, for exam­ple, the polit­i­cal foot­ball that is fed­er­al Title IX guid­ance for uni­ver­si­ties. What Oba­ma com­mand­ed, pro­noun and lock­er-room insan­i­ty for the trans­gen­dered, Trump reversed, and Biden attempt­ed to restore. If the courts don’t beat him to the punch, our incom­ing pres­i­dent will sure­ly with­draw the rel­e­vant Biden-era “rule,” thus kick­ing the ball once more into the oth­er team’s ter­ri­to­ry. That may not hap­pen on the after­noon of Jan. 20, but it will cer­tain­ly occur. 

To embrace “Day One” think­ing is to advance an ide­o­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive: So obscene has been the pre­vi­ous president’s work that our man can’t lose a moment set­ting the dyna­mite. When, mere hours before the 2020 elec­tion, Biden promised Day One rules con­cern­ing mask­ing and social dis­tanc­ing, he had in mind not COVID-19’s dimin­ish­ment but his opponent’s. It hard­ly mat­tered what words filled in the pol­i­cy blanks. The point was to endorse what Democ­rats want­ed: the utter era­sure of the 45th president’s fin­ger­prints from Amer­i­can life. 

Looked at in this con­text, Trump’s vow to be a Day One “dic­ta­tor” is sim­ply an acknowl­edg­ment of new norms. A troll of world-his­tor­i­cal abil­i­ty, the for­mer pres­i­dent must have known that Democ­rats would shriek as if set afire upon hear­ing that pledge. Yet he also knew he was send­ing his sup­port­ers an impor­tant sig­nal. So crit­i­cal is the busi­ness of repair­ing the Left’s dam­age that it can’t wait for a “Grand Bar­gain” that may nev­er come. Rather, the pres­i­dent will give orders, and the courts will rein him in if they must. Blame the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion if you dis­like this state of affairs. (Oba­ma aide Daniel Pfeif­fer: “When Con­gress won’t act, this pres­i­dent will.”) Or blame the Supreme Court for allow­ing such exec­u­tive branch abom­i­na­tions as Deferred Action for Child­hood Arrivals to stand. Whomev­er one faults, this is how the polit­i­cal sys­tem now works. What Oba­ma and Biden start­ed, Trump must con­tin­ue. Uni­lat­er­al dis­ar­ma­ment is no way to win a fight. Nor does the path to polit­i­cal com­pro­mise run through sur­ren­der. 

This is not a call for law­less­ness. Were Trump to order, say, that the IRS col­lect no income tax­es, he would be dam­ag­ing both Repub­li­cans and the repub­lic, set­ting his par­ty up for cat­a­clysmic retal­i­a­tion even as he fed still more of the Con­sti­tu­tion into the shred­der. It is, how­ev­er, a call for Day One max­i­mal­ism. Cliché or not, Trump’s first after­noon should be a ruth­less­ly effi­cient oper­a­tion, gamed out weeks before­hand and as script­ed as net­work TV. Gath­er up the attor­neys. Put ink in the president’s favorite pen. To the extent that a half-day’s work can over­turn the ruinous Biden admin­is­tra­tion, it ought to be giv­en a chance to do so.

In part, Trump’s own cam­paign promis­es will be a use­ful guide. As the Wall Street Jour­nal recent­ly report­ed, the pres­i­dent will like­ly sign on Day One a pre-draft­ed order direct­ing the rel­e­vant Cab­i­net agen­cies to deport ille­gal immi­grants. Oth­er pledged actions include the par­don­ing of non­vi­o­lent Jan. 6 pris­on­ers and the fir­ing of spe­cial coun­sel Jack Smith, the face of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­fare machine. Still, oth­ers include the re-with­draw­al of the Unit­ed States from the Paris cli­mate accord, the afore­men­tioned Title IX rever­sal, and the dis­missal “of any gen­er­al involved in the U.S. with­draw­al from Afghanistan.” Need­less to say, these orders must be air­tight, pre-lawyered, and as polit­i­cal­ly defen­si­ble as pos­si­ble. An exam­ple of the lat­ter is already being float­ed in some sec­tors of the Right. In addi­tion to par­don­ing most Jan. 6ers, Trump should relieve New York City May­or Eric Adams, a high-pro­file Demo­c­rat who, in any case, will nev­er see the inside of a jail cell. Had the out­go­ing pres­i­dent not done the job already, a par­don for Hunter Biden would have been in keep­ing with this strat­e­gy.

