Here’s the conclusion of the Achievements of the President from his inauguration through early June. I know it is much information to digest. But it’s important information that I am certain you have not seen or heard from Mainstream Media. That is unfortunate but true. If you wish to have a single .pdf file with all of the achievements listed (and you don’t subscribe to www.dnewman.org), I’ll gladly email it to you if you send me an email at dan@dnewman.org. Your email address will remain confidential.
Thank you for reading! I encourage any positive or negative response you may have to any of the discussions we have here. And feel free to share any you see here anywhere you choose.
Dan
Foreign Policy (continued)
- On July 6, 2017, President Trump gave a major policy address in front of 15,000 supporters in front of the famous Warsaw Uprising Monument. He promoted conservative, Christian, America First, and nationalistic values in his speech. Trump took a strong stance against terrorism in his speech, stating that “our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.” He strongly stood up for Western values and asked “Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” Reaffirming American NATO duties and military support for Poland, he spoke highly of Poland for meeting its NATO spending pledge. While taking a reasonable stance regarding Russia, Trump criticized “destabilizing” Russian activities such as supporting hostile regimes. Trump took a strong stance against government bureaucracy and regulations, warning against “the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people” and stating that “the West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies….we put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives.” Trump defended Christian and Roman Catholic faith, stating that “the people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out ‘We want God’.” According to numerous conservative commentators, President Trump’s speech marked a “clean break” with Obama’s foreign policy philosophy, replacing them with his America First doctrine, and he placed “matters of identity, culture, faith and sovereignty over democracy”, unlike liberal globalists. He received generally good reviews for the speech, even from some critics.
- July 7–8, 2017—Going into the G-20 summit, President Trump displayed strong support for his America First philosophy and criticized the Paris climate agreement. At the summit, President Trump met numerous world leaders, most notably Russian President Vladimir Putin. After Trump’s meeting with Putin, both countries announced a ceasefire in Syria’s war. In the final G-20 common statement, the Trump Administration, which was ideologically opposed by the other G-20 nations, successfully received concessions from them in regards to climate policy, with the statement acknowledging the U.S.’s intention to withdraw from the Paris agreement and including language on the nation’s intention to promote clean fossil fuels internationally, and trade.
Other achievements - President Trump strongly urged the other NATO members to increase their defense spending in order to meet their spending pledges. In late-June 2017, it was reported that Europe’s NATO countries would increase their defense spending at the fastest pace in three years.
- It was reported in early-July 2017 that President Trump had held about 50% more meetings with foreign leaders than President Obama did during the same part of his presidency.
Deregulation and Government Size
Legislation signed
- President Trump successfully made use of Congressional Review to roll back Obama-era regulations—even more than expected. Prior to Trump’s presidency, the Congressional Review Act had been used only once successfully, sixteen years prior. When the window to use the CRA for the 115th Congress ended, Congress had passed and Trump had signed 14 CRA resolutions repealing Obama regulations – significantly more than expected. These actions were estimated to have saved $3.7 billion in regulatory costs and up to $36.2 billion in compliance costs. Some examples of CRA legislation signed by President Trump follow (other examples can be found elsewhere in the article):
- February 14, 2017—President Trump signed a bill into law repealing an Obama Era relation requiring energy companies to disclose financial transactions with foreign governments.
- February 16, 2017—President Trump signed a bill into law blocking the “Stream Protection Rule,” an environmental regulation.
- March 27, 2017—President Trump signed four bills undoing Obama-era regulations. Two of those bills rolled back federal education regulations.
- March 31, 2017—President Trump signed another bill undoing an Obama-era regulation, giving the power back to the states to expand drug testing for unemployment benefit applicants.
- April 3, 2017—President Trump signed a bill reversing an Obama-era FCC privacy regulation applicable to internet service providers. The FCC had adopted the rule to fill a gap created by a court case which ruled that the FTC did not have jurisdiction to extend its privacy rule over internet service providers because they were regulated by the FCC. The new law repealed the FCC rule and prohibits the FCC from enacting a replacement for 10 years without giving the FTC jurisdiction to regulate internet service providers’ privacy practices. Part of yet another series of bills undoing other Obama regulations.
