President Donald Trump has issued 266 executive orders in his second term but only 70 have been codified into law, according to Mark Meadows, a White House chief of staff in the first Trump administration and a former North Carolina GOP congressman.

“That’s a start, but Congress needs to double the effort!!!” Meadows wrote in a post on X this week, noting that 196 of Trump’s Executive Orders were not yet codified into law.

An executive order is a signed, written directive from the U.S. president or state governor to federal or state administrative agencies, which does not require congressional approval.

However, if Congress passes a statute explicitly codifying the directive into law, it becomes binding legislation that cannot be overturned unilaterally by another president, according to the American Bar Association.

Trump, as of Wednesday, had signed 266 executive orders, 79 memoranda and 147 proclamations in his second term, which began on Jan. 20, 2025, according to Ballotpedia.

Of the executive orders, 230 were signed just in the first year of the term, the highest first-year total since Franklin D. Roosevelt issued 568 in 1933.

Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush have issued the fewest, with an average of 35 and 36 a year, respectively.

Trump has signed the most executive orders on foreign policy, the administrative state and trade and tariffs, in that order.

The most recent executive orders by Trump include strengthening customs enforcement, eliminating bureaucratic processes when removing senior federal workers for misconduct or poor performance, both issued on June 3, and an order promoting advanced artificial intelligence innovation and security, issued on June 2.

Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett reposted Meadow’s post in agreement with the former congressman’s argument.

“I have filed 20 bills dealing with @realDonaldTrump executive orders. Some were covered in the BBB,” he wrote in the repost, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “We need some guts.”

Trump has the good political fortune of having a Congress led by members of his own Republican Party, which makes passing his legislation and measures far easier than if Democrats controlled the House and/or the Senate.

However, Republicans have a slim majority in both chambers, which means they need essentially every member to vote in unity, except for perhaps one or two.

Such a dynamic is complicated by members serving states and/or congressional districts with a lot of Democrats or by ideological differences – with some being MAGA, while others are more moderate or libertarian minded.

Though executive orders bypass Congress, they also frequently face lawsuits and can become tied up in court.

In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, the administration faced more than 120 lawsuits challenging the implementation of executive orders. In total, there are 321 litigation cases challenging the administration’s actions, according to Lawfare’s Trump Administration Litigation Tracker.

Lower courts have issued injunctions against the executive order to end birthright citizenship for non-citizens, and federal judges have filed preliminary injunctions against the executive order banning transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military.

Executive orders requiring passports to reflect biological sex, and efforts to terminate Biden-era parole programs have also faced litigation by civil rights and affected groups.

There has also been considerable backlash to the executive order restricting the distribution of mail-in ballots by the U.S. Postal Service, with all 23 Democratic state attorneys general urging the court to block the order, and condemning it as unconstitutional voter suppression in a case now before the federal court in Boston.

Some of Trump’s executive orders that have become law include the GENIUS Act, aimed at protecting America’s financial system from illicit activity, and the White-House-led Task Force to Eliminate Fraud (Executive Order 14395), which legally modifies how federal benefits are administered under the False Claims Act.

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