By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
Originally published May 16, 2025 for our End-of-Month Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get semi-monthly issues.
“When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?” –Marcus Tullius Cicero on justifying his decision as consul to execute Lucius Sergius Catiline without Roman Rule of Law “due process”
“If [as the Federalists say] ‘the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government,’ … then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de so. … The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law…” –Thomas Jefferson – Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Nov. 1819
INTRODUCTION
Our report on Trump’s first 100 days will focus on President Trump’s executive actions in three parts: his executive orders, his tariff orders, and his world policy. In our next issue, we will report in more detail on the courts’ responses to Trump as well as the tactics and seditious personalities behind those anti-American actions (our ongoing Judgefare series).
In our upcoming June 13 issue of MIA, we will release parts 2 and 3 of this report. We will analyze his tariff orders in the first 100 days, as well as what will then be the current state of this “tariff war.” We will also do an analysis of his foreign policy during his first 100 days.
The Trump Presidency, so far, has four major storylines: Trump versus the Deep State at home, Sedition within the RNC, Trump versus the Globalists, and Trump versus China. A pattern worth noting here is that I am referring to Trump as opposed to America, for one thing these first 100 days suggest is the spirit of Americanism (the right of the individual to be self-stewarded so long as they respect the rights of others to do the same) is dimmer than this writer believed it was.
President Trump himself is not a clear representative of Americanism, especially given the nature of the types of un-American actions he might believe he is required to take (and he might just be right about that). Nothing highlights this dichotomy inherent in the Trump administration better than the President’s use of executive orders.
Here we see the underlying dichotomy of this administration manifest in EO form, where the President seeks to balance the “preservation” and restoration of American Rule of Law with the necessity to quickly extract the cancer from the rapidly dying host.
The tariff wars, foreign policy, and even the budget, will matter little if the DNC is able to make anti-American standards the “New Americanism,” the NEW Rule of Law in the land.
If the Republican Party does not convert Trump’s executive orders into laws, specifically the ones rightly assaulting the heart of DNC power, government ideological capture unapologetically opposed to Rule of Law, the “constitutionality” of Trump’s executive orders will be irrelevant.
Until that time comes, an analysis of Trump’s executive orders in the first 100 days is closer to being a fractal of the whole of those first 100 days than any other aspect of Trump’s presidency. For now, it is the frontline of the battle for Americanism, even if some aspects of its fight are less than American in spirit.
That battle also highlights the battle for Americanism that has existed since the founding of our country, a battle between judicial tyranny and American rule of Law. This story is, in fact, a part of that larger story which we’ll continue in the next issue of MIA, through our Judgefare series.
- THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF XOS
Donald Trump has signed more executive orders in the first 100 days than any other U.S. President in history, with 152. The list includes 3 Democrats in positions 2-4 before Trump shows up again in 5th for his first term’s first 100 days (with 33 executive orders). Second place is Franklin D. Roosevelt with 99 executive orders, third place is Harry S. Truman with 57 executive orders, and fourth place is Joe Biden with 42 executive orders.
Of those executive orders, 44 have been blocked by the judiciary, mostly at the District Court level. The number of reverses of those blocking orders is disputed, but somewhere between 2-5 are the numbers most often given.
This writer does not assume every executive order by Trump is constitutional, though those executive orders might not even be the ones that have been struck down and/or challenged.
The sheer volume of executive orders, however, is astounding. Given the fact he wrote 50% more executive orders than one of the most far-left authoritarian Presidents of all-time, FDR, one should be sobered by that high number.
- THE JUDGES STRIKE BACK
“You seem to consider the judges the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges … and their power [are] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and are not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves … When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves.” –Thomas Jefferson – Letter to Mr. Jarvis, Sept 1820
- AI ANALYSIS – An analysis of the Judiciary’s response by X.com’s AI Grok concludes (in Grok’s formatting as well):
Based on available data up to May 14, 2025, here’s an analysis of Donald Trump’s executive orders from his second term (starting January 20, 2025) regarding judicial challenges, reversals, and those still in effect:
Total Executive Orders: Trump signed 152 executive orders in his first 100 days (January 20, 2025, to April 30, 2025), as reported by the Federal Register and other sources.
