Trump Term Two, Day One, Executive Orders
Photo by The Trump White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As promised, the second Donald Trump administration featured a cavalcade of executive orders on a wide swath of MAGA priorities. Here are some of them for discussion and review.
From the Washington Post:
Ending birthright citizenship in the United States
The U.S. government will no longer recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States to immigrants who lack legal status, according to an order Trump signed Monday. It also bars birthright citizenship for children born to people on temporary work, student and tourist visas. The order, which is expected to face legal scrutiny, reinterprets the words “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which grants citizenship to nearly all people born on U.S. soil, to exclude babies born to parents illegally in the country.
Declaring a ‘national emergency’ on the southern border and other major immigration orders
Trump declared a “national emergency” on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of immigration-related executive actions. He also declared in a separate order that “the current situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion.”
He ordered a halt to refugee admissions in the United States for “at least four months” and said his administration would designate cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
He directed the military to make it a priority to “seal the borders” and end unlawful mass migration, drug trafficking and other crimes. And he directed the armed forces to provide troops, detention space, transportation — including aircraft — and other services to boost border security.
The United States will stop allowing migrants who cross the border illegally into the United States, even if they are seeking asylum, per one of Trump’s directives. He also ordered the restoration of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires migrants to await asylum hearings in Mexico.
Another order allows the attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including capital crimes committed by undocumented migrants.
Making changes to the federal workforce
The president ordered federal workers to come back to their offices. The action Trump signed directs agency heads to “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”
Trump also issued a freeze on federal hiring with exceptions for military personnel and jobs “related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
He reinstated a policy that would strip employment protections from tens of thousands of federal workers. Trump stripped those protections in his first term in office, and Biden reinstated them. Another memorandum is aimed at “restoring accountability for career senior executives” in the federal government. The memo directs his administration to issue new performance plans for senior government officials who are not political appointees and reassign officials to ensure they are “optimally aligned to implement” his agenda. A different order makes changes to the federal government’s hiring plan.
Trump also signed an order that calls for the elimination of government diversity programs. It includes the termination of all federal offices and positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion as well as environmental justice. The order also directs his administration to review which federal contractors have provided DEI training materials to federal workers and which federal funding grantees have been given funds to advance DEI and environmental justice.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement
The president signed a letter to the United Nations to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
Trump initially withdrew the United States from the accords during his first term in office, but under Biden, the country had rejoined it.
Ending ‘weaponization’ of the federal government
A newly signed but vaguely written directive orders the U.S. attorney general and the director of national intelligence to review potential misconduct within the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the intelligence community that may have occurred in the last four years.
Delaying enforcement of a federal ban on TikTok
Trump ordered his administration to delay enforcing a federal ban against TikTok, giving the app’s Chinese parent company more time to broker a deal with a potential American buyer. Legislation signed into law and upheld by the Supreme Court required the Chinese parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a ban in the United States over concerns that the app poses a national security threat by potentially exposing American users to Chinese surveillance or propaganda. TikTok has said those claims are unfounded. China hawks, including some Senate Republicans, balked over the weekend at Trump’s plans, saying there is no legal basis to extend the divestiture window. The president cannot unilaterally overturn a law that was passed by Congress and affirmed in court, and his plans to halt enforcement are likely to face legal scrutiny.
Clemency for Jan. 6 defendants
Trump issued a presidential proclamation commuting the sentences of 14 individuals charged with crimes related to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The proclamation also granted pardons “to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Trump also ordered the attorney general “to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct” on Jan. 6.
Trump signed an order to officially recognize only two sexes (male and female), which would be defined based on the reproduction cells at conception. He directed agencies to issue government documents showing people’s sex at conception, stop using gender identity or preferred pronouns, and maintain women-only spaces in prisons and shelters.
The measure directs the attorney general to write new policies concerning the 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found sex discrimination in employment includes gender identity and sexual orientation. It also directs the Bureau of Prisons to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
The action could prompt the Education Department to punish schools that recognize gender identity, for instance by allowing transgender girls access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms or sports teams. It also could affect teachers who, in some districts, are told to use students’ preferred names and pronouns.
