by WorldTribune Staff, November 2, 2026 — Real World News

The America First agenda has ten steps remaining, but “none of it gets finished unless you vote,” said Ed Martin, who served as Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and most recently as U.S. Pardon Attorney.

Martin, currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for Renewing America, wrote in a post to LinkedIn that “elections are about who controls the levers, not just who wins the headlines. I’ve spent my career in the law, and in government I led the Weaponization Working Group and served as U.S. Pardon Attorney. One lesson stands out. The House writes every spending bill, and the Senate confirms the judges and the people who run the Justice Department. As I put it in my new essay, ‘Whoever holds the gavels holds the subpoenas.’ ”

President Donald Trump, Martin noted, “has started the job on the border, on the the weaponization of government and on freeing political prisoners. A Congress that refuses to fund that work can undo it without repealing a single law. A Democratic House wouldn’t have to repeal a thing. It would just stop paying.”

Martin states in his October essay that his “Finish the Job, America” walks through ten places where the work isn’t finished:

Step 1: Mass Deportation and Immigration Freeze

Keep deporting until they’re gone. If you came here illegally, you broke the law, and the remedy is removal. Ten years of breaking the law doesn’t earn you a thing.

Build the wall. All of it. CBP’s own plan calls for about 1,591 miles of primary wall. Any mile not built is a mile the next Democrat can cancel.

Freeze immigration until the deportations are done. When your basement floods, you don’t argue about paint colors. You shut off the water. After an Afghan national shot two National Guard members in Washington last November, the President said he’d pause migration from Third World countries “to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.” I’d go further and pause everything until the deportations are done and the fraud is rooted out.

Then, and only then, come to work and go home. Once the system is clean, I’m open to limited, temporary work visas. No path to citizenship. And if an American will do the job at a fair wage, the American gets it.

Step 2: Arrest Bad Government Actors and Impeach Bad Judges

Follow the evidence all the way. Where the facts support charges, prosecutors take them to a grand jury, and juries decide. Due process, every time. We are not them.

Make every record public. Every Arctic Frost record and every email behind the parents memo.

Impeach bad judges. The Constitution gives federal judges their seats “during good Behaviour.” That’s a condition. Only fifteen federal judges have ever been impeached and eight removed, all for things like bribery and perjury, never for their rulings. A handful of district judges have blocked deportations and blocked checks that only citizens are on the voter rolls. When the Supreme Court paused one of those rulings in September, it said the order “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts” to help states run the midterm elections.

The last time Democrats held the House with President Donald J. Trump in the White House, they impeached him twice. Give it back and they’ll investigate the people who exposed the weaponization. And the Senate confirms the Attorney General, the U.S. attorneys, and the judges who replace the bad ones. A Democratic Senate can stall every one.

You can’t arrest or impeach anybody. You can elect the people who can. That’s how we finish the job on weaponization.

Step 3: Free the Political Prisoners and Reimburse the Survivors of Political Weaponization

On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump freed the January 6 defendants. His proclamation said it “begins a process of national reconciliation.”

Within four days he’d also acted for two D.C. police officers and 23 pro-life Americans prosecuted under the FACE Act. “They should not have been prosecuted,” he said of the pro-lifers. “Many of them are elderly people.”

In May 2025 I became U.S. Pardon Attorney. The first pardon on my watch went to Scott Jenkins, a Virginia sheriff sentenced to ten years. The President said he “doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail.” I posted four words that day: No MAGA left behind. In November 2025 the President pardoned 77 more people targeted over the 2020 election.

But a pardon doesn’t pay the lawyer or the second mortgage.

Here’s what’s left.

Free them all. Cops, sheriffs, pro-lifers, anyone a political prosecutor wanted as a scalp.

Use the Tina Peters model when the pardon stops at the state line. Tina Peters, the Mesa County, Colorado, clerk, got nine years in state court. The President can’t pardon a state conviction, so he gave her a federal pardon. Colorado’s governor commuted her sentence, and on June 1, 2026, she walked out of prison. Same playbook for Derek Chauvin and the men caught up in the Michigan “kidnapping plot” case: pardon the federal charges, then lean on the governors.

Pardon everyone who serves. Joe Biden pardoned General Milley, Dr. Fauci, and the January 6 committee in advance, saying “politically motivated investigations wreak havoc” on families. Apply his rule to everyone who worked for President Donald J. Trump.

Pay the survivors back, one claim at a time. Slip on the wet steps of a post office and you can file a claim and get your bills paid. If the government came after you on purpose for your politics, you deserve the same. Send a letter of claim with your receipts, the Pardon Attorney reviews it case by case, and the Justice Department settles with you directly. Hard costs only: legal fees, medical bills, bail, travel, lost pay. The President told *Meet the Press* in June, “Many of those people should be compensated.” It’s been done once. The Justice Department settled the claim of Ashli Babbitt’s family for $4,975,000.

