About
A financial services professional, curious generalist, and cancer survivor who decided that paying attention to the world while we are here is not optional.
About Matthew Tushman
I grew up outside Detroit and have spent nearly 40 years in the Chicago area since. Over 33 of those years have been in financial services, currently in wealth management. Outside of that work I'm a Python fiddler, an AI experimenter, a daily learner, and a voracious consumer of audiobooks and podcasts. I have strong civic instincts and equally strong opinions about feta.
Five years ago I went through a stem cell transplant. That experience reinforced a belief I already held: those with some capability, some time, and some platform have both the ability and the responsibility to contribute something useful. The Executive Order Analysis Project is my current attempt to do exactly that.
I write regularly on LinkedIn and publish longer analysis on Substack under the name policy + governance. My letters to the editor have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. The rejection pile is considerably larger.
A note on perspective: I have strong personal views. The project's nonpartisanship is methodological, meaning consistent analytical frameworks applied regardless of topic. It is not a claim that I have no perspective. "No politics. Just systematic analysis" describes how the work is done, not who is doing it.
How the Fetaverse got its name
In early 2026, I was listening to Hard Fork, the New York Times technology podcast, when the hosts mentioned the fediverse: a decentralized, open-source network that allows independent platforms to communicate freely. The context was a discussion of corporate-owned social media and a hope that a more federated internet might return to its earlier, more open roots.
Since I was listening rather than reading, I heard "fetaverse." I thought it was a clever play on Zuckerberg's metaverse and it made complete sense to me. I searched for it. It didn't exist.
I eventually read the transcript and discovered my mistake. But by then I liked the idea too much to abandon it. I registered the domain, and the Fetaverse was born: a deliberately dual-purpose site where a serious research project and an appreciation for good cheese coexist without apology.
The Executive Order Analysis Project had already been running for nine months by then, living on LinkedIn and Substack in small doses. The Fetaverse gave it a proper home.
The Executive Order Analysis Project
I started this project in April 2025, a few months into the current Trump administration, when it became clear that executive orders were going to be a primary governing instrument and that the rhetorical structure of the orders was itself a political message, somewhat independent of their stated purpose. The language was doing something. I wanted to understand what.
I am not a technology professional, attorney, or policy analyst by training. Using Python and artificial intelligence, with AI generating over 90% of the code, I've systematically analyzed 244 executive orders published in the Federal Register since January 20, 2025: over 292,000 words organized across 26 policy categories, with sentiment analysis, rhetorical pattern tracking, and cross-document synthesis. For context, the first twelve months EO volume rivaled the annual average of the World War II era. A first read of all those orders would take a researcher approximately 48 hours. The AI-assisted approach identified key patterns in a fraction of that time, while I reviewed outputs, challenged classifications, and interpreted what the data revealed.
The long-term goal is to extend this analysis back to 1937, building what would be the most comprehensive AI-powered repository of executive order analysis ever assembled. A public resource, freely available, for researchers and citizens who want a clearer view of how presidential authority has been exercised across nearly 90 years.
The project is strictly nonpartisan and will never be monetized. My hope is that journalists, researchers, policy analysts, and engaged citizens can use this analysis to strengthen their own work. Domain experts without formal programming backgrounds can now build sophisticated analytical tools, and this project is a demonstration of that as much as it is a demonstration of what those tools can reveal.
"If we are to hold power to account quickly and at scale, journalists, researchers and others need tools that amplify their analytical capabilities. This methodology is fully reproducible, allowing people to verify findings independently... With proper design and ethical guardrails, AI became an indispensable partner in my efforts to understand how presidential authority is being exercised in ways that traditional reporting alone cannot capture."
— Matthew Tushman, letter to the editor, The Washington Post, May 2025The site is built on a simple philosophy: