In just a few weeks in office, President Trump has made striking use of his power to issue Executive Orders, using them to pave the way for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, change the rules about federal regulations, and enact a controversial ban on admission to the U.S. for range of immigrants and refugees.
But historically, most executive orders have been issued with little fanfare, says Kenneth R. Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power. "Most real executive orders are pretty routine," Mayer tells TIME. "In the 1930s and '40s, Roosevelt had to use an executive order every time he wanted to exempt someone from mandatory retirement."
But that doesn't mean that unilateral executive action hasn't had a major effect on the history of the United States.
Some of the most important unilateral executive action in American history, like George Washington's Neutrality Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, have not technically been executive orders. Mayer says that, for this reason, the number of orders a President issues is not a good measure of how he used unilateral power. Nevertheless, over the years the executive order has become a more controversial tool and more "prominent in the public psyche," perhaps partly because its formality makes such orders easy to track.
“A person’s attitude about executive action depends almost entirely on whether the President is of your party," Mayer says, but the fundamental question of the limits of Executive Branch power dates back to the earliest days of the republic. "Hamilton and Madison fought over it. Those debates have not been tempered in the centuries since."
And perhaps with good reason, as that power has greatly shaped the history of the United States. Here are nine 20th-century Executive Orders that show just how far that influence can go:
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 7034 (1935): This order established the Works Progress Administration, among other agencies. The New Deal spending machinery was so complicated that, back then, that the President himself gave the press four separate "lectures"—complete with diagrams—explaining how the WPA "would keep its finger on the pulse of all projects started."
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 (1942): This post-Pearl Harbor order, now infamous, gave the military the ability to mark out areas from which it would be possible to exclude "any and all persons." The upshot of this move was that more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants were sent to internment camps.
Harry Truman's Executive Order 9981 (1948): This order declared that "there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin," leading to the desegregation of the American military.
President Truman had been examining the issue of segregation in the armed forces since at least 1947, when he appointed the President's Committee on Civil Rights. By January 1948, internal White House memos indicated that the President was determined to end military segregation by executive order. However, it was not until the delegates at the 1948 Democratic National Convention called for a liberal civil rights plank that included desegregation of the armed forces that Truman felt comfortable enough to issue Executive Order No. 9981 on July 26. The order stated that "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." The order also established the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services (Fahy Committee).
Naturally, there was resistance to this order within the military. Staff officers from all branches protested anonymously and sometimes even openly to integration. The Fahy Committee worked with the different branches of the military to ensure that the armed forces instituted integration in their recruitment and unit composition practices. Full integration did not come until the Korean War however, when heavy casualties forced segregated units to merge for survival.
Harry Truman's Executive Order 10340 (1952): This order directed the Secretary of Commerce to " take possession of " American steel plants. The order put to rest a threatened strike, which Truman held to be a military necessity, but in doing so it raised "a great constitutional question," as TIME put it, about the limits of executive power—and in fact, after the Supreme Court struck down the Order, it turned out that the resolution of that question was where its influence was felt most in the long run.
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Dwight Eisenhower's Executive Order 10730 (1957): This order, in reaction to the resistance of "certain persons" in Arkansas to federally mandated school integration, particularly at Little Rock's Central High School, directed the Secretary of Defense to federalize National Guard units in Arkansas , which had previously been used by Gov. Orval Faubus to prevent integration. AThe President was left with little choice but to sign "a historic document" that "ordered Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson to use the armed forces of the U.S. to uphold the law of the land in Little Rock."
John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10924 (1961): This order established the Peace Corps, which, , "captured the public imagination as had no other single act of the Kennedy Administration."
By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Mutual Security Act of 1954, 68 Stat. 832, as amended (22 U.S.C. 1750 et seq.), and as President of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
SECTION 1. Establishment of the Peace Corps. The Secretary of State shall establish an agency in the Department of State which shall be known as the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps shall be headed by a Director.
SEC. 2. Functions of the Peace Corps. (a) The Peace Corps shall be responsible for the training and service abroad of men and women of the United States in new programs of assistance to nations and areas of the world, and in conjunction with or in support of existing economic assistance programs of the United States and of the United Nations and other international organizations.
(b) The Secretary of State shall delegate, or cause to be delegated, to the Director of the Peace Corps such of the functions under the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as amended, vested in the President and delegated to the Secretary, or vested in the Secretary, as the Secretary shall deem necessary for the accomplishment of the purposes of the Peace Corps.
SEC. 3. Financing of the Peace Corps. The Secretary of State shall provide for the flnancing of the Peace Corps with funds available to the Secretary for the performance of functions under the Mutual Security Act of 1954, as amended.
SEC. 4. Relation to Executive Order No. 10893. This order shall not be deemed to supersede or derogate from any provision of Executive Order No. 10893 of November 8, 1960, as amended, and any delegation made by or pursuant to this order shall, unless otherwise specifioally provided therein, be deemed to be in addition to any delegation made by or pursuant to that order.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 1, 1961.
Lyndon Johnson's Executive Order 11246 (1965): This order made the U.S. Government practice equal opportunity in hiring, and demanded that each executive department set up a "positive, continuing program" to support equal employment opportunity. The order extended to government contractors as well. According to the Department of Labor, that provision of the Executive Order now protects about 20% of the entire American workforce from discrimination.
On September 24, 1965, more than two years after the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and more than a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became the law of the land, the Nation took a historic step towards equal employment opportunity when President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order (EO) 11246.
For the first time, EO 11246 charged the Secretary of Labor, a Cabinet–level official with strong enforcement authority, with the responsibility of ensuring equal opportunity for minorities in federal contractors’ recruitment, hiring, training and other employment practices. Until that time, such efforts had been in the hands of various Presidential committees. EO 11246 continued and reinforced the requirement that federal contractors not discriminate in employment and take affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity based on race, color, religion, and national origin.
Signed by President Johnson that early autumn1965, EO 11246 became a key landmark in a series of federal actions aimed at ending racial, religious and ethnic discrimination, an effort that dated back to the anxious days before the U.S. was thrust into World War II.
Today, Executive Order 11246, as amended and further strengthened over the years, remains a major safeguard, protecting the rights of workers employed by federal contractors—approximately one–fifth of the entire U.S. labor force—to remain free from discrimination on the basis of their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin…and opening the doors of opportunity through its affirmative action provisions.
Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12291 (1981): This order, signed by President Reagan almost immediately upon taking office, required cost-benefit analysis to be applied to every "regulatory action" undertaken by the Federal government, signaling a broad shift toward deregulation.
George W. Bush's Executive Order 13228 (2001): This order established an Office of Homeland Security, which grew into the Department of Homeland Security that, as TIME put it, merged "merged 22 federal agencies into a single department whose primary mission is fighting terrorism."
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