The pardon power is the President’s alone. The rest needs Congress to fund the Justice Department and the Senate to confirm the people who run it. Biden’s Justice Department brought more than 1,500 January 6 cases and prosecuted the pro-lifers. A Democratic House created the January 6 Select Committee. Put them back in charge and the subpoenas will go after the people who were freed.

Vote Republican, and let the President finish the job he began on January 20.

Step 4: Make America Healthy Again

At Madison Square Garden in October 2024, President Donald J. Trump made a promise about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “I’m going to let him go wild on health,” he said. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

He kept it. On February 13, 2025, the day Kennedy was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the President created the Make America Healthy Again Commission, starting with childhood chronic disease. With its first report in May, he said, “More than 40 percent of American children now have at least one chronic health condition.”

HHS and the FDA moved to pull petroleum-based dyes out of the food supply. States got waivers to keep soda and junk food out of SNAP. The administration struck most-favored-nation deals on drug prices and launched TrumpRx so you can see cash prices without the middleman. And in January 2026, new dietary guidelines told Americans to eat real food.

Here’s what’s left.

Write the dye ban into law. The big food companies can promise to drop the dyes by the end of 2027 and slow-walk it the minute a Democrat is in the Oval Office. Congress has bills to ban the harmful dyes and close the “generally recognized as safe” loophole that lets chemicals into our food with almost no review. A House subcommittee held a hearing on them in April 2026. Pass them.

Codify most-favored-nation drug prices. The President asked Congress for that in January 2026. Sixteen manufacturer deals and a website are a start, but only a statute sticks. Americans shouldn’t pay more so the rest of the world can pay less.

Fund the work and confirm the people doing it. The commission’s report has more than a hundred recommendations, and they’re worthless if the next Congress starves HHS and the FDA, or if the Senate won’t confirm the people who’ll carry them out.

Step 5: Military Superiority = More Peace and No More Wars

Fund the buildup, every year. Pass the $1.5 trillion request and pay for Golden Dome’s sensors and interceptors.

Make the name permanent. The next president can undo an executive order with a pen. The House defense bill writes the Department of War into law. The Senate should too.

End this war from strength, and start no endless ones. “No more wars” never meant “never fight.” It means no twenty-year occupations, no nation-building, and no war without a clear idea of what winning looks like. Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. End the war on terms that keep it that way, and bring our people home.

Keep the mission the mission. As the President put it, the mission is “defeating America’s enemies.”

Part of that $1 trillion came through a reconciliation bill that, the White House says, “passed with only Republican votes.” This year’s defense bill passed the House 216 to 212 in July, with Democrats against it 205 to 6. In the Senate it couldn’t even get started. On July 14 the motion to proceed failed 50 to 46, short of the 60 it needed. All 50 yes votes were Republicans.

On Iran, Democrats tried twice to stop the campaign with war powers resolutions. The Senate voted one down 47 to 53, and the House voted another down 212 to 219, both mostly along party lines. Tie the Commander in Chief’s hands in the middle of a war and you get a longer one.

I won’t tell you every Democrat wants a weak military. I’ll just tell you how they voted. Vote Republican, keep the peace the way Reagan did, and finish the job.

Step 6: Invoke the Insurrection Act for Failing Cities

Use the law Congress wrote for this. The Insurrection Act has been on the books since 1807. Section 253 lets the President act when state authorities are “unable, fail, or refuse” to protect people’s constitutional rights, or when violence “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States.” That’s what I mean by a failing city: one whose leaders can’t or won’t protect their own people, or won’t let federal officers do their jobs. A bad crime year doesn’t qualify.

Do it by the book. Section 254 requires a proclamation first, ordering the insurgents “to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.” Warn them, then act. Eisenhower did it that way at Little Rock in 1957, and Kennedy at Ole Miss in 1962. The last president to invoke it was George H.W. Bush, for the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

Get in, restore order, get out. Nobody wants an occupation. When local leaders are ready to keep the peace, the troops go home.

I served as Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. A prosecutor can charge a crime after it happens. He can’t keep a city safe by himself when its leaders won’t do their part.

Congress matters here, too. Under the Home Rule Act, the President can direct the D.C. police for up to 30 days. Anything longer takes a joint resolution of Congress, and I don’t expect a Democratic House to pass one. A Democratic House would hold every hearing and write the budget that pays the troops. And what Congress wrote, Congress can rewrite.

Your city doesn’t have to be the next Los Angeles or Chicago. Give the President a Republican House and Senate, and he’ll finish the job on our streets.

Step 7: Expel the Communist Chinese, Especially from Our Universities

Expel the Party’s agents. Anyone here on a student or research visa who works for the Communist Party, its military, or its intelligence services should lose the visa and go home. Then write the vetting into law so the next administration can’t quietly drop it.

Close the Confucius Institutes for good, including the ones with new names. Their number fell from more than 110 at their peak to fewer than five by 2023. But the National Association of Scholars found many of the closed institutes reopened under new names. As of October 1, 2026, the Pentagon can no longer waive its ban on funding schools that host them. Make that ban broad and permanent.

