It’s only been a little over a week since Donald Trump was officially sworn in as the 45th President of the U.S., but in these first few days, a lot has changed. Here is what you need to know about Trump’s first seven days in office.
Women’s Rights
A day after the inauguration on January 21st, Women’s Marches swept across not only the United States, but the entire world. Over 5 million people worldwide marched in the name of women’s rights, yet Donald Trump’s only reaction to the marches seemed to be a cryptic tweet, addressing the celebrities who participated. On the topic of women’s rights, however, Trump has already outdone himself. Trump reinstated the “global gag rule”, which blocks funding from all organizations that provide any abortion-related services. This means that healthcare providers have almost no way to provide abortions, or even information on the subject, leaving women in developing countries in danger of unsafe abortion methods, and women in the U.S. with less control of what happens to their own bodies.
DAPL
Along with enforcing a rule having to due with what millions marched literally days before to protest, Trump has also given his full support to the extremely controversial Dakota Access pipeline. The pipeline proposal was under fire for interfering with Native American sacred ground, and for endangering a reservation’s water supply. Trump has also picked a fight with the press, and more specifically, the National Parks Service’s Twitter account. After retweeting photos of Trump’s underpopulated inaugural crowd, the National Parks Service was ordered to stop all tweeting from the account. But they soon took matters into their own hands, creating an alternate account titled “NOT ALT WORLD”, and sending out a first tweet: “Mr Trump, you may have taken us down officially. But with scientific evidence & the Internet our message will get out.”
Immigration
Making such a huge deal about his immigration policies during the election, it was only a matter of time before Trump took real action as president. At the end of this first week, Trump’s order became official. This order blocks refugees from entering the United States for 120 days and bans Syrian refugees from entering indefinitely. The order also states that immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries will not be allowed to enter the United States for 90 days, and even more absurdly, if U.S. citizens originally from these countries leave the United States, they might not be able to get back in. The order as a whole has caused an uproar, with many claiming that Trump is acting on nothing more than “xenophobia,” sparking protest and controversy worldwide.
No matter what side of the Trump debate you’re on, we’re all in this for the long run. This past week has been our first glimpse of what the next four years will look like, and as long as we can learn to put our differences aside and stay strong, especially in a campus as diverse as ours here at State, we’ll all be able to make it through.
