Executive Actions — Week of May 18, 2026

Several executive actions this week raised questions about whether the administration is using creative procedural approaches to expand its authority beyond what Congress authorized. The most notable involve a government watchdog finding, new immigration-related financial rules, and changes to civil rights enforcement.

The Government Accountability Office issued an opinion concluding that the Commerce Department did not comply with legal requirements when it used a press release to effectively suspend a Biden-era rule on artificial intelligence chip exports without first notifying Congress, as required by the Congressional Review Act. Senator Warren entered this GAO opinion letter into the Congressional Record. This might matter because the Congressional Review Act exists to give Congress the ability to review and reject rule changes by executive agencies, and bypassing it could weaken Congress's role as a check on executive power. It is possible Commerce genuinely believed a press release did not qualify as a "rule" under the law—but the GAO, a nonpartisan watchdog, examined this question and disagreed. It is also possible the administration's approach reflects a broader policy strategy that may be clarified through future legislative or regulatory action.

A new executive order, Restoring Integrity to America's Financial System, directs banks to begin verifying customers' immigration status and to treat the lack of legal status as a financial red flag. The administration says this protects against fraud and money laundering and has broad authority to set regulatory priorities. It frames these measures as addressing genuine financial crime risks and improving the efficiency of the financial system. However, the practical effect could be to deny banking access to millions of people based on immigration status, using a legal framework Congress built for a different purpose. These changes may also be subject to legal challenge, which could limit their scope.

The Department of the Interior also rescinded regulations that allowed civil rights complaints about policies with discriminatory effects, even when discrimination wasn't intentional. The administration argues this aligns its rules with the original meaning of Title VI, and some legal scholars agree that Supreme Court precedent supports this interpretation. However, the change goes further than the courts required and removes an enforcement tool the agency itself had long used.

Limitations: This analysis is AI-generated and based on publicly available documents. It does not account for legal challenges, implementation details, or internal deliberations that may affect how these actions play out in practice.