Ari Weitzman (4:20)

More executive orders are expected to be signed today. It comes amid fallout from his unprecedented.

John Law (4:25)

Use of executive power so far.

Ari Weitzman (4:27)

Yeah. More of the January 6 rioters who Trump pardoned were released from prison today. The Trump administration has also been hit with a slew of lawsuits. A total of 18 states states including the attorneys general from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are challenging Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship. Just hours into his presidency, Trump signed an order declaring that future children born to undocumented immigrants would no longer be treated as citizens.

John Law (4:57)

President Donald Trump began his second term on Monday with a series of executive actions, memos and announcements, signing 26 executive orders, 12 memoranda and four proclamations on his first day alone. Broadly, these actions focused on restricting immigration and asylum, redirecting the nation's energy policies, changing and curtailing federal employment practices, issuing high profile pardons, reversing Biden era executive orders and policies, and more. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order denying birthright citizenship to anyone born in the United States whose father is not a US Citizen or lawful permanent resident and whose mother is either in the country without authorization or on a temporary basis. The order has already been challenged in court by attorneys general in 22 states. Relatedly, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, authorizing additional security forces to construct more barriers and designated certain foreign drug cartels as terrorist groups ended the policy of catch and release, which allowed those apprehended while crossing the border illegally to move freely in the country while awaiting their hearings empowered officials to repeal, repatriate or remove any alien engaged in the invasion at the southern border reinstituted the remain in Mexico policy, causing existing asylum appointments to be canceled Ended the use of categorical parole programs, including the cancellation of the CBP1 app as a method for facilitating entry or parole and suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program for 90 days, directing the Department of Homeland Security to release a report on whether the program is in the national interest. President Trump also issued several acts of clemency. On his first day in office. He pardoned or commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who had been charged with certain offenses relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. Among those pardoned was Enrique Terrio, leader of the Proud Boys white supremacy group, while Stuart Rhodes, founder of the anti government militia group the Oath Keepers, had his sentence commuted. Both were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Trump also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the anonymous web based marketplace Silk Road that was used to traffic illicit drugs, whose imprisonment became an important cause among libertarians. On Tuesday, the president announced a $500 billion project to invest in domestic artificial intelligence infrastructure and suggested the government should institute tariffs of 10% on all goods from China and and 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico. He also declared an energy emergency, opening paths for federal agencies to pursue more petroleum drilling and issuing a memorandum to temporarily pause offshore wind farm leases and pause electric vehicle incentives. Finally, Trump signed other notable executive orders, including withdrawing from the Paris climate Accords and the World Health Organization establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, declaring that there are only two sexes that are not changeable delaying a ban on the social media app TikTok in the United States for 75 days, reversing many of President Biden's executive actions, including health care directives and voter registration initiatives instituting a federal government hiring freeze ending DEI practices and work from home policies in federal agencies and reinstating Schedule F designations to remove job protections for as many as 50,000 federal employees. Today we'll get into what the right and the left are saying about Trump's first days, and then editor Will Kabeck will give his take.

Sean Brady (8:49)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Isaac Saul (8:55)

Enjoy a brilliant sleep experience with Soundcore from Anker stressed out by your partner's snoring Having trouble falling asleep? Waking up too easily? Suffering from poor quality sleep? Now put on Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds. Experience unparalleled pressure free comfort perfect for side sleepers. Choose your favorite sound in your curated playlist, feel your body getting lighter and lighter and enjoy a full night of peaceful sleep with the A20's long lasting battery. Then wake up feeling fresh with a personal built in alarm. Get the sleep you deserve with Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds. Discover more on soundcore.com S O U N D C O R E Soundcore Use code sleep at Checkout to get $30 off S L E E P in all caps.

