Welcome back to our liveblog of the early executive actions of the Trump administration. Since Inauguration Day, the Prospect has been contextualizing and explaining, clearly and succinctly, what Donald Trump is doing in office with his early executive actions, and who really benefits. We have now compiled coverage of over 30 executive actions over the past three days (here are the links: Day One, Day Two, Day Three).
We continue that work today. Keep checking back for updates throughout the day.

The 90-day federal hiring freeze that Donald Trump instituted on day one is not a new idea. Several presidents in the past have done it. And when auditors have studied those previous instances, they found that they didn’t really work, actually increasing total operating costs while decreasing government efficiency. (Someone tell DOGE!)

If anything, the current iteration of the hiring freeze is going even worse. Numerous job offers that had already been made were rescinded, including for an untold number of doctors, pharmacists, and other health care professionals who accepted jobs at the Veterans Health Administration, even as the nominee for VA secretary, Doug Collins, insisted that veteran patients would not be affected by the hiring freeze. It may be the point to cause a fake shortage in VA providers to push patients into the private system, but that is more expensive, worse care for people with specialized needs.

There’s an exemption, of course, if your job in the federal government is rounding up immigrants or serving in the military, but the VA snafu shows that this is not foolproof. The Wall Street Journal, in fact, describes the government as "grinding to a halt" amid the confusion over the hiring freeze and other orders. National Park Service seasonal employees cannot be onboarded, disrupting a perfunctory process. The IRS hires seasonal employees to deal with tax season (which starts Monday), but that agency’s hiring freeze is actually indefinite.

And it doesn’t stop at the hiring freeze. The Department of Transportation temporarily closed a computer program that assists states with highway funding. Messages to farmers about bird flu have stopped. Procurement of supplies for basic research is stalled. This too is probably also the point; when you put people who want to end the government in charge of the government, this is what it looks like. –David Dayen

Just as bird flu is becoming a major concern, Donald Trump issued an order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization. This comes just a few days after the Biden administration, in one of his last official actions, awarded a $590 million grant to Moderna for an urgent effort to develop a bird flu vaccine.

The World Health Organization provides the worldwide exchange of information on diseases and other potential threats to public health that don’t respect national boundaries. Yet Trump’s order specifies, "While withdrawal is in progress, the Secretary of State will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations."

Trump tried to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO late in his first term, but the effort was quickly reversed by President Biden. Among Trump’s other grudges was criticism in some circles that senior Chinese officials at the WHO had toned down WTO criticism of China’s actions early in the pandemic. Trump’s order explicitly cites "the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China," pandering to conspiratorial views of where the pandemic originated.

Combined with Trump’s appalling orders to the Centers for Disease Control and NIH, suspending all communications by those agencies, Trump seems determined to loose epidemics upon the land. Trump tangled with the CDC during the early stages of the pandemic. His order is described as a temporary pause, while these agencies are reviewed. But surely it would be more sensible to let them do their urgent jobs, while the reviews go forward.

It’s one thing to go after the deep state, another to sabotage basic public health. These actions are nihilist.

We were worried about RFK Jr., who has lately sought to reverse his long-standing crackpot views of vaccines in his effort to win confirmation. Trump is far worse. –Robert Kuttner

Perhaps the weirdest priority in President Trump’s spree of executive orders is his crusade against efficient appliances. He would "safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads," according to one order, and will "eliminate counterproductive requirements that raise the costs of home appliances," per another.

Trump claims, without evidence, that "unprecedented regulatory oppression from the Biden Administration is estimated to have imposed almost $50,000 in costs on the average American household."

This number is preposterous—indeed, the opposite of true. A core intention of the (quite modest) regulations on appliance efficiency going back decades has been to nudge the market toward devices that use fewer resources, and therefore cut Americans’ bills. As Rachel Cohen covered at Washington Monthly years ago, for instance, light bulb regulations under the Bush and Obama administrations successfully advanced the deployment of LED bulbs, which are now as cheap and good as incandescents, use about 90 percent less power, and last much longer.

Another Biden administration priority has been to advance dryer efficiency, aiming to eventually make heat pump technology the industry standard. Not only do these use about 70 percent less electricity than traditional dryers, they also don’t vent your conditioned air to the outside, saving even more in hot or cold months. They also do not require a 240-volt circuit, saving yet more in construction costs. Though they cost more up front (for now), they can easily pay for themselves in a few years.

It’s hard to know how Trump acquired this fixation. He has been claiming for years that toilets don’t flush properly anymore, requiring 10 to 15 flushes to dispose of his waste, and that showers don’t get his hair wet enough at a mere 2.5 gallons per minute. I’m not sure what he’s eating, or whether he’s washing his pet musk ox in the shower, but suffice to say that is not remotely my experience with a brand-new bathroom.

But it’s not clear whether these moves will have much effect. Trump attempted a similar rollback in his first term. "No manufacturers, to our knowledge, took advantage of those loopholes," Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, told the Associated Press. –Ryan Cooper

>>Read more updates at prospect.org