A New Age of Ruling by Executive Order?

During President Donald Trump's second term in office, there have been an average of more than two executive orders and memorandums issued every day. According to an analysis by The American Presidency Project at the University of California Santa Barbara, almost half of these executive orders and memorandums dealt with reforming and shrinking bureaucracy, a major project Trump undertook with right-hand man Elon Musk and the DOGE initiative. Celebrated by some, the downsizing has cost more than 100,000 federal employees their jobs and was heavily criticized for abruptly ending funding to different aid causes and important research as well as data security breaches. As many DOGE initiatives have been already reversed or delayed by courts, the full scope of what the project has actually achieved remains to be seen. Its savings goals has meanwhile been lowered to $150 billion from $2 trillion.

The second Trump administration took governing by executive order, which relies more heavily on presidential powers than finding agreement in an increasingly divided Congress, to the next level. Trump issued 187 executive orders and memorandums in his first 87 days in office. For comparison, Former President Joe Biden counted only 235 in his first two years, while Trump issued 211 during this time in 2017 and 2018. The number of executive orders, memorandums and similar types of documents has gone up over the years, but had remained relatively steady previous to Trump's second term if only counting substantial orders and subtracting symbolic, ceremonial and purely administrative ones.

A high number of executive orders also dealth with defense, foreign affairs and international organisations as well as immigration, refugees and the Southern U.S. border. When added together, orders on energy, natural resource, climate and the environment actually form the second largest group at 64. While this topic has so far been overshadowed during the second Trump administration, the Climate Action Campaign has called the first 100 days under the new government the most harmful of any administration for climate, clean energy, public health and communities as Trump doubled down on environmental funding cuts, deregulation and program elimination which had also been a cornerstone of his first term.