State of the Union: Trump's America
The first few days of Donald Trump's presidency have been rough, to say the least. Here's a run-down of the most recent developments over the past 48 hours.
Immigration
- President Trump is set to implement a ban on allowing Muslims into the US. Acceptance of Syrian refugees will also be halted.
- Trump has also announced that "sanctuary cities" (cities which usually refuse to acquiesce to federal requests to detain those undocumented immigrants who have been arrested and turn them over for deportation) will not receive Federal grants "except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes".
- These two decisions sparked protests in Washington Square Park on Wednesday night.
Photo taken by Christopher Lee for The New York Times.
- Further to this, President Trump has ordered that a list of all crimes committed by immigrants be published weekly. Comparisons have been drawn between this and similar actions taken by the Nazis.
Image taken from the book Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress by professor Richard Weikart.
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Democracy
- America has been down-graded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy due to extremely low trust in "government, elected representatives, and political parties".
- The entire senior management team at the US State Department have resigned, allegedly due to their distaste for the new President.
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The Infamous Wall
- Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico would be put into action.
- The former President of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada, reiterated on twitter that Mexico would not pay [sic] "for that fucking wall".
- The current President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, also stated that Mexico would not be paying for the wall.
- Trump responded by threatening to cancel their upcoming meeting if President Pena Nieto did not want to pay.
- A few hours later, President Pena Nieto beat President Trump to the punch and publicly cancelled the planned meetings between himself and Trump.
- Trump has called for a 20% tax on Mexican imports to 'pay' for the wall.
