Donald Trump is doing things differently this time.
In 2017, Trump swept through Washington like a tornado, upending and scattering everything in his path, but much of what he set out to do didn't come to fruition.
The half-baked and hastily submitted proposal failed to pass Congress and withstand bad press and court challenges.
The investigation hampered President Trump's White House.
No walls were built.
Trump delegated tax bills to Paul Ryan and judges to Mitch McConnell, but was unprepared to implement many of his ideas.
On Monday, Trump got into action in earnest.
He issued a series of executive orders that his team had been preparing for months, with more than 100 expected to be signed within the first day.
He even set up a desk at Capital One Arena and signed ceremonial autographs in front of the crowd.
Most of the orders were not secret, even as Democrats became obsessed with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 and ignored President Trump's own campaign promise, Agenda 47.
While some of the things Trump discussed in his inaugural address require support from Congress, the executive order focuses primarily on what the president himself can do.
This often ignores the president's job as commander in chief and head of law enforcement, and instead uses executive orders to do things that Congress and the states should decide on, such as student spending. Contrasting. These include loan forgiveness, halting evictions, and requiring workplace vaccinations.
It all starts with immigration.
There is no issue on which President Trump has a clearer mandate to break with his predecessors.
By declaring a national emergency at the border, President Trump not only reinstated previously successful policies such as “Remain in Mexico” (requiring asylum-seekers to stay abroad), but also deployed military to the southern border to deter them. I promised. Catch and release and internal resettlement of refugees.
He plans to target Mexican cartels by designating them as foreign terrorist organizations and use legislation signed by John Adams to pursue criminal organizations as foreign enemies.
The cartels, which control a third of Mexico's territory and do whatever the government wants, have never faced anything like this.
More controversially, it challenges Supreme Court precedent and the text of the Constitution in an effort to ban birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
If that happens, it will be less likely to fly.
There will continue to be legal battles, most of which are within the president's military and law enforcement powers.
The message that there's a new sheriff at the border will soon travel across the planet.
President Trump declared a national energy emergency and said he would fight inflation and energy shortages.
He gave no details on how much of Joe Biden's “green energy” spending he intends to undo or what the new Department of Government Efficiency would cut, both of which would require Congressional support. It will be necessary.
But he wants to cancel electric vehicle mandates and allow for more drilling and mining. Drill, baby, drill!
On trade, President Trump has no intention of imposing new tariffs on day one, but he is increasing the government's ability to collect tariffs so that he can threaten them in future meetings with foreign leaders.
If he were smart, he would use his influence to negotiate better trade deals, rather than use tariffs to add new taxes to the price of everything.
President Trump ends government pressure on social media censorship, ends racial preference and DEI, declares there are only two genders, reinstates military members fired for refusing coronavirus vaccine with back pay With this executive order, he promises to end the woke era and the coronavirus madness.
But by promising management's declaration to keep TikTok running for the next 90 days, he risks helping keep the Chinese government's mischief alive on our phones.
He also pledged to officially rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and return the name of Mount McKinley to the peak designated by its Alaska Native name, Denali, for several years, adding to his own senselessness. We are doing symbolism.
Congress will become a more central battleground when President Trump wants more money for border security and when the 2017 tax cuts are set to expire.
Trump, the first president, didn't seem to understand what he could and couldn't do. Government is harder than it looks.
But this time he was more prepared, and now at age 78, the man who declared, “I was saved by God to make America great again,” started with a new sense of urgency. are.
Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online..
