Tag Archives: executive orders

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 7.

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            Elon Musk posed a question during a meeting with the press in the Oval Office: “If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?”[1]  It’s a fair question.  In the guise of the “administrative state,” has concerned political scientists for some time.[2]  A revolt against the “Eurocrats” of the European Union is a large part of what drove “Brexit.”[3]  In short, there’s serious intellectual positions behind some of President Donald Trump’s policies, along with all the other motivations. 

            Trump has issued a snowstorm of Executive Orders (EOs).[4]  Democrats in Congress could think of nothing to do, so they blustered.  Progressive journalists fumed that “Musk is in charge of the U.S. government.”  Until Trump casts him aside as he did others before. 

Not so with many groups and people outside of Congress.  “The old plan sufficeth them”: they sued.  As a former White House lawyer said, agencies and laws created by Congress can only be closed by Congress.  What Trump is doing is “shattering the fundamental checks and balances of our constitutional order.”[5]  Attorneys General in Democratic states and unions representing federal employees went to law.  Judges—Democrats and Republicans—issued temporary stays on a bunch of the administration’s policies.

The administration did not always comply with these court orders.  Vice President JD Vance argued that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”  What constitutes “the executive’s legitimate power”?  Lawyers and the courts will sort out that claim.[6]  Elon Musk said that the judge who had barred his men from Department of the Treasury records should be impeached.[7]  President Trump himself said that his administration was searching out corruption and that “maybe we have to look at the judges.”[8] 

Nothing dismayed, the administration ripped away $900 million from one agency within the Department of Education.  The group “tracks student progress and educational best practices.”  Declining student test scores indicate that the taxpayers aren’t getting much for their money. 

What happens when Trump and Musk start cutting at the Department of Health and Human Services, or at Social Security, or at the Department of Defense?  Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense are three of the four leading shares of government spending.  As Willy Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks: “It’s where the money is.” 

[1] “Trump, allies rage at courts amid judicial pushback,” The Week, 21 February 2025, p. 4. 

[2] See: Administrative state – Wikipedia 

[3] Although it is possible that an English hatred of the Scots after the campaign for Scottish independence also contributed to the surge of nationalism.  In news broadcasts, Cross of St. George flags were all over the place. 

[4] See: Diary of the Second Addams Administration 2. | waroftheworldblog 

[5] Charles Raul in the Washington Post, quoted in “Trump, allies rage at courts amid judicial pushback,” The Week, 21 February 2025, p. 4.

[6] Top of the line in utility sports,Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts! #thesimpsons – YouTube “Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts.” 

[7] On the status of Federal judges, see: United States federal judge – Wikipedia  Impeachment is probably the only way to remove a federal judge before s/he dies.  It would take a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a judge.  In the current state of the Senate, this will not happen.  So Musk is annoying a judge in the Southern District of New York, which deals with all sorts of complicated cases touching on financial crimes, among other things.  Smart. 

[8] “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze into you”—Friedrich Nietzsche.  If you see my point.  Guy wrote the best bumper-stickers. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 3.

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            Among President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) bearing in some way in illegal immigration were ones: declaring an emergency on the southern border; ordering 1,600 troops to the border to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); stopping the claiming of asylum at the border; revoking President Joe Biden’s EO granting special immigrant status to about 600,000 refugees from Venezuela’s Marxist dictatorship; increasing those eligible for “fast-track deportations”; declared drug cartels (which also engage in people smuggling) as “terrorists”; taking the Border Patrol asylum app off-line; and revoking an earlier ban on ICE raids on sanctuaries like churches, schools, and hospitals.[1]  In a blow at “sanctuary cities,” the Department of Justice threatened to prosecute state and local officials who refused to comply with deportation orders. 

The search for illegal immigrants got underway immediately.[2]  ICE corralled 5,000 illegal immigrants in the first weeks.  So did the expulsions.  Military planes began ferrying deportees back to their home countries.  Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia got the first returnees.  When Columbia tried to refuse, Trump threatened to slap a 25 percent tariff on imports from Columbia.  The president of Columbia caved-in. 

Democrats’ criticism of President Trump’s actions took three lines.  First, Trump’s EO modifying the eligibility for “birthright citizenship” met a barrage of denunciations from Democrats.  “The 14th Amendment says what it means, and it means what it says” asserted Connecticut’s Attorney General.[3]  Twenty-two states sued to block the order. 

Second, some critics saw a much greater import to the “birthright” EO.  Closing the border on the grounds that the massive illegal immigration “constitute[s] and invasion” creates the possibility that President Trump could invoke the Alien Enemies Act,[4] and then deploy “extraordinary new powers.”  So, we’re closer to fascism in this view.  On the other hand, the half of the country that elected Trump supports the mass deportations of illegal immigrants, while the half that failed to elect Kamala Harris oppose mass deportations.[5]  So, we’re living with the results of a free and fair—if tight–election in this view. 

