Civics on the Rocks: What Makes an Order Executive?

By Anne Trominski:

In case you were unaware, things are a bit crazy in the United States right now. In an era of shocking news stories, unheard of court cases, and generally unprecedented political events, discourse has gotten a tad tense . . . some might even say divisive.

Can we still discuss the events of the day over the dinner table? Can we realistically look to the past to deal with the problems of today? Is there an appropriate cocktail to serve for the end of times?

Three friends tackle these topics and distract themselves with other tangents in their podcast Civics on the Rocks. Steve’s an engineer, Mack’s a history teacher, and Anne’s just trying to get the mics to work correctly (with varying amounts of success). The long-form episodes are released at the beginning of each month. Living in Texas, they have plenty of political fodder to chew on, but topics cover all types of history and government. The hosts are unrepentant geeks, so they are just as likely to drop movie references as knowledge bombs but, ultimately, their goal is to try and figure out how to be engaged citizens in modern America. They’re also drinking and making cheesy jokes while doing it.

Full episodes with citations (geeks, I say) are available on their website, CivicsOnTheRocks.podbean.com, as well as all the major podcast carriers and socials.

In this episode, the trio analyze the power and effect of executive orders.

Read the edited transcript or listen to the entire episode below. And click here for references to the facts and topics discussed throughout.

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This episode originally aired March 10, 2025.

Anne: The question of the day: what makes an order executive?

Mack: Well, it has to be issued by the president.

Steve: Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Mack: Okay. Good night, everybody.

Steve: Next question.

Mack: So yeah, presidential executive orders have been in the news recently, and --

Anne: Have they? I hadn't noticed.

Mack: Yeah.

Steve: Just to timestamp this, we're February 8th, Saturday, and there have recently been a whole bunch of executive orders, although by the time you hear this, maybe they will have stopped. Maybe there aren't anymore.

Anne: He'll be tired and need to lay down for a while.

Mack: Probably rest his hand. No, I don't see that happening.

Steve: At least in our timeline. 

Anne: You think he's literally signing them or just, he's got a stamp?

Mack: No, he's signing them. Because . . .

Steve: With a flourish, he was like in an arena to sign them. He had spectators.

Mack: . . . there's video. He uses the Sharpie.

Anne:  I tend to turn away when I see his face.

Mack: Oh, okay.

Anne: Did he literally use a Sharpie?

Mack: Yeah. No . . .

Anne: I thought that was just for weather maps.

Steve: No, it's the only writing implement he uses, apparently, I guess, I don’t know.

Mack: But anyway, so executive orders are issued by the president, and they are, in short, they're the way that a president exercises his or her authority, and it can be pursuant to exercising an authority under a law passed by Congress, or it could be constitutional authority. And executive orders, historically, some of them have gotten into some gray areas. And now they're numbered. They have been numbered since 1937. They're collected under the code of federal regulations. And although the first president to issue an executive order was George Washington. And the thing is, executive orders are not mentioned in the Constitution. The president has powers and duties on responsibilities under Article II, and one of the things that a president may do is require opinions in writing of his ministers and councils. So that'd be cabinet secretaries. And George Washington wanted his cabinet secretaries, as we call them now, to provide him with opinions on the state of things in the United States for each of their respective areas. And he had to think about, okay, how do I actually exercise this power? And it was via an executive order.

Steve: Walk down the hall and ask them. Yeah, I've always thought of executive orders as, I mean, they kind of get all this pomp and circumstance around them, but honestly, they're two steps removed from the boss sends an email to the team saying, “Hey, I want this.”

Anne: It's a fancy email.

Steve: Yeah. I mean . . .  

Mack: Well, some of them.

Steve: . . . It's how the executive communicates, how the president communicates, to the rest of the executive branch about what he wants done or not done or whatever. I mean, it's a little more formalized. It's numbered. It's on pretty paper. But, I mean, at the end of the day, it's the same function. It's the boss sending directives downward to the rest of the organization.

Anne: So executive orders are going to someone specifically, like they're addressed to someone?

Mack: Not necessarily. They can be. It depends on, sometimes they're addressed to the entire executive department. Sometimes they're addressed to a specific agency. Sometimes they may be addressed to a specific cabinet official or other government --

Steve: I was just using email as a metaphor. Because they came out in ‘37 before there were emails. So . . .

Anne: Yes, I understand that. Especially since the first one came from George Washington. But . . .

Mack: It was an all staff.

Anne: No, but I guess, the question in my mind these days is what can the executive order address?

Steve: Anything.

Anne: Well, that's what it feels like, that he's just sending stuff out.

Steve: Willy nilly?

Anne: I think everybody should wear pink on Wednesdays . . .

Steve: Yup.

Mack: Sort of like a Christmas tree. Everything is getting hung on the executive orders.