A full list and running tracker of the first day Trump executive orders can be read here:
Lawlessness. Half of this he doesn’t have the authority to do and the other half is BS.Report
Who is going to stop him? Congress? The courts? Who?Report
Mount Denali got its name changed back to Mount McKinley.Report
GMC hardest hit.Report
Damn, there go my “Denali is not just a mountain in Alaska” jokes. Those always killed.Report
Trump has no idea how the McKinley presidency ended, does he….Report
Maybe he does, and that’s why he selected Vance.Report
I went and read the text and find it interesting that the name of the mountain is being changed, but the national park and preserve in which it is located explicitly retains the name Denali. Digging a little further, it turns out that “Denali National Park and Preserve” is a matter of statute. Several/many of the new EOs, including this one, have explicit language that says the order doesn’t apply if it violates statute.
This is the same EO that renames the Gulf of Mexico. “Gulf of Mexico” is a term used in a variety of international agreements and treaties.Report
I can understand the McKinley/Denali thing. When I was growing up, it was McKinley. Well, maybe the two times I heard it mentioned.
But if he thinks I’m going to stop calling it the Gulf of Mexico, he’s nuts.Report
Honestly they aren’t thinking very clearly if they want us to call it the Gulf of America. Calling it the Gulf of Mexico lets them blame Mexico for hurricanes. Who are they going to blame when the hurricanes are coming from inside the house?Report
I heard someone suggest “Gulf of the Americas” and I guess that that’s poetic and all that but I’m not calling it that either.Report
Let’s go with Mare Nostrum.Report
Nice, then we need a giant chain from Key West to Guantanamo … just like Constantinople.Report
Heh. That’s what radar is for.Report
drilling wasn’t banned in the Gulf of America.Report
JFC. If it’s this I’m going to be furious, so it’s probably this.Report
Ok, I can feel my anti-Trump non-Republican Solidarity party enjoyer calling balls and strikes credibility wearing off in the other thread… so here’s one we can all condemn as plain old bad.
And, not just the usual ‘dumb bad’ but actual bad bad… triple bad bad bad for the people actually convicted of Sedition.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/granting-pardons-and-commutation-of-sentences-for-certain-offenses-relating-to-the-events-at-or-near-the-united-states-capitol-on-january-6-2021/
In a properly functioning Republic, we’d impeach him for this.Report
We tried to impeach him twice. For critically important stuff. We failed.Report
Yes, I was there.
On this one, part of me suspects that someone (I’m assuming Susie Wiles… btw, notice how everything hinges on Susie Wiles existing — how long will that last?) said, um, for the tiniest shred of protection, let’s just commute the sentence of the Seditious Conspiracy boys. At least they’re still convicted felons then.Report
The House and Senate won’t impeach him over this or anything else.Report
The prior argument for not convicting him in the Senate was ‘He is out of office, and the court system will decide’.
The court system did not decide, it did not reach a decision on that. It ended due to his reelection.
He is now back in office. It is now time to convict.
Likewise, while he was out of office, the legal system asserted it could not question his decisions, implicitly saying the only way to punish him for a huge chunk of things he does as president is impeachment.
Like, all the excuses are laid bare.Report
None of this is relevant to a throw-away line I kinda wish I’d dropped.
It’s not, I guess, an obvious point, so I’ll make it obvious: the thing that’s broken in the Republic isn’t the Presidency, its the Congress.
The check on Presidents abusing their Pardon power isn’t some DA in Biloxi, MS or even the SCOTUS, it’s Congress impeaching the President for that abuse. That’s the primary reason (secondary is political/comms) Presidents exercise their Dodgy Pardons on their last day… the way the Impeachment Process works in the Constitution requires (too long) a runway for Congress to react.
I’d recommend Dems draft *narrow and targeted* (if they are constitutionally able) articles of impeachment to signal that the improper use of the Pardon Power is a High Crime. Sure, it won’t get the votes on Trump right now.
But, if you really want to do politics well ™ Dems should draft articles of impeachment on Biden’s pardons and see if they can bait Rs into impeaching Biden for the feels and (perhaps) opening up the pathway to SCOTUS to rule on the constitutionality of types of pardons — plus proving you can impeach Presidents for Presidential Acts, even if they have left office.
Sometimes you eat an L (impeaching a DEM) to iterate a future W.Report
I think we agree that Congress has walked way back from being a co-equal branch. Problem is the GOP spent 50 years damaging the other co-equal branch which means both checks are no longer really in play.Report
So you’re saying only the GOP has agency?
