Trump Tests the Limits of Executive Orders

WELL BEFORE PRESIDENT Donald Trump returned to office, his supporters boasted that he would start the second term with a flurry of executive actions.

- J.D. Tuccille

The new president exceeded expectations with an avalanche of pardons, orders, and edicts on matters great and small. Wide-ranging in their scope, the orders “encompassed sweeping moves to reimagine the country’s relationship with immigration, its economy, global health, the environment and even gender roles,” noted USA Today.

Some should be welcomed by anybody hoping for more respect for liberty by government employees. Others extend state power in ways that are worrisome or even illegitimate. All continue the troubling trend, over the course of decades and administrations from both major parties, for the president to assume the role of an elected monarch.

Because executive branch officials interpret and enforce thickets of laws and administrative rules under which we try to live, guidance from the boss is powerful. Interpreted one way, a rule regulating unfinished gun parts leaves people free to pursue their hobbies; interpreted another, those owning the parts are suddenly felons. The president can push interpretations either way.