Deportation Cannot Come Soon Enough

"We see on our own streets antisemitism guided by obscene woke ideologies that have led to an explosion in hate crimes."

"We must not just condemn these things, we must take action."

"We must deport from our country any temporary resident that is here on a permit or a visa that is carrying out violence or hate crimes on our soil."

"Canada is in a dark place of rampant antisemitism." 

"[We pledge] to restore a Canada where Jews are able to live fearlessly and unapologetically Jewish lives."

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre

Protesters took to the streets of downtown Montreal on Jan. 16 to celebrate the Gaza ceasefire announcement Photo Andraé Lerone Lewis

 

In an address at the Ottawa official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony, Pierre Poilievre who is poised to become Canada's next prime minister, addressed the attendees with his proposal to deport participants in hate activities specializing in radical anti-Israel, anti-Jew rallies that have become a regular feature of Canada's city streets. The calls for the destruction of Israel, the unending harassment and threats against Canadian Jews have become rampant and forthright in their unadulterated antisemitic rage. The temporary ceasefire in Gaza only appeared to serve as an impetus for greater calls of a 'final solution'.

Organized and led by invested groups that include Toronto4Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement and student groups such as McGill University's Students for Palestine's Honour and Resistance, since the barbaric atrocities of October 7, 2023 these foreign-fed radical hate-fests have become common sights of disruption, threats, and violence across Canada. Hundreds of rallies, blockades, encampments and efforts at boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses have taken place. Rallies in front of synagogues, Jewish parochial schools, and Jewish neighbourhoods have disrupted life for city residents, while focusing hate on Canadian Jews.

 

 

In the immediate wake of the October 7, 2023 sadistic savagery when thousands of Palestinian terrorists swarmed into Israel from Gaza to surround and enter agricultural kibbutzim, families were burned alive in their homes, young Israelis attending a Nova Music Festival were stalked, hunted and murdered, women were sadistically mutilated while being raped, children and the elderly were gunned down and these unspeakably brutal acts of inhumanity became a reason for celebration for the groups that now call for Israel's destruction.

It took no time for the celebrations to turn into demands for a ceasefire and charges of Israel committing a 'genocide' in Gaza. Not the Hamas terrorists whose deliberate use of the Palestinian population in Gaza as human shields, committing a crime against their own, but Israel in defending her population from the drive of Palestinian terrorists to slaughter Jews. Cause and effect that is rational and a just response is an infuriating injustice to the Palestinians who clog city streets in Canada demanding Israel's demise, and along with the state, the Jews inhabiting it.

As police stood by mutely observing, jubilant crowds in Montreal blocked intersections, chanting in Arabic, lighting smoke bombs, led by the Palestinian Youth Movement, to mark the ceasefire with a 'victory' rally through the downtown, a banner reading "Ceasefire Today. Liberation Tomorrow."

 

 

An official Facebook post by Montreal4Palestine promoted a rally titled 'From Gaza to Jenin, Liberate all of Palestine, which read: "The bloodthirsty Zionists will stop at nothing to continue their evil and oppression".

 

Where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saw fit to do nothing to deter rampaging mobs of antisemites on steroids, preferring to allow them to act without interference by law and order, despite their disruptive and criminal actions, thus giving a muted assent to the ongoing furor and increasing violence, the position taken by the leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons will shortly have the opportunity to return Canada to its values-based commitment to human rights and support of a fellow democracy assailed by the scourge of terrorism.

Pro-Palestinian supporters react in downtown Montreal to the Israel-Hamas ceasefire Jan. 15, 2025. Dave Sidaway Montreal Gazette

Trans To The Barricades!!!

"[Service by troops who identify as a gender other than their biological one] conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honourable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life [and is harmful to military readiness, requiring a revised policy to address the matter]."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump

"The law is very clear that the government can't base policies on disapproval of particular groups of people."

"That's animus, and animus-based laws are presumed to be invalid and unconstitutional."

