Fun fact: In his first 15 days in office, President Joe Biden issued a whopping 52 executive orders or memorandums that seek to implement new policies with the supposed weight of federal law, but solely on Biden’s authority.
Funner fact: That is more presidential directives than were issued by America’s first nine presidents combined, according to the American Presidency Project.
Not until President John Tyler, who entered the job 52 years after George Washington took his first oath of office, do presidents compile as many executive orders as Biden did in two weeks.
Now, at least someone might finally be saying enough.
South Dakota state Rep. Aaron Aylward, a Republican, has filed a bill that would give his state’s officials the authority to review executive presidential orders and reject them under certain circumstances.
A panel called the Executive Board of the Legislative Research Council could review any executive order issued by any president, if, as the bill states, “the order has not been affirmed by a vote of the Congress of the United States and signed into law, as prescribed by the Constitution of the United States.”
The board could then recommend to the state attorney general and the governor that the attorney general determine if the order is constitutional and whether the state should seek an “exemption” or “seek to have the order declared to be an unconstitutional exercise of legislative authority by the President.”
This process would bar all government agencies and officials within South Dakota from implementing a presidential executive order that “restricts a person’s rights, or that is determined by the attorney general to be unconstitutional” if it relates to:
A pandemic or other public health emergency; the regulation of natural resources, the agricultural industry, or land use; the regulation of the financial sector through the “imposition of environmental, social, or governance standards; the regulation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Aylward told local media, “This isn’t just a President Biden issue but rather an overall executive overreach issue that we’ve been experiencing for a long time.”
“The U.S. Congress has abdicated their duty for a long time in different areas. This bill is simply setting up a process to nullify acts that would be unconstitutional. When looking at the U.S. Constitution, the president only has the powers that are laid out in Article II.”
Alward concluded that his bill “would give South Dakota much of its power back.”
“Per the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, the powers of the federal government need to line up with what is laid out in the document,” he said.
Joe Biden: Making federalism great again.