The Daily Fuckup

On February 24, 2017, President Donald Trump signed another executive order aimed at trimming back the federal regulatory state, this time by telling agencies to create regulatory reform officers and task forces charged with identifying rules that could be repealed, revised, or eliminated. In the narrowest sense, the order was exactly what Trump’s supporters had been promised: a visible, formal step toward the anti-red-tape agenda he had sold during the campaign and repeated in public speeches after taking office. It gave the White House something simple to point to, a piece of paper that could be described as action and framed as proof that the administration was moving fast. The symbolism was not accidental. Trump has always understood the value of a headline-sized gesture, especially when it reinforces a larger narrative about shaking up Washington and forcing a reluctant bureaucracy to change. But the order also arrived at a moment when the administration’s method was starting to look less like a coherent governing strategy and more like a habit of announcing ambitions before deciding how, exactly, they would be carried out.

That gap between announcement and execution matters because deregulation is not a slogan; it is a process, and a messy one at that. Federal agencies do not simply erase rules because the White House asks them to, and they cannot legally ignore the procedures, statutory limits, and review requirements that govern administrative action. Even a strong directive from the president can only set a direction, not instantly rewrite the legal landscape. That means an order like this can create pressure and momentum, but it can also create confusion if the instructions are broad, the priorities are vague, and the standards for deciding what should go are left undefined. Trump’s style in the opening weeks of his presidency had been built around speed, disruption, and the visual impression of decisiveness. Those qualities play well in political theater, where the point is to show force and confidence. Inside the federal government, however, they can produce exactly the opposite: duplicated work, unclear responsibility, cautious managers trying to guess what the boss actually wants, and a constant scramble to turn broad declarations into defensible administrative action. The administration seemed eager to project the feeling of movement. What it had not yet demonstrated was a disciplined plan for turning that feeling into durable policy.

The executive order also fit neatly into a broader pattern that was becoming hard to miss. Trump’s governing style in these early weeks often treated policy as performance, with the main goal appearing to be the production of visible action rather than the careful explanation of what that action would mean. On regulation in particular, the president’s public language tended to be blunt and sweeping, as if the problem were simply that Washington had too many rules and the answer was to cut them back as fast as possible. That message was easy to sell because it collapsed complicated questions into a simple political argument. But the actual work of governing demanded more than that. Which regulations were being targeted first? Which agencies were expected to move aggressively, and which were supposed to proceed cautiously? How would the administration decide whether a rule was outdated, duplicative, or burdensome enough to warrant repeal? And what would happen when agencies ran into legal challenges, public pushback, or conflicts with existing statutes? The order did not answer those questions in any meaningful detail. Instead, it pushed much of the burden downward, leaving agencies to sort out the mechanics while the White House collected the political credit for being seen as tough on regulation. That may be efficient from the perspective of messaging. It is far less reassuring from the perspective of administration.

Not everyone looked at the order and saw a nimble reform effort. Critics saw a White House that was much better at declaring intent than at governing with precision, and they worried about the consequences of trying to unwind regulations without a clear public accounting of what would replace them, what protections would remain, and how far the administration intended to go. Environmental and consumer advocates had obvious reasons to be concerned about rapid deregulatory moves, especially if the process seemed designed to favor speed over review. Others pointed out that regulatory uncertainty can itself be a problem, particularly for businesses and institutions that rely on stable rules rather than a constant churn of new directives and shifting priorities. Even supporters of deregulation could reasonably wonder whether the administration understood the difference between announcing a campaign against rules and building a workable system for carrying it out. The larger concern was not simply that Trump wanted fewer regulations. It was that the administration appeared willing to treat the federal bureaucracy as a shock absorber for a political style built around improvisation. By late February, that approach was already looking like a defining feature of the presidency: slash first, explain later, and let the machinery of government absorb the consequences while the White House figures out what it meant. That is a risky way to run a federal government. A country can survive a serious argument over policy. It has a much harder time surviving chaos with a press release attached.