Donald Trump has promised a blizzard of executive orders on Day 1. Some he's already signed while others are still waiting. Here's a list of the most important ones, along with my best read of how much impact they'll have.
Executive Order | Likely Outcome |
---|---|
End birthright citizenship | Dead in the water. Both the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedent are clear on this. With a few very narrow exceptions, if you're born on US soil, you're a US citizen. |
Order of non-enforcement regarding TikTok ban | Questionable. Trump doesn't appear to have any authority to refuse enforcement of a properly passed law. But the order only lasts for 75 days, so unless a court overturns it in record time it's a moot point. |
Declare an emergency on the southern border | Complicated. Presidents have broad authority to declare emergencies, but this would be a tough one since illegal immigration has dropped substantially over the past year. The president also has to specify exactly which authorities he's invoking that allow him to take the specific actions he proposes. Trump tried to use this during his first term to pull money from the Pentagon to fund the wall and he was shot down in court. So this is all pretty iffy, though Trump has considerable authority over immigration with or without emergency powers. |
Stop asylum appointments | Unclear. Trump can certainly shut down the CBP One app that allows asylum seekers to make appointments, but that was just a scheduling tool. Asylum seekers can still show up and request asylum any time. There's no telling what impact this will have. |
End CHNV parole program | Definitely something Trump can do. This will end Biden's program that allows limited legal, temporary immigration of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. It amounted to 30,000 immigrants per month. |
Reinstate "Remain in Mexico." | Unclear. It can only happen with the cooperation of the Mexican government, which Trump doesn't have yet. |
Withdraw from Paris Treaty | Definitely legal. Beyond symbolism, however, it's not clear what real-world impact this has. |
Withdraw from the World Health Organization | I suppose this is legal. But what an idiotic pander to his COVID-pilled base. |
Transgender rollbacks | This includes: allowing only natal birth sex on official documents like passports; defunding transition medical care in Medicaid; moving trans prisoner to facilities for their natal sex; and ending requirements to use preferred pronouns. Most of this is probably legal, but maybe not. It will end up in court for a while. |
J6 pardons | There's no question about this. Trump can pardon anyone he wants. |
End DEI programs | Trump can do this, but only within the federal government. It will likely be challenged in court. |
Schedule F | Unclear. This order creates a new schedule for about 4,000 high-ranking bureaucrats who are currently civil servants. Instead of having permanent jobs, they would be considered political appointees who can be replaced at the start of every administration. This will be tested in court, and it's hard to predict whether it will pass muster. |
Declare a national energy emergency | As with the southern border, this is complicated. It's also even harder to justify since the US is currently awash in energy. This will certainly be challenged in court and there's a pretty good chance Trump could lose. |
End Biden's temporary freeze on new approvals for LNG exports | Trump can do this. However, it probably doesn't matter much since a judge has already overturned the freeze. |
End Biden's EV mandate | Biden's "mandate" is actually a steady increase in mileage standards, which eventually get high enough that gasoline cars can't qualify. Trump can certainly roll this back, but he has to go through the same rulemaking procedures that Biden went through to enact them, so it could take a couple of years. Unless he invokes emergency authority, that is. As above, this would be iffy. |
Force federal workers to show up in the office. | Trump has the authority to do this, though there might be issues with union contracts. |
Rename Denali Mt. McKinley and rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America | Trump can rename the mountain since it's American territory, but the Gulf of Mexico isn't—and the International Hydrographic Organization clearly recognizes it as the Gulf of Mexico. But there's some promising news for Trump. Thanks to endless squabbling between Japan and South Korea, the IHO has given up on naming and is moving to a system of identifying bodies of water solely by number. So in a few years perhaps the sea to our south will just be the Gulf of 26 and everyone can be satisfied.
|
"Empower consumer choice in vehicles, showerheads, toilets, washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers" | I guess this is legal? But it might run into rulemaking requirements (drafts published, public comment period, etc.). |
"American landmarks will be named to appropriately honor our Nation’s history" | What? |
Temporary hiring freeze | This is standard stuff. Plenty of other presidents have done it. |
Rollback of Biden orders | Also standard stuff. Every new president does it. |
Directives galore | Trump has one to address the cost of living. Another to restore freedom of speech. Another to end the weaponization of government. These are meaningless, nothing more than Trump expressing his opinions. |
"American landmarks will be named to appropriately honor our Nation’s history" What?
