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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aggie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm really, really, really sad. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I don't.
N. Rodgers: Am I making you sad because I'm sad? I didn't mean to make you sad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I don't know if I'm sad but it's pretty difficult and I think bad form for me to go ahead and tell you how I'm doing when quite obviously my podcast partner is sad. So I have to ask, why are you sad?
N. Rodgers: Because I didn't invest in binders. If I had invested in a Binder company, on January 10th, I'd be making a killing. My stocks would be worth I think about, like a lot of times when you see the presidential desk and there's nothing on it and you think, where does the work actually happen? Because nobody's real desk looks like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness, no.
N. Rodgers: But Donald Trump's desk is full of binders that some dude stands next to him and hands to him and then he signs and then he puts it in a pile and they all have little posts on it, I guess so on the outside they know which one it is. So he doesn't have to open it up and read it to make sure which one is which.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or they know to which acting head of the Department of Treasury or Department of Film too.
N. Rodgers: Because it used to be messenger over to.
J. Aughenbaugh: So and so.
N. Rodgers: Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. So it's very organized, but it just made, look at all those binders.
J. Aughenbaugh: So listeners, if you haven't picked up on the reason for Nia's sadness, we are doing a kind of sort of in the news long form discussion of the first roughly four days of the Trump administration.
N. Rodgers: I have to say, if this is how it's going to go, I'm not going to be able to keep.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I'm already exhausted.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, Nia and I might have to contemplate an even more regular schedule of podcast recordings in the news.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Simply because the second Trump administration is pursuing a rather active agenda.
N. Rodgers: Robust.
J. Aughenbaugh: Robust. Yes.
N. Rodgers: I Aggie said off recording, this is the administrative law administration that just keeps on giving.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a gift it just keeps on giving it.
N. Rodgers: Like he's looking forward to the next four years not because of what's going to happen but because of the amount of discussion of actual administrative law that will be forced to be taken place in the public forum. Because generally speaking, okay, y'all, nobody really knows how the breadsticks in a restaurant are made. They just appear at your table. Right. You go, Oh, breadsticks, and you eat them, and it's lovely. You don't really think about the process that they get there. That is how law usually works and how regulations usually work in the government. You don't really think about how it got there. You just know that now it's there and you have to be aware of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Oh, no, Donald Trump is like, let me lift up the veil of this somewhat arcane process.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let me invite you all back into the kitchen. Okay. Right.
N. Rodgers: Or behind the curtain where the wizard of Oz is cooking.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
N. Rodgers: The levers and stuff, and he turns around and he's like, Him, and you're like, Oh, the Wizard of Oz is just Donald Trump. I was expecting somebody different.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or to use another metaphor, the ghost in the machine. You're just like, oh, wow, this is even scarier than in my dreams, my nightmares as a child.
N. Rodgers: So now that we've set you up with four minutes of fear, what we are going to actually try to do is get a handle on some of this stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. So first of all, listeners, as Nia and I just mentioned a few moments ago, the start of President Trump's second term by almost any historical comparison has been one of the most active. There was a description I believe in the New York Times, it's a very muscular.
N. Rodgers: Use of power.
J. Aughenbaugh: Use of power.
N. Rodgers: I love that phrase. A muscular use of power.
J. Aughenbaugh: Use of power.
N. Rodgers: Which I am not entirely certain is the only way I would describe Donald Trump as muscular. You know what I mean? Like he's not.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. I thought you were talking about.
N. Rodgers: Most presidents aren't. I'm not slamming Donald Trump. Most presidents aren't particularly muscular. Probably Obama's been one of the most, like everybody else.
J. Aughenbaugh: I thought you were talking about his physique.
N. Rodgers: That's what I mean.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which I was like I would not describe Donald Trump's physique as muscular.
N. Rodgers: Right. I wouldn't describe any of them as muscular.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. I mean.
N. Rodgers: Obama. Like I said, Obama played a lot of basketball.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that was more of a kind of sort of runners lean life.
N. Rodgers: I voted the rock in. We have that problem. We have muscular all the way.
J. Aughenbaugh: All the way around, yeah. Okay. In a big head anyways.
N. Rodgers: What I like about these, no, like is the wrong word. What I mildly admire about the current four day blitz that we are under in terms of executive orders is it covers a huge number of topics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Okay.
N. Rodgers: Like Donald Trump, when he was saying on the campaign trail, on my first day I'm going to, he really meant that. He meant that on his first day he was going to do an enormous breadth of things
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, what we're going to try to do for you is to sort of break it down into nice little neat groupings which is admittedly an artificial exercise because some of them you would be hard pressed to put them in any coherent if you will category but we're going to try. As a public service to our loyal listeners, as a way to go ahead and say, okay, this is a way for you all to understand.
