This week has been unusually short — pared on one side by Labor Day, and by Hurricane Irma on the other. But the brief, three-day whirlwind may have been the most consequential thus far of Donald Trump’s presidency.
When he rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and invited Congress to replace it, Trump returned the legislative power to its rightful branch. And when he struck a surprise deal with Democrats to lift the debt ceiling until December, he restored — however briefly — the basic comity necessary for our system to function.
That process of repair and restoration has been the Trump administration’s silent agenda since January. He began by faithfully executing the law along the country’s borders, letting border patrol and immigration and customs officers do their jobs, slashing illegal immigration by some two-thirds. He continued by overturning excessive regulations that restrained our energy industry and others, repealing some rules that had never even been reported to Congress.
He nominated a solid conservative, Neil Gorsuch, to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus preventing what might otherwise have been a liberal takeover that lasted decades. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords, which the previous administration signed in defiance of the Senate’s constitutional power to ratify treaties. And he directed an active federal response to the Hurricane Harvey disaster, showing better management than both of the last two presidents.
