Trump's Day One Executive Orders
Jan 21, 2025
Day
One of Trump 2.0 was full of shock and awful, precisely what we had every
reason to expect. In classic fashion, there was so much, and it was so all over
the board that it was hard to focus on any one thing. I wrote to you about that
back in November when I first started thinking about The Democracy Index
(starting soon on The Contrarian). At the time, I wrote about how hard it was
during his first administration to focus on any one thing Trump was doing
because there was so much going on that no one could keep all of it at the
forefront, and after a while, outrage fatigue sets in, and people give up.
Yesterday was a perfect example of that.
What
we cannot afford to do this time is let Trump‘s daily scandal prevent us from
keeping track of the most significant trends in his attack on democracy. Once
The Democracy Index gets up and running we’ll be tracking the issues and
marking the through lines that let us understand the whole, rather than just
seeing each day’s individual horrible.
Yesterday
was stark because of the sheer volume of things that happened: the inauguration
itself, the pardons from both Biden and Trump, and the executive orders and
other presidential actions. There is no way to cover everything all at once in
meaningful detail. But we’ll focus on them as lawsuits and governmental action
proceed, and we see which of Trump’s executive orders look like they may lead
to action and which look more like pure political posturing. For today, we’ll
just stay high level.
You
can see a list and follow links to all of Trump’s executive orders here. Despite saying he’d sign around 200 of them, the actual
total was 26, compared to nine first day orders by Joe Biden and one by Trump
in his prior presidency. That gives you some sense of how prepared Trump and
his Project 2025 friends were.
Executive
orders are not a magic wand, though. The president can only use them to direct
activity within the executive branch, he can’t make other entities, or private
businesses, universities, podcasters, individuals or anyone/thing else that
isn’t an executive branch entity or actor comply with his dictates. That’s one
big limitation on his ability to act. Orders have to be in compliance with the
Constitution and federal laws. They can’t just, say, undo a Constitutional
protection for birthright citizenship. If they do, they’ll be challenged in
federal court, which, at a minimum, involves a sizable delay.
By
midnight last night, the lawsuits had already started, with challenges to
birthright citizenship, Schedule F, and DOGE coming out of the starting gate.
By this afternoon, 22 states had sued Trump over his unconstitutional effort to
end birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen, and other lawsuits, like
one brought by pregnant women whose babies will be denied citizenship, have
been filed too. As in the first Trump administration, the lawyers are back at
it, and despite the favorable treatment the Supreme Court gave Trump when it
came to personal immunity from criminal prosecution and its disturbing
decisions when it came to abortion, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic
here. Writing birthright citizenship out of the Constitution would require an
amendment, not a president’s whim. If you’d like a brief explanation of why
Trump should lose on birthright citizenship, I have a piece here.
The
most profound abuse yesterday was the pardons Trump issued to reward January 6
offenders for their loyalty to him. I wrote about why it would be such a bad
idea for Trump to do this for the Brennan Center earlier this month. It erases
the attack on our Constitution and our country. The purpose of that attack was
Donald Trump’s personal benefit, helping him stay in power after losing the
election, contrary to every principle of American democracy. The Founding
Fathers did not extend the pardon power to the president so he could use it to
reward political loyalists who turned to violence to try and overturn the
results of an election on his behalf.
But
that’s exactly what Trump did, commuting sentences for fourteen members of the
Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who were convicted in the cases where seditious
conspiracy charges were brought successfully by the Justice Department. My
piece relies on reporting compiled by NBC’s Ryan Reilly, who documented, using available
video, that these defendants were captured brandishing and using firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive Trump billboard, Trump flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches, and even an explosive device during the attack
on the Capitol. More than 140 police officers were injured, and members of
Congress fled the building in fear for their lives.
So
much for Vice President JD Vance’s claim over the
weekend that: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't
be pardoned.” Trump’s attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, said during her
confirmation hearings that she couldn’t take a position on pardons because she
would need to look at each file individually. That didn’t happen. These
defendants were released from prison with little, if any, preparation and no
regard for their offense on January 6, prior criminal history, behavior while
incarcerated, or threat to anyone in the community upon release.
The
QAnon shaman is thrilled about his pardon.
Trump’s inaugural speech set the stage for
all of this. He lies, panders, and rambles when he talks to the public, but a
few key points illustrate where Trump is headed. He may have said he was
interested in being a unifier before the inauguration, but that wasn’t what we got
yesterday:
- Trump: “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has
extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our
society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.” He said that,
presumably about Joe Biden, who pulled the country out of the Covid slump
and handed over what is widely viewed as the best economy in the world
with unemployment at a low and inflation under control to Trump. And Trump
talk about people who extracted power and wealth from “our citizens” with
all of the brogliarchs in the room.
- “My life was spared for a reason. I was saved by God to make America
great again.”
- “We will not forget our country. We will not forget our
Constitution. And we will not forget our God,” Trump said before launching
into his plans for executive orders that ignore all of those things.
None
of this is normal, and it’s our job to keep it from being normalized.
Presidents don’t try to erase the Constitution or turn the federal bureaucracy
into a loyalty corps. They don’t release violent criminals from prison so they
can return the favor. As the examples grow, our job is to refuse to treat them
like they’re acceptable. Trump’s abuses have to remain shocking, not because
they surprise us, but because they are profoundly unacceptable and contrary to
democratic principles.
Trump
wants us to abandon those principles. The easiest slide into autocracy is the
one where we give up. Continuing to believe in democracy is a profound act of
resistance and courage in a moment like this when we are being told it no
longer matters.
Don’t
give up.
We’re
in this together,
Joyce
