Trump Dusts Off Monroe Doctrine

Trump Awakens America: The Slumbering Superpower

By Rick Manning

The Trump 2 presidency has proven to be much more foreign policy oriented than most Americans expected with America re-emerging as the pre-eminent economic and political force in the world.

In a whirlwind, the president put Colombia’s communist leader in his place. When challenged about accepting deported Colombians who were in the U.S. illegally, Trump levied the threat of massive economic sanctions causing the Colombian government to back down within hours. Troublemaking Venezuela immediately found that they could accept back deported members of the violent gang they sent across our border under Biden’s disastrous open borders policy immediately following this short showdown.

After the threat of tariffs that would cripple the Mexican economy, Mexico City has promised to put 10,000 troops on their northern border and help with a drug cartel crackdown. Similarly, Canada has promised to better monitor their southern border to stem the flow of dangerous illegal invaders and fentanyl into America.

And in the first showdown with China, Panama has promised to end its partnership with the Communist Party of China through their “Belt and Road” initiative, choosing alliance with the United States and at least partially securing the vital Panama Canal passageway between the Gulf of America and the Pacific Ocean.

Even the discussion about Greenland matters in this context as the forgotten North American island is both rich with rare earth minerals, and essential to defending U.S. interests in the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean. What most do not know is that China has been mining in Greenland and has established a dangerous foothold on this geo-politically important Danish holding.

When you look at foreign policy through an America First lens, you defend the homeland first. Under Biden, most of South and Central America including Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile was taken over by government’s antagonistic to the United States, largely with Chinese support. 

This explains why President Trump has dusted off the Monroe Doctrine and begun to aggressively secure alliances that keep enemies off our borders with a mind toward eventually pushing China out of the western Hemisphere.

What many Americans do not realize is that our nation is effectively one big island itself, separated by the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans from land invasion. This security along with the banding together of the thirteen colonies into one country, the Louisiana Purchase and the Manifest Destiny policy which envisioned and achieved a coast-to-coast America, protected our nation to grow free from constant land wars that beleaguered Europe throughout history.

Obviously, the Civil War was an unavoidable land war to settle the power struggle between the states revolving around slavery expanding the “all men are created equal” DNA of America to include all races.

President Abraham Lincoln did not just unify the nation through war but also envisioned the uniting of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the building of the transcontinental railroad. Completed in 1869, four years after his assassination, the linking of east and west connected far off California and Nevada with the rest of the country economically and set the stage for the establishment of states west of the Mississippi River.

The freedom from war and relative stability that followed fostered the development of an industrial, mineral and energy base making America the beacon of freedom and opportunity to the world.

This North America and Caribbean basin First foreign policy that President Trump has embarked upon looks at the whole world through this historic lens, prioritizing the world closest to our shores.

It is a form of international community policing where you focus upon your own and adjacent neighborhoods first before seeking to clean up areas that affect you less.

Now this isn’t dismissing the problems with China, Ukraine/Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere, it is merely recognizing that tending to America’s neighborhood with the impacts of dramatic drops in illegal immigration and a diminution of threats that can strike the homeland rapidly due to the proximity of their origin.

President Trump has demonstrated that he is also able to walk and chew gum at the same time when it comes to other world-wide hotspots he inherited. Trump played a major role in getting Hamas-held American and Israeli hostages released, reclassified the Houthi’s in Yemen as a terrorist organization and hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his first foreign leader to visit, have meetings and dine at the White House in his second term.

Netanyahu’s first in the world visit is an obvious break from the prior administration’s virtual shunning of Israel’s leader, and it makes sense.

Two of Trump I’s achievements were moving the U.S. embassy to Israel to Jerusalem and along with Netanyahu laying the groundwork for an alliance of Muslim states with Israel around joint economic and national security interests, breaking the stranglehold the created Palestinian issue had on regional peace.