Dean Thomas (9:44)

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

John Law (10:10)

All right, let's start with what the right is saying. The right has different reactions to the orders, but many view the broad pardons for January 6th rioters as a mistake. Some praise Trump's energy related orders as a welcome change from Biden's policies. Others say Trump's immigration orders demonstrate how to address the border crisis through executive action alone, National Review's editors wrote. Pardoning Capitol rioters is no way to restore law and order. The riot at The Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a national disgrace. It was also a crime. Protesters physically forced Congress to adjourn its constitutionally mandated joint session and evacuate the building. There were assaults on police, theft and an estimated $2.88 million in damage to property, the editor said. However, the Justice Department deployed extraordinary and disproportionate resources to punish those protesters, holding many of them in extended pretrial detention far from home for many months. The Supreme Court concluded that one of the major federal statuses deployed against the January 6th defendants had been strained by prosecutors beyond its language, Trump will be able to use the political cover provided by the abusive last minute pardons handed out by Joe Biden. While Biden's scandalous pardons will undercut the credibility of Democrats criticisms of the January 6th pardons, they don't justify them, the editors wrote. Societies must resist disorder, riots, political violence and mob rule. They can and must use the criminal justice system to punish those who engage in such acts. The more dramatic the offense, the greater the case for exemplary punishment. The real scandal is not that violent rioters were charged on this occasion, but that they were let off on so many other occasions, imitating a mistake only compounds the original mistake. In the New York Post, Emmett Penney said Trump's orders Lead the US Toward Energy Abundance On Monday, Donald Trump jolted America out of decades of bad energy policy with the stroke of a pen. The age of climate extremism is over, the age of energy realism is upon us, penny wrote. Trump slashed the Biden EPA's electric vehicle mandate, a coercive maneuver that sought to bully Americans into swapping their affordable internal combustion engine cars for pricey electric ones. Trump also stripped out the Biden Energy Department's attempt to ban gas appliances, yet another inflationary policy that would put working people in its crosshairs. None of this should be read as a dismissal of the reality of climate change, but as a much needed halt to ineffective policies that in practice have done nothing to solve that problem, penny said. Both the American people and big banks see the writing on the wall. Most Americans rank climate change toward the bottom of issues they care about. With these executive actions, Trump declared his refusal to let America join hands with its allies as they march into the gray garden of managed decline. In the Federalist, John Daniel Davidson argued Trump's executive orders on immigration prove Biden could have secured the border at any time One of the first things President Trump did after being sworn in at the inauguration Monday was sign a series of executive orders on immigration and the border. A few of them stand out because they demonstrate how the border could have been secured at any point over the past four years by the Biden administration without any action or new legislation from Congress, davidson wrote. Trump declared an emergency at the border and ordered the US Military to immediately resume construction of the border wall, which Biden had abruptly halted upon taking office. Trump also ordered an immediate end to the use of the CBP1 app that the Biden administration had used to dole out mass paroles for illegal border crossings. The Biden administration could have done all this, or it could have simply left in place Trump's border policies, davidson added. What we saw Monday with the enacting of these executive orders from Trump, the first of many, is that a secure border was always within reach. These past four years, Biden and the Democrats sold out their fellow Americans, threw open the borders and then pretended they had no choice in the matter, that forces beyond their control had triggered a mass immigration crisis. All right, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is critical of Trump's actions, particularly his sweeping pardons. Some suggest his effort to end birthright citizenship will fail. Others say Trump has conditioned voters to rationalize his most radical ideas, the New York Times editorial board wrote about Trump's opening act of contempt. Mr. Trump's mass pardon effectively makes a mockery of a justice system that has labored for four years to charge nearly 1600 people who tried to stop the Constitution in its tracks. Most important, the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisors, the board said. It loudly proclaims from the nation's highest office that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression, and that no price need be paid for those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power. Mr. Biden issued dubious pardons to his son and as he walked out the door, several other family members, as well as preemptive pardons to an array of current and former government officials for non criminal actions, the board wrote. But what Mr. Trump did Monday is of an entirely different scope. He used a mass pardon at the beginning of his term to write a false chapter of American history, to try and erase a crime committed against the foundations of American democracy. To open his term with such an act of contempt toward the legal system is audacious even for Mr. Trump and should send an alarming signal to Democrats and Republicans alike. In msnbc, Ray Brescia argued Trump cannot simply erase birthright citizenship. Just as a president does not have the authority to establish a national religion or stay in office for a third term, the president does not have the authority to erase protections set forth in an amendment to the Constitution. To claim such authority is cynical at best, a sop to nativist elements on the right that should not survive legal challenge, brescia said. But in the meantime, millions of lives could be thrown into disarray with the president's stroke of the pen. And perhaps that's the point. What would it really take to rewrite the 14th Amendment? Well, another amendment which would require not just a two thirds vote in both houses of Congress in favor of repeal of the 14th Amendment, but also ratification by three quarters of the states, such events are highly unlikely. The Constitution is hard to amend, as it should be, and the notion that the president can sidestep that process is simply preposterous, brescia said. Now that likely will not stop the president and those who wish to see the end of birthright citizenship as enshrined in the Constitution from trying. But that doesn't change the fact that the Constitution protects this path to citizenship, and only an amendment to the Constitution can change it. In the Atlantic, David A. Graham said Trump's second term is already different than the first. Barely 24 hours into his new presidency, Trump has already taken a series of steps that would have caused widespread outrage and mass demonstrations if he had taken them during the first day, week or year of his presidency in 2017, Graham wrote. Although it is early, these steps have for the most part been met with muted responses, including from a dazed left and press corps. That's a big shift from eight years ago, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington and Americans flocked to airports at midnight to try to thwart Trump's travel ban. The difference arises from three big factors. First, Trump has worked hard to desensitize the population to his most outrageous statements. Second, Trump has figured out the value of a shock and awe strategy by signing so many controversial executive orders at once. He's made it difficult for anyone to grasp the scale of the changes he's made, graham said. Third, American society has changed. People aren't just less outraged by things Trump is doing. Almost a decade of the Trump era has shifted some aspects of American culture from far to the right. All right, let's head over to Will for his take.

