Welcome to the Age of Stupid

On a frigid January day in 2025—many thought it would be a cold day in hell when this would happen—Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. The new chief executive immediately began the extraordinary task of remaking the country and its government.

Some of the president’s actions seem as though they might be innocuous or even beneficial, such as his instructions Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. Others are nasty, mean-spirited, and perhaps illegal (Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, which attempts to subvert the right of birthright citizenship granted by the Fourteenth Amendment and Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States, acknowledging a National Emergency  at our southern border (declared here) and tasking the military with mitigating the emergency.) Others seem designed simply to flex presidential muscle, for example, by renaming Denali to Mount McKinley and the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. (Surely we must celebrate McKinley for pursuing our glorious Spanish-American War!) ABC News reports that the White House has ordered the removal of General Mark Milley’s portrait from a Pentagon hallway. (Trump has suggested that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed for treason, yet he has pardoned or commuted the sentences of everyone involved in the January 6 insurrection.) And Trump is trying to limit human sexes to male and female, ignoring intersex variations and producing definitions clearly crafted by politicians rather than biologists (Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which declares that: “Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.” How ironic!)

I could go on and on, but Trump is doing crazy things faster than I can document them. Interested readers can learn about Trump actions on the White House Web site here.