Follow the money. Pass the DETERRENT Act. It makes universities disclose every dollar from countries of concern like China, starting at zero. It drops the general reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000. And it bars contracts with countries of concern unless a waiver is granted.

The DETERRENT Act passed the House in March 2025, 241 to 169. Republicans voted for it 210 to 1, and Democrats voted against it 168 to 31. It went to the Senate education committee in April 2025, and it’s still sitting there. A bigger Republican Senate majority can make it a priority. Hand the committee gavels to the other side and I expect it never comes up.

The Party plays a long game. We have to play a longer one. Vote Republican and finish the job on our campuses.

Step 8: DOGE It Again and Fire More Federal Workers

Start with the government’s own personnel office. Since January 20, 2025, the federal workforce has shrunk by 264,029 people. OPM says 139,978 employees took the deferred resignation offer, and more than 85 percent of those jobs were never refilled. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s own watchdog, found that 18 of 22 major agencies shrank by more than 10 percent in 2025. Education shrank by more than 45 percent.

DOGE it again. A second round, agency by agency, with a new rescission package for Congress to pass. Then another.

Yes, fire more federal workers, by the rules. Keep the one-for-four hiring ratio and write it into law, or set a headcount cap a future president can’t wave away. Use attrition, and use reductions in force the way the law allows.

Make accountability permanent. In February 2026, OPM finalized Schedule Policy/Career. Career employees in policy-influencing jobs lose the old removal procedures that made it nearly impossible to fire anyone, but they keep merit hiring and veterans’ preference. The rule itself says it can’t be used for mass layoffs. The next administration could undo it with another rule. Only Congress can make it permanent.

A president can freeze hiring with an order. Only Congress can cancel spending for good. Round one came down to the wire. The $9 billion rescissions package passed the House 216 to 213. Not one Democrat voted yes. It passed the Senate 51 to 48, again without a single Democratic yes.

I’m reading that off the roll call. Give the other side the House and I’d bet the next round of cuts never gets a vote, and the payrolls start filling back up. Vote Republican on November 3, and let’s finish the job on the bureaucracy.

Step 9: Investigate and Expose Nonprofits

Follow the money to the violence. If a riot has a payroll, find out who signs the checks. If a tax-exempt group is passing money to people who burn cars and assault officers, the taxpayer shouldn’t be subsidizing it through the tax code.

Expose what you find. Sunlight cures a lot. When investigators find a tax-exempt network funding violence, put it on the record in reports and hearings.

Do it by the book. A group loses its exemption for breaking the tax law, not for holding the wrong opinions. Revocation goes through the IRS process, and prosecution goes through a grand jury. Same standard for every group, left or right. Do it any other way and we become what I described in Step 2.

Congress writes the tax code and funds the IRS, and hearings that expose a network don’t happen unless the majority calls them.

In September, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee wrote to Treasury and the IRS demanding answers about what they called plans to target left-leaning nonprofits, and asked them to preserve their records. But today it’s a letter from the minority. Give them the majority and I’d expect those letters to turn into subpoenas aimed at the investigators instead of the funders.

I’ve worked for nonprofits that do real good. A nonprofit doing honest work has nothing to fear from an honest audit. The ones hiding violence behind a charity’s name need to be exposed. Vote Republican, and let the President follow the money all the way and finish the job.

Step 10: Secure the Elections with Photo ID and National Enforcement

Every other step depends on this one. If Americans can’t trust the count, nothing else holds, and nobody gets to finish the job.

Hand-marked paper ballots and one Election Day. Every voter marks a paper ballot by hand, in every election. And we go back to one Election Day, where everyone votes in person, with real exceptions for the military, the sick, and the shut-in.

Photo ID to vote. You show ID to board a plane or open a bank account. Choosing the people who write our laws deserves at least as much.

Proof of citizenship to register. Noncitizens already can’t vote in federal elections. The trouble is that too often nobody checks. Check at the front door.

Clean rolls, checked against federal data. Require states to keep looking for noncitizens on their rolls and take them off, using federal tools like the SAVE database.

National enforcement. States run our elections, and they should. But a federal law for federal elections needs teeth: the Justice Department enforcing the voter-list laws everywhere, penalties for breaking them, and the right of citizens to go to court when officials won’t follow the law.

On the SAVE Act, House Republicans voted 216 to 0 for it and Democrats voted 208 to 4 against. On the SAVE America Act, Republicans voted 217 to 0 for it and Democrats 213 to 1 against.

The Senate is where it stalls. Neither bill has cleared the 60-vote threshold. Shrink the Republican majority and these bills die. Grow it and they have a shot.

I used to chair the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners. Most of the people who run elections are honest and overworked, and they need clear rules and the tools to check who’s on the rolls. A federal law gives them both, and it doesn’t change with the next governor or the next judge.

Vote Republican, and give the President the Congress he needs to secure the vote once and for all. Finish the job at the ballot box.
It Starts November 3

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Freedom Rocks! Until It Is Gone

  Ed Martin’s 10-step agenda for the rest of Trump’s 2nd term, WorldTribune.com