Will Kaback (18:56)

All right, that is it for what the right and left are saying. Which brings us to my take Reminder Executive editor Isaac Saul is currently on paternity leave, so my name is Will Kbach. I'm one of Tangle's editors, and today's My Take section was authored by me, so I'll be reading it in my voice. Trump has issued too many orders in his first 72 hours to cover here, so I want to focus on two that seem to be sparking the most debate immigration and the January 6th pardons. The other issues covered by his actions energy, the federal workforce, DEI, policies, TikTok and more are important in their own right, and we'll likely cover them in more depth in the future, perhaps even the coming days and weeks. But I think immigration and the pardons are the most relevant to discuss in the early days of Trump's presidency. To me, one of the biggest unknowns about Trump's term is how the support for his agenda will evolve as his promises become policy. As the initial wave of executive orders rolls in, it's clear that Trump intends to spend his amassed political capital on an array of issues while stretching the bounds of his executive authority. In the abstract, this is normal. The president working to achieve goals he sold voters on the campaign trail is the epitome of democracy at work. However, choosing to pursue these goals without any congressional involvement is decidedly undemocratic. On immigration, Trump has called the amount of both legal and illegal immigration an invasion, and he is clearly starting his term with an all out blitz to plug every entry pathway he can. Some of his efforts will stick, others will not, and some strategies I agree with, while many I don't like. Isaac I think Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship is likely to fail. I also believe ending birthright citizenship is both a bad idea and a bad strategy. Through a human lens, birthright citizenship recognizes that being a U.S. citizen can be defined by your allegiance and contributions to the country, not where your parents are from. To deny citizenship to children who have no other home than America is callous and I think it undercuts what makes this country special. Moving along though, 22 states immediately sued to challenge Trump's order and it's unlikely that he can enforce it even while the case moves through the court system system. Absent any short term wins, then, Trump seems to be hoping that he can bring this issue to a sympathetic Supreme Court. Now I share the assessment of writers on the right and left that this case will fail even with a 6:3 conservative majority. This is the problem with pursuing an all out blitz strategy. If Trump's legal effort falls short, he will have expended a lot of energy and political capital on an issue that is far down the list of immediate actions like tightening the asylum process needed to address the crisis at the southern border. I view this order similar to Trump's promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, a costly effort with little chance of succeeding. The other immigration actions have a much better chance of succeeding. Trump is clearly communicating a less permissive attitude toward would be immigrants, and moves like ending parole programs and reinstating their remain in Mexico policy will meaningfully curtail the number of unauthorized immigration immigrants seeking to enter the country. Already, Trump seems to be successfully forcing the hands of the Mexican and Guatemalan governments who are setting up infrastructure to receive an expected influx of deportees. Solving the overarching problems will take a lot more than executive actions, but Trump's orders can at least help avoid the kinds of surges we saw at points during Biden's term. However, many of Trump's orders don't serve any tangible goal. For instance, his decision to cancel the flights of 1,660 Afghans, including some family members of active duty US military members previously cleared to resettle in the US comes off as punitive and cruel. These are not the invaders or criminals that Trump warns of. They're the kind of people that America should welcome with open arms. I think Trump has a powerful opportunity to spur meaningful, lasting and positive change on immigration, the likes of which we have not seen in decades. He's identified real problems with our system and possesses the political will to pursue real change. Paired with a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, he could genuinely achieve what his predecessors could not and pass major immigration reform during his term. But the sweep of these actions mobilizing the military, pausing asylum, halting the parole process, trying to end birthright citizenship will incur far