| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a blunderbuss of an order of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here. Man oh man, has anybody ever gotten as great a run of product placement as the folks who make Sharpies have over the last 12 days? With President Donald Trump shedding executive orders like a loon molting in springtime, his SPIKY STABBY SCRAGGLY SHARPIE SIGNATURE® was ubiquitous. All you can do is admire his allegiance. [1]  Cloudy with a chance of Sharpie. Photo illustration: Jessica Karl But what, exactly is an executive order? Or, as my colleague Sarah Green Carmichael put it: "Why is everything an EO and not just a press release?" [2] While the president seems to be doing his best to blur that distinction, it got me curious: Where did executive orders come from? Why do we need them? Are there enough Sharpies in the world to keep up with the Donald? I'll deal with that last one first: Sharpie maker Newell Brands reported produces up to a billion markers a year, [3] so we probably won't have to worry about a Trump-induced shortage of permanent markers. However, thanks to his fondness for tariffs, we will have to fret about Trump-induced shortages of plywood, tequila and guac (just in time for the Super Bowl!) and, most seriously, of lobster rolls, both the yummy hot kind and yucky mayonnaise-y ones. As for those other questions, since life is short, I've decided to let the folks at the American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara do all the legwork. Those clever folks tell us that an EO is "a rule or order issued by the president to an executive branch of the government and having the force of law." But here is where things get hinky: "There have always been many forms of Presidential orders in addition to the numbered Executive Orders and Executive Order ... currently, these commonly are called 'Memorandums' but can have many titles." Like, say, press releases? Anyway, George Washington issued the first EO, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the most (3,721) and somehow Calvin Coolidge managed to issue 1,203 in his somnambulant single term. By last Wednesday, according to the APP, Trump had issued 44; consulting the back of an envelope, I find that puts him on a pace to produce 7,137 SPIKY STABBY SCRAGGLY SHARPIE SIGNATURES® before his term expires. Again, folks, don't panic: a billion (maybe?) Sharpies a year! What has this permanent-marker mayhem accomplished? Let's begin with the not-so-sudden death of diversity, equity and inclusion tactics. Not only did Trump blame — without any evidence — the tragic mid-air collision in Washington last week on DEI, he signed multiple orders to end the practice at the federal level and in the private sector. Stephen L. Carter has mixed feelings about Trump's crusade against these policies, which were already on the ropes before he took office. "Right-leaning activists have for years been chronicling what they consider abuses committed in the name of diversity, and some of the stories are true and troubling," he writes. "But undoing the worst abuses while helping the nation heal the still-open scar of race requires more careful consideration and surgical precision than what Trump's blunderbuss of an order provides." Other writers are less ambivalent. "There's also a deep sense of frustration with how completely DEI has been rebranded by anti-diversity activists as anti-White, anti-male discrimination," writes Sarah Green Carmichael. "Of course, that's not what DEI is. These programs seek to address documented disparities in organizations — for example, a problem retaining high-potential female employees, or an advancement gap facing Hispanic and Black engineers."  Guest contributors Vernā Myers and Joan C. Williams think companies still want diversity, and will find new ways of achieving it. "While the current anti-DEI crusade is definitely making some nervous, we don't find them backing off well-designed initiatives to level the playing field, because they know those programs are connected to their prosperity," they write. "These companies want to create cultures where many different kinds of people can thrive in order to connect with their customers, tap the full talent pool, and reduce their retention problems with women and people of color." Retaining transgender workers is going to be even harder, because Trump pretty much Sharpied them out of existence — signing an order that the federal government will recognize only two biological sexes. "A solid majority of Americans continues to support existing protections from hate crimes and employment discrimination," Erika D. Smith writes. "This should be seen as a foundation for a more productive public conversation about the rights of transgender and nonbinary people." Kathryn Anne Edwards adds: "Economists can offer a clear yet sad roadmap of the order's effect: an increase in physical and sexual abuse of cis women." Even as the