Nearly everyone who reads this blog and follows the personalities of the various names associated with it will be familiar with my strong criticism of Donald Trump, his Administration, his henchmen and minions, the policies they pursue, and the poisonous effect that they wreak upon our law, our politics, and our culture.
But nevermore let it be said that I will not acknowledge a good call when one is made, even from so awful a man as the one currently disgracing the Oval Office.
On 10 February 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14208, “Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws.” This order had the effect of causing the heads of executive agencies to cease purchases of paper straws to be dispensed for beverage consumption, and once again purchasing plastic straws for use with beverages such as water, soda, and juice sold in places like snack bars, concession stands, cafeterias, and other places in Federal buildings where food and drink are available. Further, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy is directed to prepare a national strategy to discourage the use of paper straws in non-governmental settings as well.
Paper straws mush up within seconds of being submerged in a beverage, and within a minute or two of that, become nearly unusable and collapse upon themselves. Those things suck. Now that I think about it, that’s a poor turn of phrase. Better to say, they make it harder to suck. Facilitating sucking is a straw’s raison d’etre.
Sometimes beverages ought be consumed through a straw. People spill. They drop things. They walk too fast with containers too full of sloshing liquid. That liquid gets on floors, upholstery, and keyboards. It makes floors slippery. It stains and damages things. A beverage in a cup with a lid reduces those risks, which in turn saves money in maintenance and cleanup costs for Federal facilities.
I’m 100% in favor of consumers being more ecologically friendly and the government leading in that direction by example. But I question the degree to which plastic straws entering our landfills represents a high-impact effort as opposed to, say, transitioning away from burning fossil fuels for power or adopting selective forestry management practices in our national forests as opposed to clearcutting. Compared to the myriad other more harmful behaviors we as consumers engage in, using plastic straws is actually pretty far down the list in terms of what actually makes a difference in nature.
The big issue with plastic straws is that they break down into microparticles in the oceans, which marine animals ingest; those marine animals are then eaten by, among other predators, humans. Chances are good you have some of those microplastic particles in your brain right now.
But it turns out the biggest source of marine microplastics are in Asian and African nations with few regulations on plastics manufacturing: India, Vietnam, and China are the biggest offenders by far. I presume the plastic-happy USA is not on that list because mostly, our landfills are pretty well confined from discharging solid waste into rivers and groundwater, and thus ultimately the ocean. (For now, at least; bear in mind that Trump’s EPA might simply have not yet got around to relaxing those rules. They have more than 45 months to go.)
And thanks to the ethyl-methyl-badstuff added to the paper to make these silly straws hold their shape thirty seconds longer once submerged, paper straws aren’t all that much better for the environment anyway.
Just yesterday, I got a paper straw with a beverage I bought with my lunch. I had the same bad experience you all have had with paper straws, as described above. I wound up taking the lid off my drink, throwing it and the straw away, and just drinking from the cup like it was… you know, a cup. You know what would have been more environmentally friendly than giving me a plastic lid and a paper straw? Giving me the cup with nothing at all on top, the way I get a beer at a stadium. That’s how I ultimately wound up drinking my soda at lunch, so just start out that way!
Do not mistake this essay for me somehow reconciling myself to Trump and his Administration. I’m vehemently against the blatant corruption, the naked lawlessness, the defiance of court orders, the backstabbing of our allies, the deporting of non-criminals for engaging in protected speech, the glib lies and cynical gaslighting dispensed by the President and his comms team, the arbitrary and capricious algorithm-driven erosion of the government from within, the bizarre and unproductive cozying up to Russia, the authoritarianism and subversion of democratic norms, the perversion of equal opportunity laws, the firing of public employees and ending of public benefits without Congressional approval, the impoundment of public funds, the malignant cultural signals dispensed by the White House and its denizens, America’s new status as a pariah amongst the community of nations, the appointment of risibly unqualified and in many cases dangerously destructive nominees to positions of high public trust and power, the active hostility to education and science, and in fact damn near everything else the Trump Administration has done in the last seventy-one days. I’m grumpy about what’s happened to my retirement account since this tariff business drove an otherwise moderately growing, functional economy straight into a lightpost, too.