No more goddam Indian names!
(They blocked a casino bid of his once.)
Also, Mount Trump, The Gulf of Trump, Trumpland . . .
I suspect he means more monuments names for historical white supremacists.
Yes. Recent renaming will be changed back.
Or instead of Fort Hood and Fort Bragg, they could use some more contemporary names like Fort Rommel and Fort Göring.
I’ll bet you could talk him into naming a fort after General Longstreet. Just tell him how Longstreet was Lee’s right hand man who sadly has never had a monument named after him. And he even became a Republican after the war!
Honestly, pretty meh. I was waiting for visored ICE thugs checking my papers at the office door, or mandatory busts of Stumpy in every home.
I think most of the instrumental value is get his brownshirt leaders back in play.
"End birthright citizenship Dead in the water. Both the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedent are clear on this. With a few very narrow exceptions, if you're born on US soil, you're a US citizen."
You think the Supreme Court majority that burned down Roe and Casey will have a problem ignoring/overwriting precedent on birthright citizenship? You think the Supreme Court majority that pulled absolute Presidential immunity out of their asses will have a problem torturing the 14th Amendment to adhere to Republican ideology? If so, you're delusional, Kevin.
A fucking men. For myself, I will never again say anything resembling "this can never happen in Murka!" You will only be made to look the fool.
Was about to say the same. The plan to end birthright citenzhip has always been to issue the EO, have it challenged in court, and then have the Supreme Court pull some nonsense out of their ass to ignore precedent and declare the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to everyone born in the US.
Anyone who thinks there is any chance the SC would rule otherwise is an idiot.
I will happily bet dollars to donuts that the Supreme Court will rule that a child of illegal immigrants born in the US is a US citizen as long as the 14th Amendment is not itself amended.
I see this more as red meat for the base and a potential starting point for a Constitutional Amendment process.
Have you seen the price of donuts lately? "Dollars to Donuts" used to mean very long odds; now it's even odds, but only if you like cheap donuts.
I was about to post roughly the same. I swear to God, Drum is the most naive motherfucker on the face of the planet. The corrupt Supreme Court has essentially already amended the Second Amendment (by deleting for all practical purposes the "well regulated militia" clause) and the Fourteenth Amendment by pretending the insurrecti0on clause does not say what it clearly says in plain English. Plus the risible "immunity" decision that flies in the face of the constitution, common law, statutory law, and history. He really thinks they won't find a way to uphold this? Or that they really care whether or not their rationale passes the legal laugh test? Delusional is right. (And FWIW, unlike Drum--who likes to cluelessly pontificate on legal issues--I am a retired lawyer and a former editor of the Cornell Law Reviw.)
"Force federal workers to show up in the office. Trump has the authority to do this, though there might be issues with union contracts."
Actually the Executive Memo does nothing of the sort - sloppy headline reporting. The memo directs termination of Remote Agreements - that is where a worker is working in a different part of the county than the office they work for. Telework is a person living within 50 of the office location who works at the office at least one day per week in a pay period.
The last sentence in the memo gives wide latitude to agencies in how they implement this - for many agencies the office space is long gone so it would take time to obtain office space for a full five day a week return to office. Also there's all the reasonable accommodations to allow a worker to be full time telework.
This one is very much TBD - I'll find out more myself this week I suppose.
I say this as someone who voted (very reluctantly) for Harris: there’s a lot to like in this list of Trump’s first-day executive orders:
And that’s largely because Dems have left themselves increasingly and incredibly vulnerable by failing to stand up to Leftist bullies and ideological extremists.
The best item on that list is the rollback of DEI in the federal government. I give that one a standing ovation, and I find it deplorable (to borrow a well known epithet) that Democrats not only failed to stand up to the discriminatory, censorious, and deeply unpopular ideology of DEI, but in fact actively promoted it.
Even in the bluest of all blue states, California, a state wide proposition to enact affirmative action failed to pass 4 years ago, and that was with the most hapless of all Democratic governors, Gavin Newsom, cheering it on. Affirmative action is unpopular across the board. Every single demographic group hates it (except for young, affluent, and completely out of touch white kids). And yet the Dem party saw fit to lash itself irrevocably to affirmative action programs (in the form of DEI) as if they were absolutely hell-bent on a.) destroying themselves, and b.) electing Donald Trump.
