Trump has issued 209 executive orders during the first nine months of his second term. Legal and public health experts broke down those orders during a panel at Barco Law Building Tuesday evening, saying Trump’s executive orders pose a threat to freedom of speech, access to health care and rights of immigrants.

William M. Carter Jr., a professor who specializes in constitutional law and civil rights at Pitt’s School of Law, began the panel by explaining the function of an executive order.

“Executive orders are, in essence, statements by the executive branch as to how it interprets the law, how they intend to enforce the law or what their enforcement priorities will be,” Carter said.

A number of Trump’s executive orders have attacked freedom of expression, according to Carter. He recalled Trump’s order on Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag — the Supreme Court previously ruled that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment in Texas v. Johnson. 

Carter said the recent attacks on the First Amendment are only the beginning.

“If you want to achieve widespread, substantive oppression and suppression, the first way it has always been done and always will be done — as Frederick Douglass noted — is to first suppress the freedom of speech,” Carter said.

Carter said the president serves as an enforcer and not a lawmaker, regardless of the amount of executive orders signed. Though executive orders are not law, Carter said they still hold power and many institutions will change their policies to align with the orders. 

“The power of fear and intimidation is very real. I understand the fear,” Carter said. 

Shoba Sivaprasad Whadia, director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law School, also sat on the panel and said the executive orders are a tool to elicit reactions.

“A number of the executive orders that were introduced focusing on immigration were in many ways, like the flag burning [order],” Whadia said. “They were symbolic.” 

As part of his executive orders concerning immigration, Trump rescinded a Biden-era policy that protected “sensitive” areas like schools, hospitals and places of worship from immigration enforcement. The administration is also attempting to make birthright citizenship applicable only if one of the parents has legal citizenship in the United States.  

Most recently, the Trump administration introduced a fee of $100,000 for H1-B visas. H1-B visas are a type of non-immigrant visa that allows American companies to hire international workers to work in the United States. 

“In rural Pennsylvania, we’re facing a huge physician shortage, much of which is being filled and fulfilled by H1-B physicians. If we drain Central Pennsylvania hospitals from H1-B positions, the people who use [the hospital] are American patients,” Whadia said.

Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Pitt, spoke about the large number of executive orders related to health. 

The Trump administration has pulled the U.S out of the World Health Organization, reduced  access to health care, terminated staff in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and defunded vaccine research. 

Yaver said she spends time talking about the most recent executive orders in each of her classes to help make sense of all the “chaos, confusion [and] instability.”

“I’m spending a lot of time trying to contextualize what [policies are] shifting in directions [that] cut against public health,” Yaver said.

Yaver said the government being against vaccines is similar to when the courts began the “decimation of the Voting Rights Act.”

“[The] Voting Rights Act is working, so we don’t need it anymore, and it feels like we’re having similar logic,” Yaver said. “We don’t have polio, we don’t have measles everywhere, so we don’t need vaccines.”

Yaver warned of the inability to make progress in research, due to the Trump administration’s changes in health policies and the spread of misinformation regarding chronic diseases and vaccines from initiatives like Make America Healthy Again. 

“[MAHA] starts with a kernel of truth about chronic disease but then [goes] completely in the other direction in terms of how to address it. Because, for example, if you really care about chronic diseases, you probably wouldn’t decimate the agencies that are funding the research on that,” Yaver said.

Zachary Fedyk, a first-year law student, believes panels like this are essential because it is critical to stay informed on policies at this time with the rapidly changing media environment.

“I can’t tell you how many times in this speech one of the panelists mentioned something that happened in the last month that most people may have not heard of,” Fedyk said.

Gina Marie Delmonte, a graduate student in her last year of Pitt’s master in Social Work Program, said being informed is everyone’s responsibility and encouraged more students to learn about what is occurring in the current administration.

“It is a responsibility I have as a person who is lucky enough to receive a higher education,” Delmonte said. “I think that more Pitt students should be attending events like this. We don’t know how long we’re going to be able to do this.”