
Section 338: Presidential Tariffs and Import Bans
In 2026, tariffs of 50 percent took effect August 22 on a range of Canadian goods, and three September 8 proclamations excluded certain Canadian products in…
Presidential actions are the formal steps a president takes to exercise power. They include executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, vetoes, pardons, signing statements, and appointments. Some draw on the Constitution, others on powers Congress has delegated by law. Courts and Congress can limit them, and later presidents can reverse some of them.
People usually bring questions about how an executive order differs from a law, what limits apply, and when a court can strike an action down. Others ask about emergency powers, the pardon power, the veto, and how presidents fill government jobs.
An independent team explaining how government works

In 2026, tariffs of 50 percent took effect August 22 on a range of Canadian goods, and three September 8 proclamations excluded certain Canadian products in…

In January 2025, Donald Trump signed 225 executive orders in his first year—the highest first-year count since Franklin Roosevelt's emergency response to the Great Depression. Within…

Franklin D. Roosevelt issued executive orders during his presidency—the most commonly cited figure is 3,721, though some authoritative sources list 3,726. The variation in these figures…

Trump's White House has eliminated more than 300,000 federal positions in its first year through a combination of hiring freezes, mandatory return-to-office orders, and outright job…
On December 18, 2025, the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, chaired by President Donald J. Trump,…
Hours after his second inauguration, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14172 directing the U.S. government to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the…
For over 70 years, the presidential autopen has operated quietly in the White House. The machine uses a real pen to replicate a president's…
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's plan to permanently terminate thousands of furloughed federal employees during the government shutdown that began…
The Insurrection Act is a set of United States federal laws that grants the President limited authority to deploy active-duty military forces and federalize…
TrumpRx is a federal government initiative centered around the website TrumpRx.gov, which launched on February 5, 2026. The primary stated goal is to lower…
The Trump administration made changes to federal programs, offices, and initiatives between January and September 2025. The changes affected multiple policy areas including health…
Executive privilege is the asserted power of the President of the United States, along with other high-level officials in the executive branch, to withhold…
For most of American history, the office of the president was a remarkably small affair. When Herbert Hoover confronted the Great Depression in 1929,…
Learn what presidential pardons and commutations do, which cases they reach, how applications work and why the power remains hard to police.