President Donald Trump isn’t even a month into his second term and he’s already issued around half as many executive orders as former President Joe Biden did in four years.
These actions cover a wide range of issues and have been met with an equally wide rage of responses. While some of them have been slammed with protests and lawsuits, they’ve also contributed to Trump having his highest approval rating ever.
Here are some of the highlights:
In terms of headlines, some of the flashier executive orders signed over the past few weeks include this week’s order to stop making pennies, an order declaring that the U.S. only recognizes two genders, releasing information about high profile assassinations, his pardon of Capitol rioters and an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. In the Midwest, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker joked that Lake Michigan would be renamed “Lake Illinois” in response to that last one.
According to Axios, Trump’s orders generally fall into 11 categories: foreign policy (16 orders); reshaping federal government (14 orders); immigration/national security (12 orders); miscellaneous (10 orders), diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) reversals (seven orders); energy/climate (seven orders); finance and technology (seven orders), trans rights (four orders); declaring holidays/months (four orders); faith (three orders) and abortion (two orders).
Examples of Trump’s executive orders regarding foreign policy include his order to reevaluate foreign aid and his order to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization. His moves to reshape the federal government include the establishment of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and his immigration orders include a contentious move that would end birthright citizenship.
Anti-DEI efforts included a memo putting all government employees of DEI programs being put on leave in one fell swoop, and orders related to energy and climate include an order to “bring back plastic” and more – enough to make environmental advocates concerned. In addition to the move to declare only two genders, which has caused issues for some transgender Americans awaiting passports, orders related to trans rights have also impacted athletes and his orders related to abortion include enforcing the Hyde Amendment.
Trump is outpacing his predecessors with the number of orders he’s issued, Axios noted. He’s even outpacing his own first term, when he issued a total of 220 orders, or about 55 per year, according to The American Presidency Project. It explained that the Federal Register Act in 1936 established a thorough documentation of executive orders.
Data from the project shows that executive orders appeared to increase around the time of the Civil War. Based on its records, President Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to issue more than 1,000 and President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the most, 3,721. Former President Joe Biden issued 162.
As for Trump – it looks like his spree of executive orders will continue. One example is a proposed order that would abolish the Department of Education.