Trump Puts Focus on Biden's Tax Plans 

Former President Donald Trump marked Tax Day on April 15 by putting the focus on President Joe Biden's tax plans for a second term, if Biden should win reelection. 

On Truth Social, Trump reminded his followers that he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut taxes for most individuals and corporations. But most of the individual income tax provisions expire after next year. (For details, see our article "A Guide to the Tax Changes.")

Trump warned that if Biden "gets his way, you will soon be facing colossal tax HIKES.” But as Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley writes, Biden’s 2025 budget proposal supports extending Trump's tax cuts for individual filers earning less than $400,000 and married couples making less than $450,000. The proposal would increase taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.

As he has in the past, Biden proposes to raise the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, and to restore the top individual tax rate of 39.6% from the current rate of 37%. The budget would also increase the corporate minimum tax rate to 21% for companies that report average profits in excess of $1 billion over a three-year period. (The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act established a minimum of 15%.)

“Bottom line: Biden is promising to protect the TCJA tax cuts for at least 95 percent of households,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Rob via email.

For more, read Rob's story "Trump’s Unfounded ‘Colossal’ Tax Hike Warning."

Reader: What is the purpose of executive orders? Emergencies? To evade congressional process? What's a normal amount for a president? 

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: The purpose of executive orders varies, but to have a legal effect each order must state its source of authority as "either the President’s powers in Article II of the Constitution or an express or implied delegation of power from Congress to the President,” as explained in a 2021 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Historically, executive orders have been used to carry out "routine administrative matters and the internal operations of federal agencies," the Department of Justice explains on its website.

Executive orders can be used in emergency situations. The National Emergencies Act allows the president to declare or terminate emergencies by issuing an executive order. President Joe Biden last month issued an executive order to terminate three previous executive orders that imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe and some of its government officials. 

More recently, executive orders have been used more broadly to implement policy directives without congressional action, the Justice Department website says. 

For example, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order days after taking office that said so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” that “fail to comply with applicable Federal law” would not be eligible for federal funds, “except as mandated by law.” Such orders have the full force and effect of laws. But, like laws, they are also subject to legal challenges. In this case, the order was tied up in courts for years until Biden took office and issued an executive order to rescind Trump's order. 

Similarly, Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office to create an interagency working group and require the group to take into account the “benefits of reducing climate pollution” and “the full costs of greenhouse gas emissions” in the federal decision-making process. The Supreme Court upheld the order, declining to take up a challenge by the Louisiana attorney general.  

As for the number of executive orders, the Federal Register makes that information available on its website, dating to 1937.

To date, Biden has issued 138 executive orders, with most of them (77) issued in his first year in office. In four years, Trump issued 220 executive orders. 

As for other recent presidents:

• Barack Obama issued 277 in eight years.
• George W. Bush issued 291 in eight years.
• Bill Clinton issued 361 in eight years.
• George H.W. Bush issued 166 in four years.
• Ronald Reagan issued 381 in eight years. 

A big caveat to all this is that presidents may issue other presidential directives, such as proclamations and memoranda, that “may be employed to direct and govern the actions of government officials and agencies,” as explained in the CRS report. 

As we wrote in 2013, Obama issued 23 “executive actions” to address gun violence, including presidential memoranda “to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations” and to direct “the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.” None were executive orders. 

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Judge Hasn’t Ruled on Trump’s Graduation Request": On the first day of his criminal fraud trial in New York, former President Donald Trump requested that the judge not hold court proceedings on May 17 — the day of his youngest son’s high school graduation. The judge did not rule on the request, saying he preferred to wait to see how the trial unfolds.
• "O.J. Simpson Died from Cancer, Not COVID-19 Vaccine": O.J. Simpson, a football star who was acquitted in the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, died of cancer on April 10 at age 76. Misinformation spread online within hours of the news. Social media posts falsely claimed that the cancer was related to his COVID-19 vaccination. Simpson was vaccinated, but there is no evidence that vaccination causes cancer or that it was to blame for his death.
• "Viral Claim Inflates Number of New Voters in Three States": A claim on social media misrepresents the number of people who have registered to vote in three states in 2024 and suggests the new voters are immigrants in the country illegally. There have been 194,000 newly registered voters in those states — not 2 million — and there’s no evidence they are immigrants in the U.S. illegally. 
• "Posts Misrepresent Views of Eclipse With Composite Images": During the April 8 eclipse, people in the path of totality were able to see solar phenomena, including the sun’s corona. But social media posts have shared altered or composite images of these phenomena, claiming one image was “captured by NASA.” It was actually an artist’s rendering of a composite photo of the 2017 eclipse.

• "Publicaciones plantean preocupaciones infundadas sobre el aluminio en las vacunas": Por muchas décadas se han utilizado pequeñas cantidades de aluminio para reforzar la respuesta inmunitaria a las vacunas. La exposición a altos niveles de aluminio se ha asociado a problemas cerebrales y óseos, pero no hay pruebas de que el nivel de exposición que proporcionan las vacunas provoque dicha toxicidad, al contrario de lo que se afirma en las redes sociales.