Anne: Okay, I'm following your metaphor now, but yes. Took me a second, but we're good.

Steve: Yes. I mean, on one hand, yes, the president can write anything in an executive order that they might want to write in an executive order, and they can send directives to the rest of the government about whatever they feel like sending, whether that is substantive or performative, whether it is legal or not legal.

Anne: Well . . .

Mack: But that's . . . your question is an important question.

Anne: Yeah.

Mack: Like what can they do? And I think it is a . . . it’s been a problem now for several years, the way the media will cover executive orders and the way presidents will talk about executive orders. And it doesn't really matter if we're talking about Republicans or Democrats because you'll have a president issue an executive order saying, “I'm doing this,” and I'm going to pick an example: When Biden issued an executive order saying that the Equal Rights Amendment was properly ratified and is part of the Constitution; well, he doesn't have the power to do that. And the archivist of the United States—who, if you're playing along, was just fired by the Trump administration—refused to accept it as a proper amendment because it hadn't been ratified within the seven-year time span that the amendment required. Well, but here's the thing --

Steve: Yeah, there's some finer points on that, but that's not the subject of today. So for purpose of discussion --

Mack: What executive orders can actually do. And so there's a lot of times that [the] president will say, “I'm doing this with an executive order.” The media will repeat it. He's doing this with an executive order. And you actually read the executive order, and it's something along the lines of, “I do hereby after a lot of whereases ask the Environmental Protection Agency, I strongly ask them to reconsider their decision to revoke the permit for the pipeline, blah, blah, blah, whatever.” So because under the law, you couldn't actually order the EPA to do it, especially since it's an independent regulatory agency. But you could strongly encourage, and the EPA actually followed suit, and they granted the permit—this is in Trump's first term—they granted the permit that they had previously rejected. So, I mean, even if a president is strongly encouraging, I mean, that does carry some weight. Now having said that, you've got these executive orders where that's what's happening. It's not an actual order. It's not something the president has the direct power to do, but it is something where he will just say, strongly encourage, or like Obama with marijuana, there was an executive order that sort of encouraged the Justice Department to focus on infractions from where there were on . . . like transnational drug trade, like cartels, focus on that. Or in states where the state laws still made marijuana possession illegal and encourage them to not enforce so much, to not as strongly look at enforcement in states where the state laws made it legal. But that was a recommendation of the Justice Department where you should put your time and attention and did something similar with immigration too.

Steve: And sometimes it's . . . the president issues an order, which is maybe not all that, but they presented as being all that. And sometimes --

Anne: The whereasses.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, really it becomes a recommendation, or “I've taken strong action on X, and what the strong action was is I've requested the secretary to provide me a report and recommendations.” Whooo. It's not nothing, but it's not exactly as billed. But also the news coverage, which is built on that. But sometimes the news coverage just says, “Oh, the president did this thing because the president said they did this thing.” Did they really?

Mack: Right.

Anne: Well, I guess that's why I am asking about who are they addressed to? Because if it's sent out into the world and the news covers it, and right now a lot of people are acting like, well, that's it. It's done now. That's the law. We all have to do this. Like it was sent out to everybody individually. Like we all got it in our email inbox and, okay, now we're all wearing pink on Wednesdays. But he's sending it to specific people who work for him, essentially. Right?

Mack: Yeah. People in the executive branch.

Anne: Telling them what to do and hoping it cascades out.

Steve: Or asking them or yeah, whatever. Yeah.

Anne: Right.

Steve: Well, generally it’s not a . . . I don't think it's a fixed structure for these, but it is, the intent of an executive order is to communicate to the organization. But then you get one, I think not long ago, there was one where he issued an executive order that blamed the plane crash on Biden and DEI.

Mack: I don't know that that was an executive order. It came out --

Anne: I think he just said that.

Steve: Well, I dug a little bit, and one of the reporting actually said there was an executive order --

Anne: Really?

Steve: Which is bizarre, but it goes more to the point; but he could have. You make an executive order that says, “Oh, well, it's all this fault.” That doesn't make it true. It just says it. If he's making everybody wear pink, that's kind of within his authority. But . . .

Anne: No, it's not.

Steve: He can declare Fridays casual Fridays in the office if he wants to.

Anne: For the government.

Steve: That's what I meant. I'm sorry. I meant for the government. He could dictate dress code or whatever.

Anne: But say a company like, say, I don't know, Tesla could still be requiring everyone wear brown shirts to work.

Steve: Yes. And that's the thing. Yeah. The extent of impact of his orders is only within the executive branch.

Mack: But even then, the requiring people to have casual Friday, executive orders are still limited by the scope of the president's power, either through federal law or the Constitution. So if there is a federal law that allowed the president to say, “Okay, Friday is casual Friday as long as you wear a spirit shirt or something like that,” then he could do it.

