Trump Signs Orders On Birthright Citizenship, Immigration Emergency Declaration

• Gives Cuba cold shoulders

Returnee United States (US) President Donald Trump has signed executive orders declaring illegal immigration at the U.S-Mexico border a national emergency, designating criminal cartels as terrorist organizations, and targeting automatic citizenship for U.S-born children of immigrants in the country illegally.

According to Reuters reports, the 47th American President also signed an order expected to suspend the U.S. refugee resettlement programme for four months, although the text of the orders was not immediately available.

However, there are already scathing criticisms of President Trump’s action as Birthright citizenship, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on US soil, is protected by the 14th amendment and experts cautioned that any attempt to revoke it will likely bring immediate legal challenges.

Goes Tough On Cuba
Fast forward, President Trump has also rescinded Joe Biden’s removal of Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, undoing one of Biden’s final foreign policy acts as President.

During Trump’s first hours in office, he moved to undo a slew of his predecessor’s executive actions as president. Biden’s decision to remove Cuba’s status as a sponsor of terrorism was the product of a deal brokered by the Vatican to lift economic sanctions on Cuba in exchange for prisoners held there. Meanwhile, a US political commentator and scholar, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, focusing on authoritarianism, has described Elon Musk’s apparent fascist salutes on inauguration day as “a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too”.

Flurry Of Executive Orders
In a flurry of first-day-in-office penmanship, Donald Trump has signed an order to rename the 617,800 sq mile Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s 20,000ft Denali.

The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America, and Denali, the highest mountain in North America, will revert to Mount McKinley, which it was called before Barack Obama changed the name in 2015.

The order directs the secretary of the interior, nominated by Trump to be North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, to change the change names in federal communications and on official maps. It will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.

“President McKinley championed tariffs to protect US manufacturing, boost domestic production, and drive US industrialization and global reach to new heights,” the order reads.

Mount McKinley was officially named in honor of William McKinley in 1917, 16 years after he was assassinated during a public appearance in Buffalo, New York, though it was unofficially named McKinley in 1896 by a gold prospector.

Obama changed the name to Denali – the name given it by Koyukon speakers of the Koyukon Athabaskans in western interior Alaska.

The name change is said to be of special significance to the new president because he sees a kinship with McKinley. At a rally in December, Trump praised McKinley as “a great president, very good president. At a minimum, he was a very good businessman. He was a businessman, then a governor, very successful businessman.”

Trump discussed the Gulf of Mexico name change earlier this month in a speech on tariffs.

“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring. That covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name – and it’s appropriate,” Trump declared. – With The Guardian report