It's Friday, February 21st. I'm Jane Koston, and this is Water Day, the show that did not

get invited to celebrate Black History Month at the White House and is actually pretty okay with that.

On today's show, Senate Republicans narrowly confirm Cash Patel as a new FBI director, and Mitch McConnell says his time in Congress is coming to an end.

But first, Thursday marked one month since President Donald Trump officially took office.

Since then, he signed dozens and dozens and dozens of executive orders.

White House press secretary Caroline Levitt was practically giddy during her press briefing.

This administration is off to a historic start.

The president has already signed 73 executive orders.

That is more than double the number signed by Joe Biden and more than quadruple the number signed by Barack

Obama over the same period. That's not how any of this is supposed to work. And if I recall,

Republicans said as much when Obama and Biden signed a lot of their orders. But Republicans don't

seem to care now, and neither does Trump. And the fallout from all these unilateral moves is starting

to become clear. Case in point, on Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order

freezing virtually all foreign assistance from the U.S. for 90 days. One of the organizations hit

hardest was the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. On Wednesday, USAID contractors asked a judge to hold

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the agency's current leader, Peter Morocco, in contempt of court.

They argued the two men are violating the judge's order last week to lift the spending freeze.

But funding cuts have already hit millions of people receiving aid around the world, as well as many

American businesses and nonprofits.

More than 80% of the companies that do business with USAID are based in America, according to

the data company, development aid.

The cuts are also demoralizing for USAID staffers.

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