What are orders? A powerful tool used by US presidents

Sometimes orders are made in wartime or to prevent an internal crisis. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that led to the creation of detention centers for approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans.

In 1952, President Harry Truman issued an executive order that placed the steel industry under government control in an attempt to avoid a strike.

On his first day in office on January 20, 2021, Biden signed an executive order to begin the process of rejoining the 2015 Paris climate accord, from which his predecessor Trump formally withdrew. Biden’s secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, said it was “to help us all avoid catastrophic global warming.”