In preparation for reading Trump's executive orders, I started reading Biden's. I think I just finished the backlog.
My goal in this report and subsequent reports is to get at concrete actions that are happening in government, rather than the emotional reactions and grandiose rhetoric on either side of the media. I'm looking for significant actions with long-term consequences which are under-reported along my axis of interests: competence in government, environmental regulation, science funding policy, AI, and other existential threats.
This means I will skip a lot of the rhetoric. If something is very likely to be challenged in court, I will note that and then wait for the courts to have their say.
Outgoing executive actions of the Biden administration
January 14, 2025: Proclamation 10881 "Establishment of the Chuckwalla National Monument"
This Proclamation goes on for five print pages about the history of a region in "southeastern California, where the Mojave and Colorado Deserts intersect," then declares (under the Antiquities Act) that the "objects" described in these pages need to be protected, "to ensure the preservation, restoration, and protection of the objects of scientific and historic interest identified above and to advance renewable energy in Development Focus Areas (DFAs)".
The area to be protected is five claims totaling 624,270 acres, between Joshua Tree National Park and Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range.
I don't know anything about this region, but skipping all the rhetoric, the plain text of the Proclamation doesn't make sense to me. In my mind, either you preserve an area, or you develop it, but not both. Preserving "to advance renewable energy" is weird, unless this is the watershed for a hydroelectric dam.
January 15, 2025: Executive order 14141 "Advancing United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure"
This executive order has eleven sections on more than 20 print pages, so I will summarize each section as a unit.
Section one: Preamble: "This order sets our Nation on the path to ensure that future frontier AI can, and will, continue to be built here in the United States."
Section two: Policy: Agencies should support AI development for national security and economic leadership, and energy development for such, as long as it doesn't raise energy prices. (How can using more energy not raise energy prices?)
Section three: Defines terms. Not too many surprises here, except that fossil fuel power with 90% permanent carbon capture falls under the definition of "clean energy."
Section four: (1) Three sites on Federal land will be leased to AI data centers and their supporting energy infrastructure by 2027. This section defines consideration and process for the Secretary of the Interior to do so, announcing sites by March 31, 2025, soliciting bids by June 30, 2025. (2) Five regions will be designated as "geothermal regions" for power generation and "thermal storage." A program for streamlining geothermal projects on federal land will be established by July 2025. (3) Construction of AI infrastructure is to begin by Jan 1, 2026 with full-capacity operation by December 31, 2027. This seems like slow timelines for AI. (4) These sites are to be secured within one year.
Section five: This whole section is about how the DoE should work with states to report on the impact of data centers on consumer energy prices. I predict this will slow AI development.
Section six: Requires electrical transmission providers to let the Federal government know about their remaining and planned capacity, and makes arrangements for agencies to power the three AI data centers of Section four. This is a good thing insofar as it is seeking to find underused infrastructure for placement of data centers. On the other hand, isn't this what price signals are for, and isn't it dangerous to have all this information in a single place which will undoubtedly be hacked by China?
Section seven: Requires agencies to do all the permitting quickly. Ex. EPA review is 30 days.
Section eight: Instructs the Secretary of Energy to include frontier AI data centers in its previously-scheduled nationwide energy and transmission needs analyses. Instructs agencies to who make infrastructure loans to inform the developers who win bids for AI related infrastructure on Federal land about loan and loan guarantee opportunities.
Section nine: (1) Plans to make a plan for promoting development of nuclear power. (2) Mandates a report on supply chain risks for data center components. (3) Develops model contracts for distributed energy. (4) Evaluate existing nationwide permits to see if they can be used for AI data center construction, and write new ones.[?] (5) Hold a voluntary "grand challenge" for power efficiency, computational efficiency, and water efficiency in data centers.
Section ten: Coordinate with geopolitical allies to build "trusted AI infrastructure" abroad.
Section eleven: Don't violate existing laws while doing any of this.
January 15, 2025: Executive order 14142 "Taking Additional Steps With Respect to the Situation in Syria"
This Executive Order (EO) modifies a 2019 (Trump) EO which declared a National Emergency in order to seize assets of individuals who had "directly or indirectly engaged in" "actions or policies that further threaten the peace, security, stability, or territorial integrity of Syria", but limited to "Turkish officials" who had sought to "obstruction, disruption, or prevention of a ceasefire in northern Syria".
Biden's EO strikes language which keeps it narrow to "in particular the recent actions by the Government of Turkey to conduct a military offensive into northeast Syria," and removes all clauses limiting enforcement to representatives of Turkey.
I read this seeking to allow sanctions on non-Turks who threaten the stability of Syria. Maybe Syrians, maybe Isrealis?
January 14, 2025: Notice 2025-01312. "Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Situation in the West Bank"
This notice extends the national emergency of a previous executive order for one year, until Feb. 1, 2026. The previous executive order appears to sanction people involved in supporting violence in the West Bank, and prevents them from immigrating from the US. Not sure if it referrs to Israeli settlers or members of the Palestinian Authority.
January 15, 2025: "Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Widespread Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan and the Potential for a Deepening Economic Collapse in Afghanistan"
The administration issues a declaration to extend a previous national emergency by one year. This national emergency allows freezing the assets of "Da Afghanistan Bank" held by US financial institutions, to keep the Taliban from using these assets.
Given that the asset freeze has been in place since February 11, 2022, this isn't a big deal.
January 16, 2025: Executive Order 14143 "Providing for the Appointment of Alumni of AmeriCorps to the Competitive Service".
