For scared people and debunkers: Trump's surge in executive orders will likely soon stop - and many of his attempts at dramatic actions will be stopped in the courts - as for the Federal freeze
The surge of concern in our group about Trump’s executive orders is a temporary thing. Like we had a surge on WW3 posts from scared people in the UK after Biden gave permission to Ukraine to use ATACMS against targets in Russia. The reason was not because of any issue with the permission, it was because the media in the UK went crazy about it. So naturally our group did too - back then it was nearly all UK members for a week or two.
This time the executive orders are also dramatized by the press who love a story that can be made to seem worse than it is. What a president can do is actually rather limited. All the EOs can be reversed by the next president. That’s why the current legally conservative Supreme Court most often rules in favour of stability and limiting the power of the president to make dramatic changes, if anything.
From Biden's term - all his executive orders were reversed. But the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act remain and it is likely impossible for Trump to get rid of those.
We likely get a similar surge in concern for German members during their upcoming elections.
We got that surge of concern about the New Jersey drones that lasted a week or two. Similarly for the LA Wilidfires for a week or two and so on. It's just the nature of our voluntary work as fact checkers that it surges.
For debunkers, if we get too many posts to answer, the thing to do is to answer a few posts a day, same number as before and don't worry if sometimes you don't get to answer all the posts on Trump - and to scroll past unanswered Trump ones for a first glance if they are all similar to look for an unanswered one on another topic.
Also do do top level posts debunking, and if you can do blogs or videos to help too that’s great. I’ve posted about this in the group. here
Most of the Trump concerns are connected in one way or another to his executive orders many of which are illegal and will be stopped but are naturally scary until the courts stop them.
Trump may well have got close to the end of his initial surge of executive orders.
Biden stopped his first surge of executive orders on 24th February with no more until the summer.
These are the actual numbers for each day, for Trump and for Biden
:
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Trump’s surge in executive orders will likely soon stop.
Most EOs can be reversed by the next president who with Congress support can also add laws to prevent them in the future.
The current conservative Supreme Court is likely to continue to rule to limit presidential power for the more dramatic EOs for stability
Biden did 6 more executive orders after his first 15 days in February 2021 and no more until well after his first 100 days in summer 2021
https://www.meta-chart.com/share/trumps-executive-orders-since-inauguration-day [added extra 0s to get up to 15 days - will fill those 0s in if there are any more EOs]
https://www.meta-chart.com/share/bidens-first-executive-orders-from-inauguration-day-3
The numbers are:
Trump: 46, 2, 4, 5, 5, 0, 0, 5, 1, 6, 1, 2, 3, 0, 5, 2, 1 counted from here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/
Total 75.
Biden: 17, 10, 2, 0, 0, 3, 4, 3, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, 0, 4, counted from here: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-executive-orders/
That’s a total of 50 for Biden and he did only 6 more in february 2021, and no more until the summer.
This compares previous presidents before Biden:
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: executive orders through to April 30 (first 100 days)
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-executive-orders/
As the numbers per day go down and the legal cases increase to stop the most outrageous ones that will help.
The current more conservative Supreme Court already ruled to limit presidential power with the Chevron decision. Legally conservative does NOT mean MAGA. Legally conservative justices do tend to rule more in favour of decisions Republicans like which is why they select them, but they also like legal stability. The Roe decision was an unusual exception and happened because Trump and other Republicans chose justices with somewhat legally eccentric positions on Roe compared to other conservative justices.
The current Supreme Court is likely to be 6 : 3 or 5 : 4 in favour of decisions recognizing trans as “sex” in legal code. I go into that in:
In:
It’s sure to rule strongly against executive orders that try to make new and original interpretations of the law and constitution. Though with the attempt to remove birthright citizenship they likely rule 9 : 0 against that one.
A new president typically tries to get as much as he can done in his first 100 days relying on the surge of good will from his own party, the opposite party willing to give him a chance, his own executive, businesses, the media, the American people, his allies and so on. Trump is doing the opposite.