Third, it won’t work.  A human tide of people from troubled areas of the world want to get to places of greater safety and opportunity.  They will keep coming regardless of the measures taken to stop them.  “Migrants don’t simply disappear by wishing them away.”[6]  A Trump supporter could offer two counter-arguments.  On the one hand, look at the European model.  They pay foreign countries to block passage.  On the other hand, Trump isn’t wishing them away.  He’s launching a massive effort to actually stop migration.  Time will tell. 

[1] “Asylum halted as immigration crackdown begins,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 5. 

[2] “Thousands arrested in immigration crackdown,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 5. 

[3] Which sounds a lot like “Originalism.”  Originalism – Wikipedia  That’s OK: John Marshall Harlan’s lonely dissent on Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) adopted the same perspective.  However, it is a hard swerve away from the well-established liberal position that the Constitution is a “living document” which jurist must interpret in light of changing times. 

[4] One of the Alien Sedition Acts passed in 1798; unlike the others, this Act won support from many Jeffersonians and was never repealed.  See: Alien and Sedition Acts – Wikipedia 

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 17.  The Boston Globe put the share of supporters at 55 percent. 

[6] Juliette Kayyem in the Atlantic, quoted in “Thousands arrested in immigration crackdown,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 5. 

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 2.

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            Between 20 January and 1 February 2025, President Donald Trump issues 45 Executive Orders (Eos) that imposed sweeping changes in government policies.[1]  President Joe Biden had issued only 26 EOs ordering sweeping changes in the same period following his inauguration and didn’t hit the 45 mark until 14 May 2021.[2] 

            Some of these EOs struck a nerve with Democrats.  Among many other things, Trump withdrew–more accurately re-withdrew–the United States from the Paris Climate executive agreement[3]; ordered the immediate dismantling of any and all government programs promoting diversity, inclusion, and equity; ordered any federal workers employed on such programs to be placed on paid leave; reversed a Biden EO permitting transgender troops to serve in the military; changed the name of the tallest mountain in the United States from “Denali” back to “McKinley”[4]; ordered that the “Gulf of Mexico” be renamed the “Gulf of America”; and reversed an EO originally issued by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 which allowed government to lean on private contractors to take “affirmative action” in hiring.[5]  In short, a bunch of sacred cows went to Bovine University. 

            More substantively, Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization, (W.H.O.); said that the United States would “take back” the Panama Canal; reduced restrictions on oil and gas production that had been imposed by the Biden administration; created a “Department of Government Efficiency” (D.O.G.E.) to be led by Elon Musk; and ordered an end to “birthright citizenship.”[6] 

            More orders followed hard on the heels of the first few days.  He issued, then quickly rescinded, an order temporarily halting the payment of federal grants, loans, and other forms of assistance to a wide range of groups outside the federal government.  “The order sparked chaos at universities, charities, local government, and other bodies reliant on federal funding,…”[7]  Not satisfied with shaking hearts and minds with such dramatic action, the administration also issued a warning to federal employees that there were going to be big job cuts.  The e-mail message offered many of them the choice between retiring immediately and being paid for eight months or risking being laid off when Musk got around to them.  “Which will you have?”[8] 

            To top off the disruption, Trump fulfilled his pledge to pardon the 1,600 convicted rioters from 6 January 2021.  Or, in the words of the WSJ, “Cop Beaters.”  He’s good for his word, alas. 

[1] List of executive orders in the second presidency of Donald Trump – Wikipedia 

[2] List of executive actions by Joe Biden – Wikipedia  Biden issued his final EO, his 162nd, on 19 January 2025. 

[3] Like the Iran agreement, President Barack Obama had known that he couldn’t get a treaty through the Senate because the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of approval for any treaty.  So, in both cases, he settled for executive agreements whose durability depended upon retaining control of the White House.

[4] Still, if you go to a GMC dealer, you won’t be offered a test drive in the “exciting new McKinley.” 

[5] Commonly believed to mean quotas. 

[6] He did not exactly end “birthright citizenship.”  He restricted it to exclude children born of parents who were illegal immigrants, and to exclude children born to a foreign national mother in the United States on any kind of short-term or temporary visa and whose father was also not a citizen.  Furthermore, the change was not retroactive and applies to children born after 19 February 2025.  The 14th Amendment had been adopted long before there had been any idea of illegal immigration. 

[7] “Trump orders cause whiplash in Washington,” The Week, 7 February 2025, p. 4.  See also: “Trump returns with a barrage of orders, pardons,” The Week, 31 January 2025, p. 4. 

[8] True Grit (2010) “Fill Your Hands!” 

Emergency.

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Faced with a Republican Congress created by a majority of Republican voters, President Obama resorted to executive orders and administrative regulations to act on climate, immigration, and wages.  None of these initiatives have fared well with the courts.

