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As Donald Trump nears the end of his first 100 days in office, he has issued a record-breaking high of 124 executive orders, while signing a record-breaking low of just five new bills into law, and caused concerns among constitutional scholars.
“These orders are extraordinary, not just in their number, but in their breadth,” said Rory Little, a law professor at the University of California- San Francisco said at a recent panel discussion. “The current state of affairs can be characterized I think with no exaggeration as a crisis, a challenge to the rule of the law in the United States.”
Others in the panel noted how many of Trump’s executive orders have pushed into areas typically run by states. Trump has set records for both his executive order tally and how few bills he has received from Congress. Instead, he has governed by his signature and targeted immigration, tariffs, diversity programs, education and a host of other areas. He has taken pen to paper to reshape America in his image with little resistance or pushback.
“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,” fellow professor Jodi Short said.
Having signed only five bills means that Trump has signed fewer into law at this point in his presidency than any new president in the last 70 years, according to government records. He is followed by Joe Biden and George W Bush, who had each signed only seven apiece at the same juncture.
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According to the records, at the same point in his first presidency, Trump had signed 24 bills into law. Prior to that, in 2009, Barack Obama had signed 11 bills into law at the 100-day mark, and during his presidency, in 1993, Bill Clinton had signed 21 bills.
Trump’s bills so far have included three Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning Biden administration regulations, the Laken Riley Act and a stopgap funding bill needed to avoid a government shutdown. A bill is a legislative proposal that becomes a law after it is passed and signed by the president.
In contrast, within his first three months back in the White House, Trump has already signed 124 executive orders, closing in on the totals issued by some of his predecessors during their entire terms.
In total, Biden signed 162 executive orders, Obama signed 277, Bush signed 291, and Clinton signed 364, according to the Federal Register. Trump, in his first term signed 220.
An executive order is a written directive, signed by the president, that orders the government to take specific actions to ensure “the laws be faithfully executed,” according to the ACLU. Such orders do not need the approval of Congress, but are open to legal challenge.
Executive orders mean that, as president, Trump can essentially tell federal agencies how to interpret, implement or enforce a law – as long as it is within their constitutional authority, and do not violate any federal laws.
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Trump’s 124 executive orders have already prompted dozens of federal lawsuits, challenging the constitutionality of the orders and the extent to which they are being used.
“Executive orders can be an effective way to carry out policy while staying within the rule of law,” an ACLU briefing stated. “However, as we’ve seen with the Trump administration, they can also cause chaos, damage the democratic process and harm our must vulnerable communities.”
Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen called out the administration for acting “illegally and unconstitutionally in ways that weaken our democratic institutions.” Others have claimed that the actions risk prompting a “constitutional crisis.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are not in the country lawfully. It was challenged by multiple immigrants’ rights advocates, an expectant mother and several states, resulting it being blocked temporarily by several federal judges.
Two days later, on January 22, Trump signed an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs at government agencies, and later another aimed at similar programs in the military. Following a challenge by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from terminating or changing federal contracts, considered to be equity-related.
Despite its battles in the courts, the Trump administration has doubled down on the authority of the president and his orders. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previously claimed the judicial branch was behaving “erroneously,” after several judges blocked various orders
“I would like to point out that the judges in this country are acting erroneously,” Leavitt said in a Wednesday news briefing. “We have judges who are acting as partisan activists from the bench.” Leavitt previously insisted that “the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch.”
Yet Trump’s critics continue to argue that the intense volume of his executive orders amounts to, at the very least, an “overreach,” and, at worst, an unconstitutional abuse of power.
“Congress is supposed to have the purse,” Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, told PBS News in 2019. “It’s supposed to run the money. Donald Trump now is doing something unprecedented by grabbing the funding from Congress and reallocating it in his own — with his own whims.”
As recently as Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order targeting the law firm Susman Godfrey, describing it as an unconstitutional “personal vendetta.”
“Frankly, I think the Framers of our Constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power,” U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan said.
