WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump will mark the end of his first 100 days in office with a flurry of executive orders, looking to fulfill campaign promises and rack up victories quickly by turning to a presidential tool he once derided.
But Trump's frequent use of the executive order points to his struggles in moving major legislation through a Congress controlled by his own party.
White House aides said Trump will have signed 32 executive orders by Friday, the most of any president in his first 100 days since World War II. That's a far cry from Trump's campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against then-President Barack Obama's use of executive action late in his tenure when he faced a Republican Congress. Trump argued that he, the consummate deal maker, wouldn't need to rely on the tool.
"The country wasn't based on executive orders," Trump said at an event in South Carolina in February 2016. "Right now, Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can't even get along with the Democrats, and he goes around signing all these executive orders. It's a basic disaster. You can't do it."
[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 100 days]
But since taking office, Trump has learned to love the executive order.
In an email to reporters on Tuesday, the White House touted the number of orders as evidence that "Trump has accomplished more in his 100 days than any other President since Franklin Roosevelt." The White House has defended the use of executive orders as necessary to accomplish the speedy solutions it says the American people elected Trump to enact.
At first, the president's West Wing advisers fashioned a rush of executive action to set the tone for this term, with the centerpiece of that first-week blitz being Trump's first travel ban. But that hastily drawn ban was rejected by the courts. A replacement for that order also remains in judicial limbo.
Presidents frequently turn to executive orders when they struggle to advance their agendas through Congresses controlled by the opposition party. In Trump's case, he's struggled even though both houses of Congress are in the hands of Republicans.
"This president has found that legislating is hard work," said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government. "Executive orders are the easiest, simplest way to showcase action by the president to begin to fulfill some of the pledges made in the campaign."
A review of Trump's executive orders reveals that a number of them represent first steps at unraveling Obama-era environmental safeguards and financial service regulations. In some cases, there is no other way around those administrative hoops, and some of the orders have brought about major changes. Among them was his order late last month that directed federal agencies to rescind any existing regulations that "unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources," a move that rolls back environmental protections. It was denounced by Democrats and environmentalists and cheered by Republicans who advocate energy independence.
But many of the executive orders signed with great fanfare have had little immediate effect.
One order, hailed as historic by White House aides, called for the completion within 90 days of a large-scale report to identify trade abuses. On Friday, Trump signed an order commissioning a review of the nation's tax regulations.
On Tuesday, Trump signed an order that will create an interagency task force to identify measures to spur American agricultural growth.
Today he plans to sign an order aimed at minimizing the federal government's role in education. The order will direct Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to conduct a study to identify potential overreach by the federal government, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to outline details. The order will be signed during an event with governors.
On Thursday, he's expected to sign an order to create whistleblower protections in the Department of Veterans Affairs while making it easier to discipline or terminate employees who fail to carry out their duties to help veterans. He's also poised to sign an order that directs a review of the locations available for offshore oil and gas exploration. Another order will instruct the Interior Department to review national monument designations made over the past two decades.
"Unlike his predecessor, who abused executive authority to expand the size and scope of the federal government in an end run around Congress, President Trump is using his legal authority to restrain Washington bureaucrats," said White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Obama signed 276 orders during his eight years in office, less than George W. Bush (291) and Bill Clinton (364) did in their two terms, according to data from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Executive orders were used relatively infrequently until Theodore Roosevelt ushered in a new era of executive action at the beginning of the 20th century, signing more than 1,000 while in office and establishing a template for his successors.
A Section on 04/26/2017