Some calming words from a friend of mine

A buddy of mine from college posted this to Facebook. I found it beneficial and I thought other Americans worried about the current political climate might also.

(1750 words) Going to talk about how to think about federal government news in a fairly non partisan way. The big thing to remember is that the president can't initiate new programs; he can only execute the ones passed by Congress. But there's a fair amount of leeway in how that's done. There are several categories of things that make the news, which I'll talk about below.
There's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about here .... but I'm off to Missouri for the next three days to help out my mother, and won't have a computer with me, so won't really be able to talk. Be nice!
(1) Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing.
----------------------------------------
This is by far the largest category. Both parties love this type of news, because it feeds their base and requires no work. As an example, after SCOTUS said that the president couldn't start a trillion dollar spending program by executive order, Biden claimed that he was ignoring them and paying off student loans anyway. This made his partisans righteously happy, and Republicans righteously angry. Except he wasn't really doing anything new or contrary to the law - there are a zillion real programs for paying off student loans for various types of service, and this was what was happening. It HAD been happening for decades (much of it programs started by W), just nobody except the recipients paid attention. Trump's first term immigration policy was like that as well - it was really a continuation of Obama's, and essentially nothing changed (in fact, fewer were deported), but the Democrats liked to scream bloody murder over it when Trump was in office, and Republicans thought it made Trump look tough. A lot of this happening now, as well. For instance, when Trump says he's going to use the military to enforce the border, that's actually illegal (posse comitatus act). What -actually- happened last time (and will likely happen this time) is that the military will assist with road-building, blockade building, etc., along the border which IS legal - they just can't actually perform law enforcement functions. Same thing is true of DOGE - so far as I can tell, they just renamed an Obama-era department of Digital Services, and most of the stuff Musk has been talking about were actually available on public databases beforehand.
(2) Policy Changes Within the Executive Branch's Authority.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Congress creates programs and sets rules for them ... but in most cases, the rules are pretty vague, which means that the president can pretty effectively reallocate money/emphasis at his will. As an example, Biden reallocated a LOT of science funding to DEI programs. It was <1% in 2021, and 27% of the NSF budget by 2024. For scientists, this was really annoying, but it was within the president's power. Same thing is true across agencies - the president can direct the FBI or the DoJ or the DepEd on their own priorities. Same thing's true of USAID - Trump can't actually abolish it (it was created by Congress), but he can reorganize it and spend the money on something else, so long as it's vaguely related to the enabling legislation. Same thing on tariffs - Congress gave the president essentially unilateral power to impose tariffs in 1974 (Trade Act). On a personal note - I think Congress ceding all of this power to the president was a bad idea, but it's all legal, or at least SCOTUS has historically upheld it. Note that SCOTUS recently enabled -some- judicial pushback, through ending Chevron deference. Historically, if the executive branch said something was within their power, Chevron doctrine said that courts mostly just agreed with them. SCOTUS ended that doctrine a few years ago.
(3) Policy changes that are legal if done properly, but probably going to get overturned by the courts if done badly - but it'll take a while (although may be stopped immediately by judges).
---------------------------------------------------------------
Trump had a real problem with this in his first term. As an example, Obama's DACA program clearly exceeds presidential authority (I'll talk more about this later), but Trump's attempt to end it in his first term was overturned by SCOTUS -not- because DACA is legal, but because Trump failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in getting rid of it. Similarly, SCOTUS struck down Trump's muslim travel ban, not because the president -can't- ban travel from certain countries if there's perceived national security risk (Obama did this, as did W), but because when Trump did it, he was really clear that it was based on religious animosity, and that's NOT a valid reason. Note for people worried that SCOTUS is going to rubber stamp stupid sh*t Trump does this term, the R/D ratio of the supreme court hasn't changed since he was last in office - the only change was one of the D appointees getting swapped out. A fair amount of Trump's current EOs are likely to fall in this category. For instance, a lot of agencies have collective bargaining agreements allowing remote work, which the president can't unilaterally end.