Steve: Teacher much.

Anne: Right?

Mack: What's my job? And there have been, like for example, the executive order that Trump issued on the birthright citizenship thing, he specifically declares in the executive order an interpretation of the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that is not the current interpretation according to the Supreme Court. And what this will potentially set. So a lot of people have said, well, that's unconstitutional. Well, it's unconstitutional in the sense that it does violate the plain letter of the Constitution, but it is the Supreme Court that has the ultimate say. And for them it's birthright citizenship. For federal courts, it's been birthright citizenship. If you're born here, because it says all persons “born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”

Steve: “Under the jurisdiction of . . .”

Mack: “Subject to the jurisdiction of,” which is men. I mean, if you look in the congressional record, in the debate, they were talking about diplomats that were here, and so they're not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because they are ambassadors from a foreign country. That's what that was a reference to. Whereas Trump's interpretation where he says that this has been long held to be true, which it’s not, that subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, that if people are here who are foreign nationals and they have a kid, they and the kid are not subject to the jurisdiction in the United States. And that is flatly not true. Anybody within the United States or a territory of the United States is subject to the jurisdiction in the United States. And anything that an American citizen does anywhere overseas or any territories or bases or anything that we have overseas is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. End of story.

Steve: John McCain.

Mack: Yeah, he was born in the Panama Canal zone. So, what this sets up—well, he wasn't in executive order though.

Anne: Wow, they never did a birther scandal on him, did they?

Steve: Well, I only learned that because they contrasted it in that context. They're like, well, if you're going to be snippety about this, what about John McCain?

Mack: Or Ted Cruz?

Anne: Yeah, I missed that one.

Mack: Ted Cruz, born in --

Anne: He never had a chance to be president. Nobody likes Ted Cruz.

Mack: No, except Mike Lee. And we won't get into that.

Steve: Well, there there's a large chunk of Texans that like him enough to vote him in.

Anne: I don't think they like him. I think they just hate everybody else.

Steve: That's a fair point. That's a good distinction.

Mack: No, I think that's true too. So anyway, what this sets up Trump's executive order about this is what birthright citizenship means is that presumably in the future if a person who was born in the United States of parents who were foreign nationals, if the government apprehends them and tries to forcibly deport them because you're not actually an American citizen even though you were born here, if that's the reasoning, then this sets up a federal case that presumably could get appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. And this Supreme Court will decide if the citizenship clause means what it has always been intended to mean and what the plain letter of it means, or if they're going to make something up like they've done in a couple cases.

Steve: I threw up my mouth a little bit there.

Anne: You mean the Supreme Court, the current one, that said he was a king?

Steve: Yeah, that's a whole thing, anyway. But it's a good example there of, so executive orders are fundamentally directives, requests to the executive branch, the other people in the executive branch. And they can be extremely anodyne. They can be, “Hey, you know what? I really think we should be filing things alphabetically, but starting with Z and going backwards.” Fine, he can do that. It's within his power. There's not a law against it. He can do it. That's a thing. They'll all comply because they're his boss. He's their boss. But then you get into the ones, some of them which are just performative and empty, which don't actually do anything, have no teeth, but make a good soundbite. But then you've got the ones that, in theory, encourage some sort of action or inaction by the agencies. And those can lead to legal challenges.

Mack: Like what's been happening with the USAID.

Steve: All the stupid crap.

Mack: And the firing the FAA people and whatnot. But yeah, you've got, the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order. Now you might say, what was the authority? Lincoln said it was his authority as commander in chief during a time of rebellion. And the question was, which was brought out very well in the movie Lincoln, which was based on --

Anne: I love that scene so much. 

Mack: Yeah. But that was . . . he recognized that that was done pursuant to his powers as commander in chief in a time of rebellion; when the war's over, what happens? And so that's why he pushed so hard for the Thirteenth Amendment; which, side note, a president doesn't have any formal role in the amendment process but can use their political influence to get something passed or not. But there was, actually speaking of civil rights, there was another executive order from FDR in the, I think it was 1941. Yeah. Where it was basically a civil rights that said that it shall be the policy of the United States for the defense industries, for employers to not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, et cetera, et cetera, because of the need for, as we workforce ramping up production for, well, back then in summer of 41 for Lend-Lease. But the potential for war that, I mean, we needed to build stuff. We didn't need factories being idle because you had managers, you had company owners that were not hiring people because they were Black. And so he issued that, and it was pursuant to being commander in chief because he was talking specifically about defense industries. But he also says, “it shall be the policy that.” And so, a lot of it was quote/unquote, air quotes, enforced with just political pressure.

Steve: Which also brings up the point of a president can issue an executive order, and that executive order lasts as long as presidents want it to. If the next person comes along and decides to change it, they change it. They rescind whatever prior executive order they want.

