President Trump on Saturday signed three executive orders -- one to lengthen the ban on administration officials working as lobbyists and two related to national security, particularly strengthening efforts to defeat the Islamic State terror group. The order on the lobbying ban extends the existing one from two years to five years and puts in place a lifetime ban on ex-officials lobbying for foreign countries.
Trump vowed on the campaign trail to make such changes and others, to voters’ chants of “drain the swamp.”
A second executive order attempts to strengthen the country’s National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.
“Lots of additional safety,” Trump said in signing the order at his Oval Office desk. “We’ve been talking about doing this for a long time, many years.”
Trump said the third order is a plan to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in Iran and Syria.
The president, in the order, also asks the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of staff to come up with a plan in 30 days to defeat ISIS.
In Trump’s first nine days in office, he has now issued 17 executive orders.
The others include: multi-pronged orders on border security and immigration enforcement; two on reviving the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipeline; withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, a start to dismantling ObamaCare and imposing an immigration ban on refugees and residents of seven Muslim countries.
