As a candidate, Donald Trump sharply criticized President Barack Obama for using executive directives to make policy. Obama, Trump claimed, only used them “because he can’t get anything done” and they were “the easy way out” – “he doesn’t want to work too hard.” By contrast, Trump said he would “do away with executive orders for the most part.” He would “get everybody together” to do what you’re “supposed to”: to “pass a law.” Indeed, Trump said in March 2016:
Nobody ever heard of an executive order. Then all of a sudden Obama, because he couldn’t get anybody to agree with him, he starts signing them like they’re butter.
Well, it turns out that everybody loves butter.
Trump’s first-term executive orders
In late April 2017, the White House press office bragged that “President Trump has accomplished more in his first 100 days than any other President since Franklin Roosevelt.” The evidence? That he had signed more executive orders (EOs) during that period than any president since FDR. This was true, at least if you start Harry Truman’s presidency in 1949 after he was elected in his own right instead of in 1945.
A hundred days in, Trump had issued 33 executive orders, as well as close to 20 presidential memoranda. (While he issued more than 30 proclamations in that period too, all were commemorative rather than substantive. For instance, on April 28, 2017, the president reminded us that May would be Older Americans Month.)
He wound up issuing 220 executive orders over his term in office. But in a study of Trump’s administrative actions overall, Rachel Potter, Sharece Thrower, Adam Warber, and I concluded that “by the numbers,” at least, Trump was not readily distinguishable from his predecessors in this regard: “Trump does not seem to have loved ‘butter’ more – or less – than his presidential peers.” And somehow Trump forgot to praise Joe Biden as the most accomplished president ever when Biden issued 42 executive orders (plus another two dozen additional directives) in his own first hundred days.
Trump 2.0 promises more EOs
In any case Trump has been touting an even larger flood of executive action after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. He told Senate Republicans he has “almost 100” ready to go, according to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.). In a Jan. 18 interview with NBC News, Trump said there would be a “record-setting number of documents that I’ll be signing right after this [inaugural] speech.” Inflation may not be quickly vanquished in the new year: At Trump’s inauguration eve rally on Jan. 19, the number rose to 200.
These are rumored to deal with many of Trump’s favored rhetorical tropes: the southern border, immigration, and citizenship generally; energy policy; the status of federal employees; governmental initiatives regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion; gender identity; cryptocurrency; and perhaps even with TikTok. It is likely that, mirroring Biden’s first 100 days, we’ll see numerous revocations of his predecessor’s executive orders. Those will have immediate impact, as will those clearly within presidential purview, such as advising structures within the White House – or, with rather more impact, declarations of emergency. Keep in mind that Congress has given the president a lot of room to work with here: There doesn’t actually have to be an emergency for a president to declare one.
Other EOs will be mostly plans to make plans, directing agencies to work on key issues with an eye toward future regulatory change. Still others will be press releases dressed up in legal clothing – or assertions of authority that will prompt immediate court challenges. Trump does not have the power to alter the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision, for example, but it seems likely he will claim he can. For its part, the statute shutting down TikTok allows a 90-day reprieve for the app, but only under certain conditions – which even Congressional Republicans say have not been met. (And of course it was Trump who – by executive order – declared TikTok to be a national emergency in the first place, back in 2020.)
Presidential EOs, for the record
In any case, it’s worth remembering that the bar for “record-setting” in this category is actually quite low. As the table below shows, the record for the most executive orders issued on Day 1 of a presidency, at least since 1933, is just nine. That was Joe Biden in 2021. Add three memoranda from Biden and two old-fashioned letters (rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accords) and the number to beat is still only 14.
| EOs (Day 1) | EOs (Day 2) | EOs (Week 1 ) | Memoranda and other presidential documents (Week 1) | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
| Harry S. Truman (1945) | 2 | 0 | 4 | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| John F. Kennedy | 0 | 1 | 3 | |
| Lyndon B. Johnson (1963) | 1 | 0 | 3 | |
| Richard Nixon | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| Gerald Ford | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Jimmy Carter | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| Ronald Reagan | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| George H.W. Bush | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Bill Clinton | 1 | 0 | 2 | |
| George W. Bush | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Barack Obama | 0 | 2 | 5 | 6 |
| Donald Trump | 1 | 0 | 5 | 8 |
| Joe Biden | 9 | 8 | 24 | 11 |
One reason a relatively slow start is the norm is that executive orders are normally run through a quality control process via the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Justice (which checks for “form and legality”). According to the New York Times, the Trump 2.0 team is instead apparently “using a team of lawyers from outside the Justice Department to vet the orders.” Project 2025 and related think tank projects have likewise provided numerous off-the-shelf templates for their favored directives.
Will all this achieve what Trump hopes? The proof will be in the – butter.
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