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It was something US president Donald Trump made a big deal out of on his first day in office – signing hundreds of them in the space of a day – but the White House bragging about how many executive orders the Republican has signed already in his second term isn’t the brag they think it is.
Unlike laws which pass through Congress, executive orders are written directives signed by the president which order the government to take certain actions to ensure laws “be faithfully enacted”.
Back in February, University of California-San Francisco law professor Rory Little said in a roundtable discussion that Trump’s executive orders are “extraordinary, not just in their number, but in their strength”.
He added: “The current state of affairs can be characterised I think with no exaggeration as a crisis, a challenge to the rule of the law in the United States.”
At the same event, fellow professor Jodi Short said: “While some may legitimately applaud the policy goals that underlie some of these actions, I hope we can all agree these policy goals should be pursued lawfully, lest we end up living in the type of system envisioned by the president, where he is the only law."
On Saturday, the White House took to Twitter/X to claim Trump is “signing executive orders at the fastest pace in decades”, and that “no president has signed 200 executive orders this quickly since President Franklin D. Roosevelt”.
However, lawyer Gregg Nunziata argued the statistic actually indicates “legislative impotence” and is the “mark of a terrible presidency”:
Journalist Rio Veradonir commented that signing so many executive orders means “your agenda is so unpopular that your own party won’t pass legislation along those lines”:
“This isn’t something to brag about,” tweeted The Dispatch’s editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg:
And California governor Gavin Newsom, who’s made headlines lately for his relentless mocking of the president, proved there was always a tweet:
As sure enough, back in 2012, Trump took to Twitter/X to attack then president Barack Obama for “constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grabs of authority”.
Awkward.
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