We can all agree that one of the problems with Congress is that it is fundamentally driven by short-term tactical decision making – esp. at the individual level. That’s a political reality that requires leadership to overcome for strategic objectives. Every political failing/weakness is an opportunity for some group that wants to take it.Report
I have always maintained the GOP had and has agency. I’m told repeatedly by people here that I’m wrong.Report
Given that this would be the funniest outcome, I support it wholeheartedly. Impeach Biden for pardoning Hunter and other members of the Biden family.
Hell, put the Fauci on there and *DARE* Rand to impeach Biden.
I love this idea.Report
I know, right? And once you get over the shock of the thing and count the costs, you realize the cost is $0… what’s Biden going to do, complain about being excluded from running for President again in 4-years? Hope Historians can save his reputation on the Presidential Ranking Chart?Report
Now, I’d suggest that the impeachment of Trump rely rather heavily on 3 or 4 of the pardons of the J6ers and not all 1600ish of them.
If it’s all 1600ish, then the impeachment won’t get off the ground.
But if it’s those particular 3 or 4? It’s doable.
But there are too many people who can’t imagine this. “We’d have *BIDEN* be the first President to be successfully impeached?!?!? WHAT ABOUT TRUMP?”Report
Agreed. I’d focus on the dozen or so folks who were convicted of Seditious Conspiracy.
That’s a pretty solid case for High Crime.
As for order of impeachments? I’d do Biden first because that might actually have the votes, and the goal is to set the precedent that some Pardons can be considered High Crimes, even if the ‘Presidential Act’ is formally correct.
After that, as long as the opposition can avoid the big dramatic ‘impeach the electorate’ types of things and just stay focused on narrow aspects… sure, consider it staking a position for future use.Report
Trump was impeached twice. He wasn’t convicted. Words matter Jay.Report
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/day-two
After a morning meeting, I sat down to my computer around 11:30 a.m. ET and read two reader emails picked more or less at random out of my inbox. The first was from an American expat. The gist of his email was that American liberals — Blue America, for lack of a better descriptor — are totally unprepared for what’s coming down the pike toward them. The second was from a federal government employee reviewing the executive orders relevant to the federal workforce and explaining to me in so many words, ‘yeah, good luck with that.’ The expat’s email was generally more pessimistic and totalizing than I’m inclined to be. You may differ and you may be right; who knows? But in general the two emails together captured the moment as well or better than any report, essay or interview I might have read — a mix of actions and red flags almost unimaginable by any normal standard (though in virtually every case unsurprising) mixed with an underbrush of the sheer size, inertia and difficulty of whatever changes Trump is trying to make. They’re both true. Both true at once.
The best way to understand most of these executive orders is that they are statements of intent. That’s actually what an “executive order” is, in its origin: even in the much smaller federal government of a century ago, let alone two and a half centuries ago, the federal government was always a big thing — geographically if not in comparison to what we know today. The President can’t talk to everyone who works for him as head of the executive branch. So executive orders are ways of making clear, putting on paper, what his directions are.
At a fundamental level, they are, especially for Trump, performative. They become real when his appointees begin acting on them and they get litigated in courts, and validated or not validated. Pardons and commutations are real. Those things actually happened yesterday. They’re done. People are out of jail. That can’t be reversed. And Trump appears to have pardoned or commuted either every Jan. 6th convict/indictee or almost all of them. (This last marginal difference is unclear; but if a few stragglers weren’t released, he released the most dangerous and the most violent.) It’s important to understand the difference.
One thing I found interesting last night is that as lawyers began reading through the EOs, they noticed something pretty consistent. They were sloppy and contradictory, often doing things the authors hadn’t even intended. Is that a big deal? Well, yes and no. It’s the President’s will. So he can — mostly — express his will again or kind of as many times as he wants to. Fundamentally if President Trump wants to do X he’s not going to be stopped because an executive order was a sloppy cut and paste job, which many of these were. Success or failure is going to come down to three variables: 1) court action, 2) how much focus and determination his appointees have in putting them into effect and 3) public opinion. But it’s an indication that the belief that Trump’s team is more tried, tested and expert this time around may simply not be true. And that’s an important fact to know.Report
From inside – if only that were true. We are already getting very specific direction to implement many of his EOs. Direction from career civil servants acting as political appointees – as they do every transition. They got their direction from somewhere.
