President-elect Donald Trump’s most striking characteristics today are clarity, confidence, and calm. This is extraordinary in a man renowned for chaos, confusion, and the thin-skinned hurling of demeaning insults.

But it is a truth that needs to be acknowledged and accounted for to understand what we are witnessing as Trump prepares to resume the presidency.

Van Jones, one of the Left’s level-headed analysts, captured the truth lucidly in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cillizza. When Cillizza asked Jones how such a supposedly unlikely guy as Trump “became the one that cracked the code,” Jones rejected the premise of the question.

“Can we cut it out? … Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all critics. You know how we know?

Because he has the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, the popular vote, he has a massive media ecosystem bigger than the mainstream built around him and for him, and a religious fervor in a political movement around him, and his best buddy is the richest person in the history of the world, and the most relevant Kennedy is with him.

This dude is a phenomenon. He is the most powerful human on Earth in our lifetime. And we’re still saying, ‘How is this guy doing it?’ We look like idiots.”

How’s that for a mixed metaphor?  You do know that when a gigantic fracture of a massive glacier calves off creating an iceberg, the wave it creates splashing into the ocean is so huge it can seem like a tsunami overwhelming any small craft nearby, right? Okay, here we go.

An important feature of Trump’s second term will be his actions on the first day. Trump will sign a flurry of executive orders (EOs) on the day he is sworn in (January 20, 2025) and the following day. The exact number is not known but it will easily be 50 orders or more.

Trump’s executive orders have already been drafted for the most part. Some are still undergoing legal review, some are being tweaked from a policy perspective, and some are being debated internally as to whether they should even go forward. Some EOs may be pulled from the pile if counsel decides that legislation is required to achieve the intended purpose.

Each EO is presented to the president in a separate blue leather binder with the Seal of the President of the United States stamped in gold on the cover.

Each EO is signed with a different pen and then the pens are handed out to supporters of the President as gifts. Now you can visualize Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office signing away on EOs to reinstate Trump policies, establish new policies and abolish as many of Biden’s policies as possible.

The best quick guide to Trump’s first 100 days is to consider the EOs he will sign on Day One of his second term. Here’s a summary broken out by policy area:

No normal parent wants a school with teachers like this for their children.

President Trump proposes to dismantle the federal Department of Education and return education policy to the states. That will certainly be a good move, as the federal DOE has been a key promoter of the woke component of the education establishment, but this action will not of itself restore vitality to the institution of public education in our nation.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, writes: “Dismantling the Department of Education won’t make any measurable difference in educational outcomes... If you want real transformation, fight the elected school boards, defang the unions, and create alternatives to the ed schools.”

We must understand that, operating at the state level, there are other promoters of wokeness in education. Every state has several such woke promoters, including (1) its own state DOE, (2) its own state teachers’ union, (3) its own colleges and universities with their own Departments and professors of Education, and (4) its own woke culture shared by its teachers and administrators.

Each of these four agencies of influence operates in its own ways and means to bring its influence to bear in its own theatre of operation.

Yesterday (12/17), House Republican leaders were struggling to cobble together support within their party for a bipartisan stopgap federal spending bill on when, last night at 9:28pm, President-elect Donald Trump weighed in hard against it and imploded the deal.

In a joint statement on X (full text below) with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Mr. Trump trashed the 1,500-plus-page legislation that would fund the government until March 14.

The two men called on Republican leaders to reject it and renegotiate a “clean” measure with Democrats that would eliminate a trove of spending and policy extras.

Congress, now back to the drawing board, faces a Friday deadline to pass a stopgap bill to keep the federal government from shuttering.

“Republicans must get smart and tough. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, THEN CALL THEIR BLUFF,” Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance posted, with several words capitalized for Trumpian emphasis.

[Nigel Farage is the founder-leader of Britain’s Reform UK Party, which he represents as an MP (Member of Parliament) in the House of Commons.  Britain will soon no longer be a two-party Uniparty between Conservative and Labor.  The former did such an awful job under a succession of ridiculous Prime Ministers after jettisoning Boris Johnson, the Brits promptly jumped from the Tory frying pan into the catastrophically Woke Marxist fire of Labor.  Not long ago it would be laughably delusional among Brits that Reform would supplant the Tories and Farage be Prime Minister.  No laughing anymore.

This is a front page essay by Farage in today’s (12/18) London Telegraph, paired with a front-page news report: “Musk Ready To Bankroll Farage With ‘Biggest Donation In British Political History’.” Read them both and you’ll see why Farage may well transform the UK as Trump is doing to the US, both enabled by Elon.] 

A Monday afternoon (12/16) visit to Mar-a-Lago, and boy was it busy. Throughout the day, the world’s biggest tech giants were queuing up to meet Donald Trump, from Kris Marszalek, the head of Crypto.com, to Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive of TikTok.

This transition period was nothing like what I saw in 2016: there is a sense of order, determined calm and above all optimism. Trump’s personal ratings continue to rise in a way that’s not been seen before in an incoming president. And is it any wonder?

This is just one example of the atmosphere in Mar-a-Lago and the increasing aura around President Trump himself. It is no exaggeration to say that there is real excitement in the air and no one doubts that, by the date of the inauguration on Jan 20, the Trump administration is going to hit the ground running.

All of this is in such marked contrast to the doom, gloom and misery that is all-pervading in the United Kingdom at the moment.

Moscow believes that NATO will not accept Ukraine as a member as long as Russia wages war against it and wants the West to exclude Ukraine from NATO in exchange for “peace” with Russia.

Some NATO states are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside NATO’s framework. Such suggestions have proven stillborn, there being no substitute for NATO collective guarantees of Ukraine’s government-controlled territory,

Thus, awaiting a “peace settlement” with Russia before accepting Ukraine into NATO would encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. The alliance would need, however, to nail down security guarantees for and with Ukraine in advance of any negotiations with Russia.