By: Carlos Sierra
Here in the United States we have a right that not many are given throughout different countries around the world. We are granted the right to vote for our president, giving citizens a voice and an opportunity to elect the leader of our country. Some countries who don’t have this choice have submitted into a tyrannical oppression or have been ruled for centuries by one family under a monarchy. Despite having this right, we still don’t vote. Only about 60% of the voting eligible population has voted in recent elections. The majority of these votes come from elderly citizens. This year there will be 4 million new voters just turning of age, ready to vote. A lot of seniors from our school are going to be able to vote and it is encouraged you go out and exercise this right. It doesn’t matter what your political party is or who you side with. The most important thing is that you vote. If we want to see change and see our country prosper, we must go out and vote. Exercise your right, don’t let it go to waste. Make the change you want to see.
It is more important than ever to vote during this election considering all the issues going on in the country right now, like BLM and LGBT movement or issues with immigration as well as healthcare and our economy being threatened. Our President has handled these issues greatly and has done a great job the past four years and in my respectful opinion I hope to shed light on these issues throughout the rest of this piece.
In the past few months our country has dealt with an uproar of protests in regard to the Black Lives Matter Movement. While the president is in favor of this and he encourages people to protest and express their first amendment rights, one thing he will not stand by is the looting, vandalism and the violent destruction of businesses. The violence that arises from these protests give the BLM movement a bad reputation. Some of these protests have been infiltrated by ANTIFA members which resort to violence to get their point across. When faced with this violence the president has dealt with the situation greatly. The mayors of these cities granted him the power to stop them and he quickly shut down the unlawful protests without hurting anyone or restricting the protestors freedom of speech. The president allowed the BLM activists to go back out there and protest and they did so, he never did anything to silence them or against them as the media says.
President Trump has this stigma of being a narcissistic racist when in truth he has done more for the African American population than any other president has done besides Abraham Lincoln. During his term the black unemployment rate has reached an all-time low of just 5.5%. Not only that but with Trumps First Step Act, he has released thousands of wrongly incarcerated people from prisons, whom which 90% of were black. Not to mention some of those incarcerated, were put there by no other than Joe Biden, as he has a history of being in favor and voting for policies in which African Americans suffer from such as the 1994 crime law. Biden pushed for this law as a senator and he helped bring it to light. The law basically gave police enforcements an incentive to arrest and lock up as many African Americans as they could.
In addition to the First Step Act, he has created and promoted these “opportunity zones” in which private investment is incentivized. These zones are usually in poor communities where minority groups tend to reside in. This has led to jobs and economic growth for African Americans and resulted in the lowest poverty rate of African Americans at just 18%. There’s other various policy’s and actions under the Presidents administration that benefit the black population, yet people still call him a racist and are against his every word.
A similar issue on which many believe President Trump is against is the LGBT movement when it’s clearly not the case. President trump has been a longtime ally of the LGBT movement he has donated to research for AIDS throughout the years and has supported many laws in favor of the LGBT community such as an amendment to the 1964 civil rights act which would ban discrimination of an individual based on their sexual orientation. He’s supported gay rights and gay couples and advocated to our government long before he was president that they deserved he same rights that straight couples have.
During his administration he’s passed some laws and plans to benefit the LGBT population. The President devised a plan, “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America”, in which a goal of reducing the HIV infections to just 75% in five year and 90% in 10 years has been targeted. He plans to do this with a medication that will be distributed to 200,000 individuals yearly till at least December 31, 2025. President Trump and his organization and his administration have stared a global campaign in which the goal is to end the criminalization of homosexuality. In many countries there are people wrongfully convicted due to their sexual orientations and President Trump as well as the republican party are in favor of ending this unlawful act.
Immigration is a very controversial topic, and many left wingers disagree with the actions the president has taken. Many believe that Trump I against all types of immigration when in reality he as well as many others are just against illegal immigration due to the burden and threat it poses to our country. Many of these illegal immigrants take advantage of our welfare program and it’s not fair to taxpayers that their money is going towards helping immigrants who don’t contribute much back to the economy. Trump acted against this and stopped undocumented immigrants from receiving welfare. Trump has also helped American citizen and residents have more jobs and a guarantee of not getting their labor replaced by undocumented immigrants.
In addition, The Trump administration got “the safe third country rule” passed. The act states that any migrant seeking asylum in the U.S. will have to apply for asylum in that country first: If not they can’t apply for asylum in the United States. Also, the U.S. has reached an agreement with El Salvador which allows immigrants from third countries seeking asylum in the U.S. to remain in El Salvador. In exchange the U.S. will invest in El Salvador. Many immigrants falsely declare asylum and it’s not fair to those who are in actual need of it. Trumps administration has worked to crack down on these fake cases and approve more of the real cases and give residency to those who really need it.
The southern border has been packed with illegal immigrants trying to cross over. The president has sent troops to the border to contain this and the apprehensions and arrests at the border have decreased immensely. The President also shut down flights from countries such as China and other countries In Europe during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus outbreak and it prevented the virus from doing more damage than it did. Without doing this the situation could be much worse in this country.
Healthcare is another topic Trumps organization so deeply cares to improve upon. When he first went into office he was left with the healthcare system president Obama left behind which was a complete mess. Trump plans to completely get rid of Obamacare in his next term. He tried during his first term but didn’t have much success. However, he did get to accomplish some victories regarding healthcare. President trump was able to aid our veterans greatly by giving them more healthcare options. His act allows veterans to seek aid at the VA or at any private medical facility of their choice in his own words, “no veteran will die waiting for service.” Under Obama and Biden, veterans had access to community care programs, but this was only if the VA allowed for them to go, restricting the choice of the veteran to choose his or her healthcare provider. This led to the death of many veterans due to the increasingly long wait times. There was a lot of fraud and manipulation going on with the VA and Trump has done his best to combat this and has given the choice back to our veterans
In addition to this, trump and his organization have managed to lower pharmaceutical prices. Drug prices have lowered 80-90%. If he has any luck, he plans to get rid of Obamacare in his next term ending its abuse over the American people. Under Obamacare everyone is forced to have insurance, and, in most cases, it leads to them paying more than they would have to before Obamacare was in place. It’s also led to employers cutting employees hours due to the expense of covering their healthcare. Over 300,000 people died due to Obama and Biden’s poor health care and Trump plans on not doing those same mistakes
The economy under President Trump has been the best it has ever been in the history of our country. He’s brought back over 700,000 jobs to the united states that were previously in other countries such as China. He’s encouraged many businesses to come back to the United States as well as bringing back factories and production of goods. Trumps administration has given this country it’s all time low unemployment rate of just 3.5% of the population. in addition thanks to President Trump many families have been able to get off welfare and can now provide for their own. Poverty rate has also decreased. The stock market saw major growth
However, the economy took a big hit when the country shot down due to the corona virus. But it’s been recovering fast and it’s on pace to be higher that it was before. Trumps biggest accomplishment during his first term was probably his economy and there’s no doubt whether you are on the left or right that this economy has been the best the country has seen in a long time and it gives opportunity to prosper for many citizens.
The Watchdog 