A President at Full Speed -- and a Congress Asleep at the Wheel

American Thinker ^ | 1 Dec, 2025 | Brian C. Joondeph

[MtnClimber]

President Donald Trump has been back in office for almost a year -- roughly 315 days -- and has governed with the urgency of a turnaround CEO. He hit the ground running, signing executive orders immediately after inauguration and maintaining a pace unmatched in modern politics.

But what becomes of all this action? Executive orders can be reversed the moment a new president arrives unless Congress codifies them into law. That’s the key difference between temporary executive action and lasting legislative reform.

According to Ballotpedia, “As of November 25, 2025, President Donald Trump had signed 217 executive orders, 54 memoranda, and 110 proclamations in his second presidential term, which began on January 20, 2025.”

Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged that Congress has codified only 28 of these actions into law through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

That’s barely 13 percent - almost identical to Gallup’s 15 percent job-approval rating for Congress. Coincidence or correlation? Likely both.

What EOs did Congress codify? Three major categories of Trump’s executive actions did become law:

- Energy, mining, and land-use reforms - a structural shift toward domestic production

- Cost-efficiency, anti-waste, and bureaucracy-reduction measures

- Sweeping immigration and border-security policies

These are significant accomplishments, but they represent only a fraction of Trump’s overall MAGA agenda.

Where has Congress dropped the ball? Some of the most consequential orders have not been codified:

- Withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization

- Establishing a digital-asset framework while banning a central bank digital currency (CBDC)

- Ending DEI and gender-ideology indoctrination in K–12 education

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: congress; deepstate; rinos; tds; undermining

[central_va]

I respect the Democrat’s ability to leverage and wield power. You got to give them credit for that.