Comment: Trump may actually prove to be king for just a day

Issuing more than 200 executive orders on Day One, Trump may find the going harder from now on.

By Carl P. Leubsdorf / The Dallas Morning News

Like a monarch returning from exile, Donald Trump resumed the presidency that voters so inconveniently interrupted four years ago by moving promptly to return his familiar brand to both its policies and character.

From a grim, egocentric inaugural speech in the same Capitol Rotunda where rioting supporters sought to prevent his 2020 defeat to a triumphant mid-evening news conference in the Oval Office, Trump made clear on the day of his return Monday who is in charge.

And in perhaps the most telling political and symbolic coda to the day-long celebration he termed “Liberation Day,” he pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,000 supporters convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

As he did eight years ago by using the words “American carnage” to describe the state of the country, Trump set the tone in his inaugural speech with a typically exaggerated denigration of the state of the nation. Though unemployment is low and economic growth steady, he declared “our nation has suffered greatly.”

He portrayed his historically modest election victory as “a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal” and restore the nation’s faith, wealth, democracy “and, indeed, their freedom.”

“Many thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” Trump triumphantly proclaimed. “But as you see today, here I am.”

With that, he used a variety of venues to unleash an unprecedented array of more than 200 executive orders. He overturned 78 actions of his predecessor, Joe Biden — including those barring gender-based discrimination and lowering health care costs — and established his own agenda of halting illegal immigration, spurring energy production and changing government procedures.

Some actions, like halting the influx of illegal immigrants at the southern border, took effect immediately. But it will take time to redeem his pledges to lower prices and deport what he erroneously described as “millions and millions of criminal aliens.”

In others, Trump was clearly over-selling the potential impact of his initial steps, as in directing his Cabinet members to “marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.”

Several weeks ago, Trump acknowledged it would be hard to cut grocery prices to their levels of four years ago. But he does believe increased oil drilling will lower gas prices, though it might also create problems on the global markets, especially with other oil-producing countries.

Other Trump proposals face court or congressional challenges. Already, his proposal to create what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has encountered both legal and personnel problems.

On Monday, a court case alleging violation of federal transparency requirements was filed challenging the process by which he created DOGE. And one of DOGE’s two leaders, unsuccessful 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is reportedly planning to quit his run for governor of Ohio after encountering conflicts with its other co-chair, billionaire Elon Musk.

Ironically, though one of Trump’s stated goals is to reduce the size of the federal government, the executive order establishing DOGE was one of two that would create new governmental bodies.

The second would create an External Revenue Service, to collect the revenues from the massive tariff increases he hopes to impose on imports, though tariffs are already being collected by an existing agency. Besides, it would probably take an act of Congress to create a new agency or reorganize an existing one.

Another Trump executive order facing a legal challenge directs federal agencies to deny citizenship to children born here to non-citizen parents, many of whom are illegally in the United States. The Constitution’s 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War to define the status of formerly enslaved persons, states that, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,” language that would seem to leave little leeway.

His order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America seems unlikely to be recognized by other nations. But he may succeed in restoring the name of the nation’s tallest peak to Mount McKinley, honoring the 26th president, from Mount Denali, the name given it by former President Barack Obama to recognize the practice of the Alaska region’s indigenous peoples.

Trump’s spate of executive orders reflected a desire for a fast start that avoids the confusion that marked the initial weeks of his first term as well as the difficulty he and other recent presidents have encountered in acting through the normal legislative process.

Though Republicans have majorities in both houses as they did during the first two years of his first term, their margins are so small – 219-215 in the House, and 53-47 in the Senate, that it may take months to enact Trump’s legislative proposals including revisions of immigration laws and extension and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts.

Already, GOP leaders are encountering difficulties in their efforts to determine the appropriate legislative path for passing the new president’s program.

In a sense, Monday’s dominating performance may represent the peak of Trump’s presidential powers. Though most Republicans seem inclined now to give him whatever he wants, the inevitable pressures of politics, public opinion and potential legal barriers will sooner or later begin to have an effect.

But for a day, King Donald reigned supreme.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Readers may write to him via email at carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com. ©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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