N. Rodgers: Or to compartmentalize.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We would like to briefly mention executive orders are well within the power of the presidency. They've been used since George Washington. That is not a surprise. Presidents do that. On a regular basis, they walk in and they do two things often. They revoke previous Executive order orders. That guy is the old guy. I am the new guy, and we're doing things a different way because that's what presidents like to do. They like to put their stamp on the office.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's one of the things they do. Then the second thing they do is often if they made promises on the campaign trail or if they promised specific donors that they were going to try to do something, or if they just have a very strong feeling about something, they commit to an executive order. Executive orders are a tradition. Now, he's breaking ground in terms of numbers, but he's not breaking ground in terms of doing this as an action.
J. Aughenbaugh: The practice.
N. Rodgers: That's a long held thing. If you're crappy about that, you got to take it up with Washington.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, if you would like a deeper historical dive in a previous season.
N. Rodgers: Down with broccoli.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, we had our good friend and colleague, Professor Bill Newman come onto the podcast, and it's entitled Down With Broccoli he used as an example. A president could come in and issue an executive order banning broccoli.
N. Rodgers: Or Bush Senior. Because it's his fault. He didn't like Broccoli, and it turned into a whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. But nevertheless, it's a really nice, historical, if you will, context about executive orders. We're not going to get into that in this episode.
N. Rodgers: Right. I just wanted to remind you that this is not unusual. The level of it, it may be unusual, but the action itself is not unusual.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, so of all the boundary pushing that Donald Trump has done and will do, he's not the first president to go ahead and use executive orders. But as Neil points out, the sheer volume and scope of these executive orders in the first week is awe inspiring comparatively.
N. Rodgers: Right. Not just the ones he dropped but the amount he revoked. He revoked almost 80, 78 previous executive orders.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: On both ends, he's being usually Trumpian.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was my first data point. Before we get to his new ones, he just came in and beat it again.
N. Rodgers: He had a great big eraser, and he made the eraser sound as he just erased a huge number of the Biden administration's executive order.
J. Aughenbaugh: At this point, there is a housekeeper in the Oval Office.
N. Rodgers: Oh, my goodness.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's going out and getting brand new whiteboard erasers because there is so much ink in the old ones.
N. Rodgers: Well, and the shredding that's taking place.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We feel bad for the trees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. Nia, what I would like to do is. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. We would like to point out briefly if it's okay, and I'm going to say this because it's inaugs notes at the top of the top of his notes and at the bottom of his notes, because sometimes when he wants emphasis on something, he will put it in there more than once. That is that an executive order does not just sail through as a he is not a king, and therefore he cannot make an edict.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Well, it's not true. He can make all the edicts he wants. But because we have the system of democracy that we have, there can be challenges to executive orders. Executive orders aren't just the orders of a king. We don't have contrary to popular belief of people who have won that office. They are not, in fact, crowned [inaudible] .
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they're not imperial.
N. Rodgers: Their wish may be our command, but it may also not be our command, depending on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and near the end of the episode, I'm going to go ahead and mention some observations in regards to how some of the executive orders are likely to be challenged in federal court and in some cases are likely to lose. We'll talk about ones that may be quote unquote illegal in contrast to unconstitutional. Then we'll go ahead and mention some that are purely symbolic because a lot of what government officials do is symbolic politics.
N. Rodgers: Some of it is purely to get the goat of Democrats.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct, yes. We'll even highlight some of those.
N. Rodgers: Because Democrats should not leave their goat laying around. That's all I'm saying. Take your goat home with you and hide your goat because otherwise, somebody will come for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because otherwise, it's just a nice easy target for your political opponents.
N. Rodgers: For your enemies.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first category I want to highlight is the federal workforce. Now, for those of you who have followed Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and even in his first term, he has been explicitly concerned about the deep state. For those of you who would like a shorthand definition, the deep state are those unelected government officials who believe they know best and will not comply with a new administration's policies. Donald Trump believes that since the people elected him president, that those government officials should be responsive to him.
N. Rodgers: He believes he has a mandate.
J. Aughenbaugh: He has a mandate.
N. Rodgers: One could argue that if you win an election, you do have a mandate.
J. Aughenbaugh: In historical comparison, Donald Trump is not the first president who's made this argument. He's probably been the most explicit. But as I point out to my students in my bureaucratic politics class, in fact, I did it last night.
J. Aughenbaugh: Andrew Jackson in the 1820s was so displeased by the entrenched government by elites that he ushered in the spoil system, the use of patronage. FDR was so unconvinced that the existing bureaucracy would implement his new deal programs that he asked Congress to create brand new government agencies so that he could populate them with his people.
N. Rodgers: I would say that in the previous 46 administrations. The president has been suspicious.
J. Aughenbaugh: Of the existing bureaucracy.
N. Rodgers: Of the existing bureaucracy. Sorry, if anybody's wondering, this is the 47th.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The presidency, I mean all of them. All of them have been suspicious.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Trump he wants to do some things that we have not seen since the spoiled system. He wants to freeze all federal hiring except for the military or positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.
