It probably isn't a surprise, based on my last article that the last week or so of American history has been difficult for me. The new President of the United States has, every day, shown an unwillingness to create consensus or build bridges to those who never got on board the Trump Train. His nominees to the political appointees of the executive branch have, on their best days, voiced views that I disagree with strongly. On their worst, some have shown themselves to be uniquely unqualified to work in the policy areas of the departments they may soon lead. The President has fought with the press, and shown little regard for the norms that truly are the foundation of our grand experiment in democracy. But I find most immediately distressing, and potentially the most immediately harmful to the lives and well being of others, the 17 executive orders that he has thus far issued.

I think it's worth it to separate the President's executive actions into 3 groups: things that I think are bad policy, but for which there is some degree of difference based on partisan ideology between myself and any Republican; things that aren't necessarily bad, but not exactly helpful and are mostly symbolic; and things that fundamentally alter the contemporary consensus of what we can do with our government. A number of these actions are in the middle group. Extending the ban on former executive branch employees lobbying the department that they worked for is really just extending an Obama-Era policy and making the window a little longer; while I don't think it's important policy, I don't think anybody is materially worse off because of it. Nor do his executive actions calling for a plan to fight Daesh or reshaping the military actually do much of anything outside of saying that he wants something to happen eventually. I'd even argue that the bulk of the 17 executive orders the President has signed so far are in the first group; from the ACA to regulatory reform to funding for groups that provide abortion services, it's just so unlikely that I would have agreed with anything that any member of the GOP would have done on these issues. And as I think we all know by now, elections have consequences.

The I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-A-Muslim-Ban temporary freeze is really in a whole category all by itself. It is true that some number of people will die because of this freeze. It is true that there are plenty of people who do not share my partisan leanings who will fail to see this as a fundamentally counterproductive policy simply because it was the brainchild of one of their teammates. But it is also true that this executive action is a shift in thinking about immigration and who should and should not be allowed to join our American family and why which has been static for at least a generation. Actions by Barack Obama in 2011 and Jimmy Carter in 1980 certainly were targeted changes to who could receive a visa to enter the US; however, those actions were motivated by specific incidents, the terms by which the changes would reverse themselves were explicit, and the groups of people were narrowly tailored. That is not the case with Friday's action from the current President. This action has much more in common with such highlights of American history as the Chinese Exclusion Act, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, and Operation Wetback. It is broadly targeted; none of the 7 states named in this order have produced a terrorist that has successfully attacked the US homeland. It's goals are amorphous; there's no indication of what will happen on April 28, when the freeze is supposed to end for immigration from 6 of the 7 states, or October 28, when the freeze is set to end on migration from Syria. It's also unclear what the phrase "extreme vetting" means, or whether or not this order can apply to dual citizens, or how this will effect decidedly a-political things like whether Iraqi nationals who fly commercial airplanes into American airspace can keep doing that.

There's a ton of other good questions that we can ask that don't deal with the nuts and bolts of this policy too. For example, to what degree is the Department of Homeland Security actually responsible for the day to day management of our ports of entry? Why wasn't DHS or the State Department or the Department of Justice brought in the loop on this executive order before it got signed? Will the White House comply with a court order? It's only been 10 days, y'all. I'm already tired.