What the President Could Do If He Declares a State of Emergency
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The Constitution vests executive power in the President, and explicitly envisions the existence of subordinate executive officers (mentioning explicitly the heads of executive departments, for instance) through whom the executive power vested in the President is carried into execution.
The vesting of executive power in the President necessarily includes the authority of the President to issue directions to those subordinate executive officers to carry out the executive functions vested in the President.
English has a simpler word for “directions to subordinates”, and that word is “orders”.
Executive Orders are simply published, recorded, formalized directions to subordinate officers within the executive branch.
WTF?
> What is the difference between a totalitarian government and one where the executive can create any laws he wants?
None, but there's a pretty big difference between the power to issue directions to subordinates relating the application of powers with which you are vested by the Constitution and laws, and the power to create any laws you want.
Executive Orders rely on (and are limited by) the former; they do not involve the latter.
Of course he can issue orders. They don't even need to be fancy signed documents. He can simply tell his employees what to do. Any method of communication should work, no matter how silly.
The problem you might be looking for is that congress has granted rule-making authority to agencies that are part of the executive branch and thus under control of the president. This effectively allows the president to make law.
If we didn't want executive orders to be a thing, we've had a couple of centuries now to remedy the matter.