Trump Unveils Four New Executive Orders, Including Plans for U.S. 'Iron Dome'

Trump Unveils Four New Executive Orders, Including Plans for U.S. ‘Iron Dome’

United States President Donald Trump has announced that he will sign an executive order requiring the building an “Iron Dome” missile defense program.

In the morning, Trump spoke at a gathering of Republican members at his southern Florida golf club called the Trump National Doral Miami, where he pledged to boost US military assets by taking executive actions late in the night.

“We have to have a strong defense,” Trump stated onstage. “And I’ll be signing four new executive orders in a little while.”

The first step, he said, consisted of “immediately beginning the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be able to protect Americans.”

Two other orders, he said, would focus on eliminating diversity equity and inclusive (DEI) initiatives and removing “transgender ideology the hell out of our military.”

A fourth-order could also restore service members who were discharged due to their refusal to comply with the mandates of the COVID-19 epidemic. Nearly 8,000 of them were dismissed from August 2021 until January 2023.

Trump stated that the move was crucial to ensure that the US is “the most lethal fighting force in the world.”

A flurry of executive orders

The announcement on Monday was yet another step in a wave of executive action Trump has carried out since his return to his White House on January 20.

According to the officials, Trump signed a record number of executive orders on his first day as president, which amounted to 42 memorandums, orders, and proclamations.

The majority of those orders were related to questions of social and immigration. For instance, he proposed an effort to revoke birthright citizenship, a legal right guaranteed by the Constitution that grants all citizens born within the US with American citizenship.

Some of his earlier executive decrees overlapped those announced on Monday.

He called for the ending of the government’s DEI programs, which were accused of being responsible for “illegal and immoral discrimination.” He also issued an additional order declaring that the identity of gender is “not changeable.”

The most recent set of directives directly addresses the composition of the US military and its strategic priorities.

Monday’s directives, for instance, are a reference to the “transgender military ban” that Trump had in place in 2017 during his first year in office. The ban was later rescinded by President Joe Biden in 2021.

About 8,000 members of the military are transgender. However, many are afraid to identify themselves in public.

These executive decrees that Trump released were also released on the same day as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s inaugural day at the Pentagon.

Hegseth, a veteran of the military veteran and former Fox News host, has before criticized what he called a “woke” ideology overtaking the army and has questioned whether women should have the right to participate in combat roles.

As the head of the Pentagon, Hegseth has committed to overseeing the massive overhaul of the military’s management and restoring the “warrior culture” in the army.

Hesketh has fought allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual assault to be voted into his position with the support of fifty Republican senators on Friday.

Three Republicans, including the former Senate president Mitch McConnell, opposed his nomination.

Building an ‘Iron Dome’

Trump’s executive order to construct the “Iron Dome” fulfills a commitment made by the Republican leader during the campaign.

Iron Dome Iron Dome refers to a US-funded air defense system in Israel that intercepts and detects missiles coming in.

Trump has repeatedly stated his ambition to surpass the Israeli Iron Dome system in his campaign for re-election in 2024.

In a broadcast in August on Social Media Platform X, He stated that billionaire Elon Musk would construct “the best Iron Dome in the world.”

He included the Iron Dome proposal in July to the official Republican Party platform.

However, military experts have frequently doubted whether such a system is necessary or feasible for the US.

The system that is in use in Israel is currently only protecting against rockets with low power and mortars. In addition, Israel is just about equal to New Jersey, one of the smaller states in the United States.

Establishing such a system for large areas of the US mainland would be prohibitive in terms of cost and inadequate, given the sophisticated capabilities of potential adversaries such as Russia or China.

The observers also note that the US is already equipped with missile defense programs, including those that are part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program.

Source: Aljazeera