The world watched closely when US President Donald Trump published his first 26 executive orders on January 20, his first day in office. By attempting to overturn birthright citizenship among other anti-immigration orders, broadly targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and specifically targeting the rights of transgender people, he set the tone for the first 100 days of his second term.
Executive orders allow presidents to exercise their political power of implementing policies and laws. This means that they must identify relevant existing laws or constitutional passages that can form the legal basis for orders before they are issued.
DW analyzed the impact of Trump’s executive orders so far and whether the US legal system has kept his presidential powers in check.
What executive orders have been signed?
Data show that executive orders have remained a crucial tool for Trump since his inauguration. Although Trump issued the largest number of executive orders on January 20, at least one executive order has been signed nearly every other day since.
The more than 100 executive orders Trump has issued since his inauguration have restructured the way the United States is governed and changed the course of foreign and domestic US policy.
How Trump’s policies are echoing Project 2025
During his election campaign and after winning, Trump and his associates verbally distanced themselves from Project 2025, a manifesto for reshaping the United States according to ultraconservative ideals published by the Washington-based think tank the Heritage Foundation. It calls for slashing mentions of climate change from government records, accepting fewer refugees and further restricting abortions.
James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, and his colleagues monitor the changes introduced by the Trump administration and how closely they match the recommendation from Project 2025.
“A substantial plurality track very closely with specific recommendations in Project 2025,” Goodwin said, mentioning the executive orders on transgender rights as a particularly striking example. “In some cases, the language is almost lifted verbatim — or, in other cases, where the executive order itself accomplishes something that Project 2025 called for in general.”
Trump’s unprecedented use of executive orders
Trump has relied more heavily on executive orders in the first 100 days of this presidency than he did in his previous term and much more heavily than any president in the 21st century had.
Trump’s executive orders don’t just stand out for the sheer number issued, said political scientist Andrew Rudalevige, whose research focuses on presidential power and its relation to other branches of the government. They also stand out because some of the orders seem more based on personal preference than policy priorities.
“Those vengeance orders, the ones that are going after specific individuals or specific firms, really go outside the bounds of what we’ve seen orders used for in the past,” Rudalevige said. “They clearly don’t execute the law in any serious sense, but rather are being used as an instrument of personalized power. And that is a problematic development.”
Rudalevige said the issue went beyond vengeance. “An executive order telling the Department of Justice not to execute the law strikes me as problematic. We’ve seen that as well with the executive order regarding the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship, trying to impose a new definition of citizenship on what is already a pretty clear constitutional text.”
Can executive orders be stopped or overturned?
All three branches of the US government have the legal power to overturn executive orders.
Because executive orders are a means of enforcing the law, Congress can step in as the legislative branch of the government that passes the laws on which executive orders are based.
Secondly, courts can intervene in cases where a president’s executive orders contradict the Constitution or existing laws.
Lastly, future presidents can also revoke executive orders. Several of Trump’s executive orders have been issued to overturn Biden’s, and vice versa — Biden has also overturned several executive orders from the first Trump presidency.
“If you really want to achieve lasting policy change, then legislation is a much more durable route,” Rudalevige said. “So it’s interesting to me that the Trump administration has chosen not to go to the legislative route in a lot of these cases, even though Republicans have a majority in both chambers of Congress.”
Legal challenges to executive orders
More than a quarter (29%) of Trump’s 100 executive orders have been legally challenged, with some facing multiple. At the time of writing, the vast majority of those cases were still pending.
Technically, draft orders undergo a peer-review process within relevant agencies, Rudalevige said, before being passed on to the Justice Department for review of form and legality.
“I get the sense that, in the current administration, they’re not going through that institutionalized process that’s been the case for now almost 90 years across different presidencies,” Rudalevige said. “You do wonder what check they’re getting for legality. A president needs to be using [executive orders] to execute the law. In some cases, President Trump has used them to provoke a lawsuit, issuing orders that seem to be on the face of it, against existing statute.
“So I think another part is the public relations aspect. The president holds up the order with a big signature and is showing strong leadership, he hopes, to those who support his presidency. In an era where Congress finds it hard to act, presidents have been very tempted to do just this. The question, of course, is: What’s the end result? Does this order get implemented? Or is it mostly for show? I think we have a mixture of both in the Trump administration.”