Shannon Minter, legal director, National Center for Lesbian Rights

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

It took no time at all after the Presidential inauguration ceremonies, for President Trump to begin signing executive orders in alteration of many initiatives undertaken by the previous Biden administration. One of which was a return to his previous presidential order negating the military service of transgender people in the United States military. Most recently an executive order whose purpose was to direct incoming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to look to revising the policy on transgender groups in the Pentagon. Inevitably leading to a ban on military service for transgenders in the United States.

This was, of course, an entirely expected move, much mentioned as a promise during President Trump's election campaign. In addition to which troops who had left the military of their own volition rather than accepting mandatory COVID 19 vaccinations (including those who had been drummed out of the military for the same reason), are to be reinstated. 

Advocacy groups anticipated the order and they lost no time in reacting, by opposing the order and launching lawsuits. The first of which w as set to be filed the day following the order. Legal teams had for years fought the Republican ban on transgender troops, dating from the first Trump administration. The Supreme Court at that time allowed the ban to take effect, irrespective of the fact that it was  still being brought before the courts. And when Joe Biden took the presidency, he scrapped the order.

Transgender people in the U.S. say they’re worried about what’s to come after President Donald Trump signed an executive order saying his government only recognizes two sexes that are assigned at birth. Still from video/CBC

The National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law are now filing a challenge to the executive order in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, while also challenging the executive order citing equal protection. No official data exists on transgender personnel serving in the U.S. military, but there is an informal number of some fifteen thousand.

The new executive order differs from the 2017 Trump administration ban, in that it not only bans all future transgender personnel from serving, but as well has the potential to target all current transgender troops, according to Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

"[We do not comment on pending or ongoing litigation but we] will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives."

Pentagon statement

The Cynical Hypocrisy of the International Community

"Relatively many people survived, which for example barely happened in sites which didn't have such a forced labour component."

"[As testimony to the past purpose of Auschwitz, maintaining the death camp as a memorial site has its value]: You have the gate [Arbeit Macht Frei], you have the wagon [transport]. You have the incredibly long railway platform which leads to the former crematoria and gas chambers."

Thomas Van de Putte, scholar specializing in Holocaust memory, King's College London

"I saw thousands of tortured people whom the Red Army had saved -- people so thin that they swayed like branches in the wind, people whose ages one could not possibly guess."

Boris Polevoy, Pravda correspondent, eyewitness to Soviet liberation of Auschwitz Jan.27, 1945

"This is the anniversary of liberation. We remember the victims, but we also celebrate freedom."

"It is hard to imagine the presence of Russia, which clearly does not understand the value of freedom."

Auschwitz Museum director Piotr Cywinski

The entrance gate to the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz pictured on January 10.    Kacper Pempel/Reuters

 

The world is set to mark the 80th anniversary of the most dreadful mass atrocity that a country at war designed in an orgy of hatred against an ethnic population drawn from the countries of Europe whose citizenry included millions of diaspora Jews forced in antiquity from their ancestral homeland for exile abroad by a Roman occupation of the holy land that implacably put down an insurrection of Judean origin in a paroxysm of violence that millennia later was replicated with more modern and equally savage technological means of broader dimensions.

It is highly doubtful that Romans of the period felt it incumbent upon themselves to harvest the hair, skeletal remains, attire, gold dental fillings, marriage rings, to enrich themselves and produce stuffing for pillows, the production of soap from the remains of their victims as Nazi Germany felt disposed to do. The slaughter of children, women and men of all ages may be a casualty of war anywhere at any time when civilian populations bear the brunt of conflict that uproots and victimizes them in loss of home, necessities of life and life itself, but Nazi Germany brought its obsession with the extermination of Jews to a fine art.

This photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial shows a German soldier shooting a Ukrainian Jew during a mass execution in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, sometime between 1941 and 1943. This image is titled "The last Jew in Vinnitsa", the text that was written on the back of the photograph, which was found in a photo album belonging to a German soldier

 

It took an orgy of mass dementia to organize round-ups, persuade populations that a nest of vipers lived amongst them that German authorities prepared to save them from, infesting those non-Jewish citizens with a suspicion and loathing of Jews they had lived among for centuries to convince them that the goal of extermination would make for a more refined, pure society once the presence of Jews was eliminated. People adapted nicely and deliberately turned their faces away from the putrid agonies of exclusion and humiliation their fellow Jewish citizens suffered, glad when they suddenly vanished into slave labour camps since out of sight, out of mind was a great relief,

Now, generations after the Holocaust for most people inhabiting our familiar world the memory of mass annihilation is beyond faint and growing fainter. Just as the thousands of Jews who managed miraculously to survive have grown old and are growing older, their witness status soon to fade itself, in and out of history. To be sure, others besides Jews died; political prisoners, Poles, Roma, Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, but it was Europe's Jews that comprised the target focus.

 

This year, on the 80th anniversary memorializing the Holocaust, an estimated 50 survivors are expected to be present, and they will speak to the world once again of their loss, their ordeal, their endurance, their unforgettable memories. Two-thirds of the Jews of Europe perished in that orgy of hate and demonic destruction of human life. They were murdered in the death camps established all over Europe, places like Treblinka, Majdanek, Stutthof, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen among a plethora of others. 

There were survivors at Auschwitz for the simple reason that though it was a death camp it also was a labour camp. Where those who survived the journey to Auschwitz in crowded train transports were separated on arrival into groups deemed sufficiently healthy to work, the others directed to groups who would enter the 'shower rooms' where they were gassed to death with Zyklon B, their remnants cremated in giant furnaces, their ashes belched out of massive chimneys to nurture the surrounding soil.

Presidents, royalty, ambassadors, politicians, rabbis and priests will be among those in attendance to memorialize the fixation of a nation and a continent on the destruction of a tiny ethnic/cultural/religious group that had lived among them for  generations, enriching those countries with their presence as artists, scientists, teachers, factory workers, lawyers, doctors, justices, soldiers, entertainment figures, industrialists, bankers and journalists, bakers and cobblers.

 

The royalty, presidents, ambassadors, politicians and priests of the time who failed to exert their moral outrage over the persecution, then the demonization, then the isolation, then the ghettoization, then the imprisonment and finally the murder of six million Jews were in a very real sense complicit with the perpetrators of the vast act of genocide. Their present day counterparts are in a very real sense not much different than those during the Holocaust who couldn't be moved to make an effort at prevention and deterrence.

The rising tide of antisemitism which bears such an uncanny resemblance to that of the 1930s and 1940s and the growing calls of accusations against a tiny Jewish state established in its ancestral geography to restore pride in Judaic heritage but above all to give strength to the cry of "Never Again!" by its pledge to protect and guide Jews into the future is once again under existential threat. Collegial nations of the West, supporters of the Jewish state, have managed to remain on the sidelines once again, leaving Israel and Jews to their own defense.

The ruins of the sprawling Birkenau site stretch far into the distance

Release of Israeli Hostages

"Dear President Trump, first of all we want to say thank you for the happy moments we felt this week. But we want to tell you we still have 94 hostages, we need them all at home."

"Please do not stop. Please continue to press and do everything so that all the 94 hostages will come home immediately."

Ayelet Samerano, Israeli mother of hostage Yonatan Samerano

Israeli female soldier hostages Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev and Liri Albag seen on a stage set up by Hamas in front of a Palestinian crowd before being handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza City, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Abed Hajjar)

On Saturday, four members of the Israeli military, taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023 during a horrific orgy of mass rape, mutilations,and mass murder, were released finally from their ordeal as captive prisoners held in Gaza by Hamas operatives. They were all four female soldiers: Karina Ariev, 20; Danielia Gilboa,20; Naama Levy, 20; and Liri Albag, 19. 

 

Naama Levy captured the world's attention, her plight seen through photographs and video footage taken by bodycams worn by Hamas operatives as they documented their horrific abuse of Israeli citizens in border farming communities by thousands of Palestinian terrorists prowling through villages killing and raping and looting, laying waste to the villages, burning entire families alive in their homes, hunting down youthful revellers at a nearby music festival, and taking hundreds of children, women, elderly and soldiers hostage into Gaza.

