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☁ INAUGURATION THREAD ☁
I was going to post this to encourage Americans to participate in our show of civic unity. Let the messages of unity and American exceptionalism wash over you. Pay no mind to the commentators muttering about President Biden's last-minute preemptive pardons, or to the persistence of each Democrat speaker in reminding everyone that the Constitution exists and definitely binds the hands of the executive, too.
Kavanaugh has sworn in VP Vance. Now for the President.
Here's to four uneventful years. May the new administration succeed in delivering on their promises.
Edit: some of these promises kind of suck. I sure hope we don't do anything stupid over the Panama Canal.
Here's to hoping that the next four years do indeed make America great again, again. And we manage to dredge some unity and goodwill out of our desiccated corpse.
For all that we complain, I always ask people: if not the United States, where would you go? And where would you invest? Whatever my family and friends say, they're still investing in American securities. They're mostly still working in the USA. The opportunity here in most fields is unrivaled.
And to paraphrase Curtis Yarvin, I'll bet you 50$ that if you look around your neighborhood, you'll notice 0 changes over the next 4 years attributable to Donald Trump.
Looking at just the effects of the executive orders Trump has made so far:
Direction to State Department to not recognize trans gender identities. Unclear exactly what this means in practice, but this will likely make it difficult or impossible for many trans people to get/renew passports. I know many trans people renewed their passports early expecting this (and the Biden State Department literally worked overtime to fulfill those requests before January 20th).
Less serious, but Return to In-Person Work at best inconveniences many government workers. The intention is almost certainly to encourage federal workers to quit (just like tech company RTO policies are interpreted as stealth layoffs).
Those are the only two that I see that have immediate impact on the lives of people I know, but many of the others will likely lead to noticeable effects.
How? I don't see how it prevents you from getting a passport that states your biological sex.
As for other things that it means in practice, a few things that are mentioned in summaries (though I haven't looked at the EO itself so I'm not sure if it's listed there), are no males in female prisons, and not allowing to use anti-discrimination-against-women laws and regs to be construed as anti-discrimination-against-trans. Will probably also have impact on sports, though I haven't seen it mentioned explicitly.
Trans (or intersex) people may not have or be able to acquire identity documents that state their "biological sex". And if they do, photo IDs showing a mismatch between the sex marker on the ID and the gender presentation in the photo (or in person) are at risk of being rejected as valid ID.
The other effects you list also have some pretty awful consequences, but I don't know anyone directly affected by them, while I do know people who failed to renew their passport in time and will be left without one, and therefore be unable to leave the country, at some point in the next 4 years.
When you apply for a passport, you submit a current picture, which will match their current appearance. I don't think I've ever had a border guard read down to the M/F line on my passport -- they look at the picture; sometimes check the stamps.
If one does, the person in question will just need to say "I had a sex change operation" in the local language -- similar to what I would do if I dyed my hair or something. There is no practical problem; it is ideological.
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