He's picking pointless political battles he can't win or is near certain to lose with
his own party
the media
the judges and supreme court
the executive and all federal agencies [his own branch of government which he heads]
Congress
the American people
American businesses [normally strongly supported by the Republican party]
the neighbouring countries of Canada and Mexico
all the countries that USAID supplies aid to
with Denmark of all places
See my:
These fights will play themselves out, and Trump will have to back down on many of them. That will help.
Also once Trump has finished the process of picking his cabinet that will help.
Trump is making a big drama of a process that normally only hits the news in a positive way for the president - the cabinet picks and executive orders
When Biden picked his cabinet it wasn't even much in the news, nothing scary for sure. I can't remember anyone scared about a Biden cabinet pick.
Similarly when Biden did his first executive orders they were of very little interest in the group except as good news stories for the ones who want more action on climate change.
It's very very unusual for executive orders or cabinet picks to get this level of news coverage. Never had quite this level of news coverage before not even in Trump's first term.
Trump did get a lot of coverage for his Muslim travel ban but this time it is 75 executive orders with a dozen or more of them as controversial as his first term Muslim travel ban. Some much more controversial.
He never did executive orders that were so obviously illegal as the attempt to remove birthright citizenship - which is written into the US constitution. Indeed he never even tried to override the US constitution in his first term.
He never tried to pause the Federal payments. He never ordered all the agencies or even any agencies to pause updates. Never paused USAID - all US foreign aid payments. These are just really really bizarre things to pause or stop.
Imagine if impossibly a UK prime minister did what Trump has done [in reality a UK prime minister doesn’t have this power]
It’s a bit hard for those of us in other countries to understand why these stories are filling the news so much. So an analogy may help. Many of our voluntary fact checkers and scared people are from the UK so it may help to use the UK as an example.
For those of us in the UK Imagine if in his first week in office a new prime minister was to
pause all UK foreign aid to any other country
Then he does some action that clickbaitt media said meant he would
pause funding of pensions, and income support, for 90 days
pause funding to the NHS for 90 days,
As panic rises he clarifies that the pause doesn’t apply to any payments made direction to individuals. But for many hours his staff are not able to answer questions on the topic as he didn’t prepare them with an answer on that question.
Then he
tries to appoint a prominent anti-vaxer to head the NHS
[a prime minister in the UK has no confirmation process but his own party can respond to unsuitable cabinet picks by threatening a vote of no confidence]
And imagine if he or she proceeded somehow to
fire the leaders of Mi5 [domestic security similar to FBI], Mi6 [foreign spies similar to CIA], etc.
Appointed a new leader to oversee both MI5 and MI6 who many people have concerns about for lack of appropriate security clearance for the job (like Tulsi Gabbard).
And also appointed an unofficial advisory panel consisting of:
Alan Sugar, the UK host of The Apprentice
together with the 3 longest serving hosts of Dragon's den, Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, and Touker Suleyman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons%27_Den_(British_TV_programme)#The_Dragons)
[These are names that will be known to most people in the UK]
And then tasked these people
to lead a complete overhaul of UK public spending
The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den are both programs that are popular in other countries so if you live in another country imagine that the hosts of your version of The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den are in the DOGE team.
Imagine that the new PM got celebrity wealthy people like that together in a new advisory agency named after a cryptocurrency, and this agency then is
given access the computer systems of our treasury and all the officials who usually run it are kept out of it for a few days
can access the computer systems of any other UK government agency at any time and do the same for them
All just because he thought that the UK treasury needed a complete overhaul in how it does things and investigation by complete outsiders.
These celebrity entrepreneurs / businessmen are advisory only but they will be advising the prime minister to do a complete overhaul of how payments work in the civil service.
A UK prime minister doesn't actually have those capabilities to do such a thing as that, not to that extent - but suppose he or she somehow did have that ability and used it.
And then suppose also this new prime minister said that
UK reserves the right to invade Greenland and take it away from Denmark if Denmark doesn’t sell it to the UK
Also that
UK will try similarly to force Egypt to give it back the Suez canal (for large parts of its recent history the UK was in control of the Suez canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal).
