WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: 73 Executive Orders and Counting

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

This week we discuss Trump returning to office and passing what is currently 73 executive orders affecting everything from paper straws to immigration to DEI musicals in Ireland. Tune in to hear about some of his greatest hits, the precedents behind all of this, and where all of this might be going. 

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM where we examine the truth disparity between what is on social media and what's actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Gary Gulesby. And today we are talking about President Donald Trump, as we do. We love talking about Trump. He's on the show a lot. What would we do without him? I don't know how much content we wouldn't have any content.

We wouldn't have the same content. We would just be stuck talking about rugby and Moldorf schools. I was literally just about to say rugby. Weird stuff like that. For some reason, the rugby episode also sticks out in my mind. I don't know what that deal is. unique. It was unique. Maybe we should do another sports episode sometime. Anyway, today we are not talking about sports. Like we said, we're talking about Trump. We're talking about Trump's executive

orders. He's making it into a sport, almost. He is a competitive sport. He's winning, but we'll talk about the other players in this game in the past. And maybe he's actually not winning. Okay, well, good to know. I know that he's signed 73 as of 20 hours ago. I think it's 75 now. What? You mean in 20, you mean in the last 20 hours he's signed two more? He had to do something today. I guess you're right. That's actually absurd. Some of them are. not as broad and sweeping as others. Like some of them are basically just press releases. Really? Yeah. Some of them are though. Sorry. Some of them are. Yeah. Some of them are huge, huge changes. This number is double the number that Joe Biden signed in his presidency and quadruple

the number that Barack Obama signed. I don't know if that's right for total. I'll me check. Yeah, maybe do a check. But are maybe in his first month back? I'll just go ahead. Yeah, first month back, that makes sense. He's been very busy in the opening months of office. Yes. The pace that he is setting is quite prodigious so far. But in terms of total number, I'll just go ahead and say this now. The record holder for total, it's FDR kind of makes sense. But would you like to take a guess at how many over the course of his tenure he signed?

100. Higher. Well, did he serve for how many years? 12 years. So 200? Think orders of magnitude higher. I can't even go there. 35.

That's too many. Yes. The next closest is 1800. I think it's Woodrow Wilson is the next closest. Which is also two progressives. Yes, 1800 is also a lot. And it's a lot more than even the next. Like there are a few presidents that were up in that over a thousand.

But then most of them are 300 or less. And we're freaking out over a measly 73, 75. Ain't nothing yet. We'll be okay. Okay, so here are the ones that I will say social media has brought the most buzz to. The first one I was. will mention and I won't go into into too much detail is the USAID executive order that I believe froze funding for a period of time and then there was some sort of hearing because I saw a

protest. Did you see the protest at the hearing? I didn't see a protest. There was it was it's a little bit sad it was a protest for this drug that helps HIV. I don't remember what it's called and people in the like hearing seats started chanting for this drug and then they were kind of aggressively escorted out. The guys like grabbing their shoulder and like yanking them out. But they were disrupting a public or not public hearing, a hearing. And when they leave the room, the person who's speaking, I think he's like some sort of Republican spokesman, congressman, something says, well if they had read the news this

morning, they would see that this funding has been unfrozen. And that the very thing that they were like protesting about actually is a not in danger, which is so funny. And I'm glad that social media included the whole clip because it's so like social media to just give us the clip where they're protesting. But we got the whole thing and that's the case. But from what I could tell, the buzz around the USAID situation was just that they were being accused of spending absurd amounts of money on very ridiculous things. on the one hand you have $20 million being spent on Iraqi Sesame Street, $2 million on Moroccan pottery classes, things like this, of this nature.

There was one that was like $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala, which was a big Twitter to do. But then there's also like the counter, which are some videos of people in like Cambodia, where these crews are doing landmine removal work that's also been frozen by this freeze. So it was a little bit more nuanced. than just all these bad things are now not being spent money on. Like there was a freeze that actually did threaten people who needed medical care,

access to medicine, people who were doing landmine removal. So it was obviously a very nuanced issue. I believe it's unfrozen now, am I right? And just certain things have been removed. They are essentially what the freeze did was the administration said, we need to examine every contract that the USAID puts out. So the ones that the administration has deemed essentially according to its goal, have been unfrozen.

Okay. And there are others that are still under review. Things that are likely on the chopping block is the contract for the DEI musical in Ireland. That one's probably going to go. It would be my guess. The chin. What is a DEI musical? I don't know.

I did see that. I just don't know what that means. I don't know what that means either. Okay, cool. There's a transgender opera being produced in Columbia. Okay. That probably, that's a lot of money going toward that. Oh, gosh.

