Most of us have been reading about those "Executive Orders" issued by our newly-inaugurated president on "Day One." In an article dated January 21, 2025, Time Magazine has complained about them, outlining a number of problems, and though I think Time is correct in its observations about the drawbacks of trying to govern by "Executive Order," it has missed what I think is the most important point.
Here's the issue I want to raise: When the president issues an "Executive Order," what gives the president the right to do so? Where does the president get the power to tell people what to do? After all, if we quickly check out our Constitution, Article II tells us that the president's basic duty is to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed." In other words, the president's power to tell other people what to do with respect to one thing or another does not come from holding the office of the presidency. It comes from a law, enacted by Congress, specifically granting such a power to the president.
So, and let's think about it, have all the president's recent "Executive Orders" been based on a law enacted by Congress, specifically granting the president the power to issue the various orders he has been issuing?
The answer, clearly, is "No." Issuing an "Executive Order" that claims to take away the citizenship of people whom the Constitution specifically says are citizens is the most egregious example of the overreach that our president is demonstrating. I am betting, though, that an extremely large percentage of the other "Executive Orders" recently issued by our president, on his very first day in office, are not actually valid "Executive Orders," at all, in the sense that anyone is legally required to do what the president says.
In an editorial in the Wednesday, January 22, 2025, edition of The Wall Street Journal, that newspaper decried Trump's action in purporting to give TikTok what the paper called an "Illegal Amnesty." Whatever your position on TikTok, Congress passed a law; the president has now asserted the right to countermand that law, simply by executing a so-called "Executive Order." This was NOT legal. The Wall Street Journal is right about that!
And how about the president's "Executive Order" unilaterally withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization? I am betting that Congress has not told the president that he gets to make that choice. WE get to make that choice, and "we" act by laws passed by Congress, if those laws are then signed by the president. Is there some law that says that the president is granted the power to declare national health policy, based on the president's personal preferences?
Day One of this new presidency has now come and gone, and the president is acting like his election, in and of itself, gives him the right to order everyone else around. This is emphatically not what our system of self-government contemplates, and so emergency sirens ought to be wailing! But.... now is not the time to seek shelter underground. Now is the time to fill up the streets, and to object, in no uncertain terms, to the improper claims by the president that he has some kind of right to "rule," based on having been elected president. We need to demand that our Members of Congress, each one of them, insist that THEY decide, as our elected "representatives, what the laws and policies will be that guide our national actions, and our national life.
As for the so-called "Executive Orders" that have been issued by the president, let's recognize them for what they are, the diseased evidences of "Executive Disorder."
What we're seeing is a sickness, and our current president has a very bad case! Let's not allow him to infect the rest of us, and the entirety of our government.
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