It should’ve been a moderate, liberal, Democrat standing up to the DEI extremists and extolling American virtues like merit, free speech, and individual liberty. Instead, Biden caved like a crumpled napkin before the Leftist mobs and gave speeches condemning “systemic racism.” Talk about a race to the ideological bottom! We left the moderate lane completely deserted and wide open for an absolute clown like Trump to claim for his life own. And that’s an epic failure.
The Dems need to cut ties with Leftists and their nihilistic ideologies with the same unapologetic ferocity that we would use to quarantine and marginalize a pack of rabid and contagious lepers. Otherwise the party is dead.
Fuck off you racist idiot
I don't think you know what nihilistic means. Say what you will about DEI but at least it is an ethos.
@NotCynicalEnough:
I don’t think you’re cynical enough. The main point, if not the whole point, of DEI is that our country and ALL of its people (except for an elect few from the favored minorities) are so irredeemably evil, corrupt, narrow-minded, hateful, spiteful, and selfish that the country is essentially lost (and always has been).
The only course of action is, therefore, for the self-proclaimed elect to seize power and use the state (and its various levers such as DEI programs) to mandate preferred outcomes and ruthlessly cancel anyone who even moderately dissents.
If that isn’t as pathologically dark a vision as could possibly be imagined, I don’t know what is. And I will go to my grave believing that the Dems helped elect Trump by adopting such esoteric and bleak nonsense!
It still isn't nihilistic and, in any event, almost nobody thinks that democrat or otherwise.
@NotCynicalEnough:
Every time someone gives a speech or writes a column promoting the concept of systemic racism: the ideology I describe above is (basically) what they’re advocating.
So, if you really think “nobody thinks that democrat or otherwise,” then I don’t see how you could possibly understand why Trump was just sworn in as President. It’s not just because of the racists on his side, it’s also because of disgust with the nihilistic racists on our own side.
Leo, you seem to think that DEI is a greater threat to the nation than anthropogenic global warming, or turning violent insurrectionists loose, or failing to protect human rights, or instigating trade wars with our allies, or failing to oppose wars of conquest, or threatening aggressive wars against peaceful nations. I think that’s monomaniacal, i.e. nuts. Diversity is just a fact on the ground in this country; equity has been an American ideal since the Declaration, and inclusion just follows from that ideal: separate is not equal, per SCOTUS. If mistakes have been made in implementing DEI, that is no different from any other human endeavor. “Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nicht ganz Gerades gezimmert werden.“
This is almost it : "If mistakes have been made in implementing DEI, that is no different from any other human endeavor." I say "almost" because it IS a problem of implementation, but I dislike the implication that "mistake" brings of unforeseeable consequences.
MOST Americans understand the role and origins of diversity, a need for equity and belonging. But under the DEI label, handling of the issue has made the topic toxic. I see this largely as a focus on purity, language and wishful thinking instead of actual solutions.
An example - in Oregon high school graduation requirements for basic lavels of math were removed b/c math is somehow racist. This is just a feel-good measure to improve our lousy HS gradution rate (2nd lowest in the country?) and make sure more jobs are accessible. But maybe instead of devaluing the HS diploma we could actually do something to ensure ALL kids get a decent education? There are similar issues with the fight over 7th grade algebra.
Thanks for your comment. I guess i would say dropping math requirements as an ‘anti-racism’ measure is misguided, rather than a ‘mistake’, which suggests an unintentional act, as you say. Still, I disagree that “handling of the issue [DEI] has made the topic toxic”; it was the right-wing propaganda networks that tarred any and all efforts toward equity with one brush.
Why relictant ? Was there any questionn whatsoever that Trump tried to overturn a free and fair ekection in 2020 ? That he and his MAGA cult break norms and laws and threaten violence with abandon ? In a list of over 20 things you jump on the DEI programs as the most important thing. You don't think trying to override the Constitution (14th Amendment) and end birthright citizenship - first thing on Kevin's list - deserves a little of your outrage ?
For all your sanctimony about DEI you seem to care little about the fundamentals of a functioning democracy otherwise.
"I say this as someone who voted (very reluctantly) for Harris"
You did not vote for Harris. You keep posting this lie that you are "liberal" or a Democrat in a blatant attempt to fool people into taking your racist, right-wing opinions seriously. You're fooling no one.
I call BS. You did not vote for Harris. Good God man, you need better material.
Oh, and FOAD.