 

One of those soldiers was Naana Levy, seen in the trunk of a car and ordered into another one, her pants bloodied, hands tied behind her back, ankles bleeding, deliberately slashed to keep her from attempting to flee her captors who had raped and mutilated her. Seven female members of the Israel Defense Forces had been taken prisoner that day, from the Nahal Oz military base. Their duty there was to serve as lookouts.

 

Ori Megidish, one of the seven, was rescued on October 30, 2023 in a raid conducted by the IDF. Noa Marciano, 19, killed in Gaza, her body repatriated on November 17, 2023. Among the 33 hostages named by the Israeli government for release during the first phase of the temporary ceasefire is the fifth female soldier, Agam Berger. Israel agreed to free dozens of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails for terrorist activities in exchange for the hostages.

Hamas terrirusts stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds

In Israel's estimation, a third of the 94 Israeli hostages remaining in Hamas hands in Gaza, are dead although Hamas has failed to release agreed upon definitive information detailing how many of the Israelis held captive remain alive, or listing the names of those who have died. The initial phase of the ceasefire deal is to see 33 of the hostages released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held prisoner in Israel.

 

It took 90 Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of the first three Israeli hostages a week ago Sunday. Some 100 of the hostages had been released through a brief ceasefire in November of 2023. Since then, the bodies of around three dozen hostages have been recovered, and eight hostages were rescued. "We cannot continue living in uncertainty. All hostages must return, and none of them has time left", cautioned Ayelet Samerano. 

Naama Levy (L) is seen with her hands bound and with a bloodied face in the newly released video footage, which was filmed by Hamas terrorists  Hostages and Missing Families Forum

North Korean Arms and Servicemen Fighting Ukraine

"These are barely trained troops led by Russian officers who they don't understand."

"Quite frankly they don't stand a chance. They are being thrown into the meat grinder with little chance of survival. They are cannon fodder, and the Russian officers care even less for them than they do for their own men."

Former British Army tank commander, Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

 

"They are numerous. An additional 11,000-12,000 highly motivated and well-prepared soldiers who are conducting offensive actions."

"They operate based on Soviet tactics. They act in platoons, companies. They rely on their numbers." 

Ukraine's top military commander Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi

Russian soldiers firing rockets toward the front lines near Lyman, Ukraine, on Dec. 25.  Stanislav Krasilnikov / Sputnik via AP

North Korea sent hundreds of artillery and rocket systems to Russia and more on their way, in solidarity with Russia in its war against Ukraine. Moscow received a large boost in its agreement with Pyongyang over a mutual defence solution to two outlier countries facing off against a world hostile to their plans of nuclear proliferation and territorial expansion. Russian troops have been fortified by the presence of troops from North Korea, helping in the campaign to push Ukrainian servicemen out of the Kursk region.

 

Clashes between Ukrainian armed forces and North Korean troops have added to the merciless death toll, with Ukraine estimating that a third of the 10,000 North Korean soldiers sent to aid Russia have perished in the conflict. The death toll has been ignored by both Moscow and Pyongyang. 

Ukrainian intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov stated that North Korea has provided Russia with roughly 120 17mmn self-propelled artillery guns and 120 240mm multiple-launch rocket systems in the last three months. It is his conviction that this is just the start, that North Korea "have a lot of these systems" and will provide at least as many more in the near future. 

General Budanov's comments and estimates have been confirmed, matching reports by Russian military bloggers relating to the steady flow of weapons from North Korea to Russia. Lt. Gen. Budanov added that North Korea also is expected to forward 150 additional KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles in 2025 to Moscow, to add to the 148 provided in 2024.

Months earlier it was confirmed that up to 10,000 North Korean elite troops had been deployed to fight in Ukraine under Russian command. According to Budanov, the actual number is around 12,000 troops, one-third of whom are now casualties in a death-toll that is decimating the North Koreans. According to U.S. figures however, the death toll estimates are lower, at around 1,200.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed on January 11 that Ukraine had captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia, transporting them to Kyiv for interrogation. "This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea's involvement in the war against Ukraine", the message on his Instagram post read.

