As President Donald Trump’s first week in office comes to a close, his biggest accomplishments are things many of us anticipated: chaos and confusion.

Some of the many executive orders the president has signed do threaten democracy and others endanger the planet. But others simply endorse hypothetical policies with more spectacle than is necessary, like printing out tweets on paper, signing them with a black Sharpie, and holding them up for the world to see.

The challenge there, of course, is that only legal scholars know at first glance which of Trump’s executive orders will affect policy — and which will get stuck in court for years to come. Nevertheless, the pieces of paper scare and confuse people. And that confusion will hang around, holding up actual progress for a meaningful amount of time. Trump’s first assault on the fictional electric vehicle “mandate” serves as a perfect example of this strategy.

Hours after taking the oath of office, Trump signed an executive order with the cinematic title “Unleashing American Energy.” In it, he outlines several new policies to, as the title implies, “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources.” This is code for: promote fossil fuel and hobble the renewable energy transition.

While Trump targeted EVs in several questionable ways during........

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