{"id":17826,"date":"2021-02-01T22:09:45","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T22:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/02\/01\/in-early-going-biden-floods-the-zone-with-decrees\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T04:46:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T04:46:38","slug":"in-early-going-biden-floods-the-zone-with-decrees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/management\/leadership\/2021\/02\/01\/in-early-going-biden-floods-the-zone-with-decrees\/","title":{"rendered":"In early going, Biden floods the zone with decrees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 Modern American presidents have found that a good way to get off to a fast start in office is to issue decrees like an ancient king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With a pen as their scepter, they \u201chereby proclaim.\u201d They \u201corder,\u201d \u201cdirect,\u201d \u201crevoke\u201d and \u201cdeclare,\u201d rendering commandments in regal language drawn from the deep past. President Joe Biden is flooding the zone with them, achieving head-snapping changes in national policy that he would have no hope of getting from Congress quickly, if at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Easy come, though, can also mean easy go. As President Donald Trump discovered with his hard-charging and often ill-fated executive actions, courts can be quick to shoot them down. Congress can effectively override them and at most they\u2019re only good until a contrarian president takes over and whipsaws off in another direction again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2021\/01\/25\/biden-ends-trump-ban-on-transgender-service-members\/\" target=_blank>transgender troops<\/a> have a life in the armed forces? Not openly under Trump. Under Biden, yes they can. Under who comes next, who knows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For now, though, the lumbering government is seeing change at light speed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Biden\u2019s opening days, he put the U.S. back into the Paris climate accord, ended Trump\u2019s restrictions on travel from some Muslim-majority countries, froze further construction of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2021\/01\/22\/the-border-emergency-is-canceled-but-thousands-of-troops-there-arent-scheduled-to-go-home\/\" target=_blank>Trump\u2019s border wall<\/a>, protected immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and reversed Trump\u2019s rollback of energy efficiency and pollution standards. That\u2019s just a sampling.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/your-military\/2021\/01\/22\/the-border-emergency-is-canceled-but-thousands-of-troops-there-arent-scheduled-to-go-home\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP19037651897765.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">The border emergency is canceled, but thousands of troops there aren\u2019t scheduled to go home<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">More than 3,000 troops are stationed at the border, and they&#039;ll continue to stay there.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Altogether, Biden has brought a transformation both in tone and substance in the earliest days of his presidency. After the bellowing, never-self-questioning Trump, almost anyone would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twitter is a dead zone now for seeing what\u2019s on a president\u2019s mind in the moment. Things are being heard from the Oval Office that are foreign to our ears in recent times: \u201cCorrect me if I\u2019m wrong.\u201d \u201cHow can I say it politely?\u201d \u201cI misspoke.\u201d Wearing a mask is mandated on federal property and encouraged everywhere; meantime the gags have come off the government\u2019s top public health scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Biden\u2019s expressions of humility and his common courtesies only go so far. When it comes to dismantling a predecessor\u2019s legacy with the stroke of a pen and the words \u201cI have hereunto set my hand,\u201d Biden is off to a fierce start and, like many before him, testing the limits of what a president can do by decree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA lot of what he has done has been unwinding what Trump had done,\u201d said Kenneth Mayer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist and expert on presidential powers and executive actions. \u201cVirtually all presidents push the envelope and do things that expand the scope of executive authority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">President Barack Obama struck a multinational nuclear deal with Iran and shaped and joined the Paris accord without Congress signing on, using the recognized authority of presidents to make international deals but leaving those moves vulnerable without the assent of lawmakers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unable to get Congress to pass immigration legislation, Obama unilaterally shielded young immigrants from deportation, leaving nothing in law to guarantee their protections would last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For most of his first year in office, until his tax cuts passed in late 2017, Trump chalked up no major legislative achievements despite having Republican control of Congress at the time. He did not score many big wins in law after, either, beyond budget agreements. But he was relentless with executive actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEvery president looks for those opportunities,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cWhat Trump did was take the brakes off and do things that previous presidents had not done. He was enamored of his own powers. He was unusually aggressive and didn\u2019t respect the norm-based limits of what presidents ought to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA lot of it was really quite sloppy,\u201d he added. \u201cShockingly incompetent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump\u2019s orders to restrict entry from some Muslim countries were repeatedly blocked by federal judges until a weakened version passed muster at the Supreme Court. He declared a national emergency when no nationally recognized one existed at the southern border, allowing him to redirect some money already approved by Congress, but for other purposes, to his border wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then there were the federal lands and waters that past presidents had acted to protect from development. Trump had his eye on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFor over 100 years, it was the accepted meaning of declaring national monuments that it was a one-way door,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t undeclare a national monument.\u201d But that custom shattered in 2017 with Trump\u2019s executive action to review or shrink the protected status of vast acres of national monument lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biden moved to counter that with an order of his own. But his rollout of executive actions several months in the making has not been entirely smooth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Texas, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the government from enforcing a 100-day deportation moratorium on most deportations, ruling the new administration had failed to provide \u201cany concrete, reasonable justification\u201d for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biden has acknowledged the limits of his early course of unilateralism as he gears up for heavy lifts with Congress on pandemic relief and his ambitious legislative agenda. Merely ruling by \u201cexecutive fiat,\u201d he said, would \u201cget us virtually nowhere.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Republicans growled about Biden\u2019s busy signature pen, voicing the standard complaint about presidential overreach that comes from whichever party is out of power in the White House. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biden was a bit testy about the pushback when he was asked if Congress might require him to send the pandemic relief package in chunks instead of as a whole. \u201cNo one requires me to do anything,\u201d he said with a monarchical flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/management\/2021\/01\/27\/biden-issues-memorandum-to-protect-federal-scientists\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/635912172490719124-fed-fda-lab-1jpg_3a7716.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Biden issues memorandum to protect federal scientists<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">President Joe Biden has ordered policy changes to insulate federal scientists from political interference and ensure agency policy is based on evidence.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biden burst out of the gate with several dozen executive actions. It remains to be seen whether he\u2019ll surpass the unilateralism of Trump, who signed an average of 55 executive orders a year,  the most in any single term since Jimmy Carter, who averaged 80 a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On this front, the king among presidents is Franklin Roosevelt, who signed 307 a year on average and paired that activism with towering legislation steering the country through depression and war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If executive action is often fleeting, legislation is anything but. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although there\u2019s no permanence in anything Washington does, hard-won legislation typically sinks deep roots. So it has been with \u201cObamacare,\u201d the law Republicans swore to upend from the start but never could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump\u2019s first executive order, on the day of his inauguration, was directed squarely at unraveling the Affordable Care Act. But presidential decree could not take away what Congress had ordained, and neither could repeated efforts by Republican lawmakers to vote it out of existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Biden had an executive order on that matter, too. On Thursday he ordered the law\u2019s health insurance markets to reopen for a special sign-up window, giving the uninsured a chance to find coverage in a raging pandemic after the Trump administration had refused to take that step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He ordered his administration in the same document to examine other Trump health care policies that he may nullify, like certain work requirements for Medicaid and curbs on abortion counselling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s all an effort to \u201cto undo the damage Trump has done,\u201d Biden said, and to restore things \u201cwhich by fiat he changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, across the range of public policy, fiat chases fiat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For now, the lumbering government is seeing change at light speed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":53747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":68,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,31,15,68,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1542],"class_list":["post-17826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-management","category-leadership","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"APF2VLWMIFD47PQVLBXV4PN3AY","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/leadership\/2021\/02\/01\/in-early-going-biden-floods-the-zone-with-decrees\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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