N. Rodgers: I just want to side note that when the president wants to do something radoniculous, and this is not this president. This is all presidents. They always claim that it's about national security or public safety. Technically, everybody who works for the government works in national security or public safety. I'm just saying that knife cuts both ways when they want it to.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wants to restore a category of federal workers known as Schedule F. We're not going to go into that that takes you really deep into.
N. Rodgers: We'll do episode some day. On the G levels of this schedule.
J. Aughenbaugh: Federal bureaucracy.
N. Rodgers: Then when you come out of your coma, we'll talk about something else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But Schedule F is a category of federal government hiring that does not have the same job protections enjoyed by career civil servants. Right? Okay.
N. Rodgers: He wants to go back and make a bunch of people that.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wants to review all investigative actions taken by the Biden administration, particularly in the Justice Department, because he believes the Biden administration, "Weaponized law enforcement and the intelligence community. "
N. Rodgers: He feels so prosecuted.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's going to grant top secret security clearances to his White House staff without going through the normal vetting procedures of the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Council.
N. Rodgers: Who's got the nuclear codes, Bannon.
J. Aughenbaugh: The one that's gotten a lot of press attention because of COVID-19. He wants to end all remote work policies, and he wants federal workers back to the office full time.
N. Rodgers: He has a lot of implications for a lot of areas around DC where people moved out of the city. So I think there's some hope that people will quit their jobs rather than move back into the DC area.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, his hope is a whole bunch of federal government workers will find [inaudible] . Yeah. Okay. This is his version of freeway therapy, which I mentioned in a previous podcast episode. But a government agency doesn't necessarily need to fire you if they want you to leave. They can just transfer you to a new job at a really far away location to where you would your commute time, would be so increased that you won't want to put up with all that time traveling to work, and then you will quit.
N. Rodgers: Right. Well, anyway, yes. What's a concern about that one is, to me, are we going to wait and do concerns at the end?
J. Aughenbaugh: We're going to do concerns at the end.
N. Rodgers: I'll save my concerns for later because I'm sure I'll need them.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're just offering a slumping.
N. Rodgers: We're just clumping right now. Our next clump is -.
J. Aughenbaugh: Immigration and the border.
N. Rodgers: Oh my. I'm a little surprised that this isn't the entirety of them. He's so concerned. But then I guess he was like, no, I got a signing hand. I can sign other stuff, too.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I mean, I'm a little shocked his hand in cramp.
N. Rodgers: He'll just start that thing where people can't sign their name anymore, so they just just sort of guest pen. Maybe it'll be like that. Immigration. Didn't he Clara like a national emergency at the Southern border?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, he did. He went ahead and said that the United States is under an invasion on the Southern border.
N. Rodgers: An invasion. That is the slowest rolling invasion ever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. But nevertheless, it's a key phrase in a number of laws passed by Congress, particularly since the end of World War two, that give presidents emergency powers.
N. Rodgers: Oh, so that's why you would use that concept? Yeah, even if you know it's not really appropriate to the situation, you're using it in order to back up your reasoning. I see.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because it's like an enabling clause. Once you claim that we have an invasion, then you can exercise all kinds of emergency powers which Congress has given the Office of President.
N. Rodgers: It's like when the governor says, We're having a national emergency or we're having a state emergency. That kicks over into law things like anti-gouging. Yes. The other things that follow from that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Okay.
N. Rodgers: It's a similar idea. Okay, got you.
J. Aughenbaugh: That allows him to unlock federal funding for border wall construction.
N. Rodgers: Move people around.
J. Aughenbaugh: Troops and stuff like that.
N. Rodgers: To do all that kind of stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one of the more controversial parts, because he wants to go ahead and use the military, at least in support roles for border patrol and customs and immigration enforcement.
N. Rodgers: Okay. It's not really trained for that, but okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it's an invasion. It's an emergency. But there are other things. He's barring asylum for people newly arrived at the Southern border.
N. Rodgers: As of this week, if you show up claiming you have a good reason to say, I'm gonna be killed by gangs in Guatemala, they're like, sorry. Can't help you. We feel bad for you, but we can't help you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then he's moving to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment for all children of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. We will get to that one near the end of this episode.
N. Rodgers: A lot of feelings about that one.
J. Aughenbaugh: As a constitutional law professor, so do I?
N. Rodgers: More scary to me is that he's not allowing refugees in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's people who are leaving war torn places Ethiopia, Syria, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza. He's not allowing any of those people in now.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Since the end of World War II, Congress created a refugee admissions program that gives discretion to the president to decide whether or not to allow refugees from war torn areas around the world to enter the United States and to stay temporarily and request asylum here in the United States.
N. Rodgers: It's usually expedited because they're coming from.
J. Aughenbaugh: War torn areas. The Biden administration in particular, use this program to emphasize the admittance of refugees from areas some of which you already mentioned, the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Haiti and Gaza. Also, a bunch from Venezuela.
