Executive Order - HISTORY

Executive orders date back to George Washington. Learn more about their history, how and why they are created, and how they work.

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Signed by President Harry Truman on July 26, 1948, Executive Order 9981 abolished racial discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces.

On December 20, 1989, after a U.S. soldier was killed in Panama by Manuel Noriega’s forces, President George H.W. Bush sent U.S. troops into the Central American country in an effort to oust the dictator. In an address to the nation, Bush explains his decision to call for military action.

As an eyewitness to the executions at Nuremberg, news correspondent Arthur Gaeth describes the deaths and last words of the convicted Nazi war criminals in a broadcast on October 10, 1946.

Broadcast just 15 minutes before the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953, a news report recounts the last-minute U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a stay of execution for the pair. The Rosenbergs were the first U.S. citizens to be executed for espionage after their conviction for transmitting atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.

What are the powers of the executive branch of the U.S. government? Who can be president in the United States? And what exactly goes into electing the person who sits in the Oval Office?

On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon asks the American people to support his decision to send troops into Cambodia in response to North Vietnam’s invasion of the country.

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