Between bites of their Christ­mas din­ner, Trump’s advis­ers should be comb­ing the out­go­ing administration’s archives, look­ing for exec­u­tive actions to undo. In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Biden signed an order advanc­ing a “whole-of-gov­ern­ment approach to racial equi­ty” and fur­ther nour­ish­ing the can­cer that is diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion. Kill it. When the next pan­dem­ic hits, Exec­u­tive Order 13995, “Ensur­ing an Equi­table Pan­dem­ic Response and Recov­ery,” will be used to jus­ti­fy pri­or­i­tiz­ing the treat­ment of non­white peo­ple. Wipe that sneeze off the books. The same goes for orders con­cern­ing pri­vate­ly oper­at­ed pris­ons (EO 14006), the cli­mate “cri­sis” (EO 14008), elec­tric vehi­cle pro­duc­tion (EO 14037), and abor­tion (EO 14076). All are lib­er­al fan­tasies, dredged up from the muck of far-left pol­i­cy shops. If Pres­i­dent Trump allows them to sur­vive past his first bed­time, he will have got­ten off to a lazy start. 

And what about Project 2025, that great repos­i­to­ry of Trump Revival tac­tics and pri­or­i­ties? Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Her­itage Foundation’s book-length man­u­al uses “Day One” and its deriva­tions more than 30 times, a clear warn­ing that the sec­ond Trump administration’s clock will be tick­ing from the start. Among Heritage’s rec­om­men­da­tions for that first day are the elim­i­na­tion of the fed­er­al government’s “counter-mis­/­dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts” (i.e., its online cen­sor­ship), the rene­go­ti­a­tion of the Remain in Mex­i­co pol­i­cy, and the steer­ing of for­eign aid agen­cies away from Biden-era pri­or­i­ties, such as those empha­siz­ing abor­tion and gen­der rad­i­cal­ism. Else­where, the man­u­al urges the incom­ing pres­i­dent to begin reform­ing the increas­ing­ly unac­count­able Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, to com­mence vet­ting the 2030 census’s plan­ning and bud­get­ing, and to order the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices to pre­serve doc­tors’ “sacred rights of con­science.” 

Some con­ser­v­a­tives would like to see Trump go fur­ther still. As I write these words, reports are emerg­ing that the pres­i­dent-elect may act quick­ly to remove all trans­gen­der troops from the U.S. mil­i­tary. Trump him­self has just dou­bled down on his pro­tec­tion­ist pledge, vow­ing to insti­tute an imme­di­ate 25% tar­iff on all goods import­ed from Cana­da and Mex­i­co. Right-of-cen­ter observers can dis­agree with these moves. (I’m a “no” to the lat­ter and a strong “yes” to the for­mer.) The point is that Con­gress and the Con­sti­tu­tion have giv­en the chief exec­u­tive the author­i­ty in ques­tion. Per­haps the Trade Expan­sion Act of 1962 was a mis­take. (The pres­i­dent may “adjust the imports” that “impair the nation­al secu­ri­ty.”) Or per­haps the Constitution’s com­man­der in chief clause is over­ly broad. We shouldn’t, how­ev­er, expect Trump to hold back on these or any oth­er Day One pos­si­bil­i­ties while he holds the pow­er to do oth­er­wise. A Pres­i­dent Har­ris cer­tain­ly wouldn’t. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

There is, final­ly, a strate­gic rea­son to fill Day One to its very brim. The New York Times can fit only so much out­rage above the A1 fold. MSNBC has only so much air­time. Giv­en today’s media envi­ron­ment, it is just good pol­i­tics to gov­ern by fire hose rather than sprin­kler. Keep your oppo­nents off bal­ance, over­whelm them with action, and let the courts sort it out as they will. That isn’t the Amer­i­ca the Found­ing Fathers envi­sioned. It’s just the one we’ve got. 

The Right’s task at present is not just con­serv­ing the nation but restor­ing it, a busi­ness that will inevitably be time-con­sum­ing, con­tro­ver­sial, and hard. On Day One, hav­ing scraped and clawed his way back to office, Trump should resume that work. 

Gra­ham Hillard is edi­tor at the James G. Mar­tin Cen­ter for Aca­d­e­m­ic Renew­al and a Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er mag­a­zine con­tribut­ing writer.