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By Michael Leppert
The Indiana Citizen
January 22, 2025

Hear ye! Hear ye, America! It’s Inauguration Week! But please don’t confuse it with infrastructure week. The swearing in of a convicted felon actually did happen on Monday.

The striking components of Donald Trump’s second inauguration speech weren’t filled with goodness, with inspiration, or with charm. Of course they weren’t. What child of our nation was expecting a highlight reel like that?

The sequel to his 2017 “American Carnage” inauguration address was not terribly different in its tone or in its fundamental wrongness. This speech’s title will likely come from his promise of the beginning of a “Golden Age of America.” Again though, the erroneous assumptions contained in it are strikingly similar to eight years ago: everything is broken and terrible and his presence in office will magically fix all of it and make it wonderful.

Michael Leppert

Just like eight years ago, it was a speech grounded in civic ignorance directed only at those who share the same fantasy-laden view of the office he reclaimed on Monday. But it is that ignorance that is necessary for much of his agenda, if one can call it that, to become reality.

Exhibit number one is the executive order Trump signed on Monday attempting to end birthright citizenship. No, this constitutional provision cannot be repealed by executive order. If it could, the entire document that effectively defines America, could also be ended by the same pen. This is not new posturing from him, but the certain legal response from an army of litigants will force another branch of government, the courts, to defend the jurisdiction of our founding document again.

Exhibits two and three are not as clearly unconstitutional, but merely illegal.

The ban on TikTok, like it or not, is a law passed by Congress, signed by President Biden, and upheld by the Supreme Court. The Trump Administration is likely already acting illegally by not enforcing this law, as the ban should have gone into effect on Sunday. But the new president seems to believe that now that he is in office, a deal can be negotiated with the social media company. Even Trump loyalist, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), disagrees with the new president on this one, warning on Sunday that there is no legal basis for the kind of extension Trump is pursuing, as reported by the Associated Press.

This whole “drill, baby drill” line that Trump loves so much is leading him into a legal area where pesky laws are also in his way. On Monday, he announced his plan to declare a national energy emergency to allow for an increase in domestic fossil fuel production. But old and new legal roadblocks are in place that prohibit some of the specifics.

As reported by Reuters, “Biden earlier this month used the Outer Continental Shelf Land Act to ban oil and gas drilling in all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Bering Sea in Alaska. Trump has said he would revoke that ban, but legal experts say it is unclear that presidents have that authority.” During Trump’s first term, he tried to undo a federal ban on drilling near Alaska via an executive order, but a federal judge determined his order was unlawful.

These are things the new president cannot simply accomplish alone with a whimsical stroke of a pen. He will need the other two branches to help him. Even in this moment, that will take work and time.

Two things Trump has the power to do, with no cult member bright enough to dissuade him, are his withdrawals from both the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization. These moves are partially based on ignorance and partially based on outright lying.

The historically devastating fires in Los Angeles are still burning. The new president and his following are blaming Democrats in California for them, and actively pretending that climate change has no role, as if it doesn’t even exist.

Heaven forbid there is another pandemic in the next four years. Again, the catastrophic Trump response to COVID-19 has been declared someone else’s failure, though a large part of the American death toll still belongs to him.

And finally, while the inauguration speech was a bad sequel to a bad original, two of Monday’s executive orders were sequels to “Dumb and Dumber.”

Denali has been renamed to Mount McKinley. The native people have referred to it as Denali, or “the great one,” for 10,000 years. The Alaska legislature wants it called Denali. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) does, too. This one’s dumb.

Hear ye! I present, the Gulf of America. Seriously. This move is dumber, since the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t entirely belong to us. Or should I say “him.”

Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.

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