The second Trump administration has gotten off to a blistering start. President Trump has signed the most impactful panoply of early-term presidential executive orders in a generation.
The maestro of Mar-a-Lago and his MAGA inner circle clearly studied up during their four years in the political wilderness.
In the aftermath of the Biden Department of Justice’s attempted incarceration and his brush with death last July in Butler, Pa., Donald Trump seems to have applied Ronald Reagan’s old advice to his handling of culture war issues: “We win and they lose.”
And thus far, so it’s been. But can Trump keep it up?
Let’s consider the lay of the land when it comes to five of the most pressing concerns facing the United States in this second Trump term — and what the president might do to ensure his efforts truly last.
DEI
President Trump dropped an atomic bomb on the “diversity, equity and inclusion” industry with his second-day executive order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”
The order went well beyond merely banning racial preferences within the federal government; it also compelled all agencies to “enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI . . . programs.”
Translation: The Great Awokening, which had been on the rise since George Floyd’s death, is done. Postmodern conceptions of “anti-racism” and racial “equity,” disseminated by academics such as Ibram X.
Kendi, are over too; Boston University even closed its “Center for Antiracist Research,” which Kendi had founded. In race-centric DEI’s stead is the old color-blind maxim of MLK Jr.: Judge not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.
Trump’s anti-DEI executive order is one of the boldest culture war salvos ever fired.
At least two related follow-up moves are now needed to make these wins stick.
First, the Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel should issue a memorandum explaining that DEI is outright unconstitutional.
As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the landmark 2023 Supreme Court case that outlawed affirmative action, no taxpayer-supported institution “may . . . use race as a stereotype.”
But DEI’s hierarchical nature is intrinsically racial stereotyping — white “oppressors,” oppressed “blackness,” and so forth. Second, Trump must invoke Section 5 of the executive order and direct his administration to enforce these legal maneuvers nationwide.
Since Trump retook office, diversity apparatchiks have been heading for the exits throughout both public and private life. This will only continue.
Gender Ideology
On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed another dynamic executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order thus defines “sex” as reflecting biological truth, rejecting the notion that “gender identity” has anything to do with it. Trump then followed up this first Executive Order with another this past week banning biological males from competing in women’s sports.
With two strokes of a pen, Donald Trump did more to win the gender/pronoun war than all outside activists combined. Sure, Matt Walsh’s 2022 documentary, “What Is a Woman?” was highly effective at interrogating gender ideology.
But changing hearts and minds with films and books pales in comparison to the political power of a strong-willed president.
Trump’s executive order also puts an end to biological males in women’s federal prisons and single-sex rape shelters, and it instructs all federal agencies to “ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females . . . are designated by sex.”
All locker rooms and restrooms under the federal government’s supervision, in other words, will separate based on biology — not subjective ideology.
Just as anti-DEI activists such as Chris Rufo can now claim victory in the DEI wars, so too can athlete-activist Riley Gaines — the former collegiate swimmer-turned-women’s sports advocate.
As Gaines put it on Jan. 21, “Trump really came into office like a freight train.”
Crucially, Trump also signed an executive order defunding any hospital or healthcare provider that engages in surgical interventions for minors under the guise of “gender-affirming care.”
The move has been met with swift backlash: New York Attorney General Letitia James has instructed hospitals statewide to ignore Trump’s directive, lest they face prosecution for violating local laws.
And “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon — whose son is transgender — led a protest in front of one New York City’s impacted hospitals.
One more step is also needed.
On Friday, Deputy Solicitor General Curtis E. Gannon correctly wrote to the clerk of the Supreme Court that the “government’s previously stated views no longer represent the United States’ position” in this term’s marquee case, United States v. Skrmetti, involving Tennessee’s ban on so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors.
But the Supreme Court still needs to now dismiss the case as improvidently granted. As I’ve explained for The Post, this was a malicious lawsuit filed by Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
Abortion
When it comes to access to abortion, President Trump has already reaffirmed the decades-old Hyde Amendment, which prevents US taxpayers from subsidizing abortion domestically, and reinstituted the “Mexico City Policy,” which stops taxpayer dollars from funding abortions overseas.
He also had the US rejoin the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which affirms that abortion is not an international “human right.”
Additionally, and perhaps most notably, Trump pardoned 23 pro-life activists — many of them elderly women — who were prosecuted or imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department for purported violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act. In a strong gesture of solidarity, Vice President J.D. Vance also spoke at the annual March for Life.
Such bold “pro-life” moves led even Lila Rose, the once-skeptical president of prominent anti-abortion group Live Action, to loudly praise President Trump on Jan. 24: “President Trump is on a roll! Win after win! Great job!”
On the other hand, the Trump-Vance campaign repeatedly disavowed any kind of federal abortion ban — even a comparatively mild one.
There are real questions, furthermore, about what abortion policy at the Department of Health and Human Services will be under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a longtime pro-choice advocate.
HHS, which controls roughly a quarter of the federal budget, will need to condition all hospital and outpatient disbursements if they are to fully protect the conscience rights of pro-life doctors.
Drugs and Homelessness
Hard drug use, and accompanying overdose deaths, skyrocketed during the Biden presidency — hitting over 100,000 overdose deaths for the first time ever in 2022.
Although overdose fatalities actually fell between July 2023 and 2024, the impact of America’s fentanyl crisis remains tragically high.
It also evokes a similar period just before Ronald Reagan took office back in 1980 and ordered his drug czar, Bill Bennett, and First Lady Nancy Reagan to lead a public anti-drug campaign.
That Reagan-era campaign — “Just Say No,” as the first lady then put it — was remarkably successful. It single-handedly put to lie the oft-repeated refrain that the “war on drugs” has “failed.” And it is time for another such campaign today.
But the demand side of the ledger can only accomplish so much — and it’s useless when it comes to America’s often drug-addled homeless population.
It is also imperative to stanch the drug-infused bleeding on the supply side — which means cracking down on the criminal cartels that dominate northern Mexico.
President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order declaring the cartels to be foreign terrorist organizations is key. These narcotics traffickers live right on our border.
They are poisoning our cities and killing our kids — while abetting increased addiction and homelessness. The madness must end. And Donald Trump, who during the campaign vowed to “inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations,” has already taken a strong lead.
Social Media
In an unanticipated reversal from his first term, Trump is trying to make concerted inroads with Silicon Valley oligarchs.
How else to interpret his recent inauguration, where titans of industry like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos sat interspersed with Trump’s own Cabinet?
Many are skeptical, and for good reason — none of these men, with the exception of Elon Musk, has had a true MAGA epiphany.
Instead, they’re cozying up to the new administration in an attempt to avoid the cross hairs of regulators and antitrust enforcers. But it was Trump’s administration that first launched the extant Sherman Act antitrust lawsuit to break-up Google, and it makes sense for him to see it through today.
The issue of TikTok is particularly newsy. President Trump has warmed up to the Chinese-owned app, whose ban he delayed for 75 days while the administration tries to identify a buyer.
An American majority owner would alleviate the Chinese-related security concerns, but the issue of TikTok’s highly addictive nature remains.
The good news is that Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, takes a properly skeptical attitude toward Big Tech.
As Carr said the day Trump tapped him to head the FCC, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.” Indeed.
Regulating the leading social media apps as common carriers, something the FCC has the authority to do, would be a game-changer.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large and author of the forthcoming book, “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West” (March 2025, Radius Book Group).
