@Background Pony #02F1
I really think some of that perception of executive orders as some sort of law comes from all the complaining conservatives did about President Obama’s executive orders. If they really aren’t laws, and couldn’t possibly have done all the damage that conservatives claim, then maybe some of their hatred of liberals and in particular President Obama might have been in error. So … executive orders HAVE to be law. Or something.
Yeah, there does seem to be a really weird disconnect over what people think executive orders are/do. In reality they mostly just serve as directives on how laws are to be enforced or how the resources of the executive branch are to be managed, and are both subject to judicial review (for legality) and being overturned by a subsequent president. But between Trump acting like they give him all sorts of outlandish powers he doesn’t actually have and republicans having devoted nearly two terms of Obama’s administration making them out to be some horrendous constitutional overreach one step away from royal decree, it probably stands to reason that there’s confusion over what such an order actually signifies and what it can actually do.
And of course it needs to be commented that the big reason Obama ended up doing so much that way in the first place was because when the 2010 midterms put the House and Senate back in Republican hands (thanks in large part to all the shrill fearmongering they did over the implementation and passing of the ACA), they spend the next 6 years of his time in office refusing to work with him on virtually everything they tried to do, leaving that as one of the few options he had for accomplishing anything. A problem which only added to the false narrative about them being peddled.
@Derpy Whooves
can anyone else tell I have a degree in cartography?
Really? So what’s your favorite map projection?
@Patachu
Social media must stop acting like a speech control authority, let’s give them hell.
Why? They are private companies and they own the platform, so they have every right to set the terms by which people are able to use it. That includes the right to regulate what people say on it, especially if it involves threats or misleading information that could lead people to harm.
Don’t forget, this particular Trump temper tantrum involves them fact checking
two of the thousands upon thousands upon
thousands of lies he’s shouted from the podium they gave him. They didn’t even remove them, or make them difficult to get to. They just marked them as “fraudulent” (because they are) and put a link that guides to fact checks about what he said. That’s an awfully low bar for acting like Twitter has gone full on into all controlling Orwellian dystopia mode.
@Typhoon2000
FUCK!, HE SIGNED IT!
Yes, and exactly like you were already told, it doesn’t shut anything down or make new laws. He’s instructing government agencies (at least one of which has no real authority to regulate Twitter) to look into adjusting regulations that give social media companies liability protections, and wants his little lapdog Barr to draft legislation for congress about it. But there are a host of legal issues with him doing any of that (including the fact that technically, under the law, the president cannot actually order the FTC or FCC to do anything), and while legislative changes are not impossible, it’s highly unlikely the Democrats are going to play nicely with Trump’s desire to play word police.
So please, calm down. It’s not all over, this isn’t the end of anything, it’s absolutely going to have legal challenges, and there’s a reasonably good chance that the next person in office will simply overturn it.