N. Rodgers: Because Maduro is the nicest guy ever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Tongue in cheek, guys.
N. Rodgers: Said nobody ever.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is one of the difficulties of podcasts when you don't have a visual [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: I rolled my eyes so hard, he was worried momentarily for my health.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is awe inspiring what he's doing in regards to immigration. But it flows from his campaign. He made it very clear that this was one of his most important concerns, if not the most important and a whole bunch of people who voted for Trump, overwhelmingly identified this as either their first or second most important issue immigration. Though, interestingly enough, public opinion polls are, we agree with him generally about immigration, but when you ask them about specifics, some of these executive orders aren't that popular with even his supporters.
N. Rodgers: It breaks down a little bit when you when you're, does that include do people who crossed the border but build homes or pick produce or clean in hotels, and people are, well, I want all of that stuff to be done? There's some math questions there. The other part is, most people would agree that you would not want to allow criminals into your country. Yes. That, I think, is agreeable pretty much bipartisanly, I would say. I don't think the Democrats are, oh, no, let's go find horrible gang people who kill people and bring them into the country. Everybody agrees on that, but it's past that group of people that we start to get the disagreement about who constitutes a reasonable refugee or you [inaudible] or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, you just mentioned two, I think, salient points. First, there are various industries who are already asking for time in the Trump administration to push back on some of these provisions.
N. Rodgers: Dependent on certain kinds of labor, asylum seekers. I'm hugely dependent in the construction industry.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're talking about construction. You're talking about farm workers, but you're also talking about technology companies.
N. Rodgers: Oh, wow. It's not an h1n1. That's a flu.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you're talking about the visa system for tech workers. That's one. Second, the United States Congress, the first bill that they passed in their new session would give the federal government the authority to immediately deport individuals who have committed a wide array of crimes, and that's widely supported by the American public.
N. Rodgers: H1b. That's the name of that one.
J. Aughenbaugh: You ready to move on to another category?
N. Rodgers: Oh, heck yeah. Oh, wait. There's one you missed. It's one that I think almost everybody would actually agree with. I know that's going to sound shocking to our listeners who are, I don't agree with Donald Trump on anything. I bet you do on this, which is he has declared cartels to be terrorist organizations. You know what? Cartels are terrorist organizations. They terrorize their local people. They terrorize the people on the other end. The cartels are monsters, and they hurt everybody they come into contact with. I don't disagree with Donald Trump on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But in wow, I'm very sympathetic to that labeling. According to scholars, drug cartels are not "Foreign terrorist organizations" as it relates to American citizens.
N. Rodgers: When I'm president, they will be. That's what I'm retaining.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, this is a nice segue.
N. Rodgers: I think in part, again, it goes back to if you declare them a foreign terrorist organization, then you can use certain powers. To track them, to do things to them that you would not have the power to do otherwise. Remember that if the FBI wants to track these people in the United States, they have to get subpoenas.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But if they're foreign terrorist organizations, it's a different subpoena system, and they're more likely to get.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's one of the reasons he's doing that is so that he can use the system.
J. Aughenbaugh: What Nia is referring to is, if you're talking about foreign nationals that may threaten US national security, then you can get a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant, and those warrants, through.
N. Rodgers: PISA has never been turned down by anybody ever for any reason.
J. Aughenbaugh: It goes through a secret of court, and the subjects of the warrants are never told.
N. Rodgers: There's all kinds of stuff. It's sketchy, but I understand why. I understand why you would do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's really interesting because this segues to our next category, and that is gender and diversity equity and inclusion initiatives. Because there is a huge disconnect between the American population and academics and elites in regards to DEI and gender initiatives. We see this in public opinion polls. Trump has issued an executive order that will terminate all diversity equity and inclusion programs in the federal government. He has come out and said that as far as his administration is concerned, federal law should interpret, anything with the word sex as meaning two sexes, male or female.
N. Rodgers: He does not separate biological sex from gender identity.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: He's removed that separation.
J. Aughenbaugh: As part of these executive orders, he has instructed various federal agencies to begin to conduct research in private sector companies, state agencies, including higher education in K through 12 schools to identify whether or not there are either private sector actors or government sector actors at the state and local level who are illegally, unconstitutionally, using DEI to discriminate. I kid you not.
N. Rodgers: It's pretty sweeping. Yesterday he added to this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Set of executive orders.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. That if someone had previously been in a position that was designated as a DEI position, but then they changed the name of the position after November after the election, then you needed to tell the federal government what that person used to be doing, what that office used to be doing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You had 10 days to, and I'm going to use this term deliberately, rat out your colleagues, or there would be potential consequences. You can't see my fingers because you're listening, but they just made quote marks, potential consequences, which nobody knows what those potential consequences mean. Because the best threat is vague enough to be threatening but not, has a specific so you can get around it. There's some 1980 fourness to this. You're going to need to tell me who in this organization.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was going to use the adjective, owellian.
