Trump's executive actions could be felt for years to come

President Trump has since taking office leaned heavily on executive actions, the impacts of which are likely to be felt for years to come and will be harder to reverse for future administrations than those implemented by past presidents.

Within the first 100 days alone, Trump has already nearly surpassed the total number of orders that former President Biden signed throughout his entire term. These in theory should be the easiest for a successor to overturn, as they would only need to sign a new order to reverse them, unlike laws that Congress passes.

But with thousands of government employees being laid off and funding for certain federal agencies and programs being zeroed out, experts say Trump’s early actions could be longer-lasting than those of most of his predecessors.

“Most of his executive actions can be reversed in the letter of them,” said Hans Noel, an associate professor in the department of government at Georgetown University. “But if you created an agency in an organization and you’ve been building it up ... and then that goes away, then the expertise and all the building needs to start over again.” 

Trump already seems on track to have among the highest number of executive orders signed if he keeps up his pace, with 147 orders signed as of Monday, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

That’s almost more than the 162 that Biden signed in four years in office and more than two-thirds of Trump’s total from his first term. Other presidents from earlier in the 20th century still have considerably more, with Franklin Roosevelt holding the record with more than 3,700 across 12 years in office. 

But Trump is currently on track for the fastest yearly pace since then. 

Many executive orders that presidents sign are often symbolic, like Trump’s order in February declaring English as the national language. Others simply repeal orders from past presidents. 

“It's very easy to undo executive orders,” Noel said. “That's a lot of what Trump's executive orders have been, undoing past orders or making changes to things. And if anything, he's showing that you can change things that have been pretty established.” 

But perhaps Trump’s most notable executive action has been his remaking of the federal workforce and the executive branch, laying off or placing on leave thousands of workers and calling for eliminating funding for agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Institute for Peace and U.S. Agency for Global Media. 

In response to Trump's executive orders to make cuts, federal departments and agencies have been rolling out announcements of buyouts, early retirements and pending layoffs since Trump took office in January. 

While Trump’s directives and the Department of Government Efficiency’s work to cut into the federal workforce and agencies haven’t been formalized in congressional budget appropriations, they could still have lasting effects even if they’re eventually withdrawn. 

One issue is the logistical difficulty of hiring back so many people who lost their jobs and need to find a new job quickly while living in the high-cost Washington, D.C., metro area, said Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

He said this becomes less realistic the longer workers are out of work or in limbo about the status of their roles. 

Courts have stepped in by at least temporarily blocking or allowing some of Trump’s moves while larger battles play out. Most recently, a federal judge on Tuesday blocked Trump from dismantling three federal agencies that support libraries, museums, minority businesses and mediation services. 

“If we have in a month or two a bunch of court cases which definitively say certain employees were inappropriately separated from service and need to be given their jobs back with back pay, that's one thing,” Kosar said. “It's another thing if this drags on for months and months and months. These folks then will just move on, probably in most cases, and go on to different futures.” 

Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said presuming the cuts go through Congress, reappropriating the money to restore the federal workforce to its level before Trump wouldn’t be difficult as long as the money is available to spend. 

But hiring workers to fill those roles will take time, as the federal government has been “notoriously slow” at hiring, she added. 

Kosar said the process is laden with procedures and protections to ensure no favoritism or discrimination takes place. He pointed to the Presidential Management Fellowship Program, which the Trump administration eliminated earlier this year, as a possible way to “fast-track” hiring. 

The program, which was first implemented in the 1970s, takes in those who recently completed law or graduate school for a fellowship before hiring them to a position in the government. 

He said the amount of time can vary based on the agency, but hiring for any open federal position could take at least four months. 

As Trump’s blitz continues, eyes will turn to Congress with the White House having unveiled its budget request for fiscal 2026 on Friday. The administration's proposals would institute deep cuts to nondefense programs, including billions of dollars in reductions for departments such as Energy and Housing and Urban Development and agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Eric Yellin, an associate professor of history at the University of Richmond, said what happens next and the longevity of Trump’s actions will be up to a test of the relationship between the president and Congress and reaction from the public. 

He said past presidents who have wanted to shrink the size of the government have faced obstacles from Congress. 

“Even in Nixon's administration, even with Ronald Reagan, efforts to stall or limit the size of the federal government ran up against Congress,” he said, adding that former President Clinton was successful in reducing the size of the government through “deep working” with Congress. 

Beyond just hiring more people, Kamarck said Trump’s moves could cause a more long-lasting loss of expertise that federal agencies rely on. 

She pointed to the Agriculture Department scrambling to rehire fired employees who were working to address avian flu in February and trying to fill spots of employees who accepted a deferred resignation offer. 

“A lot of the stuff in the federal government is specialized,” she said, pointing to concerns that cuts to NIH could set back cancer research. “That's not easy to find people who know a lot about [cancer]. They're pretty much in demand. They're losing a lot of expertise.” 

Noel said “soft power” that agencies like USAID wield in other countries could be significantly disrupted, as it is based on development over time. Soft power is the ability of a country to influence other countries through persuasion and cooperation rather than military or economic force. 

The development programs facing cuts are considered prime examples of exerting U.S. soft power internationally. 

“That takes time and effort and maybe doesn't even work,” Noel said. “I think there's people who would argue that it's not worth it, but if it does matter, then you have to start over from scratch.”