In reversing an Obama-era order that broadened eligibility for overtime pay, he deprived millions of workers of billions of dollars.
Why, he wanted to know, did Russian factories no longer receive outstanding achievement awards like the Soviet-era Order of the Red Banner?
They did this by killing an Obama-era order requiring companies bidding on government contracts to disclose if they've recently broken any labor laws.
The rationale behind this Obama-era order was pretty simple and seemingly nonpartisan: If a company has been cheating its employees — by working them off the clock, for instance — it probably shouldn't be rewarded with a lucrative government contract.
Both companies stand to benefit from Trump's immigration plans., and in February the Justice Department rescinded an Obama-era order to end the use of private prison contracts by the Bureau of Prisons.
One case involves the president's decision to repeal the Obama-era order that shields so-called Dreamers — immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children — from deportation.
Donald Trump is even more blasé: Last year he signed an executive order telling agencies they didn't need to consider rising sea levels when building infrastructure, a reversal of an Obama-era order.
In Washington State, authorities picked up one man who was protected by an Obama-era order shielding those who came to the US as children; in Arizona, protesters attempted to stop the deportation of a mother who authorities had previously allowed to stay.
In late January, the Trump administration announced it would continue enforcing an Obama-era order protecting federal LGBTQ employees from discrimination, but in February it rolled back Obama protections for transgender students' bathroom use, leaving the matter up to individual states.
It has agreed to cooperate with an investigation by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who is looking into how cabinet agencies re-evaluated Clinton-era orders on arsenic levels in drinking water, mining on public lands and road-building in national forests.
Of course, we have to get some distance from any era in order to form a consensus about what it meant.
