Back at the Resolute Desk, the President signs Executive Orders

[This essay is stunningly remarkable as it is written by the founding editor and global editor-in-chief of one of the most Woke Anti-Trump media outlets in Washington, POLITICO.  It was published on politico.com yesterday (1/21) under his own name.  He is neither groveling nor abusive. His is an honest recognition of reality.  It is stunning nonetheless. –JW]

Donald J. Trump in his second inaugural address was everything his supporters hoped he would be:

In one light, it was all quite familiar. But the second occasion of Trump taking the oath of office also put him in an entirely new light.

For the first time, he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era.

Great in this context is not about a subjective debate over whether he is a singularly righteous leader or a singularly menacing one. It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record.

In other words, he is now a force of history.

Democrats are in freefall.

As of Monday January 20, Donald J. Trump is officially the 47th president of the United States. He starts his second term in the Oval Office with a bang – rolling out dozens of executive orders fulfilling promises made to American voters -- and more popular than he has ever been.

Democrats have no idea how to respond. Their party is currently earning its lowest approval ratings ever, for good reason. It is guilty of perpetrating the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes  -- pretending President Joe Biden was OK to run for another four years.

Their efforts to brand Donald Trump a threat to Democracy were a bust and their leadership is in disarray. They deserve every minute they serve in political purgatory.

A former communications director for Kamala Harris says Democrats "have got to burn down our image." He’s right.  But then what?

Vladimir Putin’s plan to outlast Joe Biden and an exhausted West has run into an unpleasant surprise – Donald Trump is surrounding himself with pro-Ukrainian hardliners.

Trump appears more willing than Biden ever was to throttle the Russian economy, if that is what it takes to force the Kremlin to accept peace on “America First” terms.

A new mood of relief – not yet optimism – is taking hold among Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers in Kyiv. Europe’s diplomats are starting to wonder whether a Trump 2.0 presidency might not be such a bad outcome after all, at least when it comes to dealing with Russia.

“It is now absolutely clear that Trump is not going to throw Ukraine under a bus,” said Prof Alan Riley, a regional expert at the Atlantic Council.

Trump’s advisers have persuaded him, by the odd “Socratic method” that shapes policy at Mar-a-Lago, that a shabby American retreat from Ukraine would be orders of magnitude worse than Biden’s humiliation in Afghanistan, and also that the first line of defense against China lies in the Donbas.

Senate Democrats who are considering holding up the confirmations of President Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments might want to rethink that course of action.

The president recently threatened to adjourn Congress so he can make recess appointments for some of his nominees.

This move would be unprecedented and would likely meet with a chorus of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left. However, it appears Trump is willing to make this gambit, according to CBS News.

The president has been eager to get the members of his cabinet confirmed. So far, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been the only official confirmed. The Senate is still set to vote on Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, and John Ratcliffe for CIA Director.

Democrats have been slow-walking the process for Ratcliffe and could do the same for the other two nominees, according to CBS News.

There are questions as to whether Trump has the authority to adjourn Congress.

President Donald Trump was so busy on his first day in office that it’s been a challenge to cover everything that he did.

The best way to know which are the best ones to discuss is to look at the way Democrats are reacting to them. His pardon of J6 prisoners was a big one; they’re really up in arms about that.

Another one was his executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants in the United States. Now, Democrat attorneys general from 22 states are suing over the executive order.

The Democrat attorneys general and immigrant rights advocates say the question of birthright citizenship is settled law and that while presidents have broad authority, they are not kings.

“The president cannot, with a stroke of a pen, write the 14th Amendment out of existence, period,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said.

These challenges are doomed to fail.

Firebombing on the Pacific

Over 25,000 acres are ablaze in Los Angeles in the Pacific Palisades fire, a veritable living hell.

Some 12,000-plus structures were incinerated. More than 250,000 souls have been evacuated and are in need of shelter.

No one has really taken charge yet. And now even the woke culprits for the catastrophe are blame-gaming each other to determine who was the more incompetent, which in this case translates to the most woke.

No one knows how many have died; all know the number will escalate in the next few days. The eventual price tag of the ruin will exceed $200-300 billion. And there are still some fires that are completely uncontained.

The Los Angeles apocalypse was a multisystem, green-woke collapse—and a disastrous reminder that when Soviet-style, anti-meritocratic ideology permeates all aspects of modern life in California, disaster is inevitable.

First, note that the culprit of the catastrophe is not climate change; it is not Donald Trump. Those are excuses for arrogant incompetency and disdain for the public. And it is not racism or homophobia to fault those who paraded and virtue signaled their tribal identities so extraneous to their actual responsibilities for public safety.

One Democratic senator resorted to “toxic masculinity”—a cardinal sin on the left—by repeatedly talking over Bondi and mansplaining his partisan talking points.

But Bondi wasn’t having it. She clapped back at Senator Alex Padilla (D-California), leaving him looking like a… pic.twitter.com/apkOiQ7wKU

— The Vigilant Fox ? (@VigilantFox) January 15, 2025

Now that is how a BOSS treats unruly children.  Pam Bondi deftly handled all the Dem nincompoops as she did Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA).

Several of Donald Trump’s most important cabinet nominees have now undergone confirmation hearings. I have watched them live in bits and pieces as I have been able, and have seen many clips posted here and elsewhere. Some obvious common threads emerge.

First, Trump’s nominees have uniformly done well. Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, Chris Wright, Scott Bessent, and Doug Bergum have all come across as competent and likable, in contrast to most of their Democrat interlocutors, who have been shrill at best, and often dim-witted.  Very often.

My favorite moment so far might be when the bizarre Mazie Hirono asked Pam Bondi whether she had ever made any unwanted sexual advances. Bondi’s puzzlement was understandable.