ONE WEEK INTO THE POTUS TRUMP PRESIDENCY AND A STRING OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS GOVERN THE NEW FORM OF GOVERNING IN THE 21ST CENTURY FROM MINIMIZING THE OBAMASCARE PPACA TO NO TPP TO FREEZING HIRING OF FED EMPLOYEES AND TO THE OPENING THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE TO THE PLAN OF BUILDING THE GREAT WALL OF MEXICO

.....The Obamacare Order. Trump’s first executive order on Inauguration Day directed his agencies to do whatever they could, “to the maximum extent permitted by law,” to minimize the impact of Obamacare until it can be repealed. This sent a strong Day One message that the president is an enemy of Obamacare.


...... Abandoning Free Trade: Another one of Trump’s early orders announced his intention to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, keeping promises he made while bashing free trade on the campaign trail. The TPP agreement would have been a huge deal, transforming the U.S. relationship with Asia, but Congress never ratified it, and everyone has known for months that it wasn’t going to, so withdrawing now doesn’t really change anything. Renegotiating NAFTA could be a big deal, too, but no one really knows what Trump means by that. So this order was mostly Trump telling the world—and especially his anti-globalism supporters—that the United States is rethinking its approach to international commerce. It didn’t impose tariffs or export subsidies or any other changes to America’s foreign trade posture.

.......The Federal Rule Freeze: New presidents routinely instruct federal agencies to stop pending regulations until they can be reviewed; Trump’s instructions came via an Inauguration Day memo from chief of staff Reince Priebus. But the Obama administration knew it had to finalize its important rules before leaving town; in fact, it knew that any rule it failed to finish before June would be vulnerable to congressional intervention. So the more consequential Obama rules were already done.


.......Green Light for Pipelines: On Tuesday, Trump signed a memorandum undoing Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, inviting a Canadian company to resubmit its application to the State Department. He also directed the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the Dakota Access pipeline, after Obama had directed the Corps to investigate alternative routes away from an Indian reservation. Again, this is not a surprise, and it does not guarantee that either pipeline will be built at a time when petroleum prices are unusually low. And blocking the pipelines was not nearly as central to Obama’s environmental legacy as his efforts to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and ratchet up fuel-efficiency standards, efforts that are also in serious peril from Trump. But the action did underscore Trump’s lack of interest in appeasing environmentalists, whom he described as “out of control.” And Trump’s White House meeting with pro-pipeline trade unions illustrated the way he sees this kind of controversy as a way to fracture the Democratic political base.


The Demonization of Immigration: The main problem with Trump coverage is that he’s a news-making machine, constantly feeding the media beast with new material, violating so many norms that it’s hard to focus on one at a time. On that visit to the CIA, Trump casually mentioned the U.S. might get another opportunity to seize Iraq’s oil, a nonchalant hint at a renewed Middle East war that was mostly ignored amid his stretchers about inaugural crowds and inaugural weather and his relationship with the intelligence community. It’s hard to know when Trump is just being Trump and when he’s fundamentally transforming the American experiment.
On Wednesday, Trump visited the Department of Homeland Security to sign two executive orders about immigration—more are coming soon—that felt like a real turning point. Much of the reaction focused on his long-promised demand for a border wall, which will depend on congressional funding, and his directive to gut federal grants to sanctuary cities that shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, which was vague and probably vulnerable to a court challenge.


http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/president-trump-week-one-first-administration-214699