Probably won't keep being funded. Um, comic books in Peru. transgender comic book. Okay, so it's all transgender stuff? Mostly. Most of the stuff that's getting defunded is like these interesting artistic projects in other countries that support kind of left-wing agenda. Well, and the thing that Stephen Colbert brought the former, gosh, what would you even call her

ambassador? Like, administrator. Let's go with that, yeah. The word is an administrator of the USAID. And she was like, this is an organization that is meant to like form hearts and minds. It's this idea of soft power, as we know about. It's a humanitarian organization. meant to address like hunger, disease, poverty, but kind of she talked about it in this more nebulous

way of like also improving culture, which when we're talking about communism is kind of a different situation than like when we're talking about DEI transgender musicals. Yes. But for some it might not be different. You know what I mean? It's true. And they do do a lot of actual humanitarian work like starving children are getting food and people that don't have water or getting clean water, all that kind of stuff. But there's literally millions of dollars spent on this cultural, quote unquote, improvement. Well, and there was a 60 minute interview. Did you see that?

There's like, they did an interview on 60 minutes about the USAID, like all the people that were cut from working there and no longer had a job there. And he makes this claim where he's like, it's ridiculous that these claims are being made because 40% of our staff is meant to just make sure that there's no corruption happening. And that in itself, I think, is a really scary figure. 40% is a lot. You're hiring 40% of people to make sure there's not corruption. I feel like there's got to be a more,

there's got to be an easier way to do that. But that's what I have from that one. There's other executive words that we'll get into. Banning transgender people from sports. That's a big one. Transgender men from male sports. I don't really know. I think it goes both ways, right?

Both ways. Okay. And then ending birthright citizenship, that obviously caused quite a big to do. Did social media explain what that is? Because that's very important. I can tell you what social media said it is. Okay.

What does social media say it is? that if you were born in this country, but your parents were not, you no longer have citizenship. Okay, yeah. I mean, it's pretty much true. Goaded. I don't know why I said goaded to that. But there's been a lot of lawsuits that have said that this is violating the 14th Amendment. Yes.

So it's kind of stalled right now from what I can tell. It's not like gone through. As we have often explored on the show, the legal system works really slow. Yeah, so we'll see. So, yeah, months and months perhaps, till we have an answer on that. So it's just, as of right now, though, it's upheld, question mark? Upheld. Okay.

And then also just in general, there was an executive order that ended all DEI programs and initiatives in the federal government. I don't really know what that means, but I've heard a lot about like just DEI training, probably branches, positions that are there for belonging. I mean, my very sorority on this campus has a DIB chair, director of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. So like, this is a pretty widespread thing, and I don't really know how, much that will change non-federal DEI programs, but starting in the federal government.

The one that I think made me the most angry, not the executive order, but the way social media responded to it, was this extremely nebulous executive order that people just say it's like consolidating power in the executive branch. There's just this consolidation of power happening where these independent agencies, the letters I got were FTC, FEC, FEC, FECC, FECC, FECC, see those sorts that were established, I assume by Congress as these independent organizations but are still a part of the federal government are now receiving federal oversight, is what I was able to pull out from this. However, everyone is basically just saying Donald Trump is claiming new power.

Donald Trump is consolidating more power. And that is partially true because it says like there's one clause that says something along lines of like the president and the attorney general are going to interpret the law in this situation, which sounds scary because that's judicial review and that's meant to be in the legislative power. But I have to believe there's more to it than just Trump is now, because they're not even talking about in the context of this executive order. They take that and they go, now Trump is interpreting the law. And I'm like, this has to be like in a case-by-case situation. Is this unprecedented? Are there areas where the president does interpret the law? Is this a new thing? Like, I'm

confused because they make it sound like it's going to be a big deal, but I just don't trust them at all. Sure. Well, let's talk really quick about what is the president actually allowed to do and what is he not allowed to do? What are executive orders for? So the office of the president, right, is the executive office, which means he's supposed to enforce the law, right? Congress is supposed to make the law as president, make sure that they get followed. He's also the commander in chief of the armed forces. So decrees he makes about the armed forces, they actually are under his purview completely. The idea of the executive order was given in the Constitution. He's allowed to do that. The executive order can be given and then must be reviewed by Congress. Congress can just override it, basically, and say they can pass a

counterlaw that goes over it. But then every executive order is subject to judicial review. And so he's not interpreting the law. Essentially, what he's doing is trying to get things done quickly. Lots of presidents do this. Is that the same situation with that specific executive order where he's consolidating these independent agencies under the purview of the executive branch. Yeah, so what he's done there is very interesting because he's not, you know, you could construe this as a power grab, but actually the long-term goal, I think, of this move appears to be that he's actually trying to disseminate power more broadly. What I mean by that is that power right now in the United States is very consolidated in Washington, D.C., these bureaucratic agencies that, you know,