(4) Policy changes that are blatantly illegal/unconstitutional, and which will get (or have been) blocked immediately and eventually struck down by the courts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Biden's attempt to spend a trillion dollars on student loan forgiveness falls into this category: spending programs have to originate in Congress. Trump's ending birthright citizenship also falls into this category: not only is birthright citizenship pretty explicit in the constitution, even if it wasn't, there's congressional enabling legislation that's explicit. It's already been blocked. These actually -sort- of fall into the Sound and Fury category, because both Biden and Trump HAD to expect these to get blocked - but then you can use it as a talking point about how evil the opposition is for blocking your wonderful program.
(5) Policy changes that are blatantly illegal/unconstitional, which never get stopped.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The most obvious recent examples of these have been DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)  (started under Obama and still ongoing) and Biden's decision not to enforce immigration law. Technically, presidential impoundment (refusing to carry out a law Congress has passed) is illegal ... but I think the legal trick to DACA is in the initial letter, "deferred." It's not that the president isn't going to enforce the law ever - just not right now. And prosecutorial discretion is well recognized as being legal. The problem is also one of standing - who exactly can claim harm and sue? It's easy to get a court order to STOP government action, but it's really hard to get a court order to START government action. It's possible that Trump is going to lean hard on this himself, since a lot of the changes he's proposing are "failure to do things" rather then starting new things. Further, as per (2), it's pretty easy for the president to take Congressionally allocated money and spend it on something different, so long as you can hand wave that it's the same thing. However, I suspect that because you have to handle it correctly administratively, which Trump has historically been bad at, more of this will fall into (4) than would have if he was better at it.
(6) Congressional acts actually passed
---------------------------------------
This isn't executive branch, but it's worth mentioning. As a practical matter, Republicans have a 2 seat majority in the House, which is incredibly narrow, and a senate that can be filibustered. The House members are not a unified front - they're a mixture of classical Chamber of Commerce Republicans, Libertarians, MAGA, Christian right, and several Republicans from districts Harris won.  Bottom line is that for the next 2 years, Congress is passing no new legislation that isn't bipartisan. Most of what happens there will be Sound and Fury ... with one exception, but it's a big one. That's Budget Reconciliation. Budget Reconciliation was established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and once (and only once) per year allows passage of a budget-related bill without filibuster in the Senate, and with simplified rules in the House. Parts of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 were passed with budget reconciliation, as was the 2017 Tax Cuts act under Trump's first term. The bill can only be about budget, and can't include non-budget-related items. I very strongly expect an extension of the expiring parts of the 2017 Tax Cuts act this year... however, I believe Congress could also use this to severely change budget allocations. They may not be able to -end- programs, because they don't have the votes to pass the legislation, but at least in the short term, slashing budgets will have the same effect.
----------------------------------------------------
OK, that was long, but here's the important part:
Most of what people pay attention to are (1) and (4) - because they're DESIGNED to outrage the opposition and delight the base. But they don't really do anything much. The big place short term changes can happen are really under (2) - because they're direct authority and can't legally be stopped. Sometimes it's hard to tell what falls into category (3) vs (2). The main way Trump will use category (5) is in the same sort of place Biden and Obama did - which is failure to act. The last thing to REALLY pay attention to is (6), budget.
Finally - without Congressional enabling legislation, which, like I said, Trump doesn't have the votes for, none of this is permanent.  He will probably lose the House in 2026, just because that's what almost always happens in mid term elections. Only way that doesn't happen is if either he is extremely successful in a way that the American people recognize, of if the Democrats are stunningly dumb. Same thing's true of 2028, although less so - if Trump has a successful 4 years, judged by the electorate, there's good odds he'll get his successor elected. If he has a bad 4 years, and if the Democrats can avoid shooting themselves in the foot, we'll get a Democratic successor, who can immediately undo everything Trump did. The only way that DOESN'T happen is if his policies in the next two years are so outageously popular that he bucks trends and gets increased majorities in Congress, to pass enabling legislation.
One last thing - on everything, it's just too soon to tell.  It's too soon to tell what the actual policy changes ARE, let alone what effect they will have. Keep your powder dry, folks.

So that you have some of the same background info I have on the author, James West: he is a research-professor at a major medical school. He is a Chamber of Commerce conservative, in favor of a move toward national healthcare, not because "healthacare is a right" but because healthcare is the greatest impediment to starting small businesses which should be the engine of the nation's economy. In most of the obvious ways, he is not at all Permie.

It's an interesting read.  I disagree with a couple points, but overall, I like the logic that went into it.

thanks for that Christopher!
and thank your friend!