On April 9, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations.” This document has mostly gone under the national radar, undoubtedly due to the ceaseless parade of headline illegalities pouring out of the White House. But the order’s legal and practical implications are massive.

Trump purports to rely on a series of Supreme Court rulings to justify ordering agencies to identify and “begin plans to repeal” what he calls “unlawful” regulations that are “often promulgated in reliance on now-superseded Supreme Court decisions.” In short, he claims that any regulations that were put in place before the court issued rulings in a series of controversial cases are now automatically unlawful and must go.

The myriad constitutional problems with this maneuver strike at the heart of the separation of powers. The order is also in line with the Republican Party’s pro-corporate “deregulation” agenda, which prominently began with President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Given the complexities of our system of government and its reliance on checks and balances and compromise, that agenda could not be fully achieved through lawful means. Then came Trump.

For starters, the federal courts — not the president — have the authority under Article III of the Constitution to decide cases involving questions of federal law, including whether recent Supreme Court decisions undermine the legality of an existing federal regulation. Trump is pretending he has the power to issue a king-like proclamation condemning unidentified federal regulations as unlawful. Not so. He is not a federal judge.

Moreover, Trump’s order baldly impedes on the authority of the legislative branch. Regulations are created pursuant to statutes, which fall within the province of Congress.........

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