N. Rodgers: Who's been interested in DEI. As far as I can tell, people are just choosing not to comply with that. The 10 days isn't up yet, so we'll see what happens.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's DEI.
N. Rodgers: Which is alarming. The other thing is that they've removed protections for transgender people in federal prison.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's alarming.
N. Rodgers: That's alarming. Whatever you may think about prisoners and whatever you may think about people who deserve to be in jail, they're still human, and they still deserve human dignity.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. They should be protected.
N. Rodgers: That's why you get rid of those horrible places where they stick you in by yourself.
J. Aughenbaugh: Solitary confinement.
N. Rodgers: Yes, because that's inhuman as well. Anyway, I got feelings about that. But then but then we get into money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, whoa.
N. Rodgers: Because don't be thinking that Donald Trump is not also concerned with the Mula.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's talk about tariffs and trade.
J. Aughenbaugh: He has issued an executive order directing Federal agencies to begin an investigation into trade practices, including persistent trade deficits, unfair currency practices, as well as examine the flow of migrants and drugs from the following three countries, Canada, China, and Mexico. He's put a target on all three. I got to admit.
N. Rodgers: Canada and Mexico makes sense in the sense that they are [OVERLAPPING].
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, you cut me off here. I got to [OVERLAPPING].
N. Rodgers: I'm sorry. No, please.
J. Aughenbaugh: If this was an SAT question, and the question was, which of these three is different than the others? Almost everybody would say China.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because right now there are folks, particularly in Canada, who are like, how in the hell did we get lumped in with China and Mexico?
N. Rodgers: Because people aren't really coming over the Canadian border?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Nobody from Guatemala gets on a boat, goes all the way to Canada and comes across the border. That's not how that works. Canada's like, what do we do? Why are you being crabby with us? We got our own problems. Have you seen what's going on with our government? Leave us alone.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because, there are a lot of migrants from Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, who go to Ontario and crossover into Windsor and Detroit. No, they don't.
N. Rodgers: Not their thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: But in particular, this is of all encompassing because it's a focus on migrants. It's a focus on drugs, but it's also a focus on the fact that the United States trade deficits for decades have been extraordinary for one of the most developed wealthy nations in the world. For Trump, it is a symbol of how the United States has fallen. When he says, let's make America great again, he is making reference to a time period where the United States made everything, and everybody else bought it.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, there are a whole bunch of people who I work with, who argue that time is coming and gone and will never come back, but for his voters.
N. Rodgers: For him of his age.
J. Aughenbaugh: Age. This is a significant issue that needs to be addressed.
N. Rodgers: The thing about deficits is, if you're not making a thing that people want, nobody will buy it. That is how that works. If your product is inferior, if your product is too expensive, if your product just isn't good, nobody will buy it. You can't make other countries buy your stuff unless your stuff is really the best stuff on the market or the cheapest stuff on the market.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, part of this set of executive orders, I think is actually good government. He is instructing agencies to assess whether or not China has been in compliance with a trade deal that Trump signed in 2020, as well as whether or not Canada and Mexico are complying with the revised NAFTA deal made in 2020.
N. Rodgers: There is something to be said for accountability. Is it working?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: What we agreed to, are you doing it? Because if you're not, we're going to punish you.
J. Aughenbaugh: But he is already projecting that we're going to generate so much money with increased tariffs and duties on other countries' products being imported in the United States.
N. Rodgers: That's not how tariffs work.
J. Aughenbaugh: He has instructed the treasury department to assess the feasibility of creating, "External Revenue Service."
N. Rodgers: Can I just say that infuriates me beyond my ability to speak? But I'm going to. For anybody who doesn't know this, we have an external revenue service. It's called customs. Anybody who's ever flown out of this country and then returned to this country has had to fill out a customs form. You have had to go through customs, where they looked you in the eye and said, do you have a Ming vase in your backpack? You say, no, I don't. They say, thanks, and you get to go through. We have that already. In fact, all around the edges of this country, there are customs houses that were built in the 1,800, 1,700, Massachusetts, North Carolina, all along the edges of the country where people used to come in with goods and pay their tariffs. We have this thing already. Hey, can we think about building this thing? We don't need to build this thing. We have this thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: It already exists.
N. Rodgers: It makes me insane because it makes me think, do you know how the government works? Why are you in charge of the government when you don't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is one of the most long standing government services in the history of the United States.
N. Rodgers: In the history of the world, the Romans had customs houses.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Anyway, you can't see me at distance, but my arms are flailing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: My arms are flailing, like Elmo because it just makes me bonkers. We don't need a new thing. We need to call it what it is, and then you can do whatever you want with it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, Nia, if that element of the tariff executive orders get your arms flaring, the next one will probably get you out of your seat. Because we're going to move on to energy and the environment. There is a whole slew of executive orders that focus on energy and the environment. For our listeners who believe in climate change, that the United States should begin the slow, arduous, difficult process to move to cleaner sources of fuel, you're not going to like any of these executive orders.