Through establishing the Abraham Accords alliances, the President and Prime Minister created a new pathway to peace in the Middle East based upon mutual regional and economic interests, and rekindling that momentum is clearly very high on the Trump II agenda.

And by the time this gets printed, undoubtedly other actions will jump into the forefront, because in Trump II things move at the speed of Silicon Valley rather than the slow meanderings of the past. 

Beyond the speed though is the Trump II North America First foreign policy demonstrates that rather than being buffeted around by world events, there is perhaps for the first time since Ronald Reagan, a gameplan where America leads and sets the agenda accomplishing our interests, and in doing so furthering the interests of the free world.

Fifteen days in, the world has shifted, America is back, confident and a little bit pissed off. The sleeping superpower has awakened from its four-year slumber. 

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2025/02/05/trump-awakens-america-the-slumbering-superpower-n2651656

Foreign And Military Aid Is Not Sacred, And President Trump Is Right To Open Up The Books

By Robert Romano

President Donald Trump has certainly ruffled some feathers in Washington, D.C. and around the world through his executive order to pause foreign aid and to open up the books at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in the process tasking the newly minted U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Service — spun off from the 2014-created U.S. Digital Service — to go through the budget to identify wasteful, illegal and fraudulent spending that runs afoul of the new president’s foreign policy and U.S. laws.

For example, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) falsely described the effort as an “unelected shadow government conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government”.

But that’s not true. President Trump was elected on Nov. 5, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College, rather easily in hindsight, over former Vice President Kamala Harris, and rallied Republicans to majorities in the House and Senate, in part on promises to realign U.S. foreign policy including foreign and military aid, to create DOGE to identify wasteful spending and so forth, including any that is going overseas.

The two executive orders of importance to this endeavor were both signed on Jan. 20, the day Trump was sworn into office, enacting the 90-day pause in new foreign aid pending a review and the establishment of DOGE in the Executive Office of the President.

The first, “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” enacted the 90-day pause, calling for a “90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”

To that end, all departments and agencies were directed to pause all obligations being sent overseas to reevaluate U.S. foreign policies priorities, stating, “All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.”

The second, “Establishing and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’”, again, spun off from the 2014-created U.S. Digital Service into DOGE, under  5 U.S.C. Sec. 3161 as a temporary organization in the Executive Office of the President.

The order stated “There shall be a USDS Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff. There is further established within USDS, in accordance with section 3161 of title 5, United States Code, a temporary organization known as ‘the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization’.  The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall be headed by the USDS Administrator and shall be dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda.  The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026.”

Well, that’s exactly what the law says: “the term ‘temporary organization’ means a commission, committee, board, or other organization that… is established by law or Executive order for a specific period not in excess of three years for the purpose of performing a specific study or other project; and… is terminated upon the completion of the study or project or upon the occurrence of a condition related to the completion of the study or project.”

So, Trump chose to dedicate his White House political staff to direct the efforts of DOGE, by definition, establishing them as White House employees and political appointees. Their job is to coordinate with “DOGE Teams” at each department and agency to identify wasteful spending and to otherwise modernize hardware and software used by each department and agency, and provides the White House DOGE personnel — that is, the President’s designees — access to all of the information technology infrastructure at each department “ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems. USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards.”

So just like National Security Advisor Mike Waltz or other members of the National Security Council appointed by the President for example can go over to a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) to access classified records to advance U.S. policy, the White House, whether via the Office of Management and Budget or other civilian designees tasked to the budget, can access the unclassified budgets of every single department and agency, looking at every line if that is what the President directs to ensure it complies with the law and is advancing U.S. policies, especially abroad.

To the extent that there is crossover, say sensitive military or intelligence programs and budgets, the President can even task everyone to work together to best get the budget in order, including assigning appropriate security clearances to any personnel who might be working on sensitive matters, in order to best ensure the President’s policies are being executed.

