It wasn’t snowing only in Georgia and the Deep South this week.
After taking the oath of office for a second term on Monday, President Donald Trump issued a blizzard of executive orders — quickly charting a new course from the Biden administration.
“President Trump made his triumphant return to the White House and immediately started delivering,” said U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, as Republicans celebrated their full return to power in the nation’s capital.
GOP lawmakers were especially thrilled with Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
“The restoration of our Republic has begun,” declared U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Athens.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
But there were dissenting voices. As Trump and his family sat at the National Cathedral for a postinaugural prayer service, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., Mariann Edgar Budde, urged the president to “have mercy” on those here illegally.
“They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” Budde said.
Republicans were livid over politics from the pulpit. “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list,” U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, R-Jackson, said of a fellow U.S. citizen.
Democrats scrambled for a unified message, buffeted by the avalanche of Trump policy changes. Some settled on pocketbook issues.
“One thing is starkly missing,” said U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Pa. “An actual plan to lower health care and grocery prices for working families.”
There was one matter where Trump drew stern rebukes from both parties — his pardons for Jan. 6 convicts, including those who attacked police in a violent bid to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.
Trump said the pardons would begin “a process of national reconciliation,” a phrase that almost sounded like it was straight out of the post-Civil War era.
That didn’t wash with members of Congress.
“I condemn in the strongest terms President Trump’s disgraceful pardon of more than 1,000 criminals,” said U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.
The pardons went to dozens of Georgians, including Michael Bradley of Forsyth, who just before Christmas was given five years in prison, the longest sentence of any defendant from the state.
Video showed Bradley swinging a metal baton at police as Trump supporters attacked officers for hours, trying to force their way into the Capitol.
“Anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the D.C. Police Union said in expressing dismay with Trump’s pardons.
Trump’s executive actions can change a variety of policies. He can also wipe away criminal convictions with his pardons.
But he can never erase what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C., since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at jamiedupree.substack.com.
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