Struck Down or Blocked by Judiciary:
At least 44 executive orders (approximately 29% of the 152) have faced legal challenges, with many temporarily blocked or struck down. Sources indicate over 220–300 lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s actions, with federal judges issuing injunctions or rulings against key orders.
Notable examples include:
Birthright Citizenship (EO 14147, January 20, 2025): Blocked by three federal judges in New Hampshire, Maryland, and Washington state, deemed “blatantly unconstitutional.”
DEI Program Ban (January 20, 2025): Temporarily blocked on February 21, 2025, by a federal judge, preventing termination of equity-related federal contracts.
Voting and Elections Order (April 2025): Key sections paused by a federal judge on April 24, 2025.
Federal Workforce Layoffs: A federal judge halted mass layoffs for at least two weeks in February 2025
Sanctions on Law Firms (March 2025): Orders targeting firms like Perkins Coie were ruled unconstitutional or won preliminary relief.
Federal Grants and Loans Freeze: Challenged and temporarily unfrozen after a judge found the administration violated a court order.
It should be noted that, by this writer’s experience, Grok is decidedly leftist-framed, so getting an AI analysis by a tool that is largely still driven by leftist presuppositions is like spying on the DNC’s war room, where the real threats to their power are made naked. Grok’s propaganda tells on its programmers.
- THE NATURE OF THE CHALLENGES – The vast majority of Trump’s executive orders remain unchallenged, but all executive orders that fundamentally undermine the Democratic Party’s bases of power have been struck down in whole or in part by activist judges who put the ideology of leftism over the ideology of Americanism.
Efforts to end systemic racism in the country, to end the constitutionally illegal practice of DEI (which holds to the principle that the white heterosexual cis-gendered male must be ostracized and driven out of equitable society) have been struck down by activist judges.
These activist judges “justify” their defense of unconstitutional practices by essentially claiming equality is now the most sacred and primary right for the courts to consider when weighing other constitutional rights (even though “equality” is not a right).
They use this same invented primacy of rights, the “right” to “equality,” to justify striking down executive orders that end the brutal practice of allowing children to be mutilated in the name of trans-fascism. “Equality” to them means the fringe gets to dictate the pattern of norms to the majority, a far-left fascistic ideal that has no constitutional business in our courts, let alone in the minds of the judges that run and then define these courts.
It remains to be seen where this will all end as far as the battle for the heart of the nation-to-be, whether the “equality” courts will override the constitution and turn our republic into a fascistic leftist dystopia or whether the executive will finally move to arrest the obvious seditionists whenever and wherever they make rulings justified through a Marxist lens, not an American one.
It is certainly possible SCOTUS will, in the end, avoid the existential showdown and capitulate rightly to the majority of Trump’s mostly constitutional executive orders. He sometimes oversteps constitutional authority and should be checked by the courts when he does so, but based on constitutional standards, not Marxist talking points like “equality” or equating “free speech” to the “right to ban non-believers from the public marketplace.”
You can read more about what we are calling “Judgefare” in the May 30 edition of MIA. Judgefare is the use of the DNC-infested judiciary, especially at the district level, to subvert the opposition by any sophistic means “necessary,” or possible (such as giving primacy to “equality” as a constitutional right over all other rights, or equating prohibiting white male hirings with “freedom of speech,” as we will see below). It includes all potential judicial actions, including criminal ones (lawfare).
- AN EXAMPLE OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY
“I fear, dear Sir, we are now in such another crisis [as when the Alien and Sedition Laws were enacted], with this difference only, that the judiciary branch is alone and single-handed in the present assaults on the Constitution. But its assaults are more sure and deadly, as from an agent seemingly passive and unassuming.” –Thomas Jefferson – Letter to Mr. Nicholas, Dec. 1821
- THE SOPHISTRY (THE HEART OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY) – The cornerstone of DNC power is its ability to smuggle in the oughtness associated with “DEI,” Diversity (Exclusion of the majority), Equity (State-command economy), and Inclusion (Exclusion of the non-woke). Every reasonably educated man or woman in America today who isn’t captured by the ideology understands plainly how that ideology is an existential threat to Americanism.
