At the 100-day mark in his second term, President Trump is reveling in his administration's broad interpretation of executive authority.
After signing 220 executive orders during his first term, Trump has already signed 142 orders just three months into the job this go-round, according to the University of California Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project. That figure far exceeds the 99 executive actions Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law during his first 100 days in 1933, and the running number may soon overtake the 162 orders that former President Joe Biden signed in total during his four years in office.
Many of these executive actions involve immigration, such as his moves to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and nonpermanent residents, crack down on sanctuary cities, grant immigration-enforcement agents more access to schools and churches for deportation raids, designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and deport certain illegal immigrants to El Salvador notwithstanding pushback in the courts.
Despite the unsettled legal fights ahead, the White House sees the administration's actions involving immigration as Trump's greatest success thus far, given the crisis that existed at the southern border under his predecessor and Trump's ability to resolve it without an amnesty bill.
"It was a lie that you needed Congress" to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, a White House official said in an interview. "We need Congress for resources, right? But the laws are all on the books already."
This official compared the Biden administration's handling of illegal immigration to the left-leaning prosecutorial discretion of a George Soros–funded district attorney. "They didn't follow the law."
Beyond immigration, many of Trump's orders mirror the executive actions he signed during his first term (which Biden later reversed), such as his deregulatory moves and his decisions to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization and Paris climate agreement.
But others go far beyond the bounds of his first term. Since reentering 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, he has signed executive orders to declare English the official language of the U.S., slash foreign aid, eliminate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives from the federal government, dismantle the bureaucracy, and rescind federal funding from education programs that allow biological men to compete in women's sports. He has also used executive power to target law firms and order agency heads to investigate and suspend security clearances for first-term administration officials he views as disloyal.
Perhaps most disruptive have been his executive orders involving trade policy, which have evolved dramatically in the span of just a few weeks, rattling investors and foreign leaders alike.
His first 100 days have been marked by a comparatively light legislative footprint. As of this week, the president has signed five bills into law: the Laken Riley Act, government-funding legislation, and three measures overturning Biden-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act. Much of his administration's successes will hang on whether Republicans in Congress can pass this year's reconciliation package before many provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire in December.
The stunning scope of this administration's approach to presidential power did not emerge out of thin air. This time around, the president's closest advisers invested much more time and energy into how he would govern by executive fiat. And to avoid the disorganization of Trump White House 1.0, his transition team implemented an intense vetting process to sniff out administration hires who weren't sufficiently allied with the president's campaign promises.
This is a drastic change from his first term, "when the White House was so factionalized that different factions would often try to push through executive actions without other factions inside the White House knowing about it," a Trump world operative said in an interview. In other words, this administration is letting Trump be Trump. "The president decides what he wants to do, and the team goes and does it."
These days, it's not uncommon for lawmakers to show flexibility in their philosophical interpretations of executive authority depending on which party is in power.
In recent weeks, Democratic lawmakers have railed against the president's executive actions to trim the federal workforce, dismantle the Department of Education, and slash foreign aid. And yet the same Democrats who accuse Trump of executive overreach were unbothered by former President Barack Obama's decision to circumvent the legislative branch with his 2012 implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to protect young illegal immigrants from deportation, or Biden's decision years later to unilaterally forgive student loans without an act of Congress.
The Trump administration's broad interpretation of presidential power has indeed alarmed some conservatives who believe that a too-powerful executive undermines the separation of powers. But it's come as a welcome development to others who have long championed the unitary-executive theory's approach to executive authority, or who believe that the only way to scale back the left's excesses is to fight fire with executive fire.
"There's no doubt that the president and his team have been effective in changing the debate in conservative circles so more and more people are comfortable with expanded executive power," said Marc Short, who served as director of legislative affairs during Trump's first term before becoming chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence. "Some of that is because one of the things that President Trump is so good at is isolating a common opponent like Harvard" in ways that prompt conservatives to form a kneejerk reaction: "Yeah, let's take them on."
Signing executive orders can also be an effective vehicle to stage a press conference and drive a message. Enforcing and expanding border security and cracking down on Ivy League schools are prime examples of areas where a broad interpretation of executive authority will likely be politically popular across much of the Republican Party for the foreseeable future.
But the president's whipsawing tariff policies carry political risk for Republicans ahead of 2026, given that Trump ran his 2024 campaign on securing the border and bringing down prices.
"As long as the trade agenda is tanking the economy, I feel like that's the biggest Achilles' heel," said Short, who now serves as chair of the Pence-founded group Advancing American Freedom.
And yet the Trump administration plans on barreling full steam ahead, motivated by a sense of urgency ahead of the 2026 midterms and the belief that voters elected him to deliver on his campaign promises as quickly as possible.
From trade actions to dismantling the federal bureaucracy, "we're going to do what's in our purview and what we think we can do, and if Congress thinks it's their purview, well, that's on Congress," the White House official said. "But we're not going to restrain ourselves."
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site