Mack: And in a typical incoming administration, one of the first items of business—well, they would actually do this during the transition—is to review executive orders that are currently in effect and decide if there's any that the incoming president wishes to rescind, and what new ones . . .

Steve: And there's always a bevy of recindings that happens early on.

Mack: Yeah. Because occasionally in class, I'll get this question, what if a president violates a previous president's executive order? Well, they can do that. They can just rescind the order.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. It doesn't, there’s no consequence. Which kind of goes back to Anne, your comment about, oh, well, everybody's saying, well, it's in effect, we all have to follow it. It's like, no, it's not a law.

Anne: Well, yeah, I mean get why people who work for him directly would be inclined to follow it. Like you say, they work for him, they could get fired, okay. But the general public . . .

Steve: It has no standing with us.

Mack: Um. Well . . . executive orders, if a president is acting to enforce a law passed by Congress or pursuant to his constitutional authority, depending upon what it is, it can have the force and effect of law. For example, if there's a time of rebellion and the president is directing the military or national guard, and there are certain necessary things that the president would have to do during this time of rebellion pursuant to being commander in chief, he can issue some executive orders and people who do not . . .

Steve: To whom?

Mack: Applying to people.

Steve: Citizenry, not just . . .

Mack: Citizenry, not just the military, but citizenry . . .

Anne: Are you talking like a curfew or . . . ?

Mack: Things like that, yeah. I mean, as an example.

Anne: Okay. Blackouts in World War II.

Mack: Yeah. Sure. And if people do not follow them, there could be penalties. There could be even criminal penalties for violating an executive order that does have the force and effect of law.

Steve: If there's a law under which that's authorized, let's take the --

Mack: Not necessarily, if it's pursuant to his role as commander in chief during a time of rebellion. I mean, that's one example I'm thinking of.

Steve: Okay, let's say, let's take the curfew example. There's, for whatever reason, there's a foreign threat or whatever, there's a curfew.

Anne: Tomorrow. Trump orders a curfew. All women have to be home by 5:00 PM. I’m not going to be going home by 5:00 PM. Can somebody arrest me?

Mack: Well, okay. The short answer to can somebody arrest you? Yes, they can arrest you if there is no law, they, police have done that on occasion.

Anne: Well, yes.

Mack: But then the question would be is are you actually going to be charged with something because the police aren't the ones to charge you, the district attorney or a federal prosecutor? What are you charged with and what would be the outcome of the trial if it goes to trial? And if you're contending that it's an unlawful executive order, that would have to be determined on appeal, ultimately, because the trial court --

Steve: Well, it's assuming it gets that far. Yeah. I mean, think in that example --

Mack: I take that back. A trial court could say, no, this is grossly unconstitutional and dismiss it. But then, but the prosecutors might be able to appeal.

Steve: If it's something like that. He just decides tomorrow that women can't be out after dark. I think that's one of those, from a practical standpoint, you're not going to get really that going to trial because DAs aren't going to bring it because they know it's not going to stand up. It's just one of those ridiculous things. Now, the other extreme, if we were in a state of war and they set a curfew for everybody, for whatever reason or blackout rules, then that would actually have a basis, as I understand the argument. So that's where you can have a very similar executive order. If you can say that executive order has a basis in law, it's just, I am simply implementing the existing power or law that exists, this is just the particulars in this circumstance. Okay, fine. That's defensible, but you can't just make up crap.

Mack: No.

Anne: And that's kind of my point, is that he's making up a lot of crap. 

Steve: So much crap.

Mack: Some of the ones that I've read are—and I haven't read all of them because there's been a whole bunch—but some of them, like the birthright citizenship thing, yeah, I mean, he's sort of describing an interpretation that is invalid, has always been considered invalid, and no reasonable person that knows anything about the law would say that it's valid, and it's absolute horseshit. But then there are others that turn out to be the strongly encouraged wording. And if the agencies choose to follow and they, pursuant to their authority, then that's what they're doing.

Steve: Which is probably where I will shoehorn in my rant for this evening. So it can be edited out later at your convenience.

Mack: Is this a new segment we're doing: rants?

Steve: No, I'm just going to get this out.

Mack: Okay.

Steve: The idea that executive orders are executive orders, but they're still subject to legal restrictions. If it contradicts a law, then it's not valid.

Mack: Or the Constitution.

Anne: Right.

Steve: And in fact, you could say more generally, if the executive or representatives of the executive branch do things that are against the law, it's just not valid. Just because you won the election doesn't mean you get to ignore the laws. What we've been seeing going on over the last two weeks, and . . . I haven't seen enough people phrase it this way, we’re seeing a coup. I mean, we are. Two, I would argue two slightly different coups, but we've got an elected president who is simply ignoring the laws he doesn't like. And then we've got Musk, who is not elected at all, just . . . ignoring laws and forcing his way in. Kind of undercover, but I mean, I don't know of any other way to describe what's going on than people not authorized taking over the control of the government.

