Now that the Election is out of the way, Trump can focus on hitting the ground running next January. I hope there is “shock and awe” as he gets down to the serious work of getting the country back on its feet.
There is a lot of work to be done on important things like trade, immigration, ripping the bloated national government down to the studs, and national security. I bet Trump is going to have a stack of executive orders to sign on Day One to address those urgent national issues.
However, there is also time and slack to pursue secondary objectives meant for delivering some well-deserved justice after the past four years. Call it payback, call it game theory, but hopefully after we re-establish some order we can all be friends again. Not only that but some of things are just the right thing to do, for all Americans.
The best part is that these initiatives have all the right enemies and all can be done mostly through the Executive Branch.
First some nice things:
1) With our 250th birthday coming up, Trump should announce that all federal monies used for the occasion will go toward celebrating the event and not commemorating it. It’s a party and you celebrate those things, you commemorate solemn occasions and the Left will want to treat it like a funeral and contextualize it. Yes, there are dark spots such as slavery, discrimination, and land removals, but all can be told within the context of celebrating our remarkable country. States and localities can do what they want if they want to let their freak flag fly.
2) Reinstate Executive Order 1396 “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” which would require new federal buildings to follow classical and traditional architectural guidelines in place of today’s modernist, brutalist buildings. Biden repealed it (of course) soon upon taking office, to the applause of many who stated that “classical and traditional” smacked of “Euro-centrism.” Yes, it does, and that might be the point.
Now we get chugging with the good stuff:
3) The FBI wants a new HQ. The Hoover building in DC is getting a bit dated and is ugly as hell. I’m okay giving the FBI some money to replace it, but only because I want to see it (I mean the building) razed to the ground. What I don’t want to happen are the plans well underway to build a massive new FBI HQ, with acreage larger than the Pentagon, in the DC metro area. The FBI can get a new HQ with square footage equal to the old Hoover building, but it should be built somewhere else… say, Iowa.
4) The FBI will be the first, but not the last government agency to be sent out of town. As a start, I want to send the EPA to Pie Town, NM. Play your little bureaucratic games out there.
5) Pardon Hunter and Joe and why not, all the Bidens. Make it a complete pardon, let’s end this lawfare against former presidents and their families. However, there is twist. In the spirit of Johnny Sack’s allocution, the Bidens get off the hook by providing the 411 on their various financial dealings, on who else in DC was in on it, and on who in the media knew but looked away. Besides the general rooting out of corruption, I want to break the careers of some media personalities.
6) I want Trump to give a complete and unconditional pardon to the senior leadership of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation who were involved in the raid that led to the death of P’Nut the squirrel. While (probably) not illegal, the raid was a monstrous abuse of power and Trump can say that he just wants to be proactive so that we can put this ugly incident behind us. It’s a trap of course, because when that senior leadership rejects the pardon on the basis they did nothing wrong, it just revives the whole news cycle again.
7) Designate RFK, Jr. as the “Archives Czar” and prepare for a “Summer of Archive Releases,” with a new revelation every week for months. We can start with the Epstein client list.
8) Order a full audit of all the monies sent to Ukraine. That might take a little while, so as an appetizer list the adult male children of everyone who is anyone in Ukraine and is not serving in the military. Guilty until proven innocent.
9) Sanction any foreign government official who is involved in intimidating American social media companies into censoring information. Any foreign official who is involved in any efforts to combat “misinformation,” even just attending a conference, will no longer be allowed to enter the US.
10) Retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley should be subject to an Article 32 hearing in order to determine whether there are grounds for convening a court-martial. This is in response to his revelation that, during the last days of the Trump administration, he not only interfered with the chain of command in order to countermand a possible order from the Commander-in-chief, but also that he conspired with a Chinese general concerning the sharing of any future American attack plans. Make an example of him.
