Publisher's Notebook
Trump had a busy first week
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has been busy keeping his campaign promises. He just completed a whirlwind first week of pretty much doing exactly what he said he would do during the campaign. Like Barack Obama said after he first won the presidency, "Elections have consequences."

In just his first week, Trump jawboned U.S. companies to stop exporting jobs. He formally withdrew from the Asian trade deal know as TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). He initiated plans to keep his promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico. He instructed federal agencies to stop doing anything to make Obamacare work. He removed obstacles to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and ordered that they be built with U.S. steel.

While things are still happening so furiously fast, The Post will keep exploring local opinions on the individual subjects in question. This is not easy to do since there are so many happening so fast!

For instance, on Tuesday night, Trump quickly announced the nomination of strict constitutionalist Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. This would be the subject to explore in our reader polling this week, except for the fact that the dust still hasn't completely settled on one more thing he did in his first week.

It looks to me like Trump's strategy is not just to get things done, but to get them done fast. He seems to also be trying to prevent the news media, which he believes is the mouthpiece of the opposition, from having time to build up public sentiment against him.

Oh yes, I forgot, that one little other thing he did. He banned refugee admissions from Syria and ordered a temporary ban on travel from seven Islamic terrorist-exporting states until his full "extreme vetting" plan could be fully developed. That will be the subject of our reader poll this week.

Democrats call it the "Muslim Ban." The White House argues that it is a "temporary pause" as officials "assess the strengths and the weaknesses of our current system." Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly insists that the order "is not — I repeat — not a ban on Muslims."

To stoke the fire a little hotter (as if it needs to be), I will add my two cents. My personal view is that the threat of Islamic terror is so grave that it justifies profiling those that are most likely to be a threat to our country, rather than making a 90-year-old Grandma from Indiana take off her shoes at the airport. That always struck me as a ridiculously-inefficient system being done in the name of political correctness.

So, I'm OK with the concept of "extreme vetting." What bothers me is the way it was done in such a totally inept and insensitive manner. I get that they wanted to keep would-be terrorists from rushing to slip in before the vetting program can get started. But it surely seems that it could have been planned better and in a less disruptive way.

What do you think? Our reader poll question this week is: Should President Trump have temporarily frozen travel to America from seven countries deemed high risk for exporting Islamic terrorism? Go to thepostnewspapers.com or your local Post website to cast your vote. The poll is up now and voting ends Tuesday.

Last week's question was: Should the Affordable Care Act be completely repealed? The results were resoundingly "yes" against Obamacare. Over 46 percent voted that "parts could be used in a new system, but it ultimately needs to be replaced." Nearly 31 percent felt that is should be completely "gutted and replaced." Only 23 percent said "absolutely not" or "don't care."

That means that more than three in four (77 percent) of our local readers want Obamacare replaced. We heard that loud and clear. Time will tell what you think about Trumpcare!