Mack: Yeah. Can I have a, I don't want to say a counter rant, because it's very much in line with your rant, but parallel rant. The coup has been going on since the election of 2020 when he would not concede, and from that moment was interested in one thing, and that was maintaining himself in the presidency, unlawfully, and then getting it back. He won the election, but the coup was going on all through the four years of Biden because the people involved were working on plans and looking at what they were going to do and trying to --

Steve: Yeah, I mean they were preparing, arguably they tried on January 6th, and it didn't work. So they spent four years regrouping and trying again.

Mack: And then he pardoned all of 'em.

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Mack: The dismantling of USAID, and the firing of people in the FAA, and a lot of other things that are being targeted. We have a lot of government agencies, many cabinet departments and everything. And I really feel that the Democratic Party, if they got certain things done where it's like, okay, this is now a cabinet department, this is now an agency, and these are agencies that are doing good things for the American people, I think their mentality was, okay, we've got that done now onto the next battle. And it's like, no, you have to keep reminding people of what these things do. And I mean, there has to be just an outreach of what these agencies are doing for you and what service is being provided and why. And arguably, if you want to keep 'em around, why they're essential and what would happen if they weren't. And [the] Democratic Party, for the agencies that mattered to it, sort of gave up on that. I mean, it was like, okay, this matters. We got this done, let's move on.

Steve: Not gave up. But yeah, took it for granted.

Mack: Yeah.

Steve: I think it's a better way to put it. And it kind of reminds me of the industry I work in, infrastructure, where it's hard to get people to actually pay money for sewer and water and storm drains and things like that because it's not very exciting. And why do I have to pay for it? It works fine right now. So you have to kind of remind people, yeah, it works fine because there's a lot of people working on it continually you don't see. And because we go around and repair the pipes every 50 years or whatever it is that keeps it working. If you enjoy not having sewage in your home and having drinking water, then you need to fund this stuff. And it's the same thing with the federal government agencies. You don't always see them.

Anne: Well, I mean, this actually brings up something that I have been thinking about with these executive orders is the reason why there's so many in such a short amount of time, and some of them are so ridiculously bad, is because they are going to focus on certain ones and get them overturned and rescinded and what have you, and they're going to be spending so much time and energy focusing on that—“they” being all of humanity who wants humanity to continue—that things are going to get through that this administration really wants. They're hiding it behind a whole bunch of noise.

Steve: Yeah, well, I get that. I guess I think of it differently. I don't think that there's 10% that they have high-value targets and the rest are intentionally noise. I think they like all these things, all the things.

Anne: But see, this is where I --

Steve: And they just throw them all out because they know. But again, they know because they can't all be defended against successfully. 

Anne: But this is where I am confused. So let's use the FAA. Republicans fly in planes. Trump supporters fly in planes. Everybody flies in planes. There's not a group right now, politically, that's like, you know what? Fuck planes.

Mack: But there is a group --

Anne: I like the possibility that I might die if I fly in a plane.

Mack: There is a group, or rather one person, that was getting a little pissed at having to comply with requirements of the FAA before he would light off his rockets.

Anne: And I get that. I get the asshole in the room. But this is the thing is, a lot of planes crash suddenly there's going to be a big problem for the Republican Party.

Steve: In the medium term, yes; in the short term, I think a lot of the people who fly on planes either A) don't understand the federal government's role in air travel or don't care. It's not going to happen to me. My flights are fine; or my flights are fine, I'm on a private jet. So I don't think, they're either ignorant or they don't care about the federal government's role. Now, eventually, yeah, there'll be enough crashes and enough tragedies that it will hit the Republicans, but let's assume we still have elections at that point.

Mack: Well, and not only that, but they have started to go after, or at least seemingly, hiring freeze and a few other things with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service because the idea is, well, we need to fix government. We need to do this, this, and this. All of these amorphous things that everybody thinks, and they talk about in bars, but nobody has an actual plan for, because, I mean, who knows? Who actually has an idea of just the enormity of the federal government apparatus? And it's very few people. But it's like, oh, here's somebody who's doing it. He's cutting through the red tape.

Steve: Right. Well, it just kills me. I'm like, there's red tape for a reason.

Mack: Sometimes.

Steve: Well, yes. I mean, you can always find dumb examples, but a lot of the stuff is there because somebody screwed up once and somebody got hurt. It's kind of like regulations are written in blood kind of stuff.

Mack: Where somebody died.

Steve: Yeah, there are checks and rechecks on things because you can't not have Social Security payments go out. People depend on that to eat. So you cannot fuck that up. And if you have a bunch of guys go in and, oh, I'm going to make a change. Oh, well, it's okay. It didn't work this time. I'll just roll out an update next week. No! That's not how this works. But they think it is.

