The NYT editorial board has chosen a truly absurd list for making its anti-EO point. https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1354605352747225097

Let’s take it one by one:

• The Paris agreement is a subsidiary agreement of a treaty the Senate ratified in 1992, and its emissions targets are nonbinding. It would likely need an accompanying law to make significant change. But that’s no impediment to signing it.

• The Muslim ban was an EO exercising presidential discretion under the INA. Why would revoking require new legislation? It doesn’t.
• Keystone XL’s permit similarly was granted by executive action, exercising discretion given to the executive branch by an existing law.

• Funding for the border wall was NOTORIOUSLY unable to pass in Congress. Trump found a dodgy executive workaround, diverting funds appropriated for other things relying on fairly BS emergency declarations. Stopping those shenanigans is a compliment to Congress’s authority.

• DACA is maybe the closest they get to having a point, but in this case Biden is maintaining the status quo that has survived through two prior administrations, while immediately proposing immigration legislation that would make it unnecessary. Hardly a slight to Congress.

• Mandating mask wearing on federal property is exercising presidential discretion, again, that’s granted under an existing statute to safeguard the federal workforce.
• The private prison EO instructs the attorney general not to renew their contracts. That’s it.

• The transgender ban was always a matter governed by executive order since 1960, until it was rescinded by the executive branch under Obama. Trump then purported to reinstate it with a series of tweets. Biden is re-rescinding it by executive order.

• And finally, calling for agency opinions (on anything, including matters of racial justice) is an intrinsic presidential power expressly set forth in Article II of the constitution. It’d be ridiculous to make Biden run every request for memos through the legislative branch.

tl;dr all the examples of executive overreach the wise opinion journalists on the NYT editorial board have chosen fall into the categories of:
- signing treaties
- exercising powers granted by statute
- revoking Trump’s executive actions
- not changing DACA
- asking for advice