After taking the oath of office on Monday, President Trump began implementing executive actions to unilaterally change federal policy across topics including immigration enforcement and energy production.
Many of the actions took the form of executive orders. These are instructions issued by the president to subordinates in the executive branch, instructing subordinates to carry out certain activities or restricting their actions.
An executive order cannot create new legal powers for the president. Rather, it is a means of exercising legal powers that the president already has, either because the Constitution gives them to him or because Congress has enacted laws creating those powers.
That said, controversy often arises over the appropriate interpretation of the scope and limits of executive power. It is not uncommon for presidents to use executive orders to assert authority to take actions whose legal legitimacy is contested and leads to court battles.
For example, near the beginning of his first term, Mr. Trump sought to ban travel to the United States by citizens of several Muslim-majority countries. But the court blocked that travel ban and subsequent versions from going into effect before the Supreme Court allowed a more carefully written third version to go into effect.
Several of Trump's executive orders at the start of his second term are also expected to lead to lawsuits.
For example, Mr. Trump wants to abolish the “birthright citizenship” status of babies born to undocumented parents on U.S. soil. Perhaps he would declare that the executive branch currently has a different interpretation of the Constitution on this issue, and instruct executive branch agencies not to issue citizenship-affirming documents such as Social Security cards or passports to such young children. You will do such a thing by doing this. The question of whether he can do so will almost certainly be decided by the Supreme Court.
Executive orders are one of the most prominent types of executive action, and the term is sometimes used to encompass other categories of ways in which the president exercises control over the executive branch.
Other types include presidential policy memorandums and national security directives that shape certain bureaucratic processes, and presidential proclamations such as national emergency declarations that can lift certain standby powers that Congress has authorized the president to exercise in emergency situations. be.
During his first term, Trump declared a national emergency, spent more money than Congress had earmarked for a wall on the border with Mexico, and then failed to give adequate hearings during the coronavirus pandemic. declared that it would take certain public health measures, including refusing asylum applications by immigrants. He is expected to reinstate these measures on Monday.