- May 12, 2017—President Trump signed Public Law 115-33 (S. 496), which repealed a rule by the Department of Transportation that would have taken power away from local governments on infrastructure planning. The bill did not invoke the CRA.
Executive actions
- January 20, 2017—On its first day in office, the Trump Administration ordered a regulatory freeze on all federal governmental agencies.
- On Inauguration Day, 2017, the Trump administration instituted a federal hiring freeze. On January 23, 2017, Trump signed an executive order instituting the hiring freeze, from which the military was exempted. On April 12, 2017, the hiring freeze was replaced with a plan to restructure and shrink the executive branch.
- January 30, 2017—Trump signed an executive order that requires two federal regulations must be eliminated for every regulation created.
- February 3, 2017—President Trump signed a memorandum directing the United States Department of Labor to review a regulation signed by Obama set to go into effect.
- February 24, 2017—President Trump signed an executive order requiring every federal agency to create a “regulatory reform task force” to find unnecessary, burdensome regulations to repeal. This order was called “the most far reaching effort to pare back U.S. red tape in recent decades.”
- February 28, 2017—President Trump announced that he did not plan on filling numerous government positions he considered unnecessary. According to one source, about 2,000 positions were vacant, and most of them were likely included in this list. As of April 4, 2017, President Trump did not make a nomination for nearly 500 positions requiring Senate confirmation.
- March 13, 2017—President Trump signed an executive order to perform an audit on every executive branch agency in order to reduce spending and waste and improve services.
- April 25, 2017—President Trump signed an executive order ordering the Department of Agriculture to find and eliminate unnecessary regulations, in an effort to help farmers, particularly in the light of NAFTA and the trade imbalance with Canada.
- April 26, 2017—President Trump signed an executive order ordering the Interior Department to review designations of national monuments from as far back as 20 years prior, with the intention of reversing federal overreach in land acquisition and returning power to the states.
- June 19, 2017—The Environmental Protection Agency ended a $1 million program where it gave gym memberships to its employees, ending the program due to an abuse of taxpayer money.
- The White House 2017 payroll was $5.1 million lower than the Obama Administration’s 2015 payroll. Additionally, the Trump White House employed 110 fewer employees than Obama, and it did not employ any policy “czars.” In addition, President Trump donated his entire first-quarter 2017 salary to restore the Antietam National Battlefield.
Military, national security, and anti-terrorism
Legislation signed
- H.R. 244, which was signed into law by President Trump on May 5, 2017 and funded the government through September 30, 2017, expanded military spending by about $21 billion without an identical increase in domestic spending and fulfilled several of the military’s requests.
- January 27, 2017—President Trump signed a memorandum to begin the expansion and rebuilding of the U.S. military.
- February 3, 2017—The Trump Administration and Lockheed Martin reached a tentative deal that would purchase 90 F-35 jets at the lowest price in the program’s history. The first 90 planes were about $725 million below budget, with billions of more dollars of savings expected, and it saved at least one U.S. ally, Japan, $100 million.
MOAB, the “Mother Of All bombs”
- April 13, 2017—Under the increased autonomy President Trump gave the Defense Department, the U.S. dropped a GBU-43B (also known as MOAB or the “Mother Of All bombs”), the largest non-nuclear bomb in existence at 21,000 pounds on a complex of Islamic State tunnels in Afghanistan. Although tested in 2003, the bomb had never been used in combat before. It caused much damage, being estimated to have killed at least 94 ISIS fighters, including four commanders – no civilians were killed. It also destroyed several of the tunnels as well as weapon stockpiles. The attack was reported as having dealt a heavy blow to ISIS’s Afghanistan branch.
- May 11, 2017—President Trump signed an executive order to review U.S. cyber security and hold the various federal departments accountable for ensuring the protection of valuable information.
- May 11, 2017—President Trump signed an executive order creating a commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and vice-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, to review the extent of voter fraud and suppression in the United States.
- Unlike former President Obama, the State Department under President Trump described the Afghanistan Taliban as a terrorist organization without hesitation.
- May 26, 2017—President Trump made clear his stance against terrorism in a statement wishing Muslims a joyful Ramadan. President Trump did not hold a Ramadan dinner, breaking the annual tradition held since Bill Clinton’s presidency, and instead issued a statement greeting Muslims for Eid al-Fitr on June 24, 2017.
