“Today, I will sign a series of executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” — Donald Trump, Inauguration 2025 Speech
Tump is a busy man these days, what with all the paperwork he’s so publicly autographing. Indeed, executive orders are fairly flying off the Oval Office desk, reminiscent of FDR’s Depression-era first term (minus the conscience, compassion and quality cabinet) and inviting speculation as to how many crates of his preferred pen (Crayon-size Sharpies) will be exhausted over the next four years.
As perhaps with no administration before, the orders signal Team Trump’s strategic reliance on them in order to bypass what’s left of our three-branch democracy. Once a tool of little or last resort for president fiat without congressional input, recent executive use (including Trump’s first term) has hovered between 150-250.
But on his self-labeled “Shock and Awe” first day on the job, Trump issued orders covering a record dozen government functions, each with clear instructions for change per the ultraconservative Project 2025 blueprint.
Some of the orders are as bizarre as Trump himself, none more so than the mandate to rename the Gulf of Mexico - what else, the Gulf of America. Mexico’s fed-up-to-here president, Claudia Sheinbaum’s cleverly rebuffed the notion; but it did not deter the always reliable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from introducing a house bill to the same effect.
But things got serious when Trump doubled down on campaign pledges regarding immigration, convicted January 6th attackers, energy, trade, and government hiring and diversity. Once again, it’s Project 2025 come to pass.
In practical terms, everything on the list defies logic. Among the least sensible are those having to do with the World Health Organization, and the Paris climate accord - two essential, international entities Trump has despised since his first term.
Only the foolish can subscribe to the theory there will be no more global pandemics. By leaving the WHO, the U.S. will no longer fund or have access to research and containment measures. Based on everything we know, it’s a matter of when, not if another contagion takes place.
The Paris accords are also on Team Trump’s chopping block, best evidenced by the boss’s “Drill, Baby Drill” mantra. Never mind the U.S. contributes roughly 11% of global greenhouse pollutants, second only to China. As with the WHO, Trump ended our participation in the accords during his first term, only to be reversed by the Biden administration. And now the pendulum is swinging backward.
If there’s a word to describe what we’re witnessing in these early days of Trump’s second coming, it must undoing. Undoing laws, undoing safety nets, undoing hard won progress. Time was, undoing was just a Republican strategy for campaigning. Now it’s a strategy for governing.
Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2025
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