Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. These days, when a president makes an important speech, you can expect to read her insights on it in her column in the Wall Street Journal. She may offer praise or critique. But what I really look for is her discernment of the speaker’s motivations and her knack for explaining why this particular president said what he said.

As President Trump delivered his inaugural address, I kept thinking that it sounded like a campaign speech.    That didn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing to me. I learned later that lots of people made the same observation. Trump hit his campaign themes hard. This, says Peggy Noonan, was by design.

“The essential message:” she wrote was, “Remember those things I said in the campaign? I meant them. I meant it all.”

President Trump made some big promises in the speech. Some appeal to most Americans:

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”
Of the myriad inner city problems, President Trump said, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
He said we’ll “unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.”

Can an administration really do these things? Will President Trump take his promises seriously? Will he get right to work? Where will he start?

There are things the new administration can do right away to get the ball rolling on promise-keeping and it actually did a couple of them on Day One.

Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, had a column published last week in The Hill entitled, 6 ways Trump can advance religious freedom in his first 100 days. Kelly writes:

“First, and perhaps most ironically, ministries and churches need immediate relief.” He explains, “…ministries have faced crippling, multi-million dollar fines unless they participate in insurance that provides abortion pills and contraceptives against their faith. The government dogmatically continues this threat. But President Trump can eliminate this threat through executive action.”

On Day 1, President Trump signed two executive orders that begin to fulfill this item on First Liberty’s wish list. One of the executive orders declares an immediate freeze on any new federal regulations. The other directs agencies to grant relief to all constituencies affected by the Affordable Care Act. Over the previous few days, federal agencies had been rushing to write as many regulations as they could before the new administration took power. The Trump orders call a halt to the regulation-writing and begin the process of reversing burdensome ACA regulations, some of which force businesses and non-profits to violate the faith convictions of their owners or sponsoring organizations.

It’s heartening to see this move to unwind repressive regulation. You can read Kelly Shackelford’s other 5 recommendations here. Hopefully the new administration works quickly to implement all of them.