By Don Terry | Sunday, September 07, 2025 | 8 min read

Donald Trump began his second presidency the way he likes best—onstage, in the spotlight, and with a flourish of his pen. Inauguration Day was filled with the usual ceremony, the parade, the balls, the music, the endless television cameras, but woven into the pageantry was a steady stream of paperwork. Not symbolic, not ceremonial.

Real signatures, real orders, real proclamations. By nightfall, Trump had put his name to nearly fifty official documents—more than triple what he signed in the opening week of his first term, and more than three times what Joe Biden signed on his first day in 2021. It was executive power on steroids, and Trump seemed intent on showing from the very start that Congress was going to be sidelined.

Trump’s Made-for-TV Executive Orders

For decades, executive orders were the quiet machinery of government — signed behind closed doors, logged in the Federal Register, and rarely noticed outside Washington. Donald Trump changed that.

From the outset, he turned executive orders into performance. Seated at a desk, surrounded by aides and cameras, he’d scrawl his bold signature in black marker, then hold the oversized document aloft for photographers. The act became ritual: a televised show of strength meant to broadcast action, even when the underlying order carried less substance than the spectacle suggested.

Unlike past presidents who leaned on executive orders as bureaucratic tools, Trump used them as stagecraft. The spectacle mattered as much as the substance. Orders directing agencies to “consider” policy changes, for example, were packaged as sweeping victories. Supporters saw decisive leadership; critics saw showmanship masking limited impact.

Other presidents publicized major orders — Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal, Barack Obama with DACA — but Trump made nearly every signing a media event. In doing so, he redefined the executive order from a piece of government paperwork into a political performance, a symbol of presidential power displayed for all to see.

The subject matter of those early orders ran the gamut from the mundane—directing flags to fly at full staff on Inauguration Day—to sweeping actions with enormous political and legal stakes. Some touched hiring practices in the federal bureaucracy, others addressed the fate of TikTok in the United States. But two in particular overshadowed the rest: a blanket pardon for nearly everyone convicted of crimes tied to the January 6 riot, and a unilateral declaration that birthright citizenship would no longer apply to the children of immigrants without legal status. Those moves landed like thunderclaps, instantly sparking outrage, lawsuits, and breathless commentary.

The citizenship order in particular raised alarms across the legal community. Trump’s language claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, had been misinterpreted for more than a century. According to his order, a baby born on U.S. soil would not automatically be a citizen if the mother lacked legal status or if both parents were in the country only temporarily. Federal agencies were directed to stop recognizing those children as citizens. Within hours, the ACLU and more than twenty state governments filed lawsuits.

Could a president really rewrite a cornerstone of American life with the stroke of a pen? Yale Law professor Jed Rubenfeld says it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Executive orders have been around since George Washington issued the first one in 1789, and every president since has leaned on them to steer the federal bureaucracy. In theory, they’re just instructions from the commander-in-chief to his staff. In practice, they carry real weight — agency heads and federal departments are legally bound to follow them.

Rubenfeld explained that executive orders are supposed to stay within the bounds of the Constitution or authority granted by Congress. A president cannot simply legislate by fiat. Yet the growth of government has made them indispensable. Ronald Reagan issued nearly 400 orders, Bill Clinton a similar number, Barack Obama 276, and Trump himself signed 220 in his first term. Franklin Roosevelt remains untouchable at the top of the list, with more than 3,000. “The only way a president can even attempt to steer a bureaucracy this size is through executive orders,” Rubenfeld said.

The question, then, is whether Trump’s order on citizenship can hold up. Rubenfeld acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment contains an important caveat: it extends citizenship to those born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The children of foreign diplomats, for instance, are excluded. Trump’s lawyers argue that people in the country illegally are also outside that jurisdiction. It is not an argument conjured out of thin air.

Still, the Supreme Court as far back as 1898 ruled that birthright citizenship extended to the children of foreign nationals living here. That ruling did not involve undocumented parents, but the principle has long been understood to apply across the board. For that reason, Rubenfeld predicted the order would eventually be struck down in court.

Not all of Trump’s early directives face such shaky legal ground. His order allowing TikTok to continue operating is more likely to stand, because presidents have broad discretion over how statutes are enforced. A law banning the app exists, but Trump directed the Justice Department not to pursue prosecutions. That sort of prosecutorial discretion is well within his power. For now, TikTok has at least seventy-five days of breathing room.

Other orders launched investigations into diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across federal agencies, directing departments to account for spending under Biden and identify any programs that targeted political opponents. While many of those instructions are about gathering information rather than making immediate changes, the clear signal was that Trump intends to sweep away the last administration’s policies and paint them as partisan abuses.

But the action that stirred the sharpest debate was the mass pardon of those convicted in connection with January 6. Unlike the birthright citizenship order, this one rests on solid constitutional ground. The pardon power is one of the broadest authorities granted to a president. Historically, it has been used sparingly, sometimes controversially, but always with sweeping reach. Trump used it in the most sweeping fashion imaginable, wiping away convictions for hundreds of his supporters in a single stroke.

Critics immediately charged hypocrisy. How could a president who campaigned on ending the “weaponization of justice” begin his term by granting blanket forgiveness to people convicted of violence against police officers and of trying to halt the certification of an election? But Trump’s allies offered a different framing. To them, the prosecutions themselves were the real examples of weaponization—overzealous, politically motivated cases that turned ordinary protesters into felons. From that perspective, the pardons were not favors for friends but corrections of injustice.

Rubenfeld noted that however unsettling the optics, there is little question about the legality. “These pardons fall right in the core,” he said. They are precisely the kind of targeted, specific pardons the Constitution envisions. Compared to Biden’s last-minute preemptive pardons for Anthony Fauci, Hunter Biden, and other allies—pardons issued for hypothetical crimes rather than convictions—Trump’s were more conventional in form, even if not in scale.

The larger question is what this governing style means for Congress. If a president can wipe away prosecutions, redefine citizenship, block statutes from being enforced, and redirect the work of agencies—all through executive orders—what role remains for legislators? In theory, Congress holds the power of the purse and the ability to pass laws that constrain the executive. In practice, a president willing to test boundaries and exploit every ounce of discretion can sideline lawmakers for long stretches.

Trump seems eager to do just that. His barrage of day-one orders was both practical and symbolic. It showed that he views Congress less as a partner in governing than as an obstacle to be skirted. Supporters see a decisive leader cutting through gridlock. Opponents see an autocrat bypassing democratic institutions. Both views capture something of the truth.

The Constitution was designed with overlapping powers and checks that require cooperation among branches. But in an age of polarized politics, presidents of both parties have leaned more heavily on unilateral tools. Obama boasted of his “pen and phone.” Biden signed a raft of orders in his early weeks. Trump has taken that trend and accelerated it, turning the executive order into his weapon of first resort.

Whether courts will uphold all of these early moves is uncertain. Lawsuits are already piling up, and judges will soon weigh in. What is clear is that Trump has chosen to govern at a sprint, relying on the authority of his office rather than the slow grind of legislation. With two hundred executive orders already under his belt, and more sure to follow, he has made his priorities unmistakable.

In the end, the answer to the question—who needs Congress?—may be sobering. For now, Trump doesn’t. And that is exactly how he seems to like it.

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