When Donald Trump pulled open the middle drawer of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office last night, he found within it a letter from Joe Biden addressed, simply, to “47.”

This letter, from the outgoing president to his successor, was in keeping with a tradition begun by Ronald Reagan. While Trump teased that he might open it on the spot and read it together with the assembled media, he ultimately decided to read it in private.

We have no idea what Biden’s letter might say, but we can be pretty certain of one thing it doesn’t say: that executive orders are no way to govern a nation. Such a statement would’ve required wisdom and introspection — neither of which Joe Biden demonstrated at any point during the previous four years.

Biden, though, did issue a slew of executive orders during his presidency, and in moments they would disappear with successive strokes of Trump’s pen. Thus, on this day, his last in office, Biden would follow in the footsteps of Trump, who had followed in the footsteps of Barack Obama: Those presidents whose administrations lived by the executive order will, in the end, die by that same device.

Not all executive orders are the same, of course. Some, like Biden’s, are based on tyranny, while others, like Trump’s, are based on Liberty and popular support. However, all executive orders tend to be issued for the same reasons: immediacy and practicability.

Such orders, like the series that Trump issued yesterday on border security, become immediately enforceable because they bypass the lawmaking function of Congress. Executive orders are thus drug-like in both their effect and their addictiveness. But, again, they’ve become a substitute for lawmaking — without either the durability or legitimacy of legislation. And because they can be undone in an instant, they leave little likelihood of continuity from one administration to the next, except in the rare case when an outgoing president gives way to a successor from his own party, as Reagan last did for George H.W. Bush 36 years ago.

Here, we might recall how all this started. Back in November 2012, Barack Obama enacted DACA, an unconstitutional executive order that prevented the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who’d entered the U.S. as minors. Obama’s use of executive orders reached a fever pitch in January 2014, when, with three years left in his second term and facing stiff opposition from Republicans in Congress, he famously said at a cabinet meeting, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.” In doing so, he signaled his willingness to bypass Congress and enact his leftist agenda via executive order.

None of this is to take away from what Trump did yesterday, which was to make his inauguration a day-long festival of executive action, with the indefatigable president moving from speech to luncheon to presser to ball and signing much-anticipated orders all along the way. In all, Trump signed 42 executive orders, 115 personal actions, and more than 200 executive actions. As the Associated Press grimly reports:

Donald Trump began erasing Joe Biden’s legacy immediately after taking office as the nation’s 47th president on Monday, pardoning nearly all of his supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and issuing a blizzard of executive orders that signal his desire to remake American institutions.

It was an aggressive start for a returning president who feels emboldened and vindicated by his unprecedented political comeback. Four years after being voted out of the White House, Trump has a second chance to launch what he called “a golden age” for the country.

He signed orders for increasing border security, designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, limiting birthright citizenship, freezing new regulations and establishing a task force for reducing the size of the federal government. He also rescinded dozens of directives issued by Biden, including those relating to climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Whether Trump will seek to pass permanent legislation on any of these fronts is unknowable at this point, but his executive actions — especially those directed at declaring a border emergency — are already yielding results.

One particular border action bears special attention: Trump’s order ending so-called birthright citizenship, an ill-conceived policy that, as I wrote in 2023, has dubious origins in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and whose language was meant to apply to slaves, not illegal immigrants. Trump’s executive order here will no doubt invite legal challenges, but in doing so may force the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the issue once and for all.

And that, I suppose, is one more useful application of an executive order.