How many executive orders by president?

Between Inauguration Day and Jan. 31, Trump signed seven executive orders and 11 memos; in the same time frame, Obama signed nine orders and 10 memos. Some executive actions are controversial, some are procedural, and some simply reverse orders signed by prior presidents. read more

Many early executive orders were not recorded. The State Department began numbering executive orders in the early 20th century, starting retroactively from President Abraham Lincoln's Executive Order Establishing a Provisional Court in Louisiana issued in 1862. read more

Many scholars said that the number of executive orders is a useless metric for judging whether a president is abusing his executive powers. “A president could issue 1,000 executive orders,” said Chris Edelson, an assistant professor at American University’s School of Government. read more