Monitoring democratic institutions through public records
Executive Actions — Week of Jul 7, 2025
Tracking presidential actions and new regulations. Government actions that bypass normal legislative or regulatory processes, concentrate decision-making authority, or expand executive power beyond established norms.
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This week, two major government actions drew attention: a presidential rescission package that would cut over $1 billion from public broadcasting and other programs, and a USDA rule eliminating compensatory preferences for minority and female farmers in response to a court order.
The administration submitted a rescission request asking Congress to cancel $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports more than 1,500 public radio and TV stations nationwide. Senate leaders debated whether this should pass with a simple majority or require the traditional 60-vote threshold used for spending bills. This might matter because the bipartisan appropriations process — where both parties must agree on how taxpayer money is spent — exists to prevent any single party or the President from unilaterally redirecting federal funds, and bypassing it could weaken Congress's independent role in government spending decisions.
Separately, USDA issued a rule removing preferences for minority and female farmers in certain programs, saying past discrimination has been "sufficiently addressed" through over $2 billion in prior settlements. The rule responds to a federal court order but frames the change as USDA's own independent decision. The agency's stated rationale is that prior remediation efforts have resolved the underlying issues, and the rule may also reflect broader legal shifts following recent Supreme Court decisions on race-conscious government programs.
There are reasonable alternative explanations for both actions. The rescission process is a legal tool presidents have used before, and it may reflect a legitimate effort to reduce spending or redirect funds toward other priorities. Minority-party senators routinely characterize majority actions in stark terms — this could be standard political disagreement rather than institutional erosion. The USDA rule may simply reflect compliance with a court ruling, reinforced by the agency's own legal assessment. However, the scale of the proposed cuts and reports of additional rescission packages planned suggest this may go beyond typical budget disputes.
Limitations: Most of the documents reviewed this week are opposition speeches, which are inherently partisan. The rescission package itself was not directly available for analysis, and the full impact of the USDA rule depends on future implementation.