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Trump's biggest executive actions, explained

Here is a list in chronological order:

8. Ethics pledge – Jan. 28, 2017

Alex Brandon/AP
President Donald Trump holds up a signed Executive Order in the Oval Office of the White House, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017 in Washington. The document includes restrictions against lobbying for "Every appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 2017..."

ACTION

Executive Order: Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees mandates that every executive agency appointee after Jan. 20, 2017, sign and ethics pledge, which includes a five-year ban on officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government and a lifelong ban against White House officials becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.

ANALYSIS

The ethics pledge changes the timelines of Mr. Obama’s 2009 ethics pledge, which barred appointees from lobbying for two years after federal employment, prevented appointees from working for a lobbying group within the one year prior to his or her appointment, and prevented the appointee from working on anything related to their past lobbying interest for two years after beginning their job with the government. Although they now have to wait five years before working as a lobbyist, appointees can contact their former agencies within one year. Trump’s order also expands the definition of a lobbyist from strictly registered lobbyists to include those working or researching for an advocacy campaign or creating lobbying strategies.

Although both presidents have allowed ethics waivers for some officials, Trump’s order does not require the White House to disclose which appointees are granted waivers.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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