N. Rodgers: These 10 executive orders can be summed up in one phrase. Drill baby drill.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. He said it during his inauguration speech. He used that expression.
N. Rodgers: That expression, one, it is antithetical to any environmental anything. But it is the short hand that a lot of pro fossil fuel folks.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: On both sides of the aisle. Although, more commonly on the Republican side of the aisle, used to refer to drilling in Alaska, drilling off the shores of the United States, opening up more fracking in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's delve into some of the details. First, he has officially withdrawn the United States from the Paris Environmental Agreement, which is a pact that pretty much all nations around the world have signed to fight climate change. He's declared a national energy emergency for the first time in the history of the United States. Jimmy Carter didn't even declare this during the 1970s.
N. Rodgers: When he was wearing sweaters and turning down the temperature at your White House.
J. Aughenbaugh: People were lined up for hours just to get five gallons of gasoline. This would unlock new powers in the executive branch to suspend certain environmental rules or expedite permitting of mining projects.
N. Rodgers: We don't need mountaintops, Aughie. I don't know why you're complaining. Nobody needs a mountaintop. Mountains can just be flat.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because, neither participant in this podcast loves mountains. Again, listeners, I said that sarcastically because I love mountains.
N. Rodgers: I love mountains, and I like them pointy at the top, not flat. Which is what happens, by the way, when you do something called mountaintop mining, which is you just destroy the land to make it easier to extract just stuff that's underneath it. Because almost always coal is down in the Earth in mountains and you have to get it out that way.
J. Aughenbaugh: He is going to attempt to reverse Biden's ban on offshore drilling in regards to 625 million acres of Federal waters. He wants to repeal the Biden administration regulation on tailpipe pollution for cars and light trucks. He wants to roll back energy efficiency.
N. Rodgers: I hope you didn't like breathing air.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wants to roll back energy efficiency regulations on dishwashers, shower heads, and gas stoves.
N. Rodgers: Those star ratings that you get the star guide ratings. He wants those to go away.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wants to reopen the Alaska wilderness to more oil and gas drilling.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wants to restart reviews of new export terminals for liquefied natural gas, and he wants to halt the leasing for federal waters for offshore wind farms.
N. Rodgers: Not only does he want to encourage fossil fuels, he wants to discourage green and for some reason, Donald Trump hates himself a windmill. Like, he personally has a deep loathing. I don't know if one made fun of his mother, or if he just but he has a very personal relationship when it comes to windmills, which there's so many mano a mancha references we could make there that would be sarcastic and hilarious, but we're not going to do it. We're just going to leave that to you, listeners. Do that in your own hearts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. He wants to eliminate environmental justice programs across the government, which, again, are aimed at protecting poor communities from excess pollution and he wants to review all federal regulations that impose an undue burden on the development or use of a variety of energy sources which basically means the federal government over the next four years is going to emphasize coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, hydropower, and biofuels. I'm serious. We're going back to the 1980s, folks.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Okay. In case anybody was wondering, Saudi Arabia just said they're going to invest $600 billion in the United States and I was like, Wow, I hope they're not going to do anything with green energy because that's not going to go well for them.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are a few others we want to get to, and then we're going to offer some brief commentary, but we have to go ahead and talk about the next one, because a lot of people have asked me about this, and they think that President Trump is violating the Constitution when he announced this, and he's not. He has said that in regards to the TikTok ban, which the United States Supreme Court, a couple of days before Trump's inauguration, the Supreme Court said that the law passed by Congress was signed by Biden was constitutional and according to that law, TikTok was to close down unless the owners sold TikTok.
N. Rodgers: Sold a majority share to an entity that is not controlled by the Chinese government.
J. Aughenbaugh: Donald Trump has asked that the Attorney General not enforce the law for 75 days so that his administration has an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward.
N. Rodgers: What he's going to try to do is make a deal for somebody in America or Europe to buy it. Or to buy the controlling share of it. I would assume 51 they only have to buy 51%.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, I've been asked--
N. Rodgers: But good luck with that cause who knows how much TikTok is worth, but it's probably worth a lot of money.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've been asked, is he not violating the law? My answer is no and he's not even violating the constitution's charge that he take care to faithfully execute the law. He's engaging in prosecutorial discretion on how to enforce the law. There are plenty of federal laws, depending on which president is in charge of the executive branch that never even get enforced.
N. Rodgers: C note marijuana laws. Yeah. Under many presidents marijuana is still an illegal substance at the federal level and yet most presidents at this point are like, I'm not even going to try to enforce that. Go forth and go speed They don't even want to be dealing with marijuana as a schedule one. They get bigger Frist to fry with cocaine and methane and fentanyl. Yeah, it's similar idea, which is I can drag my feet on doing this and what he's trying to do is get time to make a deal of some kind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because it's really hard I mean, otherwise, he's going to have to have a legislative repeal of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You'd have to get a legislative appeal. There are other noteworthy ones. We're going to briefly mention them. One that is absolutely driving our good friend and colleague nuts, doctor Judy. President Trump announced that the United States is withdrawing from the World Health Organization as a form of protest to the WHO's actions during the COVID 19 pandemic.
