Trumpers, and especially E.O author Stephen Miller, don't wish to hear the facts, but nearly all of Trump's Executive orders - issued in his first 100 days- are unconstituional. They'd rather loll in their delusional world that their man is accomplishing something when he isn't doing squat. Hence, they fancy the mirage of action over actual executive effort and work. Like Trump - when he holds up each signed product in a leather binder, similar to a toddler who just completed a page in his coloring book. "Looky, Mommy! I did do it! I did!"
But in Trump's case it's all performative, all theater. All make believe. By that I mean these glorified scrap sheets have no force of law, none. Many Trumpies also believe the authority to write an executive order is conferred by the Constitution but this is not technically so. Let us reference the Wikipedia entry:
"There is no constitutional provision nor statute that explicitly permits executive orders. The term executive power in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution refers to the office of President as the executive. They are instructed therein by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 5 or face impeachment. Most executive orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization allowing for their issuance to be justified as part of the President's sworn duties, the intent being to help direct officers of the U.S. Executive carry out their delegated duties as well as the normal operations of the federal government: the consequence of failing to comply possibly being removal from office"
In other words, these more comport with a wish list based on appeals or pleas from a president to the legislative branch to formalize into law what he seeks to do. In Trump's case, most legal experts note these scribbles on fancy paper haven't even been vetted by competent, qualified staff for internal consistency or by constitutional lawyers, for consistency with constitutional law. Thus, they are at most :"executive actions" - or a lesser category to executive orders. The latter, then, have already been vetted.
Trump's signed action ("tweet") back in 2017 - based on staunching the flow of Muslim immigrants was clearly unconstitutional, for example. He declared with solemn bull toad authority that he was preventing people from "entering via terrorist nations", yet he didn't even name the nations of the 9/11 terrorists, including: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. The selective naming of his chosen 7 nations means there is no equal protection under the law for the selected nations' immigrants. It's like he's turning a blind eye to the sources of real terrorists.
His more recent EOs in Trump 2.0 are equally misguided, misinformed and gibberish. A classic example was invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify rounding up Venezuelans - claiming they were member of an "invading" gang called Tren de Aragua. And while in this case a federal judge in Texas ruled that the invocation was unlawful, we are still awaiting the return of hundreds of Venezuelans from a Gulag in El Salvador. But this is only one standout example of overreach, others include removing inspectors general from various departments, defunding museums and libraries, scrapping the Voice of America, cratering agencies, letting DOGE dismiss federal workers and trying to dictate to universities - like Columbia and Harvard- what studies and curricula are acceptable, and what professors are eligible to teach them.
Given all this, any constitutional lawyer worth his salt should be able to expose most of Trump's signed papers in 2025 as not worth much more than a piece of his gold-lined toilet paper.
Thus, the key aspect for people to bear in mind here is:
"Executive orders are subject to judicial review, and may be struck down if deemed by the courts to be unsupported by statute or the Constitution."
Think about that when the orange reprobate issues another one.
See Also:
by Sarah Anderson | May 2, 2025 - 5:00am | permalink
Well, we’ve hit the 100 day mark of the second Trump administration. Donald Trump campaigned as a champion of working class voters. But straight out of the blocks, his policy choices have undermined workers at nearly every turn.
A recent fact sheet from the Institute for Policy Studies, Economic Policy Institute, and Repairers of the Breach rounds up the damage so far.
Trump started by illegally removing National Labor Relations Board Chair Gwynne Wilcox for allegedly favoring workers’ interests over employers. The NLRB cracks down on union busting and other abuses, but now it can’t function. A federal court ruled to reinstate Wilcox, but the Republican-dominated Supreme Court blocked this action while litigation is pending.
And:
by Bill Berkowitz | March 23, 2025 - 4:55am | permalink
Trump’s Executive Order Defunding Museums and Libraries Across the Country is Another Authoritarian Attempt to Control Culture
“They were careless people … They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
—F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Historically, authoritarian regimes have used cultural appropriation to consolidate power and control cultural narratives. Suppressing artistic expression, attacking the media and academia, banning books, destroying historical documents, saturating the culture with groupthink, are all part of an authoritarian’s supercharged playbook. Donald Trump, in his rush to eradicate and/or rewrite history and reshape America’s cultural institutions has, among other acts, named himself Chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and dismissed existing board members, appointing a new Trump-aligned board; rewritten guidelines for National Endowment for the Arts grants, emphasizing the need for so-called patriotic art; appointed a new head of the National Archives; and most recently signed an executive order to eliminate the agency that funds museums and libraries.
The Alien Enemies Act, Explained | Brennan Center for Justice
And:
by Ailia Zehra | May 21, 2025 - 5:28am | permalink
Since his inauguration in January, Trump and his supporters have been targeting individuals and groups they view as political or ideological adversaries.
In an article published Tuesday, the New York Times featured the views of analysts who are concerned about where the United States is headed under the Trump presidency.
Paul Rosenzweig, who served as a deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, told the Times that the impact of the president's action will never go away.
"The damage is permanent. Not because it cannot be fixed — it can be with effort. But rather because nobody will ever trust the United States again that something Trump-like won’t recur," he said.
And:
by Robert Reich | May 18, 2025 - 5:10am | permalink
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
I wrote an earlier version of this piece shortly after the start of this horrific regime. The regime has become far more horrific since then — worse than I’d feared.
I mentioned then that a woman I didn’t know was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me, and almost shouted, “It’s a fucking nightmare!”
Well, it has been a “fucking nightmare.”
But a “fucking nightmare” is not all bad if it awakens America.
America is like a sleeping giant whose passion for democracy and social justice is fearless, once awakened.
The giant doesn’t awaken easily, but a nightmare can do it.
And:
by Tom Engelhardt | May 17, 2025 - 5:25am | permalink
I remember the phrase from my boyhood, listening to baseball games on the old wooden radio by my bed. A major hitter would be up and—bang!—he’d connect with the ball in a big-time fashion. The announcer in a rising voice would then say dramatically: “It’s going, going, gone!” It was a phrase connected to success of the first order. It was Duke Snider or Mickey Mantle hitting a homer. It was a winner all the way around the bases.
Today, though no one may say it anymore, somewhere deep inside my mind I can still hear it. But now, at least for me, it’s connected to another kind of hitter entirely and another kind of reality as well. I’m thinking, of course, about the president of these (increasingly dis-)United States of America, Donald J. Trump, and how, these days, his version of a going-going-gone homer is simply the going-going-gone part of it.
But no one reading this piece should be surprised by that. After all, in my own fashion, for the last 24 years here at TomDispatch, I’ve been recording the going-going-gone version of both this country and, as time has gone on, this planet.
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