But other observers said the order stands to have little impact on large-scale reforms already underway, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act, and bedrock laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which governs the education of special education students.
Just as a blossoming environmental awareness in the early 1970's led to some of the bedrock laws we rely on today, I believe the great awakening of 2017 will echo for years to come.
This is a radical effort to dismantle bedrock laws that have stood firm for decades.
The drilling technique called fracking which could threaten water supplies, for instance, is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act and several other bedrock laws.
As such, the rules depart from both the spirit and the letter of a bedrock environmental law, the 1976 National Forest Management Act.
No, the real problem comes, funnily enough, in places that are already multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual, yet without that common bedrock of law, language and democratic governance.
Unless the Senate bestirs itself, two legislators will have rewritten an important part of a bedrock environmental law without so much as a hearing.
The bill would also weaken longstanding environmental protections, suspending key parts of the National Environmental Policy Act, the nation's bedrock environmental law, and making it more difficult for anyone opposed to Forest Service decisions to seek and win injunctions in the courts.