I'm a liberal and voted for Harris... cuz I says so anonymously in random blog posts! Despite my numerous posts emphatically saying otherwise.
DEI in my office is an annual video in which I get paid to watch cartoon characters implore me to not to be an asshole in treating people of different races, ethnic backgrounds, genders or sexual orientations differently from how I treat people that look and act more like me.
I can totally see how DEI is leading to the collapse of America, and how comments like the ones from Leo1008 are not.
I was just coming here to post something similar. For all the non-stop bitching about DEI, the reality of it is pretty meh. At most places, it's a few hours of annual training that amounts to "don't be an asshole", consider diversifying teams, and watch out for unconscious bias. It's all very bland stuff.
And for all the assholes that rant about "DEI hires", I have never once seen recruiting mentioned in the context of DEI. Nobody is hiring unqualified candidates to fill important positions in the name of DEI. It just isn't happening, and it never has.
I don't like the special vocabulary, or the pretentiousness of the whole DEI thing, but people need to keep this in perspective. My annoyance with DEI is worthy of an eye roll or two, and maybe a heavy sigh. I'm not sure how or why the MAGA set have gotten themselves worked up to the point of ending the American experiment, but I think it's mostly because they're a bunch of whining little babies that demand a trophy for being born white.
" Nobody is hiring unqualified candidates to fill important positions in the name of DEI"
You sure?
Hegseth, Patel, Kennedy....
That's not DEI. That's business as usual in Trump world.
It's not DEI, it's WIMP: White Incompetent Male Placement.
All members of historically disadvantaged communities: rapists, drug addicts, lunatic conspiracy theorists. /s
But being cOnScIeNtIoUs Is HaRd, mmkay?
Leo always brings the good stuff - and its always astonishing to see how reflexively most commenters shove their fingers in ears and shout "la la la I can't hear you!" Miners long ago learned to listen to the smallest among them, the canary, in order to save their own lives - yet the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be defined by the maximalist and created an own-goal situation. The voices of centrism and caution were pushed out, and have somehow been blamed for crashing the bus when they weren't even driving anymore.
Is that a defense of Trump? Hell no. Republicans should have had the courage to impeach him properly. His terms are environmental and foreign policy disasters. He knows how to destroy, not build. But when your side can't beat that clown then its time for a long look in the mirror at yourself. When you've created a situation in which I, and I think Leo and many many others, hold the position "I want Trump to lose, but I don't want to Harris to win" - well, its time for a reformation.
"The voices of centrism and caution were pushed out"
They were? Is it when Pelosi blocked younger, more progressive candidates for committee chair appointments? Pelosi, Schumer, and the rest of the old guard of the Democratic Party are died-in-the-wool centrists and they are still very much in charge.
The posts you see on social media and in comments and message boards are not the leaders of the party. I'm not even opining whether it's good or bad, I'm just pointing out the fact that the technocratic centrists are still running the party, just as they have for decades.
Leo and Grumpy show every sign of shortsightedness on this topic. There are over 5000 colleges and universities in the US, and over 13,000 school districts, a handful of which arguably mishandled DEI programs. Fine, our system has multiple ways of challenging policies that ones considers misguided. The U.S. survived the turmoil of the nineteen-sixties, and in fact became a better, more equitable nation; whatever excesses may be perpetrated under the banner of DEI, they are nothing in comparison.
"American landmarks will be named to appropriately honor our Nation’s history" What?
Military bases will be renamed for Confederate generals. Native American names will be replaced with Anglo-Saxon names.
Worked for a hundred plus years, and only required the total suppression of any viewpoint that wasn’t sufficiently white, Christian and male. Should be easy to do again now that the white, Christian male party is back in charge possibly forever. (We’ll see how free and fair elections are in 2026 and going forward. We held elections post civil war too that led to Jim Crow cropping up somehow.)
Performance theater.
Birthright Citizenship probably survives the Supreme Court, although I bet it's at 5-4 or 6-3 decision rather than the 9-0 it should be.
Schedule F is a tough one. My guess is that it actually does survive legal challenge - the Hack Four will support that, and Roberts is a maximalist on Presidential power when a Republican is in office. But I could be surprised there.
The "Return to Work" mandate apparently has a big loophole for when office leads determine an exemption can be made. So . . . maybe some rollbacks on that (especially when some DOGE guy is in the office), and then quietly reallowing it for staff retention.
