Trump's executive actions: What he signed in Week One

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In his first week in power, U.S. President Donald Trump began rolling out his vision for America in a swift series of top-down orders from the White House.

Trump has signed 14 executive actions since his inauguration last Friday, including six executive orders and eight presidential memoranda, which allow the president to set policy directives.

Many of those decisions make real several of Trump’s most contentious campaign promises. The actions include an executive order to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, an announcement to move forward with approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and an order to cut funding from so-called sanctuary cities, such as New York and Seattle, that protect undocumented immigrants.

On Friday, Trump signed two new executive orders at the Pentagon. One called for “new vetting measures” to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the U.S., a move that echoes Trump’s campaign call for an outright Muslim ban.

“We don't want 'em here," Trump said during the announcement. "We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.”

A second executive order signed Friday seeks to build the U.S. military.

An executive order is a binding decision issued by a president that carries authority with the stroke of a pen. An executive order cannot kill a law passed by Congress, but it can scrap an executive order issued by a past president.

It’s fairly common for presidents to spend their first week in office issuing executive actions.

“We’ve been seeing a great number of these things happening in presidential transitions in the last several administrations,” Phillip Cooper, a professor of public administration at Portland State University, told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

Cooper says the trend of “taking control of government very quickly” through executive actions started with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and has become more or less the norm ever since.

“In each administration since then, we’ve seen an increase in the importance of these things, even to the point where when President Obama took office, the news media were expecting him to issue a significant number,” he said.

Trump’s fast action

But Trump’s speediness is notable. He’s the only president since Bill Clinton in 1993 to sign an executive order on his first day in office. Trump’s order attempts to roll back elements of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Trump cannot issue an executive order to flat-out kill Obamacare since it is a law passed by Congress. But Trump’s executive order attempts to weaken the legislation by asking the U.S. secretary of health and services to loosen their interpretation of the law to cut financial slack for health care providers, individuals and insurers.

In some cases, executive actions resemble a political tug-of-war between Republican and Democratic presidents. Trump’s decision to reinstate the Mexico City Policy on the third day of his term follows a longstanding history of back and forth on the decision, first introduced by Ronald Reagan, that limits U.S. funding for international NGOs that provide women with safe access to abortions.

The policy was revoked by Bill Clinton, revived by George W. Bush, killed again by Barack Obama and brought back to life again by Trump.

Legal battles loom

An executive order can be challenged by Congress. However, since Congress is controlled by Republicans, it’s possible that challenges to Trump’s executive orders will be brought forward by everyday Americans through the court system.

“Obviously since we have a Congress of the same political party as the president, then the question is: will the Congress conduct careful oversight of what the president is doing, or are we going to looking to lawsuits in the courts to challenge what the president has done?” Cooper said.

Here is a full list of Trump executive orders and presidential memoranda in his first week in office:

TRUMP’S FIRST SIX EXECUTIVE ORDERS

TRUMP’S FIRST EIGHT PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA

Previous presidents and executive orders

The infographic below shows the average number of executive orders per year issued by previous presidents, using information compiled by the American Presidency Project. It does not include memorandums or executive actions “that are not accompanied by a published presidential directive.”