FROM THE EDITOR: Far-Reaching, Loosely Defined Executive Orders Create Uncertainty at Home
The Advance is launching a new journalism project to track how President Trump's Executive Orders are affecting the 540.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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A maxim that has been expressed both in the pages of the Advance as well as on the New Dominion Podcast is that local politics have far more influence on your daily lives than the politics at the national level.
Save for times of war, when duty calls people from their hometowns, this maxim generally holds true.
The events since the inauguration of Donald Trump, however, are threatening to upend this idea. Specifically, the flurry of Executive Orders Trump has released. Just 14 days into his Administration, the president has issued 49 Executive Orders.
It’s not so much the number of orders — Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to greatly accelerate the release of EOs, issuing an average of 145 per year; Franklin D. Roosevelt averaged 307 — as the confusion Trump’s have unleashed.
The Advance is committed to reporting on our community, and it is impossible to ignore the disruption to businesses, nonprofits, local governments, and school systems these EOs are having on our community.
A New Journalism Project
On Tuesday morning, the Advance will begin rolling out a new project — EOs in the 540.
The project will be both broad in scope, and dynamic in its execution.
The Advance is dividing the EOs up into eight categories that directly affect our region, and our team of reporters will be tracking each on an ongoing basis.
The focus will be the people and organizations that are feeling the effects of our rapidly changing political reality, for in truth all of us will feel the effects of what Trump is doing.
From deportations to tariffs; forcing workers back to the office and forcing others out of their jobs; and threatening to pull funding over “DEI” programs as well as “indoctrinating” curriculum, Trump’s EO’s are laying the ground floor for long-term impacts on our community as no president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Some of these changes will be — indeed, already are — hurtful to people, some people will benefit, and many unintended consequences are sure to flow from these EOs.
The Advance is uniquely positioned to track and make sense of the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Our reporters are both grounded in and deeply knowledgeable about the community we share, and bring decades of experience covering Washington, D.C., and national movements. This combination of local knowledge and national experience allows us to not only trace what is happening at home, but to put these events in their larger context.
We cannot do this alone, however.
Be Part of Telling Your Story
The stories that EOs in the 540 will be writing about are yours. To that end, we are asking you to let us know when EOs directly affect you.
Email our Reporters
Share EOs in the 540
Bring your neighbors and friends into the work the Advance is doing so that they might better understand the changes occurring.
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The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
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This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”
"This combination of local knowledge and national experience allows us to not only trace what is happening at home, but to put these events in their larger context."
Indeed, "...To put these events in their larger [LEFTIST] context." It should be entertaining to watch the spin that the editors will toss onto every EO put forth by President Trump. But will you point out the EO's that are to repeal the damage of the Biden EO's and the Democrat bureaucracy? DEI, gender idiocy, energy policies, weaponization of the DOJ...