One big one that will definitely be litigated is the EO (not mentioned here) heavily rolling back the use of NEPA-related executive orders that have set the grounds for procedural challenge lawsuits over the past few decades. Given that litigating using NEPA and other laws has been the bread-and-butter weapon of environmental activist groups, you can bet that one will have a bunch of lawsuits - but we'll see where the court lands.
Birthright Citizenship probably survives the Supreme Court, although I bet it's at 5-4 or 6-3 decision rather than the 9-0 it should be.
That's my guess, too. But when we're dealing with possible margins in the 5-4 range, the odds that birthright citizenship survives are more like 70% and not 100%.
I thought that the spoils system had been ended in law, but in reading the history, it seems that Congress gave the Executive wide latitude in classifying positions as appointive or civil-service. Damn.
Return to work will impact a bunch of really hard to hire specialties in technical fields, but OTOH if you want to punish older workers to get them to retire you force them back into the office.
Also ending birthright citizenship also raises one important question that I don’t think they want to answer - what happens to the citizenship of all the people living in America whose citizenship came from being born there to non citizen parents.
This. I am a citizen because I was born here. But strip that away, I guess I'm a citizen also because my parents were citizens because, erm, they were born here. But, even if they didn't have citizenship via birth, fortunately their parents were citizens, albeit by dint of being born here. But go another generation back, and . . . .
So if birthright citizenship is not conferred by the 14th amendment, nearly all of us non-naturalized citizens are in a lot of trouble, as theoretically there are situations in which we'd have to prove that we are, in fact, citizens, and a birth certificate wouldn't be adequate to do so, and good fucking luck on having the documentation establishing that an adequate portion of your ancestors however far back had citizenship conferred through some other means than by being born here.
"End Biden's temporary freeze on new approvals for LNG exports Trump can do this. However, it probably doesn't matter much since a judge has already overturned the freeze."
Its hard to see how it matters since the already existing approvals allow a doubling of LNG export capacity and there won't be customers for that amount of LNG.
Not an EO, but Trump came out in favor of Musk's Mars fantasy. Manned space flight is not only the easiest thing to cut with minimal impact on "ordinary working Americans" but it commits taxpayers to funding a project that Musk could self fund. That said, if we can send Musk, Bezos and Andressen (to name a few) to Mars on the first available flight it might be worth it as long as it is a one way ticket.
No, Musk could not fund it. There is no way that a manned mission to Mars costs less than $1 trillion, and probably more.
The reasons not to set up a manned mission to Mars is that it's ridiculously expensive, of little value, and has a significant probability of not even being possible with anything resembling today's technology.
Somehow I don't think JFK would have said that.
I got no beef with sending people to mars. We spend collosal sums on all sorts of goofy and pointless things; at least this would be inspiring, and fund a lot of useful engineering and tech development.
That said, I think that we should commit to putting a person in orbit around mars, rather than land them on the surface, as that would be vastly, vastly easier. Have them do a spacewalk, send back some crazy beautiful 8K video of a dude/dudette floating in a spacesuit happily brandishing an american flag while Valles Marineris rolls by far below.
I read a lot of science fiction in my youth, and I understand the appeal of humans going to Mars. But it is clear that all the science and tech benefits can flow from robotic missions, and then some. I’m also skeptical of our ability to keep astronauts safe and sane in a tiny ship for the months in the transfer orbit, let alone descent, landing and return. The Apollo program was a dead-end; I doubt that we would have the patience to build the capability for human missions that are safe and sustainable.
Dead in the water. Both the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedent are clear on this. With a few very narrow exceptions, if you're born on US soil, you're a US citizen.
Kevin's got WAY more confidence in the integrity of John Roberts and Amy Barrett than I do.
Eh...I think this is just a bridge too far. Alito and Thomas will vote for it, but there's just no justification for torturing the plain text that much.
There was no justification for the tortured logic of the Presidential immunity decision either. It didn't stop them then, why do you think it will stop them now?
This is different. The decision on Presidential immunity was to protect Trump. This does nothing for him directly. Also, in the immunity case, they just invented it out of whole cloth. They also invented the "major questions doctrine". So much for strict textualism. But in the case of the 14th Amendment, they'd have to find a way to hold that it doesn't say what it quite clearly says. That's a lot harder.
They can say the 14th Amendment says whatever they want it to say. If they say that it only applies to men named David, there is fuck all anyone can do to oppose them.
