With the flick of pen, a new president can undo years of work by a previous administration through their constitutional “executive powers.” It is argued that the first 100 days of a President’s term is one of their best chances to enact their agenda. Already since relocating to the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump has signed a number of executive actions, including executive orders and presidential memoranda, aimed both at fulfilling his campaign promises and at rolling back the policies of former President Barack Obama.
An executive order is a legally binding document that declares government policy. Unable to reverse a law passed by Congress, it is more often used to delegate and direct government agencies and departments. Since taking the inaugural oath, Trump has, so far, signed five executive orders
Day 1: Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal.
Hours after taking the oath of office, Trump issued an executive order aimed at rolling back the affordable care act.
Who will it affect? The order’s language is somewhat vague and considering that the Affordable Care Act was passed through Congress, this presidential action can’t change the law. The process of changing the law is underway, however. The House of Representatives recently approved a budget that would allow Congress to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act and congressional Republicans and the White House are scrambling to develop a replacement. President Trump hopes to replace it with his own administration’s health care law. While the direct implications of this executive order are still unknown, this executive order will affect millions of of Americans who currently receive health care under the Affordable Care act.
Day 4: Expediting environmental reviews and approvals for high profile infrastructure projects.
Trump directed those in charge of evaluating the environmental impact of infrastructure projects to return to their assessments in a timelier manner.
Who will it affect? Trump promised to make new spending on US infrastructure projects a priority of his administration. He needs congress to approve any new spending bill, but this order could help expedite certain projects.
Day 6: Border security and immigration enforcement improvements.
Fulfilling another of his campaign promises, President Trump instructed the Department of Homeland Security to commence immediate construction of a 1,900-mile long wall along the southern border with Mexico using existing federal funds to get it started. The directive also signaled beefing up the border with an additional 5,000 border protection officers.
Who will it affect? It’s unclear where the funds for building the wall will come from. Trump has said that US tax dollars will pay for it with Mexico reimbursing the United States later on. Mexico has repeatedly denied this. More officers will probably mean more deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Day 6: Enhancing public safety in the interior of the United States.
This executive order aims to tackle the issue of undocumented immigrants through deportation and tripling resources for enforcement with 10,000 additional immigration officers. It also targets so-called “sanctuary cities” — cities, states and other entities which can refuse to turn over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities through a variety of shielding policies — by withholding funding.
Who will it affect? Again, this order would likely see an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants being deported. And while the administration can’t cut off all federal funding, as Congress pays out much of it, the President could put pressure on cities to comply.
Day 8: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.
This executive order suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days and immigration from countries with ties to terror, including Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, and Libya, for a period of 90 days. It also halts the issuing of visas and other immigration benefits to people from countries of “particular concern” and caps the entry of refugees in 2017 and 50,000.
Who will it affect? This order will ultimately affect visitors and green-card-holding legal permanent United States residents from these seven countries. Only one day after the executive order was signed, students, visitors, and green-card-holding legal permanent United States residents were stopped at airports in the United States and abroad, including Cairo, Dubai, and Istanbul. Some were blocked from entering the United States and some were sent back overseas. On Saturday night, a federal judge in Brooklyn blocked part of Mr. Trump’s order, saying that refugees and others being held at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.
In addition to the executive orders, Trump has signed eight presidential memoranda so far. Trump’s memoranda have less legal weight than an executive order, but are important as these documents lay out the priorities of his administration. These memoranda include the Mexico City policy, which reinstates a policy that, among other things, restricts the US funding to NGOs that provide abortions, the federal hiring freeze which institutes a freeze on the hiring of new federal workers, expect for the military, and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in which Trump approved the pipeline construction. These are only a few of the many presidential memoranda that have been introduced so far.
Millions of people have already protested many of these executive orders and presidential memoranda. It is obvious that Trump is an extremely divisive president and if the rest of his presidency is anything like his first week, then people from all over the world are going to experience the repercussions.