11) If you have been following the NFL, you probably have noticed that DC’s football team is in a bit of a renaissance and just oozes likability. They have new ownership, a new coach, and a QB who is not only a fantastic athlete but a great guy. They also want a new stadium and generally everyone wants it at the old RFK Stadium site in DC. That site is owned by the federal government and DC operates it through a lease. Here’s where Trump can be a hero to the DC area. He can make the RFK site available for a new stadium contingent upon the restoration of the “Redskins” name. All the fans want it, and through the years the various tribes I worked with were fans of the team based on the name alone. The only people who don’t want it are sportswriters and people who are right now still crying about the election. To heck with them. As for the sponsors? That was 2020.
There would be no greater symbol of the turning back of the clock on the Left’s nonsense than restoring the name of the Redskins.
Trump has told Mexico to either stop the “caravans” of illegals or face escalating tariffs on everything they export to us.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/07/opinion/even-before-taking-office-trump-puts-mexico-on-spot-stop-the-caravans-now/
A new FBI HQ? Money is tight, and we need to cut back. No, the FBI can keep the old building and focus on doing a much MUCH better job of their responsibilities.
Besides, when the staffing levels at the FBI are reduced significantly (money is tight, you know), there will be lots of room in the existing building — maybe enough room for the FBI to set up a public museum in the ground floor explaining their misdeeds at Ruby Ridge and Waco, providing a permanent memorial to the innocent children the FBI murdered and naming the guilty parties in the FBI for public shaming.
I’d like to see work on the upper levels of the civil service, the ones who drag their feet when implementing the new administration’s policies. Prepare a list of all the people in the SES (senior executive service) and the excepted service that were in the “resistance” last time and fire them. especially in the excepted service. Wikipedia (yea, I know) says that the organizations with these positions are generally exempt from “most appointment, pay, and classification laws.”
Don’t stop, you’re on a roll.
As far as the FBI HQ, my understanding is that the Hoover building may cost more to renovate than to replace. Perhaps someone on Elon’s crew can take a look at it to see if it’s true or not, I’m okay with keeping it but not with a massive new HQ. I think exiling the whole leadership team to the New Mexico badlands would be a good message to the DC Establishment of FAFO. That or just raze the organization itself to the ground and rebuild it
As far as Milley, the press is already running stories on how the military on dealing with controversial orders from Trump. If you check the article, you only see “resign” or “resignations” once. When Milley worked to undermine Trump in December 2020/January 2021 under the grounds that Trump was deranged, you might have built a moral case for it but as far as the military not an acceptable one. If Iit was abridge too far to fire Milley and perhaps court-martial him then he should have retired early to “spend more time with the family” which everyone knows what that means
We’re going to see Trump acting on some new intellectual energy on the Right about a “unitary executive” which states that all legitimacy for executive branch decisions and the bureaucracy flows from the president. There might be legislation that constitutionally restricts it and court decisions to guide it, but people in the DC blob have no constitutional authority to defy the president; the amusing thing is that everyone on the Left who thinks Trump is a threat to democracy push the opposite to that authority argument.
Some things to keep in mind over the next 7 to 8 months….
In many ways this is the high-water mark of the second Trump presidency. He won a decisive victory and the Left is in disarray. However these moments don’t last. Boris Johnson won a crushing landslide in 2019 and frittered away the mandate given. Reagan won an enormous landslide in 1984 and had a hellish 2nd term. Anecdotal evidence sure, but just a reminder that the Left didn’t undergo the last scene in the Lord of the Rings and its power dissipated with the destruction of the Ring; it will reform, be back, and look for opportunities.
Traditionally an incoming administration, especially cabinet secretaries, are urged to focus on a few priorities because it takes so much energy to force things through. Trump is in a different position because he not already has a first term learning the ways and had his head handed to him, but he’s had four years off to get refreshed and plan his vengeance tour. We’ve seen nothing like this before. His partnership with Musk and RFK has shown he’s loaded for bear.
The Democrats have been much better than the Republicans on how to invest short-term advantage power into power. When they have controlled Congress and the White House, they use that to push through radical agendas; witness 1993 and 2009. The whole background noise in 2021-22 was that many on the Left understood that they had a once in a generation opportunity with their political control to make enormous changes and they were willing to risk their control in the 2022 elections to do it. Trump understands that and unlike 2017 with his being an outsider and having Paul Ryan and McConnell he has the support of Congress. We’ll see, but Trump has about 6 months, if that, to run wild.
