‘Going to be madness.’ Trump’s flood of day one executive orders would upend tradition

On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump is set to sign nearly 100 executive orders — a staggering and unprecedented figure, according to presidential historians.

“Within hours of taking office, I will sign dozens of executive orders, close to 100 to be exact,” Trump told his supporters in Washington, D.C., on the eve of his inauguration. “We will not waste a single moment in delivering our promises to the people.”

Among the orders he plans to sign are 10 that pertain to immigration, including one declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and another attempting to end birthright citizenship, according to Politico.

Others concern a wide range of topics, with one renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” and another targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government.

As had already been announced, Trump will also sign an order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead, according to NBC News.

Unprecedented ‘avalanche’ of orders

No other president in history has ever issued anywhere near 100 executive orders on their first day in office, Taylor Stoermer, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, told McClatchy News.

“This is going to be madness. Like so much else with Trump, it’s yet another way to shatter historical precedent,” Stoermer said. “For context, the idea of Day One executive orders isn’t new, but the numbers have typically been small.”

For example, on his first day in office in 2021, now-former President Joe Biden issued nine executive orders. Trump, during the first hours of his first term in 2017, issued just one — which targeted the Affordable Care Act.

Before them, former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all issued zero executive orders on Inauguration Day, Stoermer said.

“Even presidents legendary for aggressive executive action — FDR with his 3,500-plus orders — spread them out over months and years,” Stoermer said. “Nobody in our history has tried a single-day avalanche.”

Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, also stressed the unprecedented nature of Trump’s proposed day one actions, telling McClatchy News, “100 orders on the first day would blow out of the water all of his predecessors.”

Many of Trump’s proposed executive orders will simply be revocations of orders issued by Biden.

“There’s kind of a tit for tat here,” Balcerski said. “Because remember, when Biden came into office, many of his executive orders he signed on day one actually were undoing Donald Trump’s executive orders.”

For example, hours after his inauguration, Biden signed orders rejoining the Paris climate accords and halting the construction of a southern border wall — reversing Trump policies.

Further, if Trump does sign around 100 orders on his first day, it will be nearly half as many as the 220 he issued during the entirety of his first term, according to the American Presidency Project.

“If Trump proceeds, he’ll be making good on his promise to push well beyond normal presidential boundaries,” Stoermer added, “a calculated show of force that will likely define his entire term — and could reshape those to come.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2025 at 11:17 AM with the headline "‘Going to be madness.’ Trump’s flood of day one executive orders would upend tradition."