That said, I do think that the fact our system allowed a clown to the highest office in the land is a point for nihilism.

I agree with you there. However, the fact that progressives turned protesting into the new brunch is a point against. It's easy to forget that the Trumpkins are numerically inferior by any measure and that the establishment apparatus is no less establishment just because they've been left out in the cold.

But the courts have generally held that new administrations need to justify such reversals. The Reagan administration tried to rescind a rule requiring airbags in passenger vehicles. The courts found the move unjustified.

“It is not a relevant or adequate defense to say that the president told us to do it,” said Michael Eric Herz, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

The Trump administration could face a host of similar challenges — the requirement that agencies must find two regulations to eliminate before enacting any new rules is already being challenged in federal court.

In addition, Democratic attorneys general from New York, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont have threatened in recent days to sue the Trump administration to try to block some of the regulatory rollbacks.

It is a radical role reversal for state attorneys general — their Republican colleagues spent the last eight years suing the federal government to block the enactment of many Obama-era rules. Now the Democrats are planning to try to prevent many of these same rules from being revoked.

“Demolish the administrative state? I don’t even know what that means,” Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts said during a visit to Washington last week, where she and other state attorneys general met with Mr. Trump at the White House.

Leashes Come Off Wall Street, Gun Sellers, Polluters and More

It's fairly obvious to state that this isn't politics as usual. It's still definitely politics, though.