Cards in Deck: Trump Keeps Stack of Orders Ready to Play as Needed

The Washington Post

12:34 JST, June 7, 2025

Months before President Donald Trump issued a travel ban on individuals from more than a dozen countries, his team of lawyers and advisers had already started crafting the ban, a process that was underway before he stepped back into the Oval Office in January.

Trump announced the proclamation Wednesday night, three days after an Egyptian man with an expired tourist visa was charged with attacking pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado. Trump said the crime “underscores the danger posed to our country by foreign nationals not properly vetted.”

“We don’t want ’em,” Trump said in a video announcing the ban.

But a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Wednesday night’s proclamation “was not a direct response to” the Colorado attack. Trump was always going to implement a travel ban, his advisers say.

The announcement was the latest example of how the Trump administration has dipped into its large reserve of proclamations and executive orders – many of which have been long in the making – to drive its chosen narrative, push the president’s priorities and sometimes change the subject when news coverage focuses on topics that Trump officials prefer to downplay.

Throughout Trump’s second term, White House staff have maintained a stash of executive orders and proclamations they can deploy depending on the themes of the moment and the narratives they want to shape, a senior White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about internal strategies.

Some orders are put into the calendar well in advance, the official said. Others are teed up the night before they are signed depending on impulse, political strategy and the overall mood within the White House, the official said.

On this occasion, Trump invoked the recent attack in Colorado as an example of why the new measure was needed, even though Egypt is not one of the countries listed in the proclamation.

Wednesday evening was the time the president and his team chose to hit the go button on the long-planned travel ban – making the announcement as Trump and his White House team were pushing Congress to embrace his sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill legislation, and as Elon Musk, who until recently was a top Trump ally, was increasing his criticism of Trump’s bill.

During Trump’s first term, he implemented a similar travel ban just a week after taking office. It was later revoked by President Joe Biden.

A number of the executive orders Trump has signed this term were written during the presidential transition. Wednesday’s travel ban had been in the works since soon after Trump reentered office this January, four White House officials told The Washington Post. Broad plans to implement such a ban were underway even earlier, as Trump’s lawyers crafted an executive order he signed on his first day in office, requiring the Cabinet to begin developing a potential travel ban.

Some of the president’s recent executive actions sat in the pile for much less time: Two other proclamations issued Wednesday night were the result of the White House quickly springing into action to seize on recent events. One restricted international students and scholars from entering the country to attend or teach at Harvard University. The other ordered the White House counsel to open an investigation into whether Biden and his staff covered up his cognitive decline.

Those orders were “new,” a White House official said.

The Harvard proclamation came just days after a federal judge blocked an earlier effort by the administration to revoke the university’s ability to host foreign students and scholars, a critical source of money for Harvard.

The order to investigate Biden and his use of the autopen – a tool presidents have long used to sign certain documents and executive orders – followed a flurry of news coverage in recent weeks alleging Biden’s cognitive state was in decline throughout his time in office. Trump has alleged without evidence that Biden’s staff used the autopen to sign documents without the president’s knowledge.

Trump’s approach to executive action has differed notably from that of his predecessors, who resorted to it at times but never with the intense frequency of Trump’s first months in office.

In less than five months, Trump has signed 157 executive orders and 62 proclamations, according to data from the Federal Register, a pace faster than any modern president. Trump surpassed the pace of his first term, when he signed an average of 55 orders a year, according to data compiled by the American Presidency Project.

White House staff secretary Will Scharf is responsible for managing the flow of orders onto Trump’s desk. When orders and proclamations are signed publicly, Scharf, standing at Trump’s side, serves the role not only of a lawyer, but something akin to a game show host sidekick – placing each leather-bound order in front of Trump and announcing what every order accomplishes. Trump, meanwhile, will grab a thick black marker from a small box of them placed by his right hand, positioning himself in the stance to begin signing as Scharf gives his summary.

Trump has already signed more orders than President Barack Obama in either term, and at the current clip, is likely to surpass this year Biden’s sum of 162 orders over four years.

Trump’s use of the executive order mirrors Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed an average of 307 orders a year during his more than 12 years in office. However, FDR also worked with Congress to implement his agenda through legislation. Trump signed just five bills into law in the first 100 days of his presidency.