Duke public policy professors reflect on Trump's slew of controversial executive orders

Less than a month into his second term, President Donald Trump has signed over 60 executive orders, the most in a president's first 100 days in over four decades.

To understand the quantity, legality and implications of the president's executive orders, The Chronicle spoke to three professors from the Sanford School of Public Policy.

“Trump is claiming powers that he really doesn't have and essentially daring Congress to try to push back on his exercise of these powers,” said David Schanzer, professor of the practice in the Sanford School.

Schanzer outlined that the Trump administration is legally allowed to set policy within the constraints of the executive branch. However, in the last month, his administration has issued executive orders focused on federal funding and congressionally appropriated aid, raising constitutional challenges.

To Schanzer, however, a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to push back on executive-branch efforts to “intervene” on the “power of the purse.”

“​​He's acting illegally and then daring anybody to try to reverse these illegal actions,” he said.

Some of Trump’s orders have targeted funding for federal agencies including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which receive congressionally appropriated funds. Several court rulings have blocked funding freezes, but it remains unclear how the Trump administration will respond.

“Our judicial system, in addition to our overall democratic system, is going through a major stress test,” said Abdullah Antepli, professor of the practice in the Sanford School.

“[The executive orders] seem to be partisan,” Antepli said. “They seem to be done in the spirit of virtue signaling, just trying to rise your own partisan base and delivering political promises instead of elections.”

One such controversial executive order, titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, challenges the legal standing of birthright citizenship — and over a century of precedent.

Asher Hildebrand, professor of the practice in the Sanford School, believes that the order violates one of the basic tenets of the Constitution.

“Birthright citizenship is plainly outlined in the Constitution … and we’ll have multiple judges affirm that by blocking that order,” he said.

Four federal judges have issued preliminary injunctions on the order as of Thursday. Another executive order targeting medical care for transgender youth was also recently blocked by a federal judge.

“If you have the sitting president openly defying the orders of a federal judge to conduct policy in accordance with laws set by the legislative branch, then that is a textbook definition of a constitutional crisis,” Hildebrand said.

Despite their concerns about the potential constitutional implications of these executive orders, the professors also expressed cautious optimism about the resilience of American democratic institutions.

“We still have a functional judicial system, we still have institutions, we still have elections,” Antepli said, pointing to the country's 250-year history of navigating political challenges. “In less than two years, we will have another election, and these policies and executive orders will be put on a referendum.”

For Hildebrand, the American people give him hope because they “still hold the power to speak out about [Trump’s actions], to contact their members of Congress and ultimately, to elect somebody else who will do something different.”

---