WASHINGTON — Donald Trump returns to the White House ready to immediately change the government using the fastest tool at his disposal – an executive order.
The future president signs an avalanche executive orders is standard practice. Executive orders allow the president to exercise power without action by Congress. However, there are also limits to what procurement can achieve.
An introduction to how presidential power works and its often short-lived influence:
What are executive orders?
They are essentially signed statements about how the president believes the federal government should be run. These may include instructions to federal agencies or requests for reports.
Many orders may be unobjectionable, such as giving federal workers the day after Christmas off. They can also set major policies. For example, President Joe Biden signed an executive order creating a structure to establish regulations on artificial intelligence. But executive orders — and their sausage-making siblings, the proclamation and policy memorandum — are also used by presidents to advance agendas they can’t get through Congress.
New presidents can – and often do – issue orders to cancel the orders of their predecessors.
As the American Bar Association notes, the orders do not require congressional approval and cannot be directly waived by lawmakers. Still, Congress could block implementation of the order by cutting off funding or creating other obstacles.
How common are executive orders?
There have been cases like this throughout U.S. history several thousand executive orders– according to data collected as part of the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. George Washington signed eight executive orders and Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed 3,721.
During his first term, Trump, a Republican, signed 220.
Biden, a Democrat, signed 160 as of December 20.
Executive orders often concern political messages
Trump predicted that as many as many of them would be signed 100 executive orders on the first day, likely including deportations, the U.S.-Mexico border, domestic energy, Schedule F federal employee policies, school gender policies and vaccine mandatesincluding Day 1 promises made during his campaign. He also promised that the executive order would give more time to sell TikTok.
Trump asked Representative Jeff Van DrewRN.J., to write an order to suspend the development of offshore windmills for electricity generation.
Many of Trump’s moves are likely to draw opposition from Democrats.
And in a few major cases, orders will largely be declarations of will based on Trump’s election promises.
The power of executive orders has its limits
Both Congress and the courts have the potential to block executive orders.
For example, in 1992, Congress repealed then-President George H. W. Bush’s executive order establishing a human fetal tissue bank for scientific research by enacting a provision stating that the executive order “shall have no legal effect.” Congress can also defund agencies and make it more challenging to enforce the order.
There are also legal challenges based on the claim that the president has exceeded his legal authority. When President Harry Truman tried to seize steel mills during the Korean War, the U.S. Supreme Court found that he did not have the authority to seize private property without congressional authorization.
