in effect
This is a presidential executive order (Executive Order 14208, signed February 10, 2025), a directive from the President instructing federal agencies on how to act. It orders the federal government to stop buying and providing paper straws and to work toward ending the use of paper straws more broadly.
Agency heads are directed to stop purchasing paper straws and to ensure they are no longer provided inside agency buildings. Agencies must also undo internal policies that discouraged plastic straws, which had been adopted under a prior sustainability order (Executive Order 14057) that this administration revoked on January 20, 2025. Within 45 days of the order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy must issue a “National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws,” addressing how to remove executive-branch policies that disfavor plastic straws, how to handle federal contracts with parties (including states) that ban or penalize plastic straws, and other tools to apply this policy nationwide. The order states its rationale is that paper straws are, in its words, nonfunctional, potentially risky to health, more expensive, and sometimes wrapped in plastic; it directs implementation “consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.” The order explicitly creates no legal rights that anyone can enforce in court.
The most direct effects fall on federal executive departments and agencies, their staff, and their procurement and building operations, which must change what straws they buy and provide. The order also reaches outward through its planned national strategy, which is directed to examine federal contracts with outside entities—including states—that restrict plastic straws. Members of the public are not granted any enforceable rights under the order itself.