His team is more competent then you think.Report
The head of the FCC has an interesting thread about DEI and how one of the executive orders was to “end the promotion of DEI”.
It’s gone from the FCC’s budget. No more advisory groups, no more equity action plans, no more DEI analysis in the economic reports.Report
Good riddance.Report
Yup.Report
And fascism took hold of the land because lo, the centerist declare the woke was worseReport
“Is that a reason to stop being woke? Maybe be less woke?”
“LOL. LMAO.”Report
Well, to be clear, the centrists said “this seems not very helpful as a practical matter and pure poison as a political matter”, the idealists answered “even trying to assign a name to this, let alone critiquing it, is racist” and then the voters said “yup, woke is worse”. And here we are. Though, let us be clear, the question of wokeism is only one of many elements many of which make the centrists look bad too.Report
Woke is mainly ivory tower discussions that moved into online spaces with a slightly bigger number of speakers. The big problem with a lot of it is that it comes across as really doctrinaire to normies. I don’t think it turns people away from liberalism or leftism but it definitely can turn them off from politics. Take for example discussions about what books should be read in school. Real world people will speak about including non-white or LGBT authors. Online left edgelord people speak about cancelling white male authors with glee. Totally different ways of approaching the same topic.Report
I generally agree with the caveat that it did manage to colonize out of the ivory towers into the greater NGO world (with generally detrimental effects), media and to a more limited degree the c-suite.
And if something that both the further left and all of the rights media apparatus are shouting at the top of their lungs turns left-curious people away from politics while energizing right-curious people. Well enough said. It may be merely grifty, wasteful and dubiously just as a practical matter but it’s political cyanide. We should, probably, also acknowledge that this isn’t exactly woke’s fault- it wasn’t originally conceived as a way of prying scarce tenure jobs and academic resources from the death grip of elderly white men and giving them to hungry minorities and women in academia. It probably wasn’t originally meant to actually be some nation sweeping ideology.Report
DEI might be the closest thing the left as to a wingnut grift but it is more tedious than actually harmful and if done right, it could theoretically be beneficial (it will never be done right because that requires time, effort, and money that doesn’t produce a profit).
But this order is only limited to the federal government and it is really not worth getting underwear in a twist over DEI considering all the other damage Trump and Co. is going to do.
Coalition building means having to grin and bear some things you dislike sometimes.
How long before JB trolls on the sentence above?Report
I think it’s a fine observation. I think that Omnicause thinking is actively bad for the Democrats.
Do you think that the moral leadership will be willing to embrace some vulgar utilitarianism to get a handful more bedfellows? “Guys, guys, guys… we’re here to talk about fighting Trump. We’re not going to open with a Land Acknowledgment and we’re not going to talk about Gaza.”
Think you can get away with that?
Because I lean “no” for the moment.Report
I mean, you’re flagrantly wrong about that. Harris had multiple instances of doing this exact thing you’re describing during her campaign and she “got away with it” just fine from the Dems and even the identarian lefties. She lost, partially, because she hoped she didn’t have to go from mostly not talking about it to actively talking against it, sure, and couldn’t because of her mistakes in 2020 but she did do exactly what you’re referring to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1n7QBi53ZsReport
Do you think she got away with that?
Because I lean “no” for the moment.Report
She lost by a hair and suffered no particular revolt, defection or uprising from the intersectional left. So by your own terms, yes, she got away with it.
Likewise her convention was one giant celebration of doing exactly what you described and it’s generally viewed as one of the high points of her campaign so she definitely got away with it.Report
She never was ahead according to her internal polling. Not even for an hour.Report
All correct but was that because she didn’t do the identarianism enough or because (at least partially) she couldn’t distance herself from it and was too risk averse to try actively turning against it? I’d say the latter. And she did downplay and turn away from identarianism and did not suffer some vast revolt from the identarian leftists (not that they seem to command that many votes anyhow).
