How many executive orders did Joe Biden sign during his entire presidency through 2024?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Joe Biden signed 162 executive orders over his presidency through January 20, 2025, according to multiple compilations including the American Presidency Project and aggregated trackers; federal-register year pages break that total down by year (77 in 2021, 19 in 2024) and the Federal Register lists Biden’s overall total as 162 [1] [2] [3] [4]. Public trackers and news outlets repeat the 162 figure but individual year counts and site snapshots show incremental totals that add up to that aggregate [2] [3] [4].
1. Biden’s headline total — what the major trackers report
Several widely used compendia and news organizations report that Joe Biden issued 162 executive orders during his term. Newsweek cites the American Presidency Project’s tally of 162 executive orders when discussing legal and political disputes over those orders [1]. The Federal Register—officially responsible for publishing executive orders—also records Biden’s executive orders across years and indicates a cumulative total of 162 for his administration [4].
2. Year-by-year accounting from official Federal Register pages
The Office of the Federal Register (OFR) publishes executive orders by year. Its 2021 page shows Biden signed 77 executive orders that year (EO 13985 through EO 14061) [2]. The OFR’s 2024 page lists 19 executive orders in 2024 (EO 14115 through EO 14133) [3]. Other OFR year pages complete the series; combining the year pages with the OFR’s administration-wide count yields the 162 total [4] [3] [2].
3. Discrepancies and why counts vary across sources
Different outlets sometimes list different numbers because of timing, scope and categorization. Some trackers count only numbered executive orders; others include additional presidential actions such as memoranda, proclamations, national security memoranda or notices—documents that are related but not EO-numbered. Ballotpedia, Wikipedia and NCSL compile related documents (proclamations and memoranda) alongside EOs, which can produce larger aggregate counts if readers conflate categories [5] [6] [7]. Independent webpages or news articles that snapshot a single month or partial year can also report interim totals [8].
4. What counts as an “executive order” in these tallies
The authoritative definition used by the Federal Register is the decisive standard: executive orders that are numbered and filed with the OFR and published in the Federal Register [4]. The American Presidency Project and OFR-based reporters use that same standard, which is why their EO-only totals match. Sources that report far larger totals typically mix in presidential memoranda and proclamations — for example, Ballotpedia lists 162 EOs plus hundreds of memoranda and proclamations separately [5].
5. Recent political disputes over validity and use of signatures
Legal controversy has followed claims about signature methods (autopen) and post-presidential attempts to cancel or revoke prior EOs. Newsweek covered assertions by Donald Trump about terminating Biden’s orders and noted legal analysts who said an autopen signature does not by itself invalidate an executive order; the underlying counts remain the basis for those debates [1]. The dispute illustrates that the numerical total is only part of the story: legal status, revocation, and administrative implementation determine an order’s practical effect [1].
6. Immediate-source examples and notable orders in 2024
The White House archive and OFR show individual orders in 2024, including an EO closing federal agencies on December 24, 2024, and a range of policy-focused EOs such as those on women’s health research [9] [10]. The OFR’s 2024 page enumerates the 19 EOs for that year, which feeds into the administration-wide total [3] [10].
7. Limitations, open questions and how to verify
This analysis uses only the provided sources. If you want a line-by-line list to cross-check every EO number and date, the Federal Register’s downloadable CSV/JSON by president and year is the primary primary-source path to verification [4] [3]. Available sources do not mention a single alternate aggregate that displaces the 162 total for Biden’s presidency; some outlets list related actions separately, which can create confusion if not read carefully [5] [6].
8. Bottom line for readers
For the narrow question “How many executive orders did Joe Biden sign during his entire presidency through 2024?” the authoritative, EO-only answer in the provided sources is that Biden issued 162 executive orders during his administration, with 77 in 2021 and 19 in 2024 specifically listed on the Federal Register pages [4] [2] [3]. Disagreements in popular reporting generally stem from mixing other presidential instruments (memoranda, proclamations) into totals [5] [6].