For example, in February 2016, the Supreme Court issued a stay on President Obama’s regulations on the coal industry as part of his effort to respond to climate change.[1]  For example, in June 2016 the Supreme Court (4-4) upheld a lower court’s rejection of President Obama’s 2014 executive order that would have allowed almost half (5 million) illegal immigrants to escape deportation.[2]

For example, in May 2016, the Obama Administration’s Labor Department issued a regulation on over-time.  Previously, only workers making less than $23,660 a year were eligible for time-and-a-half over 40 hours/week.  Under the Labor Department regulation, anyone making less than $47,500 a week would qualify for overtime.  Businesses assumed that the new regulation would be sustained by the courts, so they began raising pay to the new minimum and by turning full-time workers into hourly workers.  Then, just before Thanksgiving, a federal judge in Texas (of course) blocked a Labor Department regulation on overtime pay.[3]  The Trump Administration is likely to withdraw the regulation.

So, who is in the right here?  Hard to say because a lot of jobs pay very little and require an awful lot.  Anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows that long hours involve constant toil and bullying by idiot supervisors for lousy money.  For that matter, the idiot supervisors themselves put in 60 hours a week or more trying to get to the next level.

On the other hand, one can easily get the feeling that Democrats believe that every business is Microsoft: immense profits from immense profit margins.  In fact, retailers, restaurants, and grocery stores all run in thin profit-margins.  Thus, when Washington, DC, mandated a raise in the minimum wage, Walmart cancelled plans to build two new stores in the district, and Washington restaurants cut employment by 1,400 workers in the first half of 2016.[4]

It seems likely that one part of President Obama’s “legacy” will be a judicial restriction of executive authority.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing from a non-partisan perspective.  American voters often have chosen a divided government.  This is annoying for politicians (Republican as much as Democrats) with agendas they want to push.  The resort to executive orders and regulatory changes does offer a way around this dead-lock.  However, it establishes a pattern of circumventing the Constitution’s division of powers.  Any president can portray anything s/he wants to do as the solution to some “emergency.”

[1] See: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us/politics/supreme-court-blocks-obama-epa-coal-emissions-regulations.html?_r=0

[2] See: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/politics/immigration-supreme-court/

[3] “Issue of the week: Judge halts new overtime rule,” The Week, 9 December 2016, p. 38.

[4] “Proof that wage laws backfire,” The Week, 11 November 2016, p. 12.

Still More American Public Opinion.

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What do Americans think of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? The polls have been blurry. In March 2014, 41 percent of people approved of the ACA, while 53 percent of people disapproved. There was a big partisan break-down: 72 percent of Democrats approved it, while only 8 percent of Republicans approved it. Those figures raise their own puzzles. Why are 28 percent of Democrats opposed to the law or unsure if they approve it? If 72 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of Republicans approve the law, where do Independents stand? In another poll in May 2014, 61 percent that they either wanted Congress to leave the ACA in place or—at most—tinker with any flaws. In contrast, 38 percent of people wanted the law repealed.[1] Approval of the ACA appears to have shot up from 41 percent to 61 percent, opposition to have fallen from 53 to 38 percent. Did this mark a sea-change in attitudes toward the ACA or a polling error?

What do Americans think about race relations? In 2009, after the election of Barack Obama to be President of the United States, 66 percent of people thought that race relations were good. Then came the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. In August 2014, 80 percent of African-Americans thought that the shooting “raises important questions about race that need to be discussed.” Only 37 percent of whites agreed. Almost half of whites—47 percent—thought that race was “getting more attention than it deserves.” In December 2014, 85 percent of African-Americans disapproved of the decision by the grand jury to not indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown. Overall, 45 percent of Americans disapproved of the decision, while 48 percent approved it. By January 2015, 40 percent of people believed that race relations were “fairly good” or “very good.”[2] There is a rough similarity between the figures for those who had believed that race was getting too much attention, for those who approved the decision not to indict, and for those who believe that race relations are good.

What do Americans think about opportunity in America? In November 2014, 24 percent of people believed that the economy is “fair to most Americans,” while 71 percent think that it “generally favors the rich.” A majority—57 percent–of those who earn more than $100,000 a year agree. However, 43 percent of those who did not vote in November 2014 were African-American or Hispanic-Americans, and 46 percent earned less than $30,000 a year.[3]

What do people think about getting anything accomplished in government? In January 2015, 60 percent of Americans believed that the Congress elected in November 2014 will not accomplish any more than the previous bums. Even more, 72 percent, doubted that the Republican majority in the Senate would accomplish anything more than did the Democratic majority. Some people seem frustrated with this situation, while others are satisfied. Thus, 46 percent of people believed that President Obama should wait on action by Congress to solve the immigration issue. According to the first poll, however, most people expect that such action will not come. In contrast, 42 percent of people favored the president issuing an executive order to deal with immigration. Finally, 59 percent of people favored building the Keystone XL pipeline. This included not only 83 percent of Republicans, but also 43 percent of Democrats.[4] The president vetoed that bill.

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 4 April 2015, p. 15; “Poll Watch,” The Week, 23 May 2014, p. 15.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 29 August 2014, p. 17; “Poll Watch,” The Week, 12 December 2014, p. 19; “Poll Watch,” The Week, 16 January 2015, p. 17.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 14 November 2014, p. 19.

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 23 January 2015, p. 17; “Poll Watch,” The Week, 28 November 2014, p. 15.