President Donald Trump has been back in office for almost a year -- roughly 315 days -- and has governed with the urgency of a turnaround CEO. He hit the ground running, signing executive orders immediately after inauguration and maintaining a pace unmatched in modern politics.
But what becomes of all this action? Executive orders can be reversed the moment a new president arrives unless Congress codifies them into law. That’s the key difference between temporary executive action and lasting legislative reform.
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According to Ballotpedia, “As of November 25, 2025, President Donald Trump had signed 217 executive orders, 54 memoranda, and 110 proclamations in his second presidential term, which began on January 20, 2025.”
Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged that Congress has codified only 28 of these actions into law through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
That’s barely 13 percent - almost identical to Gallup’s 15 percent job-approval rating for Congress. Coincidence or correlation? Likely both.
What EOs did Congress codify? Three major categories of Trump’s executive actions did become law:
Energy, mining, and land-use reforms - a structural shift toward domestic production
- Cost-efficiency, anti-waste, and bureaucracy-reduction measures
- Sweeping immigration and border-security policies
These are significant accomplishments, but they represent only a fraction of Trump’s overall MAGA agenda.
Where has Congress dropped the ball? Some of the most consequential orders have not been codified:
- Withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization
- Establishing a digital-asset framework while banning a central bank digital currency (CBDC)
- Ending DEI and gender-ideology indoctrination in K–12 education
Codification is important because once these policies are signed into law, they will remain in effect beyond the Trump presidency unless Congress enacts new legislation to modify them. Make no mistake, a Democrat-controlled House and Senate will eventually, and at their usual pace, do just that, but a new Democrat president, with “a phone and a pen,” as Obama boasted, could reverse any or all of Trump’s EOs on day one.
Congress is also sleeping through nominations. While Congressional Democrats are openly instructing the military to question or even disobey Trump’s orders based on their “feelings,” what is the Republican-controlled Congress doing? Very little.
The Washington Post, which is tracking federal appointments, reports that of the 823 of 1,300 Senate-confirmable positions, the Senate has confirmed only 265. But 123 nominees still wait, and wait, for Senate action. When will they be confirmed? Next year? Next decade?
At the same time, 289 positions remain without a nominee, likely because no one wants to wait in a line that moves more slowly than the DMV. 165 Biden/Obama era holdovers remain in the administration. These officials, loyal to the former presidents, have every reason to leak, undermine, or sabotage the Trump agenda.
Is it any surprise that over the past 50 years, U.S. presidents have had only three phone calls leaked, while Trump has had more than ten leaked in just five years? That doesn’t happen by accident, and one wonders if this is how the bipartisan DC establishment is monitoring and sabotaging Trump.
Then there are judges – left waiting while leaving justice hanging. Twelve federal district court nominees are waiting for Senate action. Why the delay? Perhaps because a fully staffed judiciary might take a dim view of misconduct by people like James Comey or Letitia James.
Even after implementing new “en bloc” confirmation rules, Brookings reports that 108 nominees remain stuck in procedural purgatory, including 29 ambassadors, 16 U.S. attorneys, 7 undersecretaries, 6 general counsels, and one inspector general.
Is this treatment exclusive to Trump and other Republican presidents? To be fair, this bottleneck existed before Trump. According to ProPublica, “More than 13 percent of presidentially appointed positions hadn’t been filled at the end of Obama’s first term … compared with around 10 percent for Bush and 11 percent for Clinton.”
And the University of Virginia’s Miller Center notes, “In only 20 years, the average number of days from nomination to confirmation has nearly doubled … from 80 days under George W. Bush to 145 days under President Joseph Biden.” From slow to slower, in bipartisan fashion.
Why does the executive branch require 1,300 Senate-confirmed positions, more than any other developed country on earth? And why does the Senate take nearly half a year to complete some of these, and years to finish the job?
A new corporate CEO usually assembles a new team immediately and starts working. The U.S. president, as CEO of the world’s largest organization, is throttled by 535 ne'er-do-well lawmakers, who often prioritize personal gain or re-election over their Article One duties.
The Miller Center also found that cloture votes on nominations alone consumed 55 percent of all recorded Senate votes during Trump’s first two years and 59 percent during Biden’s.
If nominations consume the Senate, it’s no wonder they can’t codify more of Trump’s executive orders, or balance a budget, or address any of the nation’s spiraling crises. Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution?
Maybe Congress needs to borrow Biden’s autopen to speed things up. Ironically, Trump is threatening to void all documents allegedly signed by Biden using the autopen.
This isn’t separation of powers. It’s a codependent relationship between a narcissistic Congress and a battered, overburdened presidency.
America faces serious problems, yet the legislature cannot lead, follow, or get out of the way. The modern Senate and House have become the federal government’s welfare queens, consuming enormous public resources while producing almost nothing of value.
Consider that the House averages 147 legislative days per year, while the Senate averages 165. That’s working less than half the year, with a salary of $174K. Annualized, they are the top 2-3 percenters.
Yet members of Congress always find time for cable-news appearances, performative X videos, insider trading, fundraising dinners, and theatrical moral outrage. They enjoy pensions and health plans the public would kill for, and lord over personal staffs averaging 15 to 30 employees.
Earlier this year, protesters organized “No Kings” rallies targeting Trump. Fine, but who are the true kings and queens?
America’s true unaccountable aristocracy isn’t in the Oval Office. It’s the 535 members of Congress who work part-time, accomplish little, line their pockets well, and slow-walk the agenda that voters chose. And excellent job security with a 90 percent reelection rate.
If Americans want accountability, they should stop yelling at the White House and start asking why Congress is allowed to sleep on the job.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer.
