Tracking Executive Orders
The new administration has issued a barrage of Executive Orders, so many (104 as of the morning of Wednesday, 12 Feb 2025) that it's hard to keep track. Fortunately, there are many interwebs resources to help track the Orders, understand them, and see the various legal actions challenging them.
This post is an ongoing inventory of various resources to keep tabs on the Orders, understand them, and track their legal, political, and social implications. Please check in here periodically, as I will update this post regularly.
At its most basic, an Executive Order is a directive issued to all or part of the executive branch. They have come, over time, to expand beyond mere executive policies to take on something resembling "executive legislation." To help understand what an Executive Order is and what is does, the ACLU has published an informative primer. The American Bar Association makes available another useful primer.
The full text of Executive Orders are published at the White House website here.
The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara maintains an excellent primer on Executive Orders, including an interesting table that tracks EOs issued by president. Through the Andrew Johnson administration, no president issued as many as even 100 EOs throughout their terms of office. Ulysses S. Grant disrupted this trend by issuing 217, many related to Recinstructions. Since the first Grover Cleveland presidency (113), no chief executive has issued fewer than 100 Orders. The 20th century saw a massive upward trend, with Teddy Roosevelt releasing 1,081 Orders, an average of 145 per year. Unsurprisingly, Franklin D. Roosevelt holds the all-time record with both a total of 3,721, averaging 307 annually during his slightly more than 12 years in office. The 21st century has seen the following EO activity:
George W. Bush - 291
Barack Obama - 276
Donald Trump I - 220
Joe Biden - 162
Donald Trump II - 104 (as of 12 Feb)
The invaluable site Just Security publishes a series of pieces that explain what the Orders mean and their policy & legal implications.
Just Security also tracks the legal challenges to the Orders.
Lawfare is tracking the Orders and challenges to them,
Many online legal scholars and legal reporters are publishing commentary and analysis of the Orders, reactions to them, and further actions of the administration relating to them.
Cornell law professor Michael Dorf explains what options exist to address the administration's failure to comply with court orders resulting from litigation on the Orders (it's not terribly optimistic).
Professor Dorf has also published several pieces in an ongoing series ("Wait, Can He Actually Do That?") addressing whether the steps ostensibly taken in various EOs actually rest on a legal foundation. The most recent, as of 12 Feb, addresses Title IX and transgender athletes.
George Mason law professor Ilya Somin examines the implications of the president refusing to obey court orders resulting from EO legal challenges.
UC Davis law professor Vikram David Amar explains preliminary injunctions (specifically for non-lawyers such as myself), several of which have been issued by federal judges in cases challenging EOs.
Lawfare founder and editor-in-chief Ben Wittes published a piece assessing whether the judiciary is up to the task of pushing back on the attack on law and institutions by the administration (and its dozens of EOs).
The American Immigration Council has a piece on the early EOs and how they impact immigration.