Americanism is the principle that the individual’s ability to define and pursue their own happiness is the primary “right” the state should protect against ALL OTHER RIGHTS, including and ESPECIALLY the non-existent “right” to NOT BE OFFENDED.
One who is captured by the ideology of hate, fear, and fake hope presumes the number one right is the right to NOT BE OFFENDED if you belong to one of the protected classes of citizens. Free speech rights, for instance, are overridden by “equality” rights, the “right” not to feel less than others. Yet direct punitive action (effective bans and prohibitions ordered by the market oligarchs) against unprotected classes like whites and heterosexuals is called “free speech.”
You don’t have a right to declare homosexuality is a sin in a public space because a homosexual might be offended, but a homosexual business can choose to boycott your service or potential employment because you are a heterosexual cis-gendered white male, or because you think homosexuality is a sin.
The former is an act of violence, not free speech, even though it only offends you if YOU CHOOSE to let it offend you. The latter is free speech, even though it profoundly affects an individual’s “right” to access the public market space both as a consumer and a service provider.
This is the sophistry executed by a quisling insurrectionist judge that struck down Trump’s anti-DEI order not awarding government contracts to businesses that practice anti-American discriminatory punitive practices, DEI.
These are not EXPRESSIONS of an idea but the execution of it through coercive action, unconstitutional discriminatory action.
The order does not punish businesses for expressing DEI sentiments; it punishes businesses that use that ideological framework to justify directly harming American citizens’ access to the public market space. Why should the government do business with an anti-American business?
- THE RULING – EO 14151 was recently blocked on February 21, 2025, by U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson, one of President Joe Biden’s late appointments who was able to get through a hasty confirmation process largely through Republican inaction (appointed May 8, 2024).
Abelson granted a preliminary injunction of the order, meaning he was immediately halting an executive action aimed at ending the obviously unconstitutional standard of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) being implemented by the state or being funded by the state as it clearly discriminates against citizens based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, and even beliefs.
Abelson claimed the companies have a free speech right to enact racist, bigoted, heterophobic policies that directly economically harm Americans. Furthermore, the state has no right to refuse to do business with them if they do. He equates the action of discriminating against white people as a free speech expression when that action can hardly be contained as “speech” or “expression” alone, given the direct harm and coercive nature of the act.
Speech mostly only harms those who CHOOSE to be harmed by it. Cutting off market access to American citizens not in the preferred classes is a harm that is tangible regardless of how the victim CHOOSES to FEEL about it. If the American republic awards such companies with government contracts, it’s helping to fund the spreading of an ideology that ultimately wants to kill it.
I suppose to this judge that taking action to destroy the republic for the good of the whole would also be protected free speech.
The order does not challenge the constitutional right of the President to limit government contracts to companies not in compliance with government policy (he never struck down Biden’s orders discriminating against businesses guilty of not being de facto anti-American). This order challenges the “right” of the businesses doing business with the government (receiving tax dollars) to discriminate against Americans based on their race, gender, etc.
Abelson comes down on the side of coercive racist and bigoted action in the name of “free speech” rights. Abelson is a Democrat activist judge intentionally appointed to sabotage Trump by any sophistic argument possible or necessary, even if it means supporting a company’s “right” to discriminate against Americans for the crime of being American.
CONCLUSION
“But meantime his assassins came to the villa… a youth… told the tribune that the litter was being carried through the wooded and shady walks towards the sea…. Cicero, perceiving (an assassin), ordered the servants to set the litter down where they were. Then he himself, clasping his chin with his left hand, as was his wont, looked steadfastly at his slayers, his head all squalid and unkempt, and his face wasted with anxiety, so that most of those that stood by covered their faces while Herennius was slaying him…” –Plutarch, Life of Cicero
For me, the jury is still out on how Trump should be judged based on the astounding number of executive orders. He has, at least on the perceived surface, further reinforced the kingship aspect of the Presidency, and the courts’ challenges to his executive orders are less a challenge to a kingship Presidency (executive order presidencies) as they are to a challenge to the unconstitutional policies his challenged executive orders have mostly addressed.
