January 2, 2018

THE DUDE LOST MONEY ON CASINOS, WHAT CHANCE WAS THERE HE COULD GOVERN EFFECTIVELY?:

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BRICKED ON AT LEAST HALF OF ITS EXECUTIVE ORDERS IN 2017 (David Dayen, January 2 2018, The Intercept)

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION has either failed to complete or is keeping from the public more than half of the reports that President Donald Trump assigned to the administration through his early and prolific use of the executive order. Of the reports it did complete, many were turned in well past the assigned due date and only "complete" in the sense that they consist of words on paper.

In his first year in office, Trump ordered 95 separate reports, performance reviews, instructions, or other activities to be carried out by executive branch agencies. The Intercept has been reviewing these orders for the last year. We found that 48 of the 95 actions were completed, in many cases after the due date stipulated in the order. Federal agencies have yet to complete another 20. In 27 cases, the agency was unresponsive to our requests for information.

The executive orders were intended to form the building blocks of Trump's governing strategy. They covered everything from defeating the Islamic State, to instituting signature policies on immigration and cybersecurity, to fashioning the administration's position on regulatory reform and energy independence. That the executive branch has completed just half of the tasks the president had ordered suggests that the administration isn't running like the "fine-tuned machine" Trump has boasted about. If federal agencies cannot do the basic block-and-tackling work of writing a progress report, their ability to operate in a crisis is highly questionable.

The administration's track record also reinforces the incredible secrecy within the Trump government. Only 19 of the 48 completed reports were publicly released.

Posted by at January 2, 2018 2:14 PM

  

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