Testimony from Ukrainian servicemen who fought against the North Koreans related that their adversaries are brave and well trained. The North Koreans -- said the Ukrainian soldiers -- adapted quickly after taking high initial casualties, to the unfamiliar Russian battlefields.

Image published by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said to be of a North Korean soldier sent to fight for Russia. Photograph: EyePress News/Rex/Shutterstock

 

Placement of Homeless Shelters in Urban Toronto

629 Adelaide St. W., which Toronto plans to use as a 50-bed emergency shelter with estimated operating and leasing costs of $45 million over 10 years. It is close to St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

"If you're wondering what it's like to live in Toronto..."

"[Instead of] assuring the neighbourhood their concerns would be heard [Mayor Olivia Chow] bemoaned the fact that the neigbourhood had been tipped off! These things are supposed to be secret, so no one can oppose them!"

"Our community is frustrated by the complete lack of communication with the city."

"We would like to have our concerns heard and know the risks involved. What we have right now, through, is crickets."

"Our community understands the need for homeless shelters. This is not up for debate. It is important, however, that when choosing the site for a new shelter, it has to work for both the residents of the community where it is located, and the people who will be using the shelter."

Jennifer Hedger, Scarborough, Ontario

"People are demanding to be heard."

"They think it's incredibly unfair that they are having this decision undemocratically forced on them."

"They're not saying don't do this. What they're saying is give us a seat at the table."

"They're concerned about safety."

Kevin Vuong, Area Member of Parliament

Montreal’s École Victor-Rousselot is just down the street from Maison Benoit Labre transitional housing and inhalation centre. Photo by John Mahoney/MONTREAL GAZETTE

In the larger of Canadian cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa the demand for beds has soared owing to a skyrocketing increase in immigrants seeking refugee status. Just as their presence has become a weight on all social services while their sheer numbers impact deleteriously on the need to focus on the plight of Canadians who have fallen on hard times, the need to further provide illegal migrants invoking refugee haven in Canada has placed unsupportable stress on already-overworked and inadequate homeless shelters. 

In 2024, a quarter of a million people entered Canada to apply for refugee status, some 20 times the number for all of 2014. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) released The Shelter Safety Study revealing, among other issues that the annual number of incidents of interpersonal violence taking place in Toronto shelters had increased by 293 percent between 2011 and 2021, at a time when daily service users increased by 66 percent. In addition, incidents including violence rose from about 2,000 per year in 2011 to 10,000 in 2021.

An estimated half of the unhoused population in Toronto struggles with a substance use disorder, compelling reason for the city to be upfront with residents and business owners on where planning for shelter placements are set for, before they become a fait accompli, to be absolutely fair to  nearby residents who learn to their dismay through a grapevine, and not consultation or official statements that their neighbourhoods are slated to host homeless shelters ... and all too often in close proximity to schools.

Toronto’s 25 Augusta Ave. St. Felix Respite Centre gained international attention when a mother of three posted videos of the open drug use and graphic violence her young family was witness to. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

A troubling lack of transparency and the city's documented inability to follow through on its commitment to see that the facilities are well managed and don't present as a danger to residents makes residents extremely and understandably upset, sending them in droves to confront city officials, demanding accountability. The unsettling situation isn't Toronto's alone. Hundreds of residents gathered at Richmond, British Columbia's city hall protesting a proposed injection site they were told nothing about, to be placed in their neighbourhood.

In Montreal, a coalition came together when parents, residents and businesses found themselves blindsided with news of a building under construction meant to be used as a shelter with a supervised injection component. Located a mere few metres from a fenced-in park used for recesses and lunch breaks by an adjacent elementary school.

 

In November 2024, Kanata residents in Ottawa’s west end protested plans to erect “sprung structures” — giant platformed tents — at a park-and-ride lot. Photo by Ashley Fraser/Postmedia News

The Ottawa suburb of Kanata saw protests against the plan by the city to erect a series of sprung structures" (giant platformed tents) at a local commuter park-and-ride for the purpose of accommodating asylum seekers. Residents complained that no community consultation had taken place prior to the announcement. In Peterborough, Ontario the Police Chief stated his force would no longer encourage drug users to relocate to the injection site; henceforth anyone caught using illicit substances outside of the site would be subject to search, their drugs seized, and they possible arrests.

