Fresh off his inaugural speech at the Capitol, President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders, which included building a wall on the southern border, preventing censorship, and unleashing American energy production. At Capital One Arena in Washington, Trump signed the orders from a seemingly small wooden desk, with the presidential seal, and a microphone. “Could you imagine Biden doing this, I don’t think so,” Trump said at the arena to a cheering crowd after signing one. Trump later returned to his first day of moving back into the White House, where he signed several more executive orders during an Oval Office press conference. This included an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. When asked if Elon Musk, who is heading up the initiative, would get a White House office, Trump said no. “But he is getting an office of 20 people we are hiring to make sure things get implemented,” Trump said from the Oval Office. Trump later tossed his pens out into the crowd, where supporters jumped for them as if at a Major League Baseball game. While still at the Capitol, he signed four orders. After signing several more orders at Capital One Arena, the president was set to sign still more, for a total of 200 executive orders on the firs day in office. One established that flags would be flown at full staff on all future presidential inauguration days. The flags were raised to full staff for Trump’s inauguration after being flown at half staff following the death last month of 39th President Jimmy Carter.  Three other executive orders that the 45th and 47th president signed at the Capitol established control over his own administration by appointing acting Cabinet officials and acting subcabinet appointees and appointments as acting heads of boards and commissions. During his first term, his agenda was routinely undermined by federal employees. He came into office with many acting agency heads having worked in the Obama administration. From there, he went to Capital One Arena in Washington where after the parade, Trump signed a series of executive orders in front of thousands in attendance.  At the arena, Trump signed an order to end the weaponization of the federal government against political adversaries. He also signed an order rescinding most of Biden’s executive actions considered harmful. This included what what the president said created an “open border” and “climate extremism.” Trump signed a federal hiring freeze, and an order to have the federal work force return to the office. The House Oversight and Accountability Committee recently issued a report on how nearly empty federal buildings have become costly to the taxpayers. “Within 90 days of the date of this memorandum, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in consultation with the Director of OPM and the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service (USDS), shall submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition,” the hiring freeze order says. The president signed an executive order to stop federal censorship. The release of the Twitter files showed the federal officials exerted power to suppress damaging news stories about Democrats. Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg said the FBI applied similar pressure.  Trump spoke about several of the orders in his second inaugural address.  “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” Trump said during his inaugural address.  Trump also signed an order to provide price relief amid inflation, and an order to freeze all federal regulations pending review. The post Trump Executive Orders Cover Border, Energy, Free Speech appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Victor Davis Hanson, the renowned American historian and political commentator, has joined The Daily Signal as a senior contributor. This transcript has been lightly edited. It’s Monday, Inauguration Day. It’s also Martin Luther King Day, and the two dates coincided this year. And Donald Trump has just finished his inaugural address. The reaction to it was varied. I scanned the mainstream media, the network news, some cable outlets, and there was sort of outrage, outrage at the ambition of the Trump revolution and outraged at the direct criticism of people in the audience that had engineered or were part of the Biden tenure. But it was comprehensive as far as the agenda that, I think, is going to bother people. It was holistic, 360 degrees, 24/7. We’re going to close the border. We’re not just going to close the border, we’re going to deport people who came here illegally. We’re going to change the idea that there is such a thing as “anchor babies,” or that just because you happen to be born here, that gives you full rights of citizenship. That’s a fundamental change. He addressed crime in the cities. He address the problems of DEI and woke, and the end of meritocracy. He criticized the inability of the military to turn tactical success into strategic victory or resolution. He talked about energy, a lot, and that we were going to go full blast and he was going to overturn prior directives—Joe Biden was sitting in the audience, of course. The point he was making is, he called it a golden age—that everything was on the table. He only has four years. So he’s moving ahead very quickly. He only has two or three seats in the House, in the Republican majority. It doesn’t matter. He only has three Senate seats. It doesn’t matter—it doesn’t matter to him. He’s