have a lot of authority and they have a ton of money. And so what President Trump has done is he's established mainly the Department of Governmental Evernal efficiency, right? Elon Musk's. Yes, his new his new toy that he gets to be in charge of. Yes, my goodness. And what all of this does is essentially just it's an investigation. It's to look into all these federal agencies and to say, what do we need and what do we not need,

the biggest emphasis being on what's not needed. So is this a power grab? At first it appears that way, the long-term goal being to actually have a smaller government. So while this looks like consolidation of power in the presidency, in the short term, yeah, maybe it looks that way. But the long-term effect of this is likely going to be that there's just less of the power that runs the country residing in Washington. Less of the money, less of everything. So yes and no, I guess if that's an okay answer. It also makes sense because he doesn't plan on, I hope he doesn't plan on being president forever.

No. And so this is a power that he's putting in the executive branch that won't forever be his. Exactly. He's trying to do something that many Republican presidents have sort of hoped to do in the past and have been unable to do, which is essentially just shrink the size of the federal government. The federal government has been growing rapidly for basically since the 40s, the 30s and 40s, 1930s and 40s. And President Trump is just trying to put a halt to that and say, okay, the government is not going to continue to expand as this monster bureaucracur. agency. And to spend, it seems like a lot of this is coming from, from what I can tell, a lot of taxpayer money being spent in ways that the American people are not aware that it's being spent. Enormous amounts. And that's kind of what the, I felt like the deal with the USAID thing was. And then also with this one, too, I don't even know what to call this one, but with the independent agencies, just seeing how they're spending money and where the money's going. Seems to be

part of it. The last couple of executive orders I have before I will fully pass it over to you would be just expanding access to IVF. I saw an executive order about that. It's not directed towards the people. Obviously, it's directed towards some sort of government agency to figure out how to make that more accessible less expensive. Apparently there was an executive order that ordered hospitals across the United States to stop transitioning children, transgender children. Yes, hospitals, medical schools, any facility that allows that kind of treatment, they're not being told you can't do it. Their funding is being taken away, which is the same thing. And New York has apparently said, don't listen to this.

Do it anyway, which is not shocking. Yeah, duh. And then he removed any federal funding from schools that require the COVID vaccine, COVID-19 vaccine. I don't know if he banned paper straws. I don't, is it like a funding change? This made me laugh. So Joe Biden instituted an executive order that said that the federal government could only purchase paper straws. Oh.

And. Okay. Different than what I thought. Donald Trump said, no. Stop doing that. That's a funny quirk of executive orders is that a president can make one and then the next president can literally just tear it up. Unless it's made into some sort of bill or law, right?

Unless it's made into an actual law, which actually it doesn't appear happens all that often. Is that the goal of a lot of these for Trump? Do you think to make these into laws? Well, I think the goal is not so much that it gets made a law so much as it gets enforced as it is. And the reason that that will happen, that that that, in theory will take place and that he's making on that happen, is that he has a majority in Congress, right?

So if Congress is going to review each of these, they have to decide if they want to pass a law that overrides the executive order. And if they all agree with him, why would they do it? Yeah. The last couple are just obviously our favorite executive order to expand or extend the use of TikTok for a couple more days.

I don't know when that ends. I forgot. We just did this episode, but I used TikTok for a lot of this episode, so I needed it. We exited the World Health Organization. Is that true? We did.

My goodness. He renamed a mountain from Mount Denali to Mount McKinley. Which actually has some historical basis. It actually used to be called Mount McKinley, and then they changed the name to Mount Denali, and now it was just changing it back again. The Gulf of America thing, there's no historical basis for that. Yeah, what is up with that? That was my next one.

He wants to increase the idea that America is awesome, I guess. But I looked it up, and there's more Mexican coastline on the Gulf of Mexico than... Far more. Oh, my gosh. Okay, that was kind of a cheat because I didn't get that from social media. I was just genuinely curious. He revoked the Equal Opportunity Act, which is kind of along the lines of that DEI stuff where it's like, you have to be hired based on merit and not based on fulfilling DEI quotas.

He pardoned people who participated in January 6th. Apparently he enforced stricter immigration laws. Are we shocked by hiring more police to crack down on illegal immigrants? Then we see these ice raids that are happening in different big cities. He only recognizes two genders. And the last thing I will say that made me laugh kind of. hard, but it made me mostly just sad because why is this happening to us? Is a girl said that he was issuing federal executions instead of federal executive orders?

That is very funny. It was a bummer. It's not real. Obviously, it's not what's happening. For those of you who are just tuning into the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM, I'm Gillian. And I'm Garrett. And we're running through some executive orders.