- June 25, 2017—It was reported that the DHS de-funded several Islamic organizations supported by the Obama Administration and that were set to be funded under it.
- June 28, 2017—The DHS announced new measures to increase security in international airports an to protect flights to the U.S. from terrorist attacks.
- June 30, 2017—The Department of Defense announced it would delay an Obama Administration plan to have the military recruit transgender people for six months in order to ensure the military’s readiness would not be affected by the change.
- The Trump Administration gave wider powers to the Department of Defense than it had under Obama. In April 2017, President Trump gave Mattis authority to set troop levels in Iraq and Syria for the fight against ISIS, and it gave military commanders authority to perform military actions without approval from Washington. The U.S. military made large advances against ISIS under their autonomy. In June 2017, the Trump Administration authorized the Defense Department to set troop levels in Afghanistan. The expanded authority given to the military could also be seen in U.S. operations in Somalia.
Miscellaneous Political Achievements
General
- On January 5, 2017, the U.S. House passed a motion condemning Obama’s allowing a leftist anti-Israel resolution to pass in the UN. Additionally, Trump voiced his strong support for Israel during his transition. On April 27, 2017, all 100 members of the U.S. Senate sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres demanding an end to the anti-Israel bias in the UN. After that, the U.S. condemned the UN after the organization ignored the letter from the Senate. On June 5, 2017, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution observing the 50th anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem and called for President Trump to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and Congress commemorated the event.
- January 20, 2017—On the day he took office, Trump returned the bust of UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Oval Office that Obama removed when he took office. He also accepted the United Kingdom’s offer to re-loan the second identical bust of Churchill, which Obama removed and returned after the first loan expired.
- January 28, 2017—Trump signed an executive order banning administration officials from lobbying their federal agencies for five years, as well as banning them for life from lobbying foreign nations and political parties.
- March 21, 2017—President Trump signed a bill into law not only funding NASA, but setting a goal of having humans visit Mars “in the 2030s” and potentially colonizing another planet. The bill also funded the agency, the first time such a bill was signed into law in seven years. On June 30, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order re-establishing the National Space Council.
- May 5, 2017—President Trump attached a signing statement to a five-month spending bill he signed, ignoring several liberal provisions, such as a statement ordering the administration not to enforce federal marijuana laws in states with medical marijuana.
Political appointments
- January 30, 2017—Trump showed he would not tolerate incompetent leftist administration officials when he fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates (a left-wing Obama holdover) when she refused to defend his refugee and immigration ban executive order. Trump emulated Ronald Reagan’s firing of the striking PATCO workers in 1981 by doing so, contrary to the mainstream media spin. That same night, Trump replaced the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (another Obama holdover) with a more competent official who had a reputation for enforcing immigration laws.
- April 21, 2017—President Trump replaced Obama-appointed Vivek Murthy, who was opposed by gun rights groups, as Surgeon General of the United States.[23][24] During the same month, the Trump Administration reassigned two career government officials who had been strongly criticized by conservative organizations.
Productivity
- Despite opposition to Trump from the Left, it was reported in April 2017 that congressional Republicans were more united during Trump’s presidency than in any other time in recent U.S. political history.
- It was reported on June 10, 2017, that President Trump had signed 37 bills into law, more than each of the previous four presidents, and the U.S. House had passed 158 bills, “making it the most productive in the modern-era,” according to GOP House leaders.[27]
Proclamations - January 20, 2017—The day he was inaugurated, President Trump instituted a national day of patriotism for the country, and a few days later Trump officially designated his inauguration day the National Day of Patriotic Devotion.
- May 1, 2017—President Trump proclaimed that day as Loyalty Day, to “recognize and reaffirm our allegiance” to American values, such as “individual liberties, to limited government, and to the inherent dignity of every human being.”
This completes the list of President Trump’s achievements since taking office — at least through June. We will be watching closely and will probably in the Fall release another list from the end of this list through that date. Be watching here. If you subscribe to this site you will be receiving via email a .pdf file that contains these 4 installments. If you are not a subscriber but want this, send me an email at dan@dnewman.org and you will receive it. (If you have already done so you are on the list) Thanks again for joining in! Dan
