What are executive orders? Powerful tool used by US presidents
Sometimes orders are given during war or to avert a domestic 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 order placing the steel industry under government control in an effort to avoid strikes.
On his first day in office on January 20, 2021, Biden signed an order beginning the process of rejoining the 2015 Paris climate agreement, from which his predecessor Trump formally withdrew. Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said “this was to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming”.