If I had to trade between paper straws and having sane, competent people running our government, I’d choose the soggy inconvenience of cruddy paper straws. Better-functioning plastic straws are not worth the end of the United States as I’ve known it, which is true at the same time it’s true that paper straws are in fact terrible. I’m not going to say “thank you” for the imminent return of better-functioning plastic straws. I’ve gone quite as far as I’m willing to go already, and so here will end my concession that there is one singular, risibly small, molecularly unimportant thing that Trump did which I do not oppose.
It’s weird, I thought we were on some sort of extreme cost-cutting major to reduce the size of the government, but we’re building some sort of policy office to try to convince people what sort of straws they should purchase for themselves or for a business to provide to customers?
And odd a Republican Administration is doing this, isn’t this exactly the sort of thing conservatives don’t like?
Yes, I know, it’s utterly pointless to point out the hypocrisy, but I feel at least someone needs to at least write it down for the record, so here my completely pro forma comment about it.Report
Really? That’s it? I’m far from his number one fan, but if you can’t off the top of your head name several legitimately good policies he’s put into place—among many very bad ones!—then you might have drunk too deeply of the neurotoxic waters of Portland.Report
What are some good policies?Report
The Good:
1) Tariffs on China.
2) What he’s done with Israel.
3) Dismantling DEI and understanding it’s like opposing someone’s religion.
The Neutral (or with holding judgement):
1) I’m not going to put paper straw in there because it’s a nothing burger.
2) I’m also not going to include cozying up to Russia as a bad thing because it looks like that’s going to blow up.
3) I’m also going to withhold judgement on damage to rule of law because that’s yet to come to a head… but lots of potential on this one.
The Bad:
1) Various tariffs for the sake of tariffs.
2) Mistreating our various allies (this would be a long list btw)
3) Hiring anti-vac people to head up Health.
4) General lawlessness and basically being at war with the judicial system.
5) Hiring people who are incompetent and firing the competent people below them who are needed to carry out policy.
6) General chaos and unwillingness to use governmental tools in appropriate ways. Rather than Musk’s group we should have a copy of what Gore did as VP.
7) Getting rid of large amounts of gov competency without any effort to do a cost/value eval on it first (note I would have included bureaucracy reform as a good thing last time)
8) Apparently taking Russian info war stuff as legit information.
9) Going serious Tax-Cut and Spend.
10) General lack of stability. I think he’s suffering from some age related dementia.
Some of this is chaos of administration transfer, having very new people in their jobs, and a negative relationship with the press.
However the overall summation is really bad. He’s ripping up decades of international good will, and doing a lot of damage to the gov, and the economy. Whether that also includes rule of law is a work in progress.
At the moment I’d say he’s probably going to end up the 2nd worst President we’ve ever seen and he’s got an outside shot at #1.Report
Thanks for the suggestions, Dark Matter.
1. Less broad tariffs on China could be plausibly defensible; however, I’d still be skeptical personally. Free trade is a home setting for me, left over from my youth as a conservative during the Reagan years. These tariffs are going to hurt us more than they do China, they take place simultaneously with an idiotically destructive trade war with our former USMCA partners, and a softer touch with China would be a better idea anyway given that there were already tariffs in place. (Never mind that Trump negotiated the USMCA and I’m old enough to remember when he touted that it would lead to a new golden era of American prosperity; it was, in fact, effectively a rebranding of 2010’s-era NAFTA, and again, free trade is my home setting.)
2. Hamas are bad guys and I shed zero tears for them. Israel started the Gaza war with the moral high ground. Netanyahu’s government has since forfeited any claim there and that moral territory is now unoccupied. There are no good guys amongst the combatants in the Gaza war. Nevertheless, an honorable peace with Israeli-advantageous terms has been available to Israel for at least half a year now; Netanyahu prefers to be at war because it helps him bolster his domestic political position which in turn helps him avoid personal legal vulnerability. Since even before taking office, Trump has encouraged re-escalation of the war rather than incentivized peace, and that’s what has happened.
3. If you’re going to accuse DEI advocates of being religious zealots, then I’m one of them. DEI is a good thing and there should be more of it. White people, male people, cisgendered people, heterosexual people, Christian people, and in non-academic settings conservative people face few if any material professional or academic disadvantages, particularly when compared with people from traditionally disempowered and smaller-share demographic groups. I described what the Trump administration has done with equal opportunity laws as “perverse” in the OP, and that was a calculated choice of wording. I can respect that you hold a different opinion and perhaps think what’s going on in that arena is good. But I say what Trump’s done is deplorable.Report