Mack: And I've seen on Twitter, X/Twitter, that people saying, and I can't remember what news story it was, but apparently they were like, some of Elon's people went into OSHA, and so people just posting this, “can't wait for them to get rid of OSHA and all of its useless rules” and whatever. And I'm like, are you serious? Because people are gonna die.

Steve: OSHA's a really good example. I mean, no agency's perfect, and I'm sure you can find examples of OSHA regs that don't make sense. I'm sure there are some. I'm not saying there aren't. But at large. Yeah, the regs are there because before they had the regs somebody died, and they put the reg to stop people from getting killed. I'll be honest, one of the ones in my world that was interesting, recent one, they used to have it where the standard was when you had ladders up things like buildings, towers, whatever, you would have safety cages. And you've seen these out there where after you get 10 feet above the ground, there's a little cage around it so that if you fall, you fall against the cage or whatever. That was believed to be the good idea, and that was the way for a long time. Well, nowadays, they're like, actually no, that's a terrible idea because if you fall, now you get mangled in the cage and it's not good. And what you really need to do instead of that is have a proper fall arrester device cable that goes up the ladder that you clip onto, and then if you fall, no biggie, you get caught. So they've moved away from that. Why? Because people got hurt. Version One was the cage, which saved lives, I'm sure, but wasn't actually that great. So now they've got Version Two. You can't just yank that stuff out. There's a reason, these are built on experience. All these systems and laws. Also laws just to protect rights and access and transparency. People complain about how, oh, it's so hard to get things through the government. You know why? Because people want accountability and transparency to where the money is spent. So they have to do the extra paperwork to account for all the money. So when they bitch about how it's not accountable, and it's also hard. Well, it's hard because it's accountable. You just don't bother looking. 

Mack: Right. And that was something like when they went after USAID and started shutting everything down, people were like, finally we're going to see what these people were spending money on. It's like, you could already, if you just looked, they weren't hiding it. It's always been there --

Steve: It's kind of boring, but it's there.

Mack: Yeah, but you just didn't want to take the time to look it up.

Steve: Or go to the USAID website.

Mack: Yeah, I mean that's the idea, transparency. But now we don't have transparency, which is what y'all wanted in the first place, but you think it's so much better.

Anne: Well, and they also got rid of the people who regulate these agencies. I mean, that's the thing is, there were self-regulating in there already, and I get they weren't all perfect. Yes, some more oversight was probably necessary for specific agencies, but literally the people that go and investigate these agencies were the ones that were furloughed, and it was just, or tried to be furloughed. They had to take that back because they couldn't do it. Hahaha.

Mack: The inspector generals.

Anne: I mean, this is just, it's comic that like, oh yeah, we're going to cut back on government waste by getting rid of the people who get rid of government waste.

Mack: And prevent corruption.

Anne: It's such hypocrisy.

Mack: And not only that, what was it? The division within the FBI that handles counterintelligence for foreign influence and stuff.

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Mack: They got rid of that. That was the first thing in the FBI they got rid of, okay. Seems to be a pattern with some of this stuff.

Steve: Yeah. The inspector generals who are there to prevent fraud, waste, abuse, they yanked them day one. A couple weeks later, get the new DOJ person in. She's the one who canceled the foreign influence task force, just gutted it. Said bye, we don't need you anymore.

Anne: The one investigating Trump.

Steve: Yeah. It's just like, huh, how about that? You keep taking out the people who would investigate your crime.

Mack: Yeah. And of course Trump supporters would say, well, they were just persecuting Trump. They weren't really doing that job.

Anne: By finding lots of evidence that he's under the influence of foreign governments.

Steve: And committing fraud. Yeah.

Mack: The highest bidder.

Steve: Go figure.

Mack: And people will say, well, he's dismantling all the good things that, I'm sorry, all the things that need to be dismantled because of corruption, or they're just bad ideas. Like no, he's dismantling checks and balances. He's making them ineffectual so that he can exercise whatever power he wants.

Steve: To whatever ends he wants, helpful or not.

Mack: And so there are, and here's the thing though, there are Trump supporters who will say, no, he's not really doing that. Checks and balances are still in place because they would still want the Constitution checks and balances, but there are a lot of other Trump supporters who think, no, this is what we should have been doing in the first place --

Steve: And that's the thing, to put a slightly different point on it, he's not just damaging the abstract checks and balances. He is disregarding the idea of rule of law, the idea that there's a rule and you have to follow it because we all develop the rule under whatever procedure --

Mack: And that you're not above the law.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, Congress passed laws, president signed them. Everybody else afterwards has to follow it. If it's a bad law, so be it. Pass a new law and get that changed. USAID is an example. Congress dictated and the presidents previously have signed the USAID into existence and funded it. If you don't like it, that's a fair position to have, absolutely reasonable, work with your representatives to get the law changed. You don't get to have a guy who got less than 50% of the vote come in and just trash stuff cuz he feels like it.