In the meantime, Trump has made Secretary of State Marco Rubio now the acting director of USAID as the White House gets a handle on the agency’s $42.8 billion budget. Many media commentators and other journalists have described the budget as a “drop in the bucket” but there it is, a $42.8 billion a year “drop in the bucket” that the executive branch often has discretion to direct towards the President and Congress’ foreign policy goals. But USAID is not the only agency that does foreign aid, so does the Department of Defense, the Department of State and so forth. Enough drops in the bucket to fill up the bucket, no doubt.

And it’s all sacred, or so the President’s critics would attest. But nothing is sacred when it comes to foreign and military aid.

John Kennedy pulled the plug on Cuba.

Congress and Gerald Ford pulled the plug on South Vietnam.

Jimmy Carter pulled the plug on Iran.

Congress pulled the plug on Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Ronald Reagan pulled the plug on nuclear weapons in Europe when he signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Joe Biden pulled the plug on Afghanistan, and so forth.

Certainly, during their times, these were all controversial decisions, some popular, others not so much, but they were all made by presidents and on occasion by Congress, too, all under their constitutional responsibilities under Article I and Article II of the Constitution’s legislative and executive powers. But none of these operations are sacred, especially foreign commitments, which is well established since the 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality by George Washington that tore up military alliance treaty with France following the French Revolution. Not even treaties are immune to the power of the President take U.S. foreign policy in a different direction.

Obviously, the President as the sole executive under Article II of the Constitution has a lot of power to direct U.S. foreign policy, and certainly to direct White House staff and departments and agencies to ensure that the money being spent is done so in accordance with the law and the President’s stated policies. No one except who the President delegates has the authority to speak on behalf of the U.S., and certainly not by directing foreign aid that runs counter to the President’s intent.

Some of the monies we were sending overseas to Syria went to al Qaeda to blow things up. Some of the monies we sent to Iran were quite fungible and went to Hezbollah, Hamas and Tehran’s nuclear weapons programs. Some of the monies we send to China via trade deficits is directed to building up their navy and other armed forces.

Former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden might have prioritized those things but President Trump has the same exact discretion to say no and especially to stop payments that run counter to current policy. No question. The things we were funding might not be priorities anymore.

Turns out, elections really do matter. Sure, open the books up and certainly direct U.S. departments and agencies to fulfill the President’s agenda and the law. Isn’t that what the President is supposed to do?

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/foreign-and-military-aid-is-not-sacred-and-president-trump-is-right-to-open-up-the-books/

Cartoon: Cognitive Disidente

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/cartoon-cognitive-disidente/

Senate Should Work Seven Days A Week To Confirm Trump Nominees

Feb. 4, 2025, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the U.S. Senate to work seven days a week to get President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees confirmed:

“It is the week of Feb. 4, and so far the Senate has gotten around to confirming nine of President Donald Trump’s nominees into office with a few more to come this week despite having a 53 to 47 Republican majority that is owed in no small part to Trump’s popularity in the 2024 election in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

“The truth is, there are about 1,300 positions in the administration that ultimately require Senate confirmation by law, resulting in Presidents resorting to appointing acting officials until permanent selections can be made. At the current rate — nine confirmations in 16 days, or 0.56 confirmations per day — the Senate will only be able to confirm about 200 administration officials per year, or 800 of the 1,300 for the entire four years of President Trump’s second term. They’d never complete the process.

“As it is, at the current rate, it will take about ten more days just to get the 15 cabinet secretaries confirmed, to say nothing of the deputies, assistants to the secretary and agencies that also need to be staffed.

“The Senate should work seven days a week until the Trump cabinet is confirmed, including all of the deputies and assistants needed so that the executive branch can move at the speed of Trump. That means the Senate needs to move at the speed of Silicon Valley to get the President’s team in place so they can implement the Trump agenda.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2025/02/senate-should-work-seven-days-a-week-to-confirm-trump-nominees/

Take action! Urge Senate To Work Seven Days A Week Until Trump Cabinet Picks Are Confirmed! at https://www.votervoice.net/AFLG/Campaigns/121046/Respond