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New tracker aims to help you keep up with White House executive orders

There have been dozens of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump’s administration in just his first two months of office. Some of them have generated headlines and federal lawsuits, others went under the radar.

Trying to keep up with it all can be exhausting. But now a group is offering a way to make it easier to understand what each order actually means.

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation is posting what it calls an Executive Order Tracker on its website. You can filter out for orders on issues you’re interested in, from tech to immigration to education and civil rights, among a long list of other issues. You can also winnow down based on the agency each order impacts.

“Most Americans, most people, just in a general sense, are not really going to be able to understand the complexity and depth of them because of the way they’re written,” Jonathan Cox, a vice president for the Center for Policy Analysis and Research at the foundation, said. “So we wanted to bring the information to people in a way that’s easily digestible.”

The tracker also tells you if the order is being challenged in court, and what, if any, a judge’s ruling has been so far.

“We wanted to be able to distill this down,” Cox said. “It’s a ton of information, and it’s very difficult for any one person to be able to filter through all of it successfully on an ongoing basis.”

The tracker was started as a way to focus on how the orders might impact Black Americans, but Cox said a lot of the orders will impact Americans of all races, too. Some also impact the private sector. The hope is that a simpler, concise explanation will allow those who are inspired to raise their voices on particular issues.

“We really wanted to empower communities to be able to participate civically, which is just a cornerstone of democracy in the United States,” Cox said.

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