President Donald Trump burst out of the gates into his second term with the speed of a Kentucky Derby winner. Executive orders turning the status quo upside down have flown in gusts from the Oval Office less than three weeks after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

Nothing like this has been witnessed since President Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days in 1933 amid the Great Depression. Roosevelt summoned Congress into a three-month special session during which he presented and convinced the legislature to enact 15 major bills to revive the economy. At Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed 77 laws during the first 100 days and revolutionized the role of government.

Trump has by and large ignored Congress with his blizzard of executive orders. That is a risky approach. Trump’s successor can repeal them with the stroke of a pen, just as Trump has already done in revoking many of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders, such as DEI training.

Immigration has been a priority of Trump fortified by the support of the American people. On the heels of his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order declaring that children born of parents who are neither citizens nor permanent residents are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and thus are not citizens notwithstanding section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Its text contradicts the executive order, and for more than 150 years has always been understood to confer birthright citizenship but for children of diplomats immune from U.S. laws. One federal judge has already preliminarily declared the executive order unconstitutional, and companion litigation is pending.

But Trump should be congratulated for his boldness and energy. Many of Roosevelt’s early initiatives were also held unconstitutional — the National Industrial Recovery Act, for example — without derailing Roosevelt’s New Deal.

A sister executive order, Trump’s proclamation “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” decreed that immigrants crossing illegally into the United States via the southern border with Mexico constitutes an invasion of border states that the United States is constitutionally obligated to defend under the Constitution. The proclamation prohibits entry of any alien through our southern border until Trump determines that the invasion has ended.

To that end, Trump has dispatched 1,500 troops to the border to block entry in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security. He simultaneously issued an executive order to designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations — the same category as ISIS, Hamas, al-Qaida and Hezbollah — and expose them to U.S. drone attacks or assassinations. The designations are well deserved. Mexican drug cartels are killing Americans at unprecedented levels by distributing fentanyl to users in the United States. Through the distribution of these deadly drugs, vastly more Americans have died by the cartels than did in the 9/11 attacks. Trump is spot on to respond accordingly.

He has also defied the status quo by using America’s economic stranglehold over most nations, particularly Canada, Mexico, Colombia and Panama, by threatening economically crushing tariffs should they not comply with his demands on economic and immigration policies. The results have thus far been astounding. The countries all caved to Trump’s demands within hours. This was in spite of their respective leaders deriding Trump and promising to fight back against him, likely ultimately realizing that to do so would be economic suicide.

Trump’s executive order ending government censorship vindicating the First Amendment right of free speech is long overdue. The Biden administration threw its weight against speech dubious of its COVID nostrums. The government needs to be viewpoint-neutral and eschew pressing its thumb in favor or against debatable propositions. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes advised, the speech that we hate is most in need of a defense. Time has upset many fighting faiths. The reflection that “I could be wrong” is the pillar of wisdom.

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 70 celebrated an executive earmarked by “activity, secrecy, and dispatch.” Trump, bursting out of the gates, has displayed all three. The United States may soon be the envy of the world again, should Trump’s executive orders take hold. He has shown that he has taken from Machiavelli’s instruction in “The Prince”: “It is better to be feared than loved.”

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.