President Trump has only been in office for two weeks, and yet the world seems to have turned upside down. Among other things, the Trump administration has done everything in its power to advertise to the world that illegal aliens are not welcome. Woo hoo! Duly noted.
President Trump has promulgated an executive order repealing the program of racial discrimination that goes under the rubric of affirmative action. Christopher Caldwell is a scrupulous historian of the phenomenon. He observes:
For half a century, affirmative action has been the federal government’s principal instrument for carrying out desegregation, the longest and costliest moral crusade in American history. After the 1970s it was adapted to liberation movements, from feminism to gay rights. Supreme Court justices anguished over the way its call for special consideration of minorities might clash with the letter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred racial discrimination. Over the past decade affirmative action became the hammer of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement, which grew so unpopular that it has now brought affirmative action (and much else) down with it.
Trump’s decision to repeal it is the most significant policy change of this century—more significant than the Affordable Care Act of 2010 or anything done about Covid.
We thought it couldn’t be done. Pretty, pretty good. And these cataclysmic changes might better go to show what a difference a day makes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the first foreign leader President Trump has chosen to meet with. They will meet this afternoon.
Netanyahu’s dance card has filled up with congressional leaders eager to meet with him as well. He has therefore extended his trip through this week.
JNS Jerusalem bureau chief Alex Traiman compares the treatment of Netanyahu then and now in “The key differences between Netanyahu’s July and February visits to Washington.” These “key differences” provide another angle on the difference the past two weeks have made.
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