This EO gives Americorps alumni with 1700 or more hours of service a fast-track to Federal employment, by making them elligible for "Non-Competitive Eligibility", for one year following their service. This gets them out of merit-based competition in federal hiring. This affects a population of about 80,000 people.
January 16, 2025: Executive Order 14144 "Strengthening and Promoting Innovation in the Nation's Cybersecurity"
This EO has a lot of parts, and each section was likely written by a team of subject-matter experts. There is no way I can do it justice.
Section two requires Federal contract software providers to submit "machine-readable secure software development attestations; high-level artifacts to validate those attestations; and a list of the providers' Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agency software customers." It also provides that the government establish "practical and effective" security practices to require when it procures software," and implement "supply chain risk management programs" into their own enterprise software.
Section three requires federal agencies to implement security practices used in industry, then goes into protections (encryption) for the civil space system and space ground systems.
Section four requires "strong identity authentication and encryption using modern, standardized, and commercially available algorithms and protocols", including Border Gateway router security, Route Origin Authorizations, and DNS traffic encryption. I'm skeptical of digital identity documents, but if they were more privacy-preserving than physical documents that would be impressive.
Section five seeks to "Combat cybercrime and fraud" by requiring the implementation and use of "mobile driver's licenses", "remote digital identity verification using digital identity documents" which can be used on any "standards-compliant hardware." The focus seems to be on public benefit programs. Thankfully, there are provisions for "do not enable ... surveil and track presentation of the digital identity document" and "ensuring only the minimum information required for a transaction."
Section six directs DARPA to open a program using AI for cyber defense, and for other agencies to implement the program within a year or so.
Section seven is about making sure that IT systems introduced by agencies can be audited for security compliance. Mostly transparency and automatic attestation.
Section eight is about securing national security systems.
Section nine amends a previous executive order, enabling sanctions on foreign hackers and cybersecurity threatening entities named by the Secretary of the Treasury or Secretary of State.
This is an extremely technical EO, and I have no doubt it was written by several teams of specialists. This also means it is almost impossible for the layperson to evaluate. Implementation will take years, with many sequences of delays built in for agencies to develop and implement processes.
January 16, 2025: Memorandum: "Orderly Implementation of the Air Toxics Standards for Ethylene Oxide Commercial Sterilizers"
Ethylene Oxide is used to sterilize medical devices, but it also known to cause cancer when in the air. This Memorandum establishes a process for considering requests for exemptions to new EPA rules on EtO release.
Whether this is good or bad seems like it will depend on the implementation. The deadline for the process development here is two years.
January 15, 2025: Memorandum: "Extending and Expanding Eligibility for Deferred Enforced Departure for Certain Hong Kong Residents"
"I have determined that it is in the foreign policy interest of the United States to defer for 24 months the removal of any Hong Kong resident, regardless of country of birth, who is present in the United States on the date of this memorandum, except for those [who have returned to the PRC or been convited of crimes.]" This seems like a good thing.
January 19, 2025: Executive Order 14145 "Helping Left-Behind Communities Make a Comeback"
This executive order directs several agencies to coordinate to support local economic development and make it easier to find resources about economic development programs which may be useful to "covered communities", which are defined as "economically distressed" regions, "Community Disaster Resiliency Zones", rural communities, and regions served by existing regional development programs.
This doesn't look controversial at all, unless the communities in question are selected in a partisan manner.
January 19, 2025: Executive Order 14146 "Partial Revocation of Executive Order 13961"
This is a very short but cryptic executive order. "Sections 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 of Executive Order 13961 of December 7, 2020 (Governance and Integration of Federal Mission Resilience), are hereby revoked."
Executive order 13961 is about continuity of the US government during emergencies. Section 1 establishes "the policy of the United States to maintain comprehensive and effective continuity programs that ensure national security and the preservation of government structure under the United States Constitution," and mandates that agencies must be able to continuously perform "National Essential Functions": mostly security, defense, health, and emergency services. Sections 3, 4, 5, and 7 establish a "Federal Mission Resilience Executive Committee".
I'm very confused. It looks like Section 2 (not revoked) defines the Federal Mission Resilience Strategy, and is untouched. So this EO is abolishing an Executive Committee.
While searching around to try to figure out what was going on, my search for Strategy document of Section two revealed a January 20 2025 Trump EO "Organization of the National Security Council and Subcommittees" which defines a National Security Council.
I'm going to guess this was some kind of parting shot by the Biden Admin, and it doesn't really matter because Trump's day 1 EOs overwrote it. But this last one leaves me just very very confused.
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Notes -
I saw this on twitter: https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1883711988544753868
Apparently Biden gave clemency to a drug lord who killed an 8 year old kid and mother to shut them up. This makes one wonder how many of these executive orders were even vaguely known of by Biden as opposed to random whims by staffers who are in a rush and do random, bizarre things.
https://nypost.com/2025/01/22/us-news/biden-grants-clemency-to-conn-man-convicted-in-death-of-kid/
Maybe Biden/his staffers saw someone locked up for drugs and commuted him, mistakenly assuming him to be one of the non-violent offenders?
The list came straight from the ACLU and was either not vetted or vetted by an intern with the same radical sentiments. A nice capstone to the "adults in the room" presidency whose policies were set by the prestigious Tumblr Kid think-tank.
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Chuckwalla:
So there are development zones but also preservation zones. And I guess this has been in the works for a bit.
I will read more on the others later, since I like this idea of having a baseline. It might be worth figuring out what Biden's most impactful EOs were, rather than just the parting shots. Maybe there's some sort of citation/impact score?
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