One of the reasons I was worried about an extreme reaction by the Left to Trump’s victory (and it’s still there but diminishing) is that the Democrats calculated they could take Trump out; witness all the unprecedented moves over the past eight+ years. The trade-off in that approach is that if you do stuff like that, you better hope that Trump never is able to come back and they failed. Everyone know that if you betray someone or just sucker-punch someone in a bar, you better win. Once you’re gone, you cannot come back.
Even if Trump is wildly successful it will be at best only the end of the beginning
Yara,
As far as the upper branches of the civil service, look up “Schedule F” which was an executive order by Trump in late 2020 that would have removed civil service protections for the top levels of the bureaucracy. of course Biden repealed it
Trump should not be hasty with Jan 6 pardons. First he should launch an investigation of prison conditions. Cases should be reviewed carefully to make sure that only nonviolent offenders like Chansley and that guy who walked around with the lectern get pardons. He should appoint a special investigator to investigate J6 thoroughly. An intricate timeline of events must be put together, side-by-side with maps showing locations of key individuals so we have a better sense of how events unfolded. Ashli Babbitt’s killer and the official caught on camera beating Roseanne Boyland who died later that day must face charges. Everyone who lobbed tear gas deep into the crowd must face charges. Same goes for the officials who allowed the construction of the gallows against the rules.
Citizens should be encouraged to submit copies of any videos from that day. I imagine there are many who didn’t out of fear that Biden’s goons would hit them with frivolous charges.
I don’t recall if the helmeted guys who attacked the perimeter as a group were ever identified – they seem to be the worst private-sector offenders. The video of them got memory-holed faster than James Hodgkinson.
It would be fascinating to see an accounting of border crossings, official, got aways, etc over the last couple of months and going forward. No doubt some of the “caravans” have been in motion for a while, but if you are an opportunistic “migrant” things are probably looking a bit less rosy.
I think there are plenty of lower, middle and even a few upper level folks in the Border Patrol who will be happy to provide this data, and if there’s a big surge between now and Inauguration somebody will have some ‘splainin’ to do.
But first off, and like, now? That handy app you can log onto and get temporary Come on In status? Block it. 404 it. If the current admin won’t do it, well, I would not exactly condone it being hacked and brought down, but neither would I lose sleep over it. Replacing it with an angry, red glowing eyes picture of Peanut the Squirrel with a Border Patrol badge on his cute ‘lil cowboy hat? Oh, that would be just a bit much.
Tacitus – I like the idea of “Dark Peanut” Another thought maybe a picture of Trump looking out from the McDonalds drive-thru window saying “we’re closed”
Some additional suggestions that I have received:
Ban any administration official from attending the WEF in Davos or other wise participating in events except for a speech that amounts to an angry “**** off”
An acceptable delegation would strictly for observer reasons. Say Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, and Ric Grennel. When anyone in Davos tries to engage them they will only say “Sorry we’re only here to take names, not chit chat”
That Scott Jennings guy who has been on CNN laying down the law? Make him WH Press Secretary. Anytime someone asks about misinformation he can fire back “Well that’s a shame you would be willing to give up your 1st Amendment rights.” Jennings would then pull out a long piece of paper and recite all the misinformation the reporter’s outlet had been spewing.
First things first, election security. National picture ID requirement to vote. Criminal penalties for non citizens who vote, and anyone who enables them. Paper ballots. These things have such bipartisan support among actual voters (as opposed to politicians) that it’d be a first-week layup in the new congress.
Isn’t the current FBI headquarters already their “new” building? Instead of giving them a brand new building, can’t we move them back to their previous headquarters? For the FBI agents it won;t be the new building they were hoping for, but hey, at least it will be new to them.
