KATE BIERLY: It’s Going To Take More Than An Executive Order To Truly Protect Women’s Sports

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Just ask Joe Biden, whose executive orders have quickly gone the way of all flesh during the first three weeks of Donald Trump’s second term. An executive order is, by its nature, a temporary fix.

This is particularly true of Trump’s recent executive order to keep men out of women’s sports. It lacks permanence and is subject to the whims of the next occupant of the White House.

Therefore, although the president has done all he can do and all that he promised during his campaign, more is needed to ensure that this issue doesn’t simply become a political football through the executive orders process. What is needed is for Congress to do the job it was elected to do.

Four years from now, there is no guarantee that a conservative will be in office, and with that uncertainty comes the instability of policy dictated by executive fiat. Stability comes not from one man’s pen but from congressional action — because while a single president can repeal an executive order with the stroke of a pen, it takes a legislative majority to overturn a statute.

Since the 1990s, Congress has steadily abdicated its responsibility to legislate, opting instead to let the executive branch take the political heat. Members of Congress, more concerned with reelection than with the duty to govern, prefer to pass the buck.

An executive order commands only the executive branch, requiring federal agencies to comply. But its power is inherently limited. Regulatory authority has been reined in, especially after the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Chevron deference.

No longer can agencies broadly interpret congressional statutes to impose sweeping regulations. Now, their authority is confined strictly to what Congress has explicitly granted them. This limits the scope of what Trump’s latest executive order can achieve. His directive to the Department of Education to restrict women’s sports to biological females is bound by statutory interpretation, which blue states can challenge.