When people talk about presidents with most executive orders, they usually think of a modern "power grab." We see the news alerts on our phones and assume the current guy in the White House is shattering records left and right. Honestly? Most of us are looking at the wrong era.
If you want to find the real heavy hitters of the executive pen, you have to look back to the early 20th century. Specifically, the time between 1901 and 1945. This was the wild west of administrative law. Presidents weren't just "tweaking" policy; they were fundamentally rebuilding the country, sometimes dozens of times a week.
The Undisputed King of the Pen
Franklin D. Roosevelt is in a league of his own. It’s not even close. During his 12 years in office, FDR signed 3,721 executive orders. To put that in perspective, if a modern president wanted to catch him, they’d have to sign about one order every single day for the next ten years.
He didn't do this just because he liked the sound of a fountain pen on parchment. He was governing through the Great Depression and World War II. He used these orders to declare bank holidays, create the Works Progress Administration, and—more controversially—order the internment of Japanese Americans via Executive Order 9066.
FDR’s pace was frantic. In 1933 alone, his first year, he churned out 568 orders. Compare that to recent history. For a long time, the record for a "first year" in the modern era was held by Joe Biden with 77 or Harry Truman with 178 (if you count his partial first year in 1945). However, Donald Trump significantly ramped up this pace in his second term, signing 225 orders in 2025 alone. Even with that surge, he's still basically a footnote compared to Roosevelt’s mountain of paperwork.
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The Top Five: A Historical Heavyweight Map
It’s easy to get lost in the numbers. Let’s look at who actually sits at the top of the list for presidents with most executive orders.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt: 3,721 orders. The gold standard for executive action.
- Woodrow Wilson: 1,803 orders. Wilson used them extensively to manage the mobilization for World War I.
- Calvin Coolidge: 1,203 orders. This is the one that usually shocks people. "Silent Cal" wasn't so silent when it came to executive actions.
- Theodore Roosevelt: 1,081 orders. TR was the first to really push the "Stewardship Theory," believing the President could do anything not explicitly forbidden by the Constitution.
- Herbert Hoover: 968 orders. Despite his reputation for a "hands-off" approach to the Depression, he was quite busy with the pen.
Why were these numbers so much higher back then? Basically, the federal government was smaller and less organized. Before the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the executive order was the primary way to tell the government how to function. Today, we have a massive code of federal regulations. Back then, they just had the President's word.
What Most People Get Wrong About Modern Totals
You’ve probably heard someone complain that recent presidents are "ruling by decree." While the impact of modern orders is often massive, the volume is actually way down.
Take a look at the "modern" era totals:
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- Harry Truman: 907
- Dwight Eisenhower: 484
- Ronald Reagan: 381
- Bill Clinton: 364
- George W. Bush: 291
- Barack Obama: 276
- Donald Trump: 448 (Total across two terms as of early 2026)
- Joe Biden: 162
Notice a trend? With the exception of the very recent spike in 2025, the numbers have generally been sliding or stabilizing.
But here is the "kinda" sneaky part: Presidents have started using "Presidential Memoranda." These are basically executive orders without the fancy name or the requirement to be numbered and published in the same way. If you add those in, the "action" count for Obama, Trump, and Biden looks a lot higher.
Why the Numbers Spike (and Why It Matters)
There are two main reasons a president starts cranking these out.
First: Crisis. War and economic collapse demand fast action. You can't wait for a committee in the House of Representatives to debate a banking crisis for six months.
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Second: Gridlock. When Congress can't agree on what color the sky is, presidents get frustrated. They start looking for "workarounds." If they can’t get a law passed to protect a piece of land, they use an executive order to declare it a National Monument.
The downside? What is signed by one pen can be erased by the next. We saw this in 2021 and again in 2025. On his first day back in office in 2025, Donald Trump signed 26 executive orders, many of which were designed specifically to undo what Joe Biden had done. It creates a "pendulum" effect where policy swings wildly every four to eight years.
Actionable Insights for the Informed Citizen
If you want to actually track this without the media spin, here’s how you do it:
- Check the Federal Register: This is the official daily journal of the government. If it’s an Executive Order, it has to be published there.
- Look for the "Authority": Every order has to cite where the President gets the power to do it (usually "the Constitution and the laws of the United States"). If they don't cite a specific law, it’s more likely to be challenged in court.
- Watch the Courts: Modern executive orders are frequently sued. If a judge issues an "injunction," that order is basically frozen.
- Don't ignore the Proclamations: These are usually ceremonial (like "National Honeybee Day"), but sometimes they carry real weight, like trade tariffs or immigration restrictions.
Understanding the presidents with most executive orders isn't just about trivia. It’s about seeing how the balance of power in Washington has shifted from the halls of Congress to a single desk in the Oval Office.
To stay truly updated on current executive actions, you can visit the National Archives website, which maintains a searchable database of every numbered order. If you're interested in the legal standing of these orders, the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara offers a deep dive into the specific language used by every president from Washington to the present.