They probably won't stretch it that far, but they very easily could say that the intent of it was to be applied only to the children from freed slaves, and that for the past 150 years or whatever the courts have been misinterpreting it. And again, no matter how empty, nonsensical, or fantastical the excuse they come up with is, there is nothing anyone can do to oppose whatever they decide.
The court is in the hands of six all powerful and corrupt assholes whose opinion might as well be the word from God given the power it wields.
This does nothing for him directly.
Well, it would allow him to deliver a big policy victory to his base. That's not nothing. And it would also preserve him from a defeat that's potentially costly in terms of the strength of his political brand. That's also not nothing.
But one of the reasons I think Trump'w EO is unlikely to be upheld is that it does nothing for movement conservatism (it's not all about deliverables for Trump personally). How would the conservative movement or the GOP itself be helped if babies born to undocumented immigrants were denied citizenship? I'm not saying the upside. Which is why I'm not overly fearful that John Roberts will opt to uphold the EO (and then reverse engineer some specious constitutional reasoning to justify it on constitutional grounds).
I don't think the odds are zero, mind you—it's possible I'm overlooking some benefit to the GOP/conservative movement. But I think it's in the 80%+ neighborhood that the executive order will be shot down.
Why the hell not? They've already tortured the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.
As FrankM points out, they had a lot more to work with, textually in those cases (or, perhaps phrased better, had a lot less, textually, to overcome). It's one thing to make something up out of whole cloth when nothing in the Constitution speaks directly to the matter at hand. It's an entirely different thing to override the plain language of the Constitution. I'm pretty sure that at least two of Roberts, Coney Barrett, and Kavanaugh would balk at that. Maybe even Gorsuch.
Aside from that, I suspect that we're about to learn that the Court is less enthralled with Trump than a lot of people assume. Over the last few years, they've protected him because he's the only game in town if you're a conservative. The choice was either to protect him, or hand the presidency back to Democrats.
Now that Trump is a lame duck, there's no longer the same need to prop him up personally. Roberts and, ironically, all three justices Trump appointed are the sort of movement conservatives who aren't really Trump acolytes. There isn't a populist bone in their bodies, and they don't bother to pretend that there is. I'd bet that there are more than a couple of the policies that Trump champions that they are very quietly opposed to, and I suspect the crusade against birthright citizenship is one of them. They don't care much about it, and likely believe that effort spent on it reduces the chances of passing the things they do care about. They have a much better idea of what political capital is and how you spend it than Trump ever will.
This is also why I think the chances of the Court finding some out from the 22nd Amendment for Trump is close to zero. They're ready to move on.
It's an entirely different thing to override the plain language of the Constitution.
Unfortunately it's not that "plain" (in the layperson's sense of that term) what "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means.*
Sure, if we had a reliable five votes for objective, integrous, constitutional jurisprudence, birthright citizenship would not be in danger. But we only have three such votes.
*There's just enough of a linguistic fig leaf—the court's MAGA justices could cite invading armies, and also claim the cases since Elk v. Wilkins have gotten it wrong—that a determined MAGA majority could uphold Trump's EO. Who's to stop them?
“Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” may be obscure on its face to many lay persons, but it’s not that difficult to explain that persons with diplomatic immunity can be expelled from the U.S. but not prosecuted here. And if we are ever invaded by an army of pregnant women, those who surrendered or were captured would be treated in accordance with international conventions for prisoners of war, not U.S. criminal law.
This points up one of the worst effects of abolishing birthright citizenship - the risk of creating stateless persons. You can’t deport them if they have no other citizenship; you can’t charge them without admitting that they are subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Such persons often end up in detention for years.
I am mystified that, given the horrific record of the last few years, some people continue to think that the law--even the most plain and simply written law, that even a non-lawyer of average intelligence can easily parse--is any constraint on the corrupt SOTUS majority.
Exactly. Constitutional jurisprudence is basically made up with this crowd. They find the policy outcome they want, and then reverse engineer a justification. There's nothing to stop them because nowhere near 67 Senate votes are ever available for a judicial impeachment.
That's why I say it's better too look at what the five conservatives on the court want in terms of policy and political outcomes. I'm cautiously optimistic at least two of them don't think it's in the interest of movement conservatism (or the court itself) to eviscerate the 14th amendment. But "cautiously" is the key word here: it's very far from impossible. The NY Times had an article today quoting a law professor from University of Virginia (a top program) who says in 2019 she'd have said overturning birthright citizenship was "unthinkable" but "now the ground is shifting." She also points out at least one federal judge is on record ruminating about deny citizenship to the children of some non-citizens.
