Once the dust settled on the 2024 elections, Republicans had reason to be optimistic about the party’s agenda. For the first time since 2017, the party would control the White House and both chambers of Congress, opening the door to a series of possible legislative victories.
But 12 weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, if you’re thinking you haven’t seen a lot of bill-signing ceremonies lately, it’s not your imagination. Punchbowl News reported that the Republican president has taken a great many ambitious steps to advance his priorities, yet signed very few bills into law.
Trump has signed fewer bills into law at this point in his presidency than any new president taking office for the last seven decades, according to government records. Trump has signed just five bills into law so far: three Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning Biden-era regulations, the Laken Riley Act and a stopgap funding bill needed to avoid a government shutdown last month.
The same report noted that every other modern president — including presidents of one party working with Congresses led by the other party — had signed more bills into law by this point in their terms. In fact, in his first term, even Trump himself had signed 24 pieces of legislation by mid-April.
There are, to be sure, plenty of reasons for this. For one thing, the GOP majority in the House is tiny, and it was even smaller before the congressional special elections held earlier this month. What’s more, Senate filibusters were relatively uncommon before the 21st century, while they’re now a standard part of the legislative process. (In Dwight Eisenhower’s first year as president, a grand total of one bill — literally, just one — faced a cloture vote.)
But the easiest explanation is also the most obvious: Trump isn’t signing a lot of bills because he doesn’t feel the need to rely on Congress to advance his priorities. As the Republican’s second term nears the three-month mark, the president has governed — I’m using the word loosely — almost entirely by executive order, signing 124 EOs since returning to the White House.
In fact, Trump signed more executive orders in the first two months of his second term than in the first two years of his first term. In theory, Congress might push back against the idea of institutional irrelevance, but in practice, GOP leaders in the House and Senate appear quite content to let Trump consolidate power and pursue far-right goals without meaningful contributions from Capitol Hill. In fairness, this might soon change. Last week, Republicans managed to advance their budget blueprint, which opened the door to a sweeping and radical reconciliation package, which will likely include costly tax breaks and dramatic cuts to vital social service programs, including Medicaid. No one knows when such a bill will take shape, but it’s very likely to exist in the near future, setting the stage for one of the biggest legislative showdowns in years. But for now, the pens Trump uses to sign bills into law remain stuck in his desk drawer to a degree unseen in generations.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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