j4remi wrote:Clyde_Style wrote:
Do you believe the average voter has any grasp of the executive actions taken by any president? I don't particularly. Political heads know, but it doesn't seem Trump's executive actions ever made it to the front pages or became a campaign topic. And I kind of doubt Biden's EA's will either.
I don't know how active he will be in using them, but for things like environmental protections being restored I would be pretty surprised if he wasn't quite active.
I honestly think that if the average voter knew how much the president can accomplish via executive order their expectations would be a lot higher. I didn't know much either until the American Prospect's whole Day One Agenda package and my mind was pretty blown at how much legal precedent there is. I can't praise that package of articles enough fam!
I hope the environmental protections get reinstated quickly. I'd also point out that I'm completely grossed out at some of the food inspection maneuvering that Trump did and would like to see a chunk of that reversed. He'd also do well to reinstate catch and release as promised.
That stuff would be moving back to what we already had though. No gains there and the years of backward movement mean we'd have ground to make up (there were reductions in all the legal forms of immigration too and the environmental setbacks are rough). I think the two most obvious places that he can go above and beyond using our current conditions are reducing drug prices and forgiving student debt (David Dayen has written on both for how they'd work and he talked about it a bit on the Majority Report recently during a long form interview).
They're floating Janet Yellen for Treasury...I'd be hopeful on that note too.
I'm surprised there wasn't a large scale outbreak from tainted meat during the pandemic (unless I missed some news reports). The meat plants were hit hard by the virus. Between that and cutting regulations, it seems like a disaster in the making.
I'm pretty sure the EPA is going to get prioritized. One of the worst Trump people was Pruitt.
I covered this rebuilding aspect in recent posts, particularly in my sharp response to MPHarris who called the presidency symbolic and a figurehead. It's completely false. Just the power to place appointees throughout the federal bureaucracy is an incredible tool capable of changing the whole nature of the federal system and how it functions. The loyalty purges and installation of flunkies requires a wholesale housecleaning. The State Dept. was gutted in year one under Tillerson. Embassies are barely functioning in many instances. It's a mess. This falls on Biden and his team.
That's why cabinet secretaries are so important of course. A good one can staff up properly and relieve the pressure on the WH to handle every little thing. Trump's cabinet was mostly dedicated to gutting everything out and then pillaging. There's a lot of work to be done. The Presidency matters a fukton. I can't believe anybody would think otherwise.
Please, do it. He needs it.