Mack: Or even if he gets more than 50% of the vote, you still have rule of law. It applies to everybody.

Steve: If you want to change it, you can work to change it within the system, but if you don't have rule of law, all you have is rule by force. I mean, that's it, period. Those are your two options. And they're not following law. Period. Ergo coup.

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[0:49:05]

Steve: My squirrel is a new, as of this date, weekly column by Garrett Graff. He wrote an article about a week ago, and it got a really, really good traction so he's turned it into a weekly column now, I think today or yesterday was the second installment. Hopefully it keeps going. But he's basically doing a weekly synopsis of the news in the U.S. as if written like it was a foreign country. So it's a very interesting, does a good job with it. Very interesting perspective on it. Like if you saw this going on somewhere else, how would it be written up? So yeah, I'm not going to say it's fun, but it's a very nice perspective on things. So I give that a thumbs up. And yeah, there'll be links in the show notes.

Mack: Garrett Graff?

Steve: Garrett Graff.

Anne: I saw an interesting video on Instagram, and it was people from other countries, specifically ones that had undergone things like coups, talking about their perspective of how it happened. And it was kind of like, pay attention to what is happening right now in America because when it happened to us, X, Y, Z. So again, not fun, but interesting.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. I follow a couple people who have a historical or otherwise connection to those sort of events, and they have a very interesting perspective on things.

---

[0:54:36]

Steve: . . . So circling back to executive orders.

Anne: Oh, that's right. Executive orders.

Steve: One thing I didn't mention earlier when we were referencing some of the current executive orders was that it's also kind of as a corollary to the, there's so many and there's a lot there, they've actually been somewhat impressively ineffective. They have, I mean not only are there legal challenges against a lot of the current executive orders, many of them, the administration rolled back sometimes within hours of their issuance.

Anne: Yeah, I like the one that was less than 24 hours.

Mack: Or clarified.

Steve: Well, there was the hiring freeze that then they realized that meant had cut all these VA nurses who they then backpedaled rapidly because they realized they actually had to have nurses at the VA. I liked the one that stopped spending on a lot of programs and cut spending from the Department of Transportation, which the program that was impacted was one that every single day reimburses states for ongoing construction projects. So at 2:00 PM that day, the state started raising hell. And by 6:00 PM that day they said, “Oh no, no, wait. We were kidding. Not really that one.” And part of this is because frankly they were written so crappy and with no actual thought.

Mack: Well, okay, I'm going to say this about the Project 2025, and I haven't read the whole thing, but the parts that I read, it was like, this is not actually well thought out. This is people writing like they've done the research and like they've thought this out and they've thought this through. But especially the part about the National Weather Service, it's like you don't know what you're either trying to just find some generic excuse to say, let's do away with it and let AccuWeather and the other apps or whatever just control because they should be able to do that, right? And it's like you literally have no idea what the fuck is going on. And that's the way a lot of that that I read came across.

Steve: And when the executor . . . as implemented, a lot of them were sloppily written, overly vague, and they've had this problem of needing to roll them back. So I say that to frame the FAA, just because there were a bunch of executive orders --

Anne: It's almost like people who weren't qualified for the job were given the job based on, I don't know, their sex or appearance.

Steve: It could be, or connections.

Mack: Maybe if there was a term for that. If you were, but anyway . . .

Steve: Yeah. Don't get overwhelmed by the fact there's so many executive orders. A lot of them are crap, first of all.

Mack: And they're just doing it to placate certain --

Steve: And they're doing it to placate groups so they can say, “We did a thing. Look at us. We're so powerful.” Even if it doesn't stand, nobody notices afterwards because they're not paying attention.

Anne: I know this sounds conspiracy theorist, but I do think they are flooding the airwaves with information so that people who are resisting them are overwhelmed and don't know where to fight. And it's keep your eye on the ball. The ball being democracy.

Steve: Well, yes. And that's a big ball, no pun intended for the handles of certain Musk acolytes.

Mack: The big ball of democracy.

Steve: Yes. What is the topic that's most salient for you? What is the topic that resonates most with you? Focus on that. There's millions of people out there. If we all focus on the thing that we care about, we can make a big difference. If you try to focus on all of it, you're going to get too overwhelmed and you're not going to be effective at anything. Focus on the thing that you care about.

Anne: And when you pick your thing, okay, here's my thing, I'm going to go for it. Like, say, environmentalism. You do not have to reinvent the wheel. I guarantee you, whatever your thing is, there is a group out there who has been working this entire time to preserve it, to keep it going, to fight for it. They would love your help. Join the other people who are out there, because you are not alone. That's the other thing that I would like everyone listening to this podcast to remember: You are not alone in isolation. There are other people who also agree this is batshit crazy, and we need to do something about it. And a lot of people are doing things about it that you can join in and help with. You do not have to solve this all on your own.

