During the odious Senate reign of Harry Reid (D-NV), the normal processes for budgeting and appropriations were effectively terminated.  Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), then chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, once opened hearings on the next federal budget, apparently out of some weird, archaic adherence to law, process and procedure. His Majority Leader promptly ordered it shut down.

Continuing resolutions, omnibus bills and absurdly disparate collections of provisions (recall Nancy Pelosi’s infamous remark that her health care bill had to be passed before we could see what was in it) seem to be the norm. The dung beetle paradigm of rolling many things into one big ball is how we are governed.  It takes a lot for a single issue or event to get meaningful attention.

For all of the hoopla and publicity and promotions and WEF press releases and USAID kickbacks…. the sources of energy over the past 30 years have barely budged.

When Trump shut the border and let ICE do its job, I expected a continuous stream of moving stories about carefully selected sympathetic illegal immigrants.  But illegal immigration seems like old news because Trump commits another outrage against the leftosphere every day.  The left no longer has time to craft, hone and enforce a narrative because the news cycle is moving at a Trumpian pace.

We should have had stories about the economic downside of tariffs, but Canada and Mexico quickly made deals before “expert” comments could be solicited.

The DoD shows them how it’s done.   The Department of Defense runs 161 schools in the US and around the world to educate the children of US military members and other DoD personnel.   The just released “Nation’s Report Card” ranks the DoDEA as the best school system in the country… by a lot.   My state of NJ is ranked 3rd, behind Massachusetts and DoDEA.   We are 3rd … but it’s not really close.   Here is a comparison of DoDEA vs NJ vs the National Average for 4th and 8th Grade math:

I can’t find the National Average by Race, but the Demographic Breakdowns are available for the states and some select cities.   Below is NJ vs DoDEA:

The onrush of good news from so much winning has me a bit giddy, so I need to step back and assess what the enemy might do to regroup and counter.

Old hands Carville and Axelrod have warned Democrats not to make USAID a hill to die on for the simple reasons that (a) voters do not love foreign aid programs and (b) the USAID funds distribution looks like an elite inside scam. They advise to wait and pounce when cuts actually affect real people, then the pushback and political regrouping can begin.

It appears that President Trump (and, eventually, Kash) intends to fire all FBI agents who had any involvement in investigating or arresting J6 protestors.

It would seem the logic or the justification for this purge parallels the very justified prosecution of prison guards during the Holocaust.  “Just following orders” is not a defense.

The first few days of the second Trump administration might seem historic, but that is only because they are. There is much to be said and written about the specific actions taken. They do not just hint at an active and transformative administration. They set a standard and an expectation as well as a pace which could begin a true reversal of a 100-year erosion. It could be an administration that will not fundamentally transform America but build on the basic fundamentals given us in the Constitution and our traditions. It has the promise of halting what has been a deliberate transformation away from those traditions and that fundamental document.

Trump’s broad, sweeping executive actions are addressing a wide range of issues. Some will require additional action by Congress. Others will survive simply because Congress has long since abandoned its responsibilities. Some will be court-tested, as they should be. Birthright citizenship comes to mind. The current application of it was certainly not what the Reconstruction Congress had in mind when they enacted the 14^th Amendment. And the way in which we now apply it is not just senseless but self-destructive. The Supreme Court has never held that children of illegal immigrants were entitled to citizenship. It is long past time for the Court to answer this practice.

But to my rather unsophisticated mind, perhaps the most important element shown by Trumpian actions is that the core issue we are facing is cultural, and there has to be a determined urgency in all we do to reclaim the very nature of the republic. We have been up to the very last inch before the abyss, and it is not the time for the timid incrementalism that establishment types have fooled themselves into endorsing for so long.

Back when I was a lobbyist for business groups, a pet peeve was the assumption, prevalent at dinner parties, that I must be working for Goliath against heroically underfunded Davids like environmentalists and other ‘public interest’ groups.  The notion that the network of leftists in rather expensive downtown office spaces was somehow a shoestring enterprise was always misguided and annoying. It was never just the largesse of ultra-wealthy liberals that sustains some very powerful groups but the complex maze of federal funding sources that empowers leftist movements and provides sinecures for defeated Democratic politicians as well as former and future staffers, makes some players wealthy—and insulates so much policy power from the impact of public choice and elections.

For example, on a small scale, I sometimes had to join efforts to combat the litigation kabuki in which the EPA or some other agency expands its powers by losing in court:

Jonah Elkowitz, Photo ID: 2529055697 (Shutterstock)

Before I make a few more points about what has been a whirlwind first days of the second Trump administration, I would like to establish a couple (or maybe more) about the first. If I had to rank administrations of the last several decades, Trump One would be in the top three or four easily. The only other candidates are Coolidge, Reagan and Eisenhower, in that order. Trump’s might well have been the best foreign policy presidency of the bunch. His constitutional compliance was as good or better than anyone’s.