more costs than benefits. The innocent people who are trying to flee danger or persecution in their countries and immigrate to the United States legally out of a sincere motivation to better their lives, who often help our country grow and stimulate our economy, they will be the ones caught in the machinery of these changes. All told, these executive actions are a step in the wrong direction. I have even more trouble grappling with Trump's January 6th pardons. If you've gotten to this point in the take, you're probably expecting a full throated denunciation of the pardons, echoing the thoughts of writers on the left and, honestly, the right, who lambasted them in no uncertain terms. I actually happen to think the discussion is more nuanced than that. I don't agree with the scale and scope of Trump's action, but I fundamentally believe that our criminal justice system is prone to excess and abuse in how it treats criminal defendants. Now, Isaac has written about his view on the criminal justice system in Tangle previously, and I won't rehash his arguments here, except to say that he and I are aligned on two core points. Number one, our system tends to exacerbate criminal behavior more than rehabilitate it. And number two, the United States uses imprisonment as a punishment far more often than is productive or necessary. When it comes to the January 6th defendants, I fully support consequences for those who broke the law, but I also believe the Justice Department acted improperly in how it handled many cases. The biggest example of this prosecutorial overreach came in a recent Supreme Court ruling that found that the DOJ wrongly charged hundreds of rioters under an obstruction of justice statute that elevated the severity of their cases. This case did not fall along ideological lines either. Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson joined the majority in the 6:3 decision, while Amy Coney Barrett dissented. At the time the ruling came down, roughly 50 defendants had been convicted and sentenced on that obstruction charge alone, and 27 of them were incarcerated. Perhaps you're okay with those people being in prison because after all, they still took part in a disgraceful act that merited harsh punishment. I understand that view, and I sympathize with it. January 6th was a shameful day, and those who stormed the Capitol should face consequences. And at least one of the people Trump pardoned agrees, turning down that get out of jail free card because she didn't think she deserved it. We have a link to this story in the newsletter, but I also believe that individual consequences should be commensurate with the severity of individual crimes, and in many cases, prison is not the answer. If I'm being consistent in my view that incarceration is a vicious cycle that upends lives and families and that we should reduce our reliance on it as a punishment, I have to hold that view for people I sympathize with and those I don't. That's all to say I would support President Trump commuting the sentences no, not pardoning of some January 6th defendants who were not charged with violent crimes if he had done so in a targeted manner that communicated his rationale for each case. And as an aside, he had suggested that that's exactly what he would do before the election, and Vice President J.D. vance also vocally supported this idea. But if you criticized Biden, as we did, for his acts of clemency last month, which forgave some criminals who did lasting harm to their communities, you should also criticize this move by Trump now. The president pardoned the vast majority of the convicted rioters of all wrongdoing in a sweeping manner, with an apparent lack of knowledge or care for the crimes he was excusing and without expressing any remorse for the pivotal role he played on that day. Of those pardoned, many had been convicted of violently assaulting police officers or playing leading roles in organizing the attack. Trump's action signals that political violence will be forgiven if it aligns with a cause that the president deems just. That's an idea we should not tolerate, no matter who is in the White House now. Trump has done so much in his first days that a full assessment would require multiple editions or podcasts. While I'm critical of his immigration orders and his pardons, I don't think that his actions have been uniformly bad or even close to that. I'm particularly intrigued by his initial approach to energy policy, and I think he could spur positive developments for the country with some of those orders. But so far his actions on immigration and clemency have overshadowed all else, and I think they set a negative tone for the start of a term that many Americans, including me, hopeful for.