Julie Kelly is my go to on January 6th what I dubbed Delta House, follies and tragedy’s Waterbuffalo Chansley was the former, the six suicides plus Ashley Babbit was the tragedy,
the fate meted out to Lt Caldwell, the draconian sentence against the Proud Boys chief
Tarrio (22 years for some improbable charge,) he was in Baltimore days before,
now if you fire tear gas on a peaceful crowd, as the Keystone Cops did you probably will net a negative reaction, then there were the ringers like Steward Rhodes and co, that seem to be provoking the Crowd, the ones who opened the gates to the Capitol Complex,
Maybe with all the enthusiasm for remodeling the Constitution, we should revisit the whole no-heads-on-pikes discussion. Passing under a display, slowly transforming into a series of grinning skulls on the morning commute might have a salutary effect.
Here’s where Trump can be a hero to the DC area. He can make the RFK site available for a new stadium contingent upon the restoration of the “Redskins” name.
Great idea.
My brother lived in DC for his first three years of high school. His best friend’s grandfather was a prominent DC attorney. His grandfather, born and raised on the Rez in Oklahoma, decided that assimilation was the way to go. Thus the DC attorney career. His grandfather was a really big Redskins fan. If a Native American/Indian had no objection to the Redskins name, why should some WOKE white dweeb object to it?
Re: the FBI. Disestablish it completely. Fire everyone in the DC HQ and bar them from future government employment. If we decided we need a lead LE agency at the federal level, give that to the US Marshals Service and expand them accordingly (but former FBI persons would not be allowed to transfer). Demolish the FBI HQ building and leave the rubble in place for a decade, as a warning to other agencies against going rogue.
I might be open to transferring the FBI field offices to the Marshals as a means of retaining some institutional knowledge, but each person would require EXTREME vetting.
Occasional Commenter left out salt the earth.
Can’t resist. FBI delenda est.
@Occassional Commenter
The US Marshals Service provoked the first confrontation and fired the first shots at Ruby Ridge (at a dog). Then they killed Randy Weaver’s son for returning fire at the unknown party who had just killed his dog. The FBI came in later and did the 2nd round of killing.
They were also the ones providing the $15M worth of security for Fauci after he retired.
I don’t want them in charge of anything.
I drafted a more-serious-than-facetious list of recommended presidential appointments.
Attorney General: Devin Nunes
State: Victor Davis Hanson
Treasury: Newt Gingrich
Defense: Ace of Spades
Homeland Security: Dana Loesch
Interior: Sarah Palin
Agriculture: RFK, Jr.
Commerce: CEI VP and lapsed blogger Iain Murray
Labor: CATO scholar Walter Olson
HHS: Heritage scholar Stephen Moore
Housing and Urban Development: Susette Kelo
Bureau of Land Management: Susette Kelo
Transportation: Alan K. Henderson*
Energy: Carter Page
Education: Glenn “Higher Education Bubble” Reynolds
VA: Tulsi Gabbard
CIA: James O’Keefe
Director of National Intelligence: Ric Grenell
Solicitor General: Mark Levin
Surgeon General: Scott Atlas
FDA: Scott Atlas
CDC: Scott Atlas
FCC: Matt Taibbi
UN ambassador: David Horowitz
Press secretary: Critical Drinker
* Someone who remembers the frustrations of mass transit deserves this post. Read my ancient blog post “The Misery of Mass Transit.”
https://alankhenderson.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html#114615527111963312
@Richard — I know the Marshals have problems (likely every agency in DC does), but you’ve got to start somewhere, and make an example that’s absolutely biblical. Heads on pikes.
@Alan: Hanson has no executive experience. He might get captured by the staff. Doesn’t know what to look out for (like Sessions).
In the spirit of Johnny Sack’s allocution, the Bidens get off the hook by providing the 411 on their various financial dealings, on who else in DC was in on it, and on who in the media knew but looked away.
Why stop with the Bidens?
There are likely a great many politicians, celebrities, bureaucrats, military brass, and other rich people who have been involved in corruption. It seems quite likely that many of them were deliberately entrapped so they could be blackmailed.
I’d bet they’d love to spill the proverbial beans if they were given a pardon.