Trump’s ‘Flood the Zone’ Strategy Also Involves a Lot of Mopping Up
The president’s push to do everything at once has overwhelmed Democrats, the courts, the media—and the White House.
Photo illustration: Kyle Berger for Bloomberg Businessweek
Donald Trump returned to the White House in January with a far more ambitious to-do list than he had the first time around. His desire to challenge or ignore constitutional limits on his power was spelled out in Project 2025, the far-right governing agenda he disavowed with a wink during the campaign and then immediately set in motion with a frenzy of activity that hasn’t let up.
From Jan. 20 to Sept. 20, Trump signed 205 executive orders, an imperfect but useful yardstick of presidential productivity. Compare that with Ronald Reagan, another ambitious Republican president, whose count at this point in his second term was only 35. You’d have to go back to the 261 executive orders Franklin D. Roosevelt signed in the first eight months of his third term to find a president who was quicker with a Sharpie.