If this election had left because Kamala’s left wing stayed home- well that’d be an enormously different conversation than we’ve ‘enjoyed’ since the election.Report
“She lost by a hair”
so, no, she didn’t get away with itReport
Did she loose because she wasn’t woke enough? I doubt it myself.Report
She lost because:
1. She was too woke
2. She wasn’t woke enough
3. She mixed being too woke with not being woke enough in the wrong ratio and thus turned off both the people who wanted her to be woker and the people who thought she was too wokeReport
An amusing theory but one I don’t subscribe to. It remains to be demonstrated that “woke” commands a material, dedicated voting constituency among the electorate. Like libertarianism woke has a very influential set of advocates and fashionable taste makers on the elite level; also like libertarianism its extremely present on the internet and like libertarianism it gets very large degrees of signal boosting from both traditional and right wing media apparatuses. It so far, however, seems to command no masses of actual voters. The people it purports to advocate for think it’s kooky and annoying. Heck, woke doesn’t even have its own 2-5% party like the Libertarians do.Report
It doesn’t command a material dedicated voting constituency among the electorate, it does, however, command a material dedicated constituency among the staff.
And if the staff can, for example, prevent the candidate from talking to, for example, Joe Rogan, we have a problem even if the majority of the populace ain’t particularly woke.Report
Yes, but staff and elite level thinking is a comparatively easy problem to fix. If the electorate is broadly out of step with your principles you have to choose to either change your principles or accept losing for the near to long term and that is a hard decision to make. If your elites and staffers are out of stop with the electorates principles its a lot easier to change that and is a much easier decision to make. Losses do it for the elites and firing or not hiring does it for the staff which also is downstream of losing.Report
I think she lost because inflation was bad and the border is out of control. I don’t think wokeness was an issue in the sense that she failed to inhabit some sort of Goldilocks zone. What it may have done, and tends to do, is make people look out of touch with the concerns and challenges of normal, every day people.Report
I wouldn’t call it a Goldilocks Zone as much as a Revelation 3:16 problem.
The whole “but she didn’t campaign on that!” defense we saw from time to time demonstrates the problem.
At time T, she proudly asserted X. At time Tsub1, she stopped talking about X entirely.
Are supporters of X happy? Not particularly.
Are opponents of X happy? Not particularly.Report
I still think that she “got away with it” in terms of that she did not kowtow or campaign to woke terms and, at times, even pointed away from woke terms and woke figures didn’t cause heck for her in retaliation for those decisions.
She still lost, of course, but not because she wasn’t woke enough. Had she been more woke I think she would have lost by wider margins and suffered more downstream effects on her party.Report
Had she been more woke, she might have shored up Michigan and maybe North Carolina/Georgia.
Had she gone more antiwoke and repudiated the stuff she said years prior and explained it away as a strange artifact of Trump I 2019 delusions, she might have shored up some of the legion of demographics she lost and I don’t know how that would have played out.
But doing it the way she did it was…
Well, I suppose the fundamental question is “is there anything, anything at all, that Kamala could have done to win?”
And if the answer is “no”, well…
Here we are.
Maybe we should have followed Pelosi’s original plan.Report
I lay this mostly at Bidens door personally and can’t muster a lot of venom towards Harris herself. Going on Rogan, for instance, probably wouldn’t have mattered in the least. A different overarching strategy might have worked. While Trump won widely his margin was very narrow, beaten only by the narrowness of his margin in 2016. So it is pretty plausible that a different strategy would have plausibly netted the 2% difference she needed to reverse Trumps win into a similar win of her own.
My point, though, is that when you talk about the Dems embracing utilitarianism more and not suffering punishment from DEI forces that really is what happened with this election. I submit it’s more that DEI forces are -incapable- of punishing the way you imagine because they literally don’t command an adequate voting constituency to “punish” that way. Even Michigan, specifically the Palestinian heritage voters there, which is your strongest example is quite weak. Those voters don’t consider themselves in DEI terms in the least. They’re “bring an end to the Jewish entity” not “argle bargle spray of DEI catchphrases”. Yes some of the DEI set gloms onto that, absolutely, but it’s not central to the actual voters thought processes or principles.Report
If there is nothing, absolutely nothing, Kamala could have done to win, you’re absolutely right.
So we probably want to put some resources into “how might we be able to tell the difference between politicians who might win national elections and ones that are like Harris or Clinton?”
If there were two or three things that she could have done differently and moved the needle, we probably want to hammer down what they are.
Personally, I think a Sista Soulja moment would have helped. I think she should have had a different answer to the question of what she would have done differently than Biden. I think she should have told her staffers to pound sand and then gone on Joe Rogan.