Steve: Absolutely. And they want you to feel overwhelmed and powerless so that you don't take action, because they know you can and that you'll be effective, frankly. So find those groups. Sign up for the mailing lists. Sign up for whatever. You don't even, I mean, donating time is great. Donating money is great. Honestly, just showing up, even showing attention and engagement with them helps them know that there are people out there who care about this cause. Whatever that cause may be. If you can get to where you can go join a protest or write your congressperson, whatever, absolutely do that. Whatever, anything you can do matters. 

Mack: Although, if you're going to join a protest, be careful. And there's a lot of pretty good advice out there from people who have been part of protests before. You want to be cautious because of the potential for what police may do or counter protestors.

Steve: Yeah. If you're going to a protest, be aware and talk to people who've done it before. Get some advice. Precautions, measures to take. Generally, the well-run protests are very, very well organized, well disciplined, and very focused on being nonviolent also. So if you see anybody starting to start a ruckus at a protest, they may very well be somebody trying to sabotage that protest.

Mack: Yeah. And also, if you're at a protest and you're prepared and you get a vibe that there's something, and any weird feeling you get, get out. Just head on out. The minute that you get a feeling that something isn’t right here, even if you can't put your finger on it, take off, be safe.

Anne: And none of these fights are new. These are all . . . We're all fighting the same fights again, which is frustrating and it's a little demoralizing, and I'm not going to lie about that. But the good news is, is the people who did it the first time all wrote books.

Mack: Articles and everything.

Anne: Go find what they did in the sixties because it was effective. It worked. They brought about a lot of change and a lot of the smart ones who were effective in bringing about that change wrote books on how to do it. And so, look and find protests and situations where people were able to accomplish change in the past and do that. Because the Nazis failed the first time.

Mack: First couple of times.

Anne: And yeah, it was a big mess righting the system. We're in the middle of the mess. It really sucks. Don't pretend it doesn't. But we were able to do it before—“we,” collectively humanity. We can do it again.

Mack: And I had a conversation online with a friend of mine, another teacher, retired teacher, who said, for some reason this time around, she didn't feel the sense of hopelessness that she did in the first Trump administration. Couldn't quite put her finger on it, though. And we talked about some possibilities of why and whatever they may be. It does feel a little different this time around. But there is still the, they're constantly throwing stuff into the news cycle. And they have it on high-spin setting, and it's just going to be, and we should assume that that is going to be the way they're going to do it more often than not is they're just going to, as Steve Bannon said, flood the zone with shit. But that's why it's so important to echo, again, what Steve said is, you know what? Focus on what's important to you so that you don't get overwhelmed because there are people focusing on the other stuff too, stuff that you care about, but there's two or three things or one thing that matter the most to you, focus on that. And having that focus and saying, this is my issue that I'm going to strongly pay attention to, that's going to make a difference.

Steve: It helps avoid you getting overwhelmed. You can't pay attention to all the things. You will just burn out, and you got to take care of yourself. One way to do that is to install a filter.

Anne: Yeah.

Mack: Yep.

Anne: Limit your exposure. I believe in staying informed, but you don't have to stay informed 24/7.

Mack: And take a break when you need it.

Anne: I had flashbacks to the first Trumpisy, and one of the things that I was having this like, well, we did this, why were we? And it was kind of like, oh yeah, the pandemic. We were behaving a certain way during that time because there was a giant pandemic at the same time. And what I kinda came to the conclusion of is a lot of things we did in the pandemic were good for us in general. And one of those was I've made a point to reach out to people, to stay connected to people, even though I couldn't go and see them in person.

Steve: A hundred percent.

Anne: And find your community, and maybe you can't see your community on a day-to-day basis. Maybe you can't go to people for whatever reason, you can still reach out to them. You can still connect with them in ways that are meaningful. Remember, we did it once when we couldn't be there together in person. It does make a difference when you know that you are not alone.

Steve: Yes, it makes a huge difference.

Mack: And we're not alone.

Anne: So here's to community.

Mack: Community.

Steve: To community.

Glasses Clink. 

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Anne Trominski was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, but now resides in San Antonio. She graduated from Trinity University after majoring in English and Communication. She spends her dull working hours as an editor for a major publishing company and her personal time as an oft-frustrated writer and amateur podcast producer. She has written two yet-to-be published novels, countless reams of heartfelt poetry, and has tried her hand at blogging a few times. Anne is also a gastronomist, amateur chef, and student of health science. She is a constant learner and explorer and likes to drop knowledge on others like it’s hot. Most recently, she helps disseminate social science info  through the podcast Civics on the Rocks.