Executive orders don't always live up to claims
David Lauter
... a review .. of the 39 orders and presidential memorandums signed by Trump found that fewer than half actually made a substantive change in federal policy. Sixteen of the directives simply told Cabinet agencies to study a problem and come up with recommendations — something that in many cases the agencies had the authority to do even without a formal order.
Of the executive orders that actually did change policy, two — the original and revised versions of Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. by residents of several majority-Muslim countries — have been blocked by courts. Another was a freeze on hiring by federal departments, which the White House rescinded last week after it was blamed for worsening backlogs at Veterans hospitals and Social Security offices. And an order from January, reorganizing the National Security Council to add Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon, was negated by another earlier this month that took Bannon off the panel.
That leaves about a dozen orders that have truly succeeded in changing policy. Most involve rolling back Obama administration environmental policies or toughening immigration enforcement — two priorities on which the administration has focused sustained attention.
A number of Trump’s early executive actions were “not well thought-through,” said John Hudak, deputy director at the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Many of them “were quite rushed. The president was trying to achieve fairly dramatic public policy change too quickly” — as with the travel ban. “Rushing things through is risky,” he added. “You can end up looking like you’re not competent” ...
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-executive-orders-20170416-story.html
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