There were supposed to be safeguards.
Executive orders (EOs) were never meant to be this country’s default operating system. They were supposed to be the emergency hatch, not the whole damn plane. Yet as of June 2025, the current administration has issued 157 EOs—a number that reads less like a governing strategy and more like a panicked teen trying to finish an entire term paper the night before Armageddon.
I started this piece intending to write something hopeful—something about how the courts were rising to the moment, blocking executive overreach like bureaucratic Gandalf shouting “You shall not pass!” But the deeper I went, the more it felt like praising the durability of a coffee filter while the entire building was on fire.
The Numbers: Democracy by Spreadsheet
Out of the 157:
- 14 are currently blocked by courts.
- 5 are in weird legal Schrödinger status—partially alive, partially enjoined.
- 5 are suspended in the kind of bureaucratic purgatory usually reserved for Area 51 reports and 1990s climate treaties.
- That leaves 133 in full force—some beautifully dull, others so wildly unhinged they read like mad-lib policy drafted during a fever dream.
This isn’t governance. It’s toxic sequin warfare—an indiscriminate blitz of shiny but structurally unsound directives. Policies flung like bedazzled shrapnel, meant less to solve problems and more to overwhelm the radar.
Strategy or Spectacle? Or… Yes?
If you’ve ever tried to read policy while your house is being pressure-washed by feral raccoons on Red Bull, you know what this feels like. The sheer volume of EOs is not accidental. It’s not policy—it’s performance art in a suit made of toxic sequins.
Flood the system. Bury the outrageous in the avalanche of the merely annoying. Let the worst ideas sneak in disguised as “normal” by virtue of proximity. It’s democratic misdirection, and the rabbit being pulled from the hat is your constitutional stability.
Lose in court? That’s proof of persecution. Win? That’s inevitability. Either way, the show goes on, and you’re paying for the popcorn.
Cases Worth Watching (a.k.a. The Greatest Hits from the Legal Dumpster Fire)
- EO 14160: Targeting transgender youth healthcare. Blocked in some courts, still haunting others like a legally-binding ghost.
- EO 14200: Initially “in effect,” now under emergency review after a late-stage federal side-eye.
- EO 14284: A federal labor “restructuring” that sounds suspiciously like “union-busting, but make it executive.” Cue lawsuits, rage, and some very tired lawyers.
Psychological Collateral: Bureaucracy vs. Burnout
The system wasn’t built for this kind of procedural blitzkrieg. Judges are buried in paperwork. Agencies are rewriting rules they just implemented. The public? Somewhere between dazed and doom-scrolling, trying to understand what just hit them.
This isn’t just a political strategy. It’s psychological warfare.
For those of us trying to track it—journalists, legal analysts, exhausted spreadsheet-makers with 157 rows of cryptic hell—it’s demoralizing. Purpose bends under the weight of red tape.
And let’s not forget the staffers, the clerks, the attorneys, the people whose job is to keep democracy legible while the executive branch treats the rulebook like a Mad Libs on fire.
So… What Now? Hope, Spite, and Filing Cabinets on Fire
Do we high-five every blocked EO like it’s a moral victory? Do we mourn the ones implemented like it’s another tombstone for the Republic?
Maybe we stop pretending it all makes sense. Maybe we call this what it is: a postmodern game of Calvinball where the only rule is “Whoever yells the loudest gets to be president.”
But here’s the good news: You’re still here. Still naming the chaos. Still building maps while the floodwaters rise.
We may not be able to plug every hole, but we can shine a spotlight on where the damage is worst. We can catalog. We can shout. We can turn our spreadsheets into stories, our outrage into action.
Because even if the firehose never turns off—we are not out of ink.
