President Biden continued his extensive use of executive orders on Wednesday, taking action on police procedures on the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Executive orders have become increasingly common as a polarized Congress has been unable to move legislation.
Such presidential actions have historically been used for two reasons, according to public policy strategist Meredith McGehee: in the face of a crisis that demands quick action, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, or in response to a “do nothing” Congress.
And with the Senate evenly – and bitterly – divided, very few bills make it to the president’s desk these days.
The occupants of the Oval Office don’t want to use executive orders but sometimes have little choice, said congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, who has studied the legislative branch for decades.
“Most presidents, even if they have the ability to use executive power, would prefer to do it legislatively, ” he said, explaining that legislation action is more durable.
Police reform is the latest example of a president stepping in when the legislative process doesn’t produce his desired result. Since Floyd died at the hands of police officers, sparking nationwide protests and a renewed spotlight on police brutality towards Black Americans, Democrats have twice tried and failed to pass legislation.
Bipartisan talks began, but soon hit a wall as the two parties could not reach a compromise. The House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in March 2021, but failed to move through the polarized Senate. Biden claimed that Republican senators “rejected enacting modest reforms, which even the previous president had supported, while refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address.”
Now, Biden has taken matters into his own hands, although it only applies to federal policing. His executive order establishes a national registry of officers fired for misconduct, mandates that all officers wear body cameras, and restricts transfers of military equipment to law enforcement agencies. It also includes incentives for state and local agencies to employ these protections and encourages them to follow the Justice Department’s restrictions on chokeholds and “no knock” warrants. The national registry, limits on chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and body camera requirements were all part of the Floyd bill.
Ornstein explains that, while this order is very limited to federal agencies, it can impact the ways that state and local law enforcement operate. In addition to the incentives, it may create more opportunities for the Justice Department to take control of police departments when they have violated certain standards.
Executive orders were utilized extensively in the first half of the 20th century — Franklin Delano Roosevelt used them more often than any other president, averaging 307 per year. However, its usage has declined steeply. Since Jimmy Carter’s average of 80 executive orders per year 40 years ago, no presidents have averaged more than 48. That is, until the past two presidents. Donald Trump signed 55 orders per year, while Biden has so far averaged 67. These numbers parallel increased polarization in Congress.
“Whenever the Congress is so closely divided, there are all the incentives in the world for the executive, in this case the president, to issue executive orders. This happens very frequently when there is an inability by one party or the other to break a filibuster with 60 votes,” said McGehee, who was executive director of the crosspartisan advocacy group Issue One before launching her own consulting firm. “The biggest change [in recent years] is that the nature of our politics has changed, in that the post-World War II consensus between Republicans and Democrats has imploded.”
Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, echoes this notion that growing polarization has led to more executive orders. “What we’ve seen, fundamentally, since the Obama presidency, is that you can’t count on votes from the party that is not the president’s party.”
Ornstein also mentioned another important consideration when it comes to executive orders: the Supreme Court. He describes how the current court, controlled by conservatives, showed a willingness to allow greater executive power when there was a Republican president, but is now curtailing that power. In addition, he believes the court has begun limiting the power of the federal government in general, which will have an effect on how much Biden and his successors can utilize executive orders.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.