Having been sworn in in January, the 45th president didn’t take long before signing off on executive orders. Within the past few months, Trump has signed off on well over 35 executive memoranda, a type of executive action that is legally binding and has the backing of the full force of the law.

“Regardless of what you think about Trump, he’s doing what he promised to do,” sophomore Easton Gilbert said. “When has another president actually stuck to the promises he made on the campaign trail? Obama didn’t do it, Clinton didn’t do it, [and] Bush didn’t do it.”

Some of these orders have been found to be particularly controversial such as Trump signing off to advance the creation of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. This was a widely debated issue due to the fact it may disrupt Native American established sites, as well as posing a major environmental risk that pumping back thousands of barrels of crude oil a day could create. However, despite these issues, it would allow the United States to be less reliant on foreign powers for oil, and could result in a huge significant economic boom.

“I don’t really agree with how Trump is going about this,” junior Kendall Lincoln said, “It doesn’t seem fair to build on [the native] sites without their permission, even if it’s going to help America.”
Trump has signed off on actions that will help increase the funding and size of the military, a plan that could potentially defeat the terrorist group ISIS, and issued a temporary travel ban that would have affected people coming from seven countries with high terrorist activity. However both the intentional proposal and the revised one have been blocked from being put in place by the federal court, due to the vetting system in place being substantial already, and the fear that the ban may only cause issues. Trump has also signed off an order than will limit the federal government’s regulations of climate control in hope that it will create more jobs in the long falling coal mining industry. However, due to the rise of new and cleaner forms of energy, this change is questionable.

“While I mostly try to stay away from politics, I don’t think he should be such an influential person in our country built on diversity,” sophomore Angelina Cook said. “He’s working to break down achievements that we’ve worked to accomplish over time and it’s really disheartening, to be honest. I only hope things don’t end up too bad.”