going full blast ahead. He called this, as I said, “a golden age.” It reminded me of the great seal of the United States, “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a new order for the ages or for the centuries. That comes from Virgil’s Eclogues, the great Latin poet, when he was talking about the birth of a new Roman generation—in particular descendants of Augustus—that would change Rome forever. And our founders in 1776 put it on the seal. And you see it emblazoned on the $1 bill. And that’s the type of mood he’s trying to encourage. But, at the same time this happened, the outgoing president pardoned—first of all, the same day, so there would be no coverage, really. It would be overshadowed by the inauguration accounts. He pardoned Gen. Milley, who we remember called his Chinese counterpart, to tip him off and warn him that he might have to have private conversations, if Trump gave Milley an order he disagreed with. Anthony Fauci, he pardoned, who looked right into the television screens, under testimonies before Congress and said, that he did not help in any way or subsidize gain of function research. That was a lie. And then he pardoned the entire Jan. 6th Committee. We know that, in the case of Liz Cheney, she may have unduly influenced a witness and coached her testimonies without a lawyer being there. And there are some records that are missing. These are all legitimate areas of inquiry for future prosecutors. And yet, he gave them a blanket pardon—Biden did. And then just fifteen minutes before the speech, he pardoned the whole Biden family. For what? What did he pardon them for—for anything that turns up forever? Ten years, 20 years, two years, one month, anything we find about the Biden skullduggery that accounts for how they made $20 million from foreign sources, will be fruitless in vain. Think about that. And here’s my point: Trump was blunt, maybe even crude. He said he was going to eventually—we would have the Panama Canal. He was going to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the “Gulf of America,” and people were kind of hysterical, in their reactions. But it’s the way he said it and his directness and his candor and his honesty that bothered them. But they weren’t bothered to the same degree, if at all, that in sobering and judicious terms, Joe Biden did something that we’ve never seen before. He has the greatest numbers of preemptive pardons we’ve ever seen by a departing president. And we’ve never seen a president pardon his own convicted felon son—much less give a blanket immunity to people who may have been involved with Joe himself—his family members. In what—scandals of unimaginable size. So let me just conclude. One of the paradoxes of the entire Trump decade is that he speaks, often crudely, bluntly and truthfully about the problems confronting the country and his opponents. Then others who oppose him speak carefully or not at all, or with media approval, with the proper vocabulary. And what they’re talking about or what they’re describing is egregious. It’s just astoundingly dangerous and detrimental to the country. And we don’t seem to be bothered. It’s always style over substance. Trump gave a tough, substantive speech that ushers in a new age without worry about criticizing the people in the audience who brought us this disaster. Biden stealthily, covertly, pardoned a number of potential criminals in a way we’ve never seen before. And that was deemed OK and that’s the secret to the entire Trump paradox. The post The Secret to the Entire Trump Paradox appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Californians are dealing with devastation after their homes have been lost to the wildfires that ravaged the golden coast — but one family noticed something interesting when they went back to look at the charred remains. Members of the Halpin family were blessed with a sign of hope when they saw that their statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph miraculously survived the blazes. “Our son-in-law snuck up the day after the fire and he took some pictures, so those were the first pictures we saw that really confirmed that the house was gone,” Jackie Halpin tells Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson of “Blaze News Tonight.” “My daughter, his wife, said ‘Mom, look, look at the bottom of the picture,’ and there was the statue. And I’m not saying it was a miracle, but I’m saying it gave us so much hope that we were still protected and loved,” Jackie continues. That’s when all six of her children decided to return to the remains and “pray to God, thanking him for the wonderful years we had in our home.” “We did not go to sing; we went to pray. So we said a prayer that our family says; it’s a consecration to the sacred heart of Jesus. So we said the prayer, and then we generally sing that song a lot after baptisms and weddings and funerals, so then it just came about that we sang the song,” Jackie explains. A family member took a video of the moment, and it went viral. “We had no idea this was going to become viral or famous. It’s a little bit humbling, but we just did it to cling to hope. And sometimes you have to force yourself to be grateful, and we wanted to be grateful,” she continues. “We just wanted to say thank you to God, and that's all we can do. That’s our hope,” she adds. Want more from 'Blaze News Tonight'?To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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