N. Rodgers: Can I mention the most petty one?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, go ahead. She's been away, by the way, listeners.
N. Rodgers: I've been waiting for this whole episode to mention because it's so petty. That's the thing. He wants to rename Mount Denali, which was renamed in the Obama administration from Mount McKinley. He wants to rename it back to Mount McKinley. Because he perceives Denali as a DEI thing, even though Denali is just a respectful thing to call it for the natives of Alaska. By the way, Alaska's Republican, and most people in Alaska want it to be called Denali. They don't want it to be called Mount McKinley. Sorry. I got all feisty there for a second. He also wants to rename the Gulf of America. He wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico and call it the Gulf of America. I'm like, You can call it the Gulf of Trump, but that doesn't mean anybody else is going to do that. Randa McNally is not going to do that. Europe's not going to do that. South America's not going to do that. Like, nobody but you. Nobody but you is going to call it that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some of the other ones.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. That one makes my arms fail.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some of the other ones. He wants to ensure that states that carry out the death penalty have a quote. Sufficient supply of lethal injection drugs. I'm like, Damn, dude. That's hardcore. He wants to fly American flag at full staff on Monday and on future inauguration days. He was upset that a number of states were not flying the flag at full staff the day he got inaugurated.
N. Rodgers: Which I think, sorry, this is just a personal opinion. That is petty. Jimmy Carter was lying in state last week. How would Donald Trump feel if he was the one who had just been buried and there was inauguration and they flew the flag, he would probably be crabby about that because really, it's all about Trump.
J. Aughenbaugh: But if you want to talk about Petty, he has revoked the security clearances for the 51 signers of a letter suggesting that the contents of Hunter Biden's infamous laptop could be Russian disinformation.
N. Rodgers: But the thing about cutting off your nose is it often spites your face. You can cut off these guys clearance, but you better hope you never need any of them to answer a question for you. Sorry, sir, I know the answer to that question, but I can't tell you because you've taken away my security clearance.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then anyway, he officially announced that he wants to implement the Department of Government Efficiency, which will be led by Elon Musk.
N. Rodgers: Named after the Doge coin, by the way. Really? We're naming things after Bitcoin now? That was sarcasm, by the way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because this has been an episode devoid of sarcasm.
N. Rodgers: Devoid of any sarcasm. Can I just say that what Donald Trump did this week was give himself hand cramps for, generally speaking, almost no purpose because every single one of these is going to end up in court?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I wouldn't say it's not without purpose.
N. Rodgers: That's true. That's a fair. He's making statements.
J. Aughenbaugh: He is demonstrating to his supporters that the election has a consequence.
N. Rodgers: When Aughe talks about symbolic politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The piles of these on the desk in front of him was itself a symbolic new sheriff in town with a whole bunch of folders and a big pen, and I'm going to start signing some stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: He even sarcastically got a few digs in at his predecessor because while he was signing these executive orders, he was conducting press interviews which is in marked contrast to his predecessor, who basically stopped doing press conferences early on in his presidential administration, okay? I mean, and had a phalanx of aides who protected him from even off-handed conversations with reporters.
N. Rodgers: Well, but Donald Trump has never met a camera that he did not want to stand in front of.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay, fine, fair enough. But again, okay, it has purpose.
N. Rodgers: It does have purpose. It looks more transparent. It appears to be more reachable. The president is more reachable.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's governing. On the other hand, to your point, Nia. Some of these are quite clearly symbolic politics. Flying the American flag at full staff on Mondays or renaming Mount Denali. That's symbolic politics. Some of this stuff is going to be delayed, if ever implemented, because it's being challenged in federal court, and almost every constitutional law scholar that I'm aware of will go ahead and say that getting rid of birthright citizenship ain't going to fly.
N. Rodgers: Well, the courts have been pretty clear in their rulings about that over the last 140 years or so.
J. Aughenbaugh: It took me two hours Wednesday night to find a single federal judge in the United States in the last 120 years who has even remotely suggested that birthright citizenship is not protected by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
N. Rodgers: Another wrinkle of that, if I may, is Native Americans. Because Native Americans are they are under the jurisdiction of tribes, not the federal government. If you're a child born on a reservation, theoretically, that would make you not a citizen, I don't think so. Like so yeah, there's some real I mean, but then, again, some of the stuff that he's done, I think, can stick.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, before we get to the stuff that can stick, some of the things he wants to do is going to require Trump to demonstrate something that he did not demonstrate in his first term in office. Which is?
N. Rodgers: Patience.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's going to have to follow well-established processes either in the US Constitution or in federal law, particularly the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946. If you want to roll back existing regulations, you have to first propose a new regulation, then go through notice and comment, then review the comments and then issue the final rule.