And suppose also he
renamed the North Sea as the Sea of Britain, and ordered the Ordinance Survey to label it as the Sea of Britain on all maps from now on.
It's a bit like that, naturally people worry.
But then - imagine
he or she does all this in the first 10 days in office -
immediately there is a surge of legal cases and most of it turns out to be illegal, that he had no right to do these things.
Then there would be a big surge of worried posts of people from the UK worried about
what would happen to the NHS
to their income support,
to their pensions
whether the UK would start a war with Denmark or Egypt,
worried about what Alan Sugar, Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, and Touker Suleyman would advise the Prime Minister to do to the treasury since they are reasonably respected but nobody thinks they have any expertise in that topic area
(none of them are far right or controversial like Musk but it’s the closest I can think of),worried about whatever equivalent of Tulsi Gabbard would do as head of Mi5 and Mi6, etc. [can't think of a UK equivalent for Tulsi Gabbard]
worried about what would happen to the NHS if led by an anti-vaxer with no medical professional experience.
But over a few weeks those concerns would die away as
the legal cases play out, he is prevented from doing the most outrageous things,
Alan Sugar, Peter Jones, Deborah Meeaden, and Touker Suleyman one by one resign from their unpaid advisory posts saying they have other things to do, having found they are completely out of their depth and understood how the economy works less than they thought they did.
Of course almost none of this can happen in the UK as we don't have a president
the prime minister has far less power
the prime minister can be removed at any time with a simple no confidence vote similarly to how the US leader of the House can be removed.
But I think it can help give an idea of why this is happening to UK readers. And maybe members of other countries.
It may also help scared people in the US to see it from another perspective and help understand how Trump really is not going to be able to succeed at this.
Just like this bizarre UK prime minister wouldn’t really be able to take over Greenland or return the Suez Canal to the UK or any of that stuff.
I talk here about how many of his orders are being contested in the courts, with one of them already stopped (the federal freeze) and several others already paused.
See my
Trump is spending the good will a new president has with pointless fights - undermining his own position in government - setting himself up for a lame duck style ineffective presidency
This blog post will sound counterintuitive because Trump is trying to act like a big boss in a company, a CEO, like his celebrity role in “The Apprentice, You are fired”. But he doesn’t have that power as president.
TIPS FOR DEALING WITH DOOMSDAY FEARS
If suicidal or helping someone suicidal see my:
BLOG: Supporting someone who is suicidal
If you have got scared by any of this, health professionals can help. Many of those affected do get help and find it makes a big difference.
They can’t do fact checking, don’t expect that of them. But they can do a huge amount to help with the panic, anxiety, maladaptive responses to fear and so on.
Also check out my Seven tips for dealing with doomsday fears based on things that help those scared, including a section about ways that health professionals can help you.
I know that sadly many of the people we help can’t access therapy for one reason or another - usually long waiting lists or the costs.
There is much you can do to help yourself. As well as those seven tips, see my:
BLOG: Breathe in and out slowly and deeply and other ways to calm a panic attack
BLOG: Tips from CBT
— might help some of you to deal with doomsday anxieties
Also do remember that therapy is not like physical medicine. The only way a therapist can diagnose or indeed treat you is by talking to you and listening to you. If this dialogue isn’t working for whatever reason do remember you can always ask to change to another therapist and it doesn’t reflect badly on your current therapist to do this.
SEARCH LIST OF DEBUNKS
You can search by title and there’s also an option to search the content of the blog using a google search.
CLICK HERE TO SEARCH: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date
That includes also my short debunks at the end. I do many more fact checks and debunks on our facebook group than I could ever write up as blog posts. They are shorter and less polished but there is a good chance you may find a short debunk for some recent concern.
See Latest short debunks for new short debunks
I also do tweets about them. I also tweet the debunks and short debunks to my Blue Sky page here:
FOR MORE HELP
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Facebook group Doomsday Debunked
Also do join our facebook group if you can help with fact checking or to help scared people who are panicking.
It has now been ten days since this post. Do you still stand by it?