Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The Impact of President Trump’s Executive Actions

Introduction: A Series on the Impact of President Trump’s Executive Actions

The Impact of President Trump’s Executive Actions
U.S. President Donald Trump signs a series of executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on February 10, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

Since taking office, President Trump has fired off a barrage of sweeping executive orders that reach into the federal government, higher education, business, and other institutions. But how does all of this affect you and your family?

Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), a nonpartisan organization aimed at protecting democracy and the rule of law, hopes to answer that question through a series of deep dives into the actual impacts of all this frenetic activity.


Let's start with the fact that the Trump administration's broad and chaotic attacks on the government have little to do with waste and fraud. The real goal was set forth in Project 2025, an extremist blueprint created more than a year before the President was elected: “To…go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State."

The administration wants you to believe that federal workers are lazy and incompetent people who waste your tax dollars. Yet, as the first installment in our series will explain, these federal workers—whose duty is to serve the public interest—use their special skills and training to: protect public health; implement a fair tax system; help provide medical care and high-quality research; safeguard our financial and banking systems; help needy families and children; support seniors in retirement; promote safe air, rail, and highway travel; preserve U.S. national security; enforce the law; and protect our food supply, the water we drink and swim in, and the air we breathe.

Public opinion overwhelmingly supports these goals. Federal workers strive each day to make all of this possible. Carefully eliminating waste is one thing but randomly dismantling federal programs does nothing to improve efficiency while undermining the nation's security and prosperity.

Additionally, some of Trump's executive orders have already weakened consumer protections against unethical and potentially dangerous behavior. Our series will describe these impacts in careful detail.

The series will describe how the administration’s demolition of the federal government weakens the enforcement of legal protections that are more likely to cause harm to American families while benefiting wealthier individuals. History has proven that left unregulated, businesses may prioritize profit over consumer and public well-being. A broad-based elimination of regulations without careful consideration about what those regulatory programs are trying to accomplish will increase harmful practices and reduce public health and safety.

The series will also analyze how these dramatic cuts will have direct impacts on individuals. To provide just one example, drastically cutting staff at the Internal Revenue Service will make it easier for the wealthy to be protected by the administration as they exploit loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Those outside that elite category have no such advantages.

Another example can be found in how eliminating basic federal medical research funds will endanger families by leaving us without protection against deadly infectious and chronic diseases. Federal funding has been crucial in the race to find cures and treatments, provide ongoing research for diseases that devastate families—such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and Parkinson’s—and eradicate once terrifying diseases, such as polio. Slashing funding for medical research will leave us unprepared for the next pandemic.

The series will also explain how reducing civil service protections for federal workers will result in a government of loyalists, not experts. As an example, the administration is already undermining the independence of the FBI and the Justice Department, allowing the President to use them as political tools.

As a result, the awesome coercive power of the federal government may be used not to pursue justice but to punish any individual who dares to express views that the administration regards as unacceptable. This has been the blueprint for the rise of autocrats in other countries where democracy and the rule of law are under attack.

The flood of executive orders and related actions is designed to overwhelm the public's ability to deal with these threats one by one. This series will focus on the larger picture while also examining specific actions in detail to reveal the serious impacts on all of us and the future of our democracy and the rule of law.

This is not the America that our founders envisioned. But it is not too late for an informed public to change our nation's course.


Lawyers Defending American Democracy  is dedicated to galvanizing lawyers “to defend the rule of law in the face of an unprecedented threat to American Democracy.” Its work is not political or partisan.

Read More

The Supreme Court Ruling in the Skrmetti Case Should Have Taken Sex Discrimination Into Account: 5 Things To Know

Supreme Court.

Equality Now

The Supreme Court Ruling in the Skrmetti Case Should Have Taken Sex Discrimination Into Account: 5 Things To Know

A quick recap:

  • The Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban, weakening equal protections.
  • Tennessee’s law denies care based on sex assigned at birth, despite claims it doesn’t.
  • The Supreme Court decision and Tenessee’s law violates international human rights standards on health and non-discrimination.
  • To reach a decision, the Court revived harmful legal reasoning.
  • Without stronger protections, discrimination can be hidden in neutral language.

On June 18, 2025, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The Court held that Tennessee’s law does not rely on a sex-based classification and therefore does not warrant heightened judicial scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. The decision sidestepped the central role sex plays in the Tennessee law, effectively signaling that states may target gender-affirming care for transgender youth without triggering the constitutional protections typically afforded in such cases.

The Court accepted Tennessee’s claim that the law at issue merely regulates “based on age” and “medical use,” not on sex or transgender status. But this framing misrepresents how the law functions in practice: access to treatment is determined entirely by a patient’s sex assigned at birth. It’s not the treatment itself that is restricted, but who is seeking it and for what purpose.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Sanctuary City Debate: Understanding Federal-Local Divide in Immigration Enforcement
Police car lights.
Getty Images / Oliver Helbig

The Sanctuary City Debate: Understanding Federal-Local Divide in Immigration Enforcement

Immigration is governed by a patchwork of federal laws. Within the patchwork, one notable thread of law lies in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The Act authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) programs, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to work in tandem with local agencies and law enforcement on deterrence and enforcement efforts. Like the now-discontinued Secure Communities program that encouraged information sharing between local police agencies and ICE, the law specifically authorizes ICE to work with local and federal partners to detain and deport removal-eligible immigrants from the country.

What are Sanctuary Policies?

Keep ReadingShow less
Lady Justice

On April 2, President Trump announced "Liberation Day"—the imposition of across-the-board tariffs on imports into the United States.

the_burtons/Getty Images

Trump’s Tariffs Are Unlawful: How the “Nondelegation Doctrine” Limits Congress

This guest post from Eric Bolinder, a professor of law at Liberty University, is based on his recent law review article on the constitutionality of President Trump's tariffs. Before Liberty University, Eric was counsel at Cause of Action Institute, where he helped litigate Loper Bright, the case that overturned Chevron deference, and at Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

On April 2, President Trump announced "Liberation Day"—the imposition of across-the-board tariffs on imports into the United States. Without congressional action, these tariffs are highly vulnerable to legal challenges as they may violate something called the "nondelegation doctrine." Recently, two courts, the Court of International Trade and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, enjoined the tariffs (though both decisions are stayed), finding that the President had no statutory authority to implement them. These courts echoed what I'll discuss below, that if the statute does authorize tariffs, then they may be unconstitutional under the nondelegation doctrine.

Keep ReadingShow less
Supreme Court Blocks Universal Injunctions: Major Shift in Executive Power Limits
How reforming felony murder laws can reduce juvenile justice harms
Getty Images

Supreme Court Blocks Universal Injunctions: Major Shift in Executive Power Limits

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. CASA marks a significant shift in the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches—particularly in how federal courts can respond to presidential actions.

Keep ReadingShow less