Take it away, Garrett. And Trump is not ordering any executions. Yes, he is. That is a misunderstanding. He is, however, reinstating the death penalty for certain crimes. Unfortunately, I also saw, not unfortunately, I just think death penalty is a sad word. But I did see that. And there's a lot of discourse online about that, but none of it constructive.

Yeah. So let's run through really quick, what makes an executive order like have punch versus when doesn't it have punch? Because it's actually not usually when they litigate over this issue. It actually, they talk about the Constitution some, but the main issue is in judicial precedent. So what does the court decided in the past constitutes an executive order that the president has the authority to give? Okay.

So the time when the president has the authority to give. has the height of authority to give an executive order is when it falls within his constitutional mandate, which has to do with the military, which has to do with also he's permitted to bar any aliens from coming into the country, not actual alien, you know. That too, I guess. I think that would fall under his authority. If the aliens come, Donald Trump will protect us. So, yes, so directly under the Constitution, that's the height of his power, which is actually

not that many things. And then the middle ground where he has a fair amount of power to make executive orders is when Congress and the president agree on the order and they grant him the authority. Okay. That is for the most part what's going to happen now. And then the lowest is when the president acts against Congress, which actually has been upheld in the court a few times. So it's kind of an unusual situation, but it does happen.

If you're curious about the court case that this all comes from, it's Youngstown. and Tubecoe versus Sawyer, which is basically, I think it was President Woodrow Wilson tried to seize, well, was it? I don't remember. Anyway, one of the presidents tried to seize control of a bunch of steel mills because of a war that was going on. And yeah, anyway, they were like, hey, stop. Don't do that. So they sued him. Nice.

Yeah. So other interesting executive orders that have come out of this time. One that I got really curious about is that he established a sovereign wealth fund. or he's created a commission to establish a sovereign way. It hasn't happened yet. This kind of things happen very slowly. And I'm sure many of you, if you heard me say that, go, what is the sovereign will fund? That's what I did.

Well, there are lots of countries that have it. It's basically an investment fund for the country. So Norway is the best example of a country that has a sovereign wealth fund. And theirs is huge. It's like $1.7 trillion, I think, is what's in there. And essentially what this is, is this is money that the government has taken from surplus revenue, whether it be oil and gas, or just money that the government has in surplus, and invested it in various ways. There's lots of strict regulations about how they can invest it.

It has to be very safe, and it tends to be pretty steadily growing, not very risky. But the point of it is essentially to save money for future generations or for times of disaster. It's a savings account. It's an emergency savings account for the U.S. government. Why haven't we had this the whole time? I know, really curious. And I think the reason why is a fewfold. A lot of people assumed it couldn't be done because America is so large, nor Norway is so successful because Norway is very small. Okay. And so I think a lot of previously people have said, well, we can't.

You know, and President Trump basically said, well, let's figure it out. Perfect. So there is now a group of people working on that. I have to ask because it's 73 is a large number. Is he stacking executive orders to say the same things ever? Or are they all saying 73 unique different things or 75? Oh, unique is kind of a tricky way to put it. They're all different.

He's not saying the same thing, but some of them apply to the same issue. Like there's, I don't even dozens related to DEI things that are just kind of focused on specific areas, whether it be, you know, in education or in federal, the federal workforce, the military, you name it. Those are separate executive orders. So that kind of multiplies the number. The other that people that are really curious about is that he's declassifying records of the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK. I heard about this through the collision. There's going to be a documentary. I know it.

I don't actually know that they're just really, there's got to. Somebody's going to do a documentary about this. And they'll probably come out really soon because people move quickly now. They do. So, yeah, there's a lot of speculation that the FBI killed MLK. MLK Jr., right? Yes, we'll see. We'll see.

I don't know. It's all up in the air. Okay. Do you have anything else to say before we give this guy a grade? I mean, there's a bunch more, but we could go on for another hour. We could. We did bite off a lot more than we could probably chew with this episode. But at least we got the surface, right?

I think we did. We won't be editing down this for any award shows anytime soon, I assume. No five minute chunks here that are usable. Okay, we're ready to give social media a very quick grade? I think so. Okay, three, two, one, see. I thought it pretty good. I thought it pretty good.

I knew some of them. Yeah. But we can't know all of them. No, I didn't read all of them. I read two thirds of them. I mean social media made me mad this week. I think I give social media lower grade when it pisses me off. That's funny.

When it says things like Donald Trump is becoming the legislative branch. No, it's not. It's just not true. Not really. You're all lying. He's also still like, First term, 220 executive orders. So we still lower than that?

That's not that many. Not that many. Compared to basically every other president, not every other. William Henry Harrison did zero because he died 31 days in office. Yeah, that'll do it. What a way to go out. Thanks so much to everybody who listened to the social mediaers this week on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM. I'm Jeline Parks.

And I'm Gary Gouldsby. And we will talk to you next week.