Wait...no reduction in grocery prices??? WTF?? I put off my shopping this week until Tuesday just so I could take advantage of the lower prices.
Declare a national energy emergency
The country is already the world's largest producer of fossil fuels. What's the emergency, he's referring to, the excessive GHG emissions this fact implies?
If you add a third column for Beneficiaries, then fill those in, you can see this all paybacks for support.
The evangelicals get a nice gift card in the form of some gender aggression. The anti-immigration crowd really turned out, they get a bunch of gift cards. The racists only got one, but there's plenty of overlap with the anti-immigration crowd. And then you have big oil and gas, they delivered bigly and we need a nice emergency to cover their gift cards.
There is no fourth estate in the US; it has become fearful of retribution. https://mstdn.ca/@swordgeek/113863064830459106
Indeed. Point of my post immediately below too. That's quite a list of complicit media doing their Sean Spicer-best to shade the truth in deference to the new sheriff in town. A terrible sign of things to come, I'm afraid.
I've been looking at video of the famed Nazi salute and I can't understand why the press is equivocating in reporting that the Nazi salute was a Nazi salute.
What makes them think the Musk gesture "ignites ... speculation" (NYT) or "draws scrutiny" (Reuters) or merits no mention at all (WaPo)?
The only doubt is whether there's a dime's worth of difference between Elon and this guy.
Revoking executive orders issued by prior Presidents may be “standard stuff,” but I don’t know of any precedent for Trump’s unnumbered executive order revoking 67 of Biden’s executive orders.
Typically, when a President issues an executive order that conflicts with previous executive orders or renders them redundant, the new executive order will revoke the earlier executive orders. For example, Obama issued an executive order concerning Presidential records on his second day in office which revoked an earlier executive order on this topic.
The Biden Administration was exceptional in that it issued a bunch of executive orders on day one which cumulatively revoked approximately 20 executive orders. But Trump’s order revokes previous executive orders without defining a new policy beyond a few generalities.
For example, Trump revoked executive order 14087 of October 14, 2022 (Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans), but the executive order otherwise says nothing about prescription drugs. I mean, we can infer that Trump wants higher prescription drug prices, but the purpose of an executive order is to give explicit directives to members of the executive branch. If a normal President wanted his Administration to find ways to make people pay more for prescription drugs, the executive order would say so clearly and directly. No inference would be necessary.
I imagine the Supreme Court justices' hearts sank as they read the news. There's enough in those executive orders to keep the docket full for years.
Kevin missed an absolute beauty. Trump also killed "DOGE". Bye Elon.
Either that or it's a subterfuge for X and/or Trump Media to get massive government contracts. Either way the idea of recommending budget cuts seems to have totally evaporated.
Oh, you sweet summer child. So many of your "unclear, will be challenged in court" things are quite obviously items that SCOTUS will declare a (Republican) president can do, and just as enthusiastically as he wants to.
Pull money from the Pentagon to do immigration enforcement bullshit - SCOTUS will roll over.
Schedule F (this one seems to me like a done deal), along with ending remote work for federal employees (which is clearly targeted at destroying the federal workforce - there isn't even enough office space for them).
The transgender rollbacks - I'm sure Scalia and Thomas are salivating over this one.
Birthright citizenship is the only "maybe" on there in my eye, but I can see a world in which a Republican party that sees itself as ascendant and invincible decides to push the limits on what courts can get away with (i.e., killing Amendments to the Constitution).
I'm sure Scalia and Thomas are salivating over this one.
I'll have to remember that one: Scalia must be salivating in his grave. At least it will add some badly needed moisture to the ground.
I take it you meant to write Scalito.
Yep, you're right. I meant Alito, but to be fair to my late night brain: they were basically the same piece of shit, just one bigger than the other.
cmayo - the federal workforce and their allies are adept at tying up poorly worded toothless memos. Figure they only have to stall until January 2027.
Trump is a one-man manure spreader who buries you in it in seconds. The old crack about lies having seven-0eague boots and being halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes needs an update.
So you don't think this supreme court is capable of deciding that the 14th amendment was only intended for former slaves? I do. I think they are ready, willing, and able to exercise their power to rewrite the constitution by 5-4.