This report is only a summary and editorial regarding the executive orders (“EOs”) signed by the Trump Administration during the last week. EOs are not legislation or court opinions. They do not carry the weight of law, and are merely statements of policy within the executive branch. That is not to say they cannot be cited in court or legal pleadings, or aren’t relevant to the application of law, only that they are almost never controlling outside of internal executive branch administration.
EOs are signed and reported on, generally, a week before they are published into the Federal Register. Until such a publication, it can be difficult to know the exact language of the signed EO. For that reason, these reports only include EOs published in the Federal Register. While this can lead to these reports feeling delayed or dated, it is to ensure precision and clarity.
While I am a licensed attorney, this is not paid legal advice. Nothing in this communication is intended to create an attorney-client relationship. Unless expressly stated otherwise, nothing contained in this article should be construed as a digital or electronic signature, nor is it intended to reflect an intention to make an agreement by electronic means.
Section 1 references EO 14148 that rescinded 78 EOs and memoranda from the Biden Administration and directed to the various Assistants to the President to find more EOs, memoranda and other proclamations that should be rescinded.
Section 2 revokes this list of executive actions.
Broadly this EO focuses on further removing any progress or lasting policy from the Biden administration. Without going into the details of each repealed executive action, they can be broken into a number of categories.
First, “Progressive” policy decisions. Promoting LGBT+ rights, workers rights and wages, reforming Tribal Nations’ funding, etc. These are generally offensive to the Administration for simply being associated with “liberal”, “leftist”, or “progressive” values.
Second, economic actions, all of the actions associated with Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 and EO 14119 are all focused on stimulating the American economy, protecting a commodity or industry vital to national safety, or to protect the American consumer.
Third, the remaining revoked actions are a hodgepodge of Covid, healthcare, weapons transfer, and energy shortage policy. While the political or economic motivation are not apparent on their face, the revocation of these EOs is merely because of its association with the last administration.
While I cannot fully endorse every executive action being revoked, I can say that this kind of rapid and broad revocation creates a presumption of negligence on behalf of the Administration. Certainly when you also pair it with the fact that there is nothing replacing the executive actions being revoked.
This EO is an almost direct harm to our nation by removing the executive’s ability to stabilize the markets of and promote domestic production for Insulin, baby formula, and a host of products within supply chains for the defense industry, to just name a few examples. The products listed in these executive action were subject to severe shortages, price hikes, and delays due to this market instability. By the executive taking a more direct, but narrow, action, they have been able to better stabilize and expand domestic production for these products. That of course was at the expense of those who were capitalizing on the instability of these markets. Now the Administration makes these products vulnerable to instability, and, despite their platform of American manufacturing, actually make it harder to produce these products in America.
Worker training, federal minimum wage for government contractors, and promotion of international work place standards have all been set back thanks to this EO. The only benefit that comes from the revocation of these executive actions is to business owners, and overseas manufacturers. The Administration is making it clear, any wealth to be created in America is at the expense of workers, and to be retained by companies and their shareholders.
Finally it is no surprise that LGBT and Tribal Nations are a target of this Administration. Both are considered at the heart of progressive politics, and their suffering is the only needed motivation to harm them. Not only this, but MAGA and the GOP view both groups with clear derision and view any government spending designated for these groups as a waste of money. Though there was no question before, this is merely an affirmation that minorities and vulnerable communities are targets for this Administration.
This is a very similar to EO 14230 covered in last week’s newsletter.
This is yet another attack on the legal profession. This is Trump attempting to punish those who harmed him in the past and helped those who harmed him. It is a gross misuse of presidential power and likely an illegal targeting of a private business by the government.
Unlike Perkins Coie’s admirable defiance of this gross action, Paul Weiss has instead bent both knees and given the Administration $40 million in free pro-bono representation.1 While base and pathetic, it is also itself a potential ethical violation as it is essentially a quid pro quo for this firm to avoid legal action by the government, and to ensure they can receive contracts going forward. Paul Weiss has received significant backlash for their actions. The stark juxtaposition between it and Perkins Coie shows that their acquiescence is entirely optional, and evidence of their timidity and cowardice.
Section 1 just says they want to reduce unnecessary Federal bureaucracy.
Section 2 eliminates the non-statutory and reduces to a minimum the statutory components and functions of these federal entities.
The effective closure of these various entities is very similar to those effectively closed entities in EO 14217 discussed in Weekly EO Report of 2/17/2025. These entities are ones that are tangentially tied to international partnerships and “progressive causes”.
These agencies are almost entirely focused on helping the poor and underserved. The Administration will harvest a miniscule amount of funds for their own nefarious plans, meanwhile the communities and people these agencies served will suffer immensely. The goals of these agencies mostly boil down to provide small interventions in people’s lives that will result in long term positive effects. Education, housing, wealth, and just community cohesion all have benefitted immensely from these agencies, and without their support will degrade.
Section 1 is mostly word salad about how intersectionality in emergency response is actually better than centralization.
Section 2 lays out a Federal policy that State and local governments and individuals are more central to emergency response and preparedness. It paradoxically then asks the Federal government to reduce complexity.
Section 3 requires the review and recommendation for modification of these executive action.
This EO is serving two purposes. First, it lays the groundwork for removing the obligations and duties of the Federal government to the states during times of national crisis. Second, it puts under review a number of significant executive actions that affect emergency preparedness for crises related to national security, natural disaster, economic instability, and public health.
Unlike the previous EOs, this does not revoke these executive actions outright. Without going over each individually, the revocation of any one action listed could account for hundreds if not thousands of lives lost. Not only this, but the programs and institutions established through these executive actions allow for quicker recovery for victims of these crises and the national economy as a whole.
This EO is one of many that we have seen and will see that aims to reduce the size of the government, and offload previously publicly absorbed costs, to the individual victims of local or regional crises. This is not in some kind of libertarian pursuit of small government, but an attempt at reducing expenses of the federal government. As expenses fall, the opportunity for corruption rises. Purchasing digital assets, making the secret service stay at Trump properties, and all other ways to pilfer public coffers are now that much more available to the Trump administration.