N. Rodgers: There are actually prescribed times for that. You can't just and 10 minutes from now, we're going to do it. No, it's 30, 60, or 90 day, depending on the agency and depending on the kind of regulation.
J. Aughenbaugh: It typically takes 12 to 18 months. Even if you're dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts as required by the administrative procedures.
N. Rodgers: They're not going to start drilling in Alaska tomorrow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Okay.
N. Rodgers: They're just not. There's going to well, first of all, there'll be lawsuits, but also even if they according to the APA, there are ways that you have to go about doing it. Now, what is good news for people who are interested in that, people who support Donald Trump, and bad news for people who don't support Donald Trump is that Donald Trump is probably going to be better at this round than he was the last time. Because the last time, a lot of his guys didn't really know what they were doing but he's got different guys or guys who are better at following the rules.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. There is that. I mean, the clear sign that this term is at least starting different is that his first term, you got the sense that he was so surprised that he won the presidency. He was not ready to govern when he took office.
N. Rodgers: It's like a dog that chases a car, he caught it, and then he was like, Well, now what do I do?
J. Aughenbaugh: What do I do with it? Yeah, right?
N. Rodgers: And now he's like, I got keys, I got driving gloves. I'm ready to get in this thing and go.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not going to do my business in the car. I'm going to get outside the car when I do my business. Now, some of the things that he is suggesting in regards to the federal workforce, Nia, are plainly illegal.
N. Rodgers: I'm going to change your job after I've already signed a contract with you that it's this kind of job.
J. Aughenbaugh: You got civil service protection that he wants to get rid of for the wide swath of career civil servants. That stuff is going to end up in court after he goes through an appeals process within the Office of Personnel Management. The only way he can get rid of that is if he convinces Congress to get rid of those civil service protections.
N. Rodgers: Which they're not going to do because they also cover Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm not even talking about Congress. I'm talking about the fact that many members of the Republican Caucus in Congress have a whole bunch of federal government workers either in their district or state. These are people who vote. Why? Because they're educated, they're middle or upper class and we know historically, those are the people who vote the most.
N. Rodgers: Government employees tend to vote out of self-interest.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I mean, call now. They like their jobs.
N. Rodgers: They at least want to keep their job, whether they like it or not.
J. Aughenbaugh: My member in the House or my US senator isn't going to protect my job. I'm voting against that person, right? Others, however, are plainly within the authority of the office of president.
N. Rodgers: Right. The TikTok thing as you mentioned.
J. Aughenbaugh: That plainly falls within the discretion in the Justice Department.
N. Rodgers: So does leaving the World Health Organization. Just because an idea is a bad idea doesn't mean you can't do it. People do bad ideas all the time. That's where the phrase, hey, y'all watch this comes from.
N. Rodgers: Right. I consider withdrawing from the World Health Organization, that kind of thing. Hey, y'all, watch this. We're going to withdraw from the World Health Organization and I'm like, Oh, please let there not be a Zeca outbreak, or whatever stressful thing is about to happen because we're not a member of the World Health Organization.
J. Aughenbaugh: We are moving ourselves from the Paris Treaty, okay, I can understand why he's doing it. But if you don't like the Paris Treaty, and the climate changes that the nations agreed to, why don't you stay in it and try to mitigate or minimize those changes?
N. Rodgers: If what you're trying to do is return American dominance, which is part of what Make America Great again is is returning American dominance. The way America dominates is to be in the organizations and to have a very loud voice. When you walk away from the organizations, you have no voice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Okay.
N. Rodgers: People will go behind you back and do all kinds of stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, there are numerous, for instance, executive orders that really smart, balanced people would say, yeah, this is probably bad policy. There are a whole bunch of people, for instance, you know, not only who are academics, but there's a whole bunch of people on Wall Street in the Federal Reserve, who tell us that inflation is going to go up at least initially, because goods that Americans rely on okay, are going to go up in price.
N. Rodgers: Right. If you want to explore the idea of tariffs, go find Chris Saladino and say to him, farm products, tariffs. Go and he will talk to you endlessly about why tariffs never are paid by the country that they are placed upon. They are always paid by the consumer. Consumer, yes and that's just the joy of tariffs. But it's a favorite word for Donald Trump. He said it I think in one of his speeches, I love the word tariff.
N. Rodgers: I'm like, oh, really? Because tariffs scare the snot out of me. But anyway, but we will see where this takes us. Because this is the first week and who knows what will happen next week?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm going to say, I'm going to give you briefly, Aughe, I want you to give me your immediate take, and I'll give you mine first, and then give you a few seconds to think about it. What's the next thing you think that will come out that you'll go, really? I think it's that we're going to leave NATO.
J. Aughenbaugh: For me, the thing that I'm expecting is wide-scale deportation rates in sanctuary states and sanctuary cities.
N. Rodgers: Okay. We'll be back in a couple of weeks to talk about this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thanks, Aughe