Trump says he will cancel all Biden executive orders signed by autopen

theguardian.com

17 points·vinni2··3 comments

As I recall from government class, executive orders are essentially just a way for the executive branch agencies to understand how the president thinks they should interpret their congressional mandates — so this is basically meaningless, he could/should cancel any executive order he wants, only doing the ones signed via auto pen is meaningless political posturing.

You mean he can try to. How did that work out when he tried to end the daca executive order by Obama? Not well that executive order became defacto law in some aspects. Your government class was teaching what executive orders should be but not what they are in practice or application.

For those interested, the executive order set forth the Obama administration's policy. The first Trump administration attempted to wind down DACA through an agency memorandum. In a splintered ruling that, among other things, wrestled with pertinent provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Supreme Court invalidated the Trump administration's agency action as arbitrary and capricious under the superseding principles of the Administrative Procedure Act.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf

So Obama's executive order was not de facto law; rather, the Trump administration violated the law in the way it went about shifting policy. And as the Supreme Court noted, executive policies can be changed — but statutory law must be respected when doing so.

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