WASHINGTON, April 23, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - In his near-100 days in power, President Donald Trump has signed a staggering number of executive orders -- an unprecedented 130 -- that topple many cornerstones of US policy.

Straight after his January 20 inauguration, the Republican leader revoked 67 executive orders issued under his predecessor Joe Biden.

Since then, he has signed edicts aimed at dismantling federal programs -- nearly half his orders go toward that, according to an AFP tally.

A quarter of them formalize his positions in the culture wars polarizing the country. And around a fifth exact revenge on some of his adversaries.

- Undoing predecessors' legacies -

A smiling portrait of Ronald Reagan -- who coined the "Make America Great Again" slogan -- may sit in the Oval Office, but Trump has set about dismantling the United States Institute of Peace conceived under that former Republican president.

And the day he took office, Trump signed an executive order suspending funding to USAID, America's foreign-aid agency, whose budget had been expanded under George W. Bush.

On March 14, Trump directed extreme cuts to the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, also created under Reagan, and the Minority Business Development Agency, established under another Republican president, Richard Nixon.

Another decree aimed to close the Department of Education, with its functions to be transferred to individual states. That runs counter to policy established under George W. Bush's 2002 "No Child Left Behind" school reform law, which scaled up the department's federal role.

In an April 8 executive order, Trump directed the Department of Justice to halt enforcement of "burdensome" state-level laws designed to address climate change when it came to energy.

Approximately half a dozen other orders targeted US federal services by putting their functioning in the sights of Elon Musk's cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

- Culture wars -

The issues of DEI -- diversity, equity and inclusion -- are obviously triggers for Trump, who has signed no fewer than 40 decrees seeking to purge them from US public life.

On January 20, Trump signed a decree doing away with "radical" DEI programs and telling federal agencies to "use the term 'sex' and not 'gender'" in their documents, erasing the idea of "gender identity."

Others followed, to exclude transgender people from the military, ending positive discrimination, and "eradicating anti-Christian bias" in federal government.

Trump also ordered that the Gulf of Mexico be called the "Gulf of America."

In a March 1 order, Trump directed that English be the United States' official language, meaning that federal agencies would no longer be required to provide services in other languages, such as widely spoken Spanish.

- Punishing opponents -

Trump has also used his executive order power to target opponents.

On January 20, he revoked security clearances held by dozens of former government officials, including his first-term national security advisor John Bolton, accusing them of having "weaponized" intelligence to "manipulate the political process" during the 2020 presidential campaign.

He has also targeted law firms that represented his adversaries, withdrawing their federal contracts and access to sensitive information.

Of the five law firms he named, four have obtained injunctions against the order being followed. The fifth saw the executive order against it pulled after a deal struck with the Trump administration that numerous lawyers viewed as "capitulation."

- Soccer and straws -

Some of Trump's orders are difficult to categorize.

For instance, there are ones creating working groups, such as a "task force on celebrating America's 250th birthday," or another to prepare next year's FIFA World Cup, to be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Trump also decreed the creation of a "strategic Bitcoin reserve," and a "national energy dominance council."

Then there are the orders on the resale of concert tickets, reversing the ban on plastic straws and... on regulating water pressure in American showers.