Sean Brady (28:00)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Isaac Saul (28:06)

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Dean Thomas (28:56)

Brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

Will Kaback (29:23)

All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to today's reader question. However, we are going to be skipping the reader question today for length so we could give our main story a little bit more attention. So I'm going to send it back over to John for the rest of the podcast and I'll talk to you all soon. Have a great day.

John Law (29:39)

Thanks, Will. Here's your under the radar story for today folks. A new executive order could pause federal funding for gain of function research, a controversial process of making pathogens more contagious for scientific study. Republicans have long sought to end gain of function research, blaming it for the COVID 19 pandemic. While supporters of the research dispute this claim and argue the research provides important assessments on how to combat pathogens, others argue that without this research, other nations will outpace the US scientifically. Reports indicate some viruses, like the H5N1 bird flu pathogen, may be exempt from the funding halt if the order is put into place. The Wall Street Journal has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright, next up is our numbers section, the number of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office is 26, the most since the Federal Register began keeping track of the statistic in 1937. The number of executive orders signed by former President Joe Biden on his first day in office is nine. The number of presidential administrations since 1937 that have signed one or more executive orders on their first day in office is 4. The percentage of Americans who said they approve of Trump's presidency on his first day back in office is 47%, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll released this week. The percentage of registered voters who support deporting all unauthorized migrants in the United States is 30%, according to a January 2025 Fox News poll. The percentage of registered voters who support deporting all unauthorized migrants accused of crimes is 59%. The percentage of US adults who support ending birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrant parents is 41%, according to a January 2025 Ipsos New York Times poll. The percentage of registered voters who said they opposed pardons for people convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot is 57%, according to a January 2025 Wall Street Journal poll. And the decrease in the percentage of Republicans who strongly disapprove of the January 6 attack between January 2021 and January 2025 is minus 21%, according to a CBS YouGov poll. Alright, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Since 2014, Oxford University Press has conducted research to track how children use language in expression, resulting in an Oxford Children's Word of the Year. This year's research was conducted in a two phase series surveying more than 6,000 children between the ages of 6 and 14 in the UK. In reverse chronological order, the words for previous years were climate change, Queen, Anxiety, Coronavirus, Brexit, Plastic, Trump, Refugee and minion. This year, 61% of children participating in the final survey chose the word kindness. With so much going on in the world, we should all be kind to each other, one of the children surveyed explained. Oxford University Press has the results and there's a link in today's episode script description all right everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, Please go to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. You can also go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a premium podcast membership where you can receive ad free daily podcasts, Friday editions, Sunday editions, interviews, bonus content and so much more. We do have a special Friday edition for tomorrow. Again, we're going to be reviewing Joe Biden's presidency, reviewing how he delivered on his core promises, evaluating how he responded to core challenges, and analyzing the effect his term will have on the future of the Democratic Party. We will have a free preview post, but to gain access to the full review and to unlock full Friday editions and our Sunday newsletter and podcast, you need to sign up to become a Tangle Premium member. Ari will be hosting this week's Sunday edition and I will return on Monday. For Will and the rest of the Tangle crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend, y'all. Peace.

Sean Brady (33:54)

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dean Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will K Back daily, Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bova, who is also our Social Media Manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet75 and if you are looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website@readtangle.com that's readtangle.com.

Isaac Saul (34:31)

Enjoy a brilliant sleep experience with Soundcore from Anchor Stressed out by your partner's snoring? Having trouble falling asleep? Waking up too easily? Suffering from poor quality sleep? Now put on Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds. Experience unparalleled pressure free comfort perfect for side sleepers. Choose your favorite sound in your curated playlist. Feel your body getting lighter and lighter and enjoy a full night of peaceful sleep with the A20's long lasting battery. Then wake up feeling fresh with a personal built in alarm. Get the sleep you deserve with Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds. Discover more on soundcore.com S O U N D C O R E Soundcore Use code Sleep at checkout to get $30 off S L E E P in all caps.

Dean Thomas (35:20)

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive. Com, Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.