President Trump took office under circumstances unlike any Presidency following a Presidency that was most likely a de facto coup of the republic itself, with a committee illegally ruling through the Joe Biden avatar (a claim that, if true, would mean every single politician claiming to be negotiating with Biden is part of the coup).
Let us not forget the Democratic Party, in this writer’s opinion, attempted to murder President Trump on numerous occasions, coming within a whisper on July 13, 2024. If he believes he is dealing with an existential threat to Americanism, as he probably should, he has every right to feel that way.
Under the Biden Presidency, Rule of Law was eviscerated in an attempt to keep the same language of American Rule of Law while changing the definitions of the terms and the order of the primacy of rights to keep the USA logo while destroying the American republic from within.
From Systematic Racism (DIVERSITY) to Sexism (EQUITY), from Heterophobia (INCLUSION) to Hate Speech Censorship, from Misinformation Censorship to Compelled Speech, policies enacted by the Biden team intending to subvert the republic from within are the policies the targeted executive orders are seeking to undo. These judges are protecting clearly unconstitutional policies by larping as constitutional judges.
On one hand, Trump is reaffirming the type of anti-American authoritarian presidency the Democratic Party has long wanted (when it’s their guy, which includes the neocon Presidents like Bush) through his flood of EOs; on the other hand, he is having a real damaging effect on DNC power at its core.
The most telling part of Trump’s flood of EO’s might be in their necessity in the first place, a necessity borne from the reality that the Republican Party, though it holds all three branches of government, is infected with quislings from within.
This is preventing the party from quickly passing legislation that would significantly undermine the seditious courts’ powers to subvert the attempt to subvert our republic, a subversion these judges are openly participating in, even leading.
For now, this writer remains reserved regarding President Trump’s performance so far, especially regarding tariff policies (wait for the upcoming Tariff report in the June 13 issue of MIA). My trepidation is not just with his tactics, his actual decisions, but more pressingly with the kingship Presidency (or Imperial Presidency) he continues to reinforce through his, perhaps, needed actions.
The tariff wars, for instance, are about fighting America’s top two REAL external threats, globalists and the Chinese Communist Party, but they also reinforce a command economy standard the left will gleefully sustain.
I predict the story of President Trump’s Presidency will ultimately be about the balance between the necessity to preserve and restore American Rule of Law, with the necessity to carve the cancer out of the dying host as fast as possible.
In a sense, this is the Catiline conspiracy, which seemingly forced then-Roman consul and champion of the republic, Marcus Tullius Cicero, to order the execution of a Roman citizen, Catiline. Cicero violated Rule of Law to protect Rule of Law, which Catiline was attempting to overthrow, allegedly merely to get out of debt, having attracted a mob of debtors to join him in that call.
One could argue Cicero ultimately helped overthrow the very republic he was so passionate about defending to the end, which came after one of the destructors of the republic, Mark Antony, had Cicero placed on the proscription list, a list of people deemed traitor to those in power. In this case, he was on the death list, not the exile and confiscation of property list.
For Cicero, it ended with an assassination legend tells he faced without fear. He failed to preserve the republic and, ultimately, Catiline may have destroyed Cicero, the upstart outsider who spoke bad Greek but eloquent Latin (the people’s language).
Though Cicero would hardly speak like Trump does today, the two are remarkably similar, in very different ways. Let us hope, for the sake of our American republic, that Cicero prevails over Caesar in the end, even if he has to play a little Caesar first to do it.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
The Imperial Presidency – Arthur M. Schlesinger
The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power After Watergate – Andrew Rudalevige
The Imperial Presidency and American Politics (Governance by Edicts and Coups) – Benjamin Ginsberg