In Scarborough, east Toronto, residents concerned of safety learned through a tip-off, that a respite centre was meant to be placed on one side of the St.Mary's Catholic Elementary School, and a supervised injection site would be placed on the other side of the school. A situation that saw concentrated drug activity in the immediate area. "We see it already. We find needles and condoms at the school", complained one outraged parent. 

A representative of the Catholic school board who supervised three city schools stated: "There's no amount of community liaison you can do with these centres that stops the problems -- which is what children see". School custodians had to be trained to deal with needles, condoms and human waste. No choice was left eventually but to erect massive security fences. "The school is starting to look like a prison -- not super-max but definitely medium security."

Professor Michael MacKenzie whose work at McGill University in psychiatry and pediatrics studies "the trauma-informed treatment of mental health and addictions". He wrote a column titled "A case study on how not to build community trust", setting the record straight on what he and his neighbours close to a site had been experiencing: groups of people injecting drugs, assaults, a man with his pants down masturbating in front of a neighbour's window in broad daylight, and sex acts on the sidewalk.

A supervised injection site opened in 2017 near St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School in Toronto, forcing the board to train staff to deal with needles, condoms and human waste and, eventually, erect tall security fences. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

"You think it's safe when a bullet comes flying out of one of these sites in Toronto to kill a mother?"

"You think it's safe to have people using heroin and crack and cocaine next to a playground?"

"[Supervised injection sites] They're drug dens. And they've made everything worse everywhere they've been done."

Leader of the Parliamentary opposition Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre

Accelerated Business through Executive Orders --- Day One

"Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced."

"[I have] a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal. [My administration will] give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and indeed their freedom. From this moment on, America's decline s over."

"I was saved by God to make America great again."

"The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons."

"The entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society."

"Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback. But as you see, here I am today. The American people have spoken."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up an executive order commuting sentences for people convicted of Jan. 6 offenses in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday, his first day in office for his second term. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

 

Sworn in as 47th president, in his second term of office, Mr. Trump promised to deliver a "revolution of common sense" as he set out to reshape American institutions. Immediately on his resumption of office, dozens of executive orders awaited his signature. Orders to clamp down on illegal border crossings, to increase fossil fuel development, and above all, to end diversity and inclusion programs throughout the federal government. He is on a mission to address a "crisis of trust".

A border app named CBP One allowing almost a million people to legally enter the United States with eligibility for employment has been ended. On the Customs and Border Protection website Monday a notice appeared alerting users that the app used to permit migrants to schedule appointments at eight southwest border ports of entry, is no longer available for use. Appointments that had been scheduled were cancelled. This route to entry was seen as overly generous, a magnet for people to  arrive at the Mexican border with the U.S.

Protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs within government have vanished with the signing of executive orders. No longer will efforts to "socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life" be countenanced. Another order declares that the federal government would henceforth recognize two immutable sexes; male and female. Women are to be protected thereby from "gender extremism". Requirements at government facilities and workplaces making it mandatory that transgender people be referred to with pronouns aligning with their gender would be rescinded, considered violations of the First Amendment's freedom of speech and religion.

Predictably, civil rights groups are on standby preparing to challenge these orders. "Welcome home", departing President Joe Biden said to incoming Trump. Following the inauguration ceremony, President Trump walked Mr. Biden to the Capitol's east side, where a helicopter awaited Biden to begin his post-presidential life. In acknowledgement that the inauguration took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President Trump remarked: "We will strive together to make his dreams a reality", thanking Black and Latino voters for their November support.

From, day one of his new presidency, first actions include the declaration of a national emergency at the southern border where deportations are to begin with "millions  and millions of criminal aliens". Monday executive actions include measures to deploy the military and the National Guard to complete barrier construction along the U.S.-Mexico border. Refugee resettlement is to be suspended for at least four months to enable authorities to designate foreign gangs as "global terrorists". Automatic citizenship will no longer be recognized for anyone born in the United States to undocumented immigrants.

Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office Monday. During his first term, Trump signed 220 executive orders. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)