Regarding the inauguration

President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Monday and has officially begun his second term.

In my estimation, there are two things worth singling out from the inauguration.

I’ll start with the low-hanging fruit: Elon Musk, our nation’s unelected co-President and the richest and therefore most powerful man in the world, did two Nazi salutes while on stage at the inauguration.

A lot of people are claiming that the arm motion that Musk did, which can best be described as “a Nazi salute,” was not in fact a Nazi salute. Speaking as someone who watched the video and has functioning eyes, this is inaccurate.

But Musk still has his defenders, including … let me check my notes here … the ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE?

“This is a delicate moment,” the ADL tweeted on Monday. “It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety. It seems that (Elon Musk) made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute … Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”

Good luck with that, guys! I’ve done a ton of public speaking and I’ve never once saluted the Third Reich in “a moment of enthusiasm” like I’m Dr. Strangelove. But good on the ADL for calling for healing and unity. I’m sure they feel the same way about the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Moving on, Trump signed a whole bunch of executive orders on his first day in office. Let’s examine a few of them:

• Trump signed 11 orders relating to immigration, including declaring a national emergency at the southern border, redefining the terms of birthright citizenship, suspending refugee settlement, and ending asylum and closing the border for asylum seekers, among other things. Take a hike, huddled masses yearning to be free!
• Trump signed pardons for 1,500 January 6th defendants and ordered them released from prison immediately, thereby setting free a small army that attempted to subvert the will of the people and overthrow the peaceful transfer of power in the previous election because they were duped into doing so. And I say that last part not as an editorialization, but because for many of them it was the key pillar of their legal defense.
• Trump signed an executive order rolling back every executive order signed by President Joe Biden. Take that, Executive Order 14046: Imposing Sanctions on Certain Persons With Respect to the Humanitarian and Human Rights Crisis in Ethiopia!
• Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Whether you’re displaced by the Los Angeles wildfires or enjoying the record snowfall in Louisiana, I think we can all agree that was a good idea.
• Trump signed an executive order mandating that there are only two genders recognized under American law: male and female. The executive order specifically states that “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” Since all fetuses at conception are female and gender doesn’t begin to differentiate until a couple of months into gestation, this executive order technically defines every single person in the country as female. Talk about a war on masculinity!
• Trump signed an executive order ending all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies in the White House, thereby turning what was assumed to be an informal policy into a formal one.
• Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Denali back to Mount McKinley. Take that, Koyukon people of the Athabascan indigenous group!

That’s just a small selection of the nearly 100 executive orders that Trump signed on Monday.

Looking down the list, however, I didn’t see anything about tackling rising grocery prices. I didn’t see anything about disincentivizing manufacturers from charging more for products under the guise of supply chain issues. I didn’t see anything about protecting Social Security or Medicare for our seniors.

Most of the executive orders are about punishing people: punishing immigrants for trying to come to this country, punishing progressives for caring about the environment, punishing trans and non-binary people for being different and vulnerable. What you won’t find are any orders designed to help Americans or to build a better tomorrow. Wasn’t that what this was all about? Eggs being too expensive?

Maybe I’m just impatient. I’d love to be wrong. Maybe changes are being implemented behind the scenes and in a few months, the prices of consumer goods will begin coming down and our social safety nets will be stronger than ever.

But day one executive orders tend to show what an administration’s priorities are, and inauguration day seemed designed to send one message: Trump is here to hurt people, not to help them.

For that, we’re on our own.