President Donald Trump made history in the first 100 days of his inauguration, surpassing former President Franklin Delano’s record on the number of executive orders issued in the same window.
So far, Trump has signed more than 135 executive orders in the first 100 days of his first term in office. He rose from 33, who signed the first 100 days of his first term, and from 99 Roosevelt, who were signed during that period.
Experts say the massive number of executive orders indicates a change in power from legislative branches and also indicates that Trump has clear priorities he wants to achieve during this semester.
Trump’s approach shows that power is diverting away from Congress and that the administrative department is envisaging an increase in legislative powers. This tends to follow future administrations, James Browgel, a senior fellow at the competitive Enterprise Institute focused on regulatory reform, told Fox News Digital.
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President Donald Trump has signed more than 135 executive orders in his first 100 days of office. (Getty Images)
“As much of the federal power is currently housed in the administrative sector, this is an indication that the president can implement a very vast and drastic agenda through enforcement actions,” Broughel said. “And I’ll hope that a future president will likely follow Trump’s lead on this.”
These first 100 days are important to set the president’s agenda and to promote media coverage of these initiatives. It becomes more and more challenging as the term progresses, Broughel said.
“These first directions coming early are very important because if they don’t, if it’s not set early, they’ll run out of time in the presidency,” Broughel said.
Additionally, according to Thomas Berry, director of the Center for Constitutional Research at the Libertarian Think Tank, Cateau Institute, the Trump administration advanced the executive order as he worked for four years to prepare and plan administrative priorities.
Berry said he is thinking about what issues the Trump administration would like to target with his long-term executive order, and it is clear that many of them are focusing on dismantling the hurdles he faced in his first term. That includes an executive order that facilitates restrictions on federal employees’ firing, Berry said.
The judge blocking Trump’s executive order is acting “mistake,” the White House says.
President Donald Trump will join female athletes and sign the “No Women’s Sports Men” executive order in the East Room of the White House in Washington on February 5, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“It’s clear that many of these executive orders aim to try to overtake what he considered a barrier to his agenda in the first administration,” Berry said.
“The weakness of the executive order is that they can simply be reversed by subsequent presidents. That’s not set in stone in the law,” Berry said. “One possible exception to that is when agents are very weakened and it is difficult to back up under the next administration.”
For example, Berry said massive staff cuts at agencies such as the United States Organization for International Development (USAID) could potentially replenish some administrations. The Trump administration announced plans in March to cut thousands of staff at the agency. It served as an independent institution that worked to provide assistance to historically poor countries and development support, and moved the rest of its functions to the State Department.
Similarly, Trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the education sector, saying that the functions of the institutions overseeing student loans and financial aid will be moved to separate institutions.
Berry said the onslaught of executive orders is straining the judicial division as more than 150 lawsuits have been filed challenge Trump’s executive order. Some of these cases have been well-known examples such as ending birthright citizenship and banning transgender individuals from serving the military.
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The views of the US Supreme Court building. (Photo: Anna Money Maker/Getty Images) (Photo: Anna Money Maker/Getty Images)
“It’s getting harder for the judicial department to keep up,” Berry said. “It’s taxing the courts on restrictions, forcing the courts to act quickly, and the Judicial Branch will not act functionally when they are forced to act very quickly.”
“To some extent, when Trump complains about a judge without a lot of law or deliberation, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Berry said. “That’s because the administration takes all these actions immediately and effectively and forces them by not having the usual time for deliberation.”
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Berry expects the pace of executive orders to slow down in the near future, as most of what appeared in the first 100 days appears to be pre-planned.
“I think they will run out by the end of his first year, if not the next few months.
