| If the number of executive orders President Donald Trump has issued so far seems extraordinary, you're not wrong. Today, Mark Milian puts the volume in historical context and explains its power to overwhelm the system. Plus: The Elon, Inc., podcast team discusses his access to the Treasury Department's payments system. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. No US president loved to sign his name more than Franklin D. Roosevelt. As commander in chief during the Great Depression and World War II, he issued more than 300 executive orders a year on average while in office, the most in history. He was empowered by Congress, where his political party held a firm majority, and by the American public, which craved decisive action in a period of prolonged crisis. Donald Trump doesn't have a lot in common with Roosevelt, but his second term so far is moving at a Rooseveltian speed. Trump established a record for first-day executive orders with 26. The previous peak was nine—held by his predecessor, Joe Biden, who spent much of his first day unwinding Trump's actions from the previous term. Part of Trump's Day 1 agenda (or Day 1,462, but who's counting) was redoing many of Biden's undos and undoing some of Biden's own policies. Other Trump orders were pure bluster, like one directing government agencies to lower the cost of living and make American workers more prosperous.  Roosevelt, like Trump now, enjoyed a Congress controlled by his own party. Photographer (Trump): Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg Buried beneath those orders, however, are outlines of policies that will reshape aspects of American business and society. His reprieve for the app TikTok, the least surprising of the bunch, was among the most legally contentious. Congress had set a deadline for TikTok's Chinese parent company to comply with the law by selling to a US owner or be banned, and Trump simply made up a new rule. "Executive orders are intended to 'faithfully execute' the law, not to explicitly tell agencies to violate the law," says Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College in Maine and author of By Executive Order. A higher-stakes version of that approach, according to Rudalevige, was Trump's order to suspend the US's obligations under international law to consider appeals for asylum. Other presidents have at times used executive action to push the boundaries of the law. Biden's attempt to forgive billions of dollars in student loan debts was deemed an overreach and struck down by the Supreme Court. In the darkest moments of Roosevelt's presidency, he ordered the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, a move that was, grotesquely, upheld by the nation's highest court before Congress eventually sought to make amends. What stands out from the past couple of weeks is Trump's capacity to overwhelm the system. While a sideshow of confirmation hearings plays out in the Senate, he's maintained a remarkable velocity of executive orders. His annual average during the first term was 55. In two weeks, he's signed about 80. That's more than any president has done in an entire year since John F. Kennedy. "The scope and tone of Trump's early executive action is unusual," Rudalevige says. "It shows what can happen when you have four years to prepare." The content ranges wildly. Redefining the situation on the southern border as an "invasion" is on one level. The denial of automatic citizenship to children born in the country if their parents aren't permanent citizens, in conflict with the Constitution, is on a whole other level. Rudalevige suggests this sort of outrage bait is part of the strategy—a directive so egregious it was designed to be "a bright, shiny object to attract attention and lawsuits while other, less salient policies are implemented." Others have pointed to lawsuits as the point; by getting to the right-leaning Supreme Court quickly, legal precedent can be changed. Sure enough, a federal judge temporarily blocked the birthright citizenship order, and the Justice Department responded saying it'll "vigorously defend" the position. Meanwhile, the US has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, rolled back transgender rights, formally created a position in the government for the world's richest man, halted large sections of the government, frozen foreign aid and rescinded an order from 1965 forbidding employment discrimination based on race or religion. "President Trump has always been the hardest working man in politics," Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said last week. "You can all expect for him to continue to work at this breakneck speed." Uh, OK, but if Trump's first term was any indication, he's unlikely to keep this pace. Unlike Roosevelt, who was a workaholic, Trump enjoys his mornings on the golf course. But much as it was in the days of Roosevelt, Congress and the courts are ideologically aligned with the president. So Trump's policies are likely to stick, at least long enough for him to encase some into law or until a future president kills them. Trump has, on multiple occasions, expressed admiration for Roosevelt (a Democrat, by the way), even early in his first term, invoking the persecution of Japanese Americans as justification for a ban on US travel from several majority Muslim countries. (This time around Roosevelt's internment order came up in Trump's inaugural address and became a basis for, what else, an executive order.) "Take a look at what FDR did," Trump said in 2015. "And he's one of the most highly respected presidents." That's an important distinction that, unfortunately for Trump, doesn't work in his favor. Roosevelt was a very popular president; his approval rating peaked at 83% during the war. Trump, by contrast, has never cracked 50%. (Gallup currently has him at 47%.) That could make it difficult to keep his momentum going for the full four years—and even more so for him to fulfill another aspiration some members of the Republican Party have for him: to subvert the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution and become the first president since Roosevelt to be elected to a third term. |
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