To pick three things off the top of my head.
But maybe she, like Joe, was doomed to lose.Report
Sure, but since I don’t hold the position that Kamala couldn’t have won the election (considering how close it was that position strikes me as irrational) is all non-sequitur.Report
If she could have won the election, I submit: Talking about obvious mistakes made and what should have been done instead is not a non-sequitur but an actual important thing.Report
Sure, but your original point was:
“Guys, guys, guys… we’re here to talk about fighting Trump. We’re not going to open with a Land Acknowledgment and we’re not going to talk about Gaza.”
Think you can get away with that?
Because I lean “no” for the moment.”
And I pointed out that Kamala did actually do what you’re describing and “got away with it” in terms that the identarian left didn’t rise up against her. Now I think this is because both A) the identarian left chose not to rise up against her considering the stakes and B) the identarian left doesn’t command the voter support for them to rise up against her in a way that wouldn’t have resulted in them simply being thrown out of the party apparatus.
You can absolutely say “Kamala should have explicitly campaigned against identity issues” and I’d be sympathetic. But you can’t accurately say that the utilitarian actions you describe for the Dems can’t/haven’t been done in the party when she literally did them in the 2024 campaign. Heck, let’s be clear eyed here, with as close Kamala came to winning; if she -hadn’t- been carrying the baggage from 2016 that she did, she might very well have pulled off a win with the “say nothing” strategy towards the DEI stuff.
Now, I think DEI is 80/20 featherbedding and posturing pap/useful prognosis’ that started out marginally bad in political terms and has become unambiguously political poison and the fifth of it that is useful/meritted is also pretty uncontroversial so I’d be quite fine with a future Democratic candidate being overtly anti-DEI indulgence. I just would like us to accurately describe the lay of the political land instead of regurgitating something that sounds like a mid spicy level Fox news talking point.Report
And I pointed out that Kamala did actually do what you’re describing and “got away with it” in terms that the identarian left didn’t rise up against her.
I suppose we can hammer out who qualifies as being identarian left or not but the only demographics that Kamala increased her numbers with are white guys with grad school.
Trump’s share increased in every other demographic. I can find you the chart, if you’d like.Report
It’s okay, you don’t need to prove my point for me further. White guys with grad school are almost a traced over circle on a Venn diagram with the identarian left.Report
This.Report
Do you literally know any organizer or process or _anything_ on the left? Have you actually ever participated or even listened to a discussion on the left? Or is it just a bunch of stereotypes and parodies running around inside your head?Report
I just know stuff like “the staffers didn’t want Harris to go on Joe Rogan” and stuff like the museum who stopped their Kimono photo shoots because of Cultural Appropriation.
Oh, and the whole “comedy isn’t supposed to punch down” moment we had for a minute there.Report
You and I don’t disagree much Saul. DEI is assuredly, along with a terrifyingly large number of NGO’s and nonprofits, the left wing equivalent of the rights’ megapastor Christian circuit. And, much like the megapastor Christians before it, the whole thing has made the left look bad and steered the left in unproductive cul de sacs.
I would never, ever, say that Trump is worth getting rid of DEI. We seemed to be steadily rolling it back on our own. But I have no qualms about saying that Trump tossing it out is probably more good than bad. Those highly educated folks will simply have to find other jobs instead.Report
As part of this purported anti-DEI push, he is rescinding civil rights era executive orders that no other President has done so, be careful what you wish for. Nothing Trump does is worth all the damage he will also do. Nothing
https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lgcivsavps2hReport
Gotta learn to pick our battles, Saul. The kind of discrimination I’m assuming you’re concerned about would still violate the equal protection clause and possibly also the civil rights act.
We also have to deal with the reality that as necessary as some of these things were 60 years ago the country has changed. The rules and regs have also metastasized from simple non-discrimination requirements into a morass of rent seeking, shadow quotas, and new forms discrimination, all to the detriment of state competence, capacity, and trust. If they really do want to start discriminating against racial minorities there are plenty of tools to fight back. Otherwise it’s time to let it go.Report
That is not what Trump is doing and it is very naive to think it is what he is doing. He is taking a wrecking ball to everything and trying to roll us back to Lochner or further.Report
Of course not, nor would I ever say otherwise.Report
As should be expected from Blueski, this is disingenuous and/or histrionic. Race and sex discrimination in employment is already illegal for all businesses (excepting those with legitimate requirements for sex-specific hiring), which includes government contractors. He rescinded this EO for the affirmative action provision, not the redundant anti-discrimination provisions.Report
Yeah, um, this thread needs to be archived and pulled out in about a month, I think. Maybe two.
Because what people seem to think is going to happen is not what is going to happen.
BTW, I’ve seen literally no one here mention that Trump is including going after accessibility as part of this.Report
Its not just for us feds – there’s a separate EO requiring it to be policed out of contracts and grants.Report
There are probably duelling Atlantic pieces upcoming about the significance of ending DEI on MLK day.
I’ll probably agree with one of them.Report
My reactions are as follows:
1. EO on Birthright citizenship- bad policy for reasons I went onto on other post, probably unconstitutional.
2. Border Emergency- unclear what this actually does, if anything. Seems likely to be empty posturing.
3. Getting rid of work remote bad, getting rid of DEI good, don’t know enough about the protections but my anecdotal experience from my brief stint as a federal employee was that there was little discipline or accountability anywhere.
4. Paris- bad, but probably doesn’t mean much given the chances of anyone meeting what they agreed to are already low. Climate will be mitigated (or not) by tech not treaties.
5. Weaponization of the government- unclear what this actually means.
6. TikTok- very bad if in fact unilaterally disregarding a law passed by Congress.
7. 1/6 Pardons- also very bad for reasons that seem too obvious to require further explanation.Report
1. Ending Birthright citizenship by EO isn’t unconstitutional if five out of four Supreme Court Justices say it is fine by sophistry.
2. It means that asylum seekers can’t enter the United States through the Mexican-US border along with other people even if they have visas and such.
3. I’m very meh on DEI but the right is not going after it in good faith but as a bogeyman. Getting rid of remote work is a way to exert dominance and insure compliance.
4, 5, and 6 agreee.
7. Trump needs his freikorps.Report
Worked for FDR, but we have a better class of justice on the Court now. There are legitimate questions about whether Congress can eliminate automatic citizenship for children of illegal immigrants (no, Wong Kim Ark didn’t address this), but it definitely can’t be done unilaterally by the President.Report
Trump just rescinded Lyndon Johnson’s EO 11246. That’s the Affirmative Action one.Report
And there it goes boys.Report
The right has been pissed off since the New Deal. We’re going way further back than the Great Society.Report
The new Gilded Age will surely be an adventure.Report
Indeed! On the plus side, eggs are now 1 cent a dozen.Report
When I bought a dozen eggs last week, they were a couple of bucks more than the previous time. Causes: on the first of the year a new state law came into force requiring cage-free production, and avian flu is still running through the flocks.Report
Random thought… How soon until the executive order forbidding states from imposing tougher constraints on growing conditions for food than the FDA has? One of Trump’s energy EOs attempts to revoke California’s waiver to impose tighter vehicle emission standards.Report
Ahem.
“Interstate Commerce”Report
I would have thought the preemption doctrine, eg, no state may impose restrictions tougher than the FDA’s. Of course, this SCOTUS seems likely to toss that with respect to mifepristone.
One interesting question we’ll get to watch is whether the Court decides that rules and statutes can be overridden by EO without any process.Report
California has made more enemies than friends over the last couple of decades. And it needs more friends than enemies now more than ever.
And, seriously, that egg thing is bullcrap.Report
Trump pardoning the Silk Road guy is, I think, the direction his Administration is going. Team Grey social and economic policies… everything else yadda yadda evangelicals and Christian Nationalists – pure smoke screen.Report
Executive Order BlitzkreigReport
Following Bannon’s advice to flood the zone with sh!t so people ( meaning mostly the media) become overwhelmed and shut down, ending opposition.
Seems to be working.Report
CNN is moving Jim Acosta’s slot to midnight and Wolf Blitzer is taking over the old one.
If only there were a news station worth watching! Wait, let’s check on the ratings of the big three…
Overwhelmed must be the only explanation, I guess.Report
Fox is great if all you want is partisan commentary and GOP cheerleading. You have to look elsewhere for actual news.Report
Endorphins from being told you’re right aren’t cool.
You know what’s cool?
Endorphins from it being demonstrated that you were right.Report