president was stomping out woke, he was also targeting work: "Among President Donald Trump's boldest power grabs is the one he is making to seize control of the federal workforce, transforming an army of nonpartisan civil service workers into a loyal fiefdom," writes Patricia Lopez. "Trump and his right-hand man, Elon Musk, have portrayed the changes as part of an effort to refocus on efficiency and merit. But that's not accurate. ... In the new administration, merit doesn't mean qualifications or skills — it means being 'reliable, loyal [and] trustworthy' — to Trump." While Musk is offering eight months of severance pay to (I guess) unreliable, disloyal and non-trustworthy bureaucrats, other federal workers are less lucky: "President Donald Trump's firing of 18 inspectors general explicitly violates a law passed by Congress to protect these anti-corruption watchdogs from removal by a corrupt president. Believe it or not, though, that's not the most worrisome thing about Trump's actions," writes Noah Feldman. "The Trump administration wants the firings challenged to get the Supreme Court to hold that the president can fire anyone within the executive branch, stripping civil servants of protections fundamentally designed to fight patronage and graft. Scarier still, the court might conceivably do this." Clive Crook isn't nearly as scared. "Trump is plausibly within his constitutional rights to exert himself as he evidently intends. He's being criticized for trying to bend the executive branch to his will by staffing it with loyalists — but the idea that an independent executive is needed to restrain the president is constitutionally questionable," Clive writes. "The president is chief executive. If he wants to shut the federal government's DEI offices, shift personnel around at the Department of Justice, fire a bunch of departmental Inspectors General, draw power away from Congress (with its blessing) by declaring assorted national emergencies — on trade, the border, energy, whatever — he isn't tearing up the Constitution." Point taken. Besides, I think Trump is less likely to tear up the Constitution than he is to Sharpie himself into another founding document: Bonus Sharpest Lives Reading: - Trump's Hunt for Legal Retribution Has Begun — Barbara McQuade
- Trump's Tariff Plan Could Work If It Weren't So Broad — Joel Griffith and Marc Short
- Even Talking About Tariffs Can Cause Inflation — Claudia Sahm
What's the World Got in Store? - Delhi Assembly election, Feb. 5: India's Shiny New Metros Are Costly White Elephants — Mihir Sharma
- BOE rate decision, Feb. 6: Starmer's Caution and Misery Aren't Serving Labour — Rosa Prince
- US jobs report, Feb. 7: The American Worker Has Lost All Leverage — Kathryn Anne Edwards
In truth, the EOs about DEI, federal workers and gender didn't come as surprises — 77 million Americans more or less voted for them in November. But I wasn't expecting him to Sharpie his way back into the debate over tiny fish, Ukraine, space lasers and anything else the conspiracy loons (no, they don't molt) can blame for the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles. He points a finger at the fish. "If President Donald Trump's claims about California water management are to be believed, then there is a basically a giant faucet in the north of the state that could unleash a welcome deluge on the south, refilling reservoirs and fire hydrants and soaking the arid land. But Governor Gavin Newsom refuses to turn on the faucet because he wants to save what's left of a species of fish that is essentially garbage," writes Mark Gongloff. "Not a single word of the preceding sentence is true, even in a metaphorical sense. The fact that California — which has more than enough on its plate already — now has to spend untold dollars and lawyer-hours to keep Trump's nonsensical words from warping the state's reality is a taste of what's to come in a presidency that approaches everything, including the climate crisis, from a position of grievance and misinformation."  "After a winter of heavy precipitation, Southern California's reservoirs are plenty full. Fire hydrants ran dry in some cases during the fires simply because the system couldn't keep up with the sheer volume of water firefighters were pouring on urban wildfires," add Mark. "Ironically, Trump and Newsom may not be as far apart on matters of hydrology as they seem. Delta locals and environmentalists are already angry with the governor over his own plan to funnel water to the south by way of a massive $16 billion tunnel. This might be as close to Trump's magic faucet as anybody has yet conceived, but it faces decades of planning and argument. By parachuting into this debate armed only with culture-war memes, Trump makes finding rational compromise exponentially more difficult." But why would Trump compromise when he can just do this? Notes: Please send mayo-free lobster rolls and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment