Criminal Law Library Blog
President Donald Trump’s second term began with a whirlwind of executive actions, sparking sharply divided reactions from the left and right. While Trump’s policies focused on immigration, energy, federal employment, and high-profile pardons, the responses have highlighted ideological divides:
The Right’s Perspective:
- Many on the right criticized Trump’s sweeping pardons for January 6 rioters, with outlets like National Review calling it a mistake that undermines law and order.
- Others praised his energy policies, arguing they signal a return to “energy realism” and a rejection of ineffective climate policies (New York Post).
- Trump’s immigration orders were viewed by some as proof that the border crisis could have been addressed during the Biden administration without new legislation (The Federalist).
The Left’s Perspective:
- The left condemned Trump’s mass pardons, with the New York Times editorial board describing them as a “mockery of justice” and a reward for political violence.
- Legal experts argued that his attempt to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional and could cause widespread harm, even if it is ultimately struck down (MSNBC).
- Analysts noted that Trump’s shock-and-awe strategy has desensitized Americans to his actions, fostering muted reactions compared to his first term (The Atlantic).
This polarized reception underscores how Trump’s policies, including denying birthright citizenship, declaring an energy emergency, and withdrawing from global agreements, reflect his effort to shift policy priorities sharply and redefine political norms.
Below is an excerpt from President Trumps First Days in Office, a posting published in the January 23, 2025, issue of Tangle ,“an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day.” The following excerpt discusses reactions from both the Right and Left in greater detail than the above introduction:
“What the right is saying.
- The right has differing reactions to the orders, but many view the broad pardons for Jan. 6 rioters as a mistake.
- Some praise Trump’s energy-related orders as a welcome change from Biden’s policies.
- Others say Trump’s immigration orders demonstrate how to address the border crisis through executive action alone.
National Review’s editors wrote ‘pardoning capitol rioters is no way to restore law and order.’
‘The riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a national disgrace. It was also a crime. Protesters physically forced Congress to adjourn its constitutionally mandated joint session and evacuate the building. There were assaults on police, theft, and an estimated $2.88 million in damage to property,’ the editors said. However, ‘the Justice Department deployed extraordinary and disproportionate resources to punish the protesters, holding many of them in extended pretrial detention far from home for months. The Supreme Court concluded that one of the major federal statutes deployed against the January 6 defendants had been strained by prosecutors beyond its language.’
‘Trump will be able to use the political cover provided by the abusive last-minute pardons handed out by Joe Biden. While Biden’s scandalous pardons will undercut the credibility of Democrats’ criticisms of the January 6 pardons, they don’t justify them,’ the editors wrote. ‘Societies must resist disorder, riots, political violence, and mob rule. They can and must use the criminal justice system to punish those who engage in such acts. The more dramatic the offense, the greater the case for exemplary punishment. The real scandal is not that violent rioters were charged on this occasion but that they were let off on so many other occasions. Imitating a mistake only compounds the original mistake.’”
In The New York Post, Emmet Penney said Trump’s orders ‘[lead] the US toward energy abundance.’
‘On Monday, Donald Trump jolted America out of decades of bad energy policy with the stroke of his pen… The age of climate extremism is over; the age of energy realism is upon us,’ Penney wrote. ‘Trump slashed the Biden EPA’s electric vehicle mandate, a coercive maneuver that sought to bully Americans into swapping their affordable internal-combustion-engine cars for pricey electric ones. Trump also stripped out the Biden Energy Department’s attempt to ban gas appliances, yet another inflationary policy that put working people in its crosshairs.’
‘None of this should be read as a dismissal of the reality of climate change but as a much-needed halt to ineffective policies that, in practice, have done nothing to solve that problem,’ Penney said. ‘Both the American people and big banks see the writing on the wall. Most Americans rank climate change toward the bottom of issues they care about… With these executive actions, Trump declared his refusal to let America join hands with its allies as they march into the gray garden of managed decline.’
In The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson argued “Trump’s executive orders on immigration prove Biden could have secured the border at any time.”
‘One of the first things President Donald Trump did after being sworn in at the inauguration Monday was sign a series of executive orders on immigration and the border. A few of them stand out because they demonstrate how the border could have been secured at any point over the past four years by the Biden administration, without any action or new legislation from Congress,’ Davidson wrote. Trump ‘declared an emergency at the border and ordered the U.S. military to immediately resume construction of the border wall, which Biden had abruptly halted upon taking office… Trump also ordered an immediate end to the use of the CBP One app that the Biden administration had used to dole out mass paroles for illegal border-crossers.’
‘The Biden administration could have done all of this — or it could have simply left in place Trump’s border policies,’ Davidson added. ‘What we saw Monday with the enacting of these executive orders from Trump (the first of many) is that a secure border was always within reach these past four years. Biden and the Democrats sold out their fellow Americans, threw open the borders, and then pretended they had no choice in the matter, that forces beyond their control had triggered a mass immigration crisis.’
What the left is saying.
- The left is critical of Trump’s actions, particularly his sweeping pardons.
- Some suggest his effort to end birthright citizenship will fail.
- Others say Trump has conditioned voters to rationalize his most radical ideas.
The New York Times editorial board wrote about “Trump’s opening act of contempt.”
‘Mr. Trump’s mass pardon effectively makes a mockery of a justice system that has labored for four years to charge nearly 1,600 people who tried to stop the Constitution in its tracks… Most important, the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisers,’ the board said. ‘It loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.’
‘Mr. Biden issued dubious pardons to his son and, as he walked out the door, several other family members, as well as pre-emptive pardons to an array of current and former government officials for noncriminal actions,’ the board wrote. ‘But what Mr. Trump did Monday is of an entirely different scope. He used a mass pardon at the beginning of his term to write a false chapter of American history, to try to erase a crime committed against the foundations of American democracy. To open his term with such an act of contempt toward the legal system is audacious, even for Mr. Trump, and should send an alarming signal to Democrats and Republicans alike.’
In MSNBC, Ray Brescia argued “Trump cannot simply erase birthright citizenship.”
‘Just as a president does not have the authority to establish a national religion, or stay in office for a third term, the president does not have the authority to erase protections set forth in an amendment to the Constitution. To claim such authority is cynical at best, a sop to nativist elements on the right that should not survive legal challenge,’ Brescia said. ‘But, in the meantime, millions of lives could be thrown into disarray with the president’s stroke of the pen, and perhaps that’s the point.’
‘What would it really take to rewrite the 14th Amendment? Well, another amendment, which would require not just a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress in favor of repeal of the 14th Amendment, but also ratification by three quarters of the states. Such events are highly unlikely. The Constitution is hard to amend, as it should be. And the notion that the president can sidestep that process is simply preposterous,’ Brescia wrote. ‘Now, that likely will not stop the president and those who wish to see the end of birthright citizenship as enshrined in the Constitution from trying… That does not change the fact that the Constitution protects this path to citizenship and only an amendment to the Constitution can change it.’
In The Atlantic, David A. Graham said Trump’s second term is “already different” than the first.
‘Barely 24 hours into this new presidency, Trump has already taken a series of steps that would have caused widespread outrage and mass demonstrations if he had taken them during his first day, week, or year as president, in 2017,’ Graham wrote. ‘Although it is early, these steps have, for the most part, been met with muted response, including from a dazed left and press corps. That’s a big shift from eight years ago, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington, and Americans flocked to airports at midnight to try to thwart Trump’s travel ban.
‘The difference arises from three big factors. First, Trump has worked hard to desensitize the population to his most outrageous statements… Second, Trump has figured out the value of a shock-and-awe strategy. By signing so many controversial executive orders at once, he’s made it difficult for anyone to grasp the scale of the changes he’s made,”’ Graham said. “Third, American society has changed. People aren’t just less outraged by things Trump is doing; almost a decade of the Trump era has shifted some aspects of American culture far to the right.’ ”