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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — The president was frustrated. Lawmakers were not passing what he wanted. They were “obstructionists,” he complained. So he took out his pen, signed his name to an order and took action on his own. “We’re taking a little different route than we had hoped because getting Congress — they forgot what their pledges were,” he said. The chief executive attacking Congress was President Trump, but his words might have been spoken by President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump has concluded that he cannot wait for a polarized Congress to act, so he is turning to executive power to accomplish what lawmakers will not, in this case erasing the legacy of the Obama years. If the routes are similar, the intended destinations are radically different. Where Mr. Obama sealed a deal with Iran on his own, Mr. Trump on Friday took a step toward unraveling that agreement. Where Mr. Obama used executive power to bolster his health care program, Mr. Trump this week used it to undercut it. Where Mr. Obama created a legal status for immigrants brought illegally as children, Mr. Trump undid that. Mr. Trump’s advisers argue that his reliance on executive authority was not a broader strategy but mainly a necessary response to remedy Mr. Obama’s overreach. “The previous president’s actions were unlawful, unconstitutional, and these actions are largely reversing those actions,” said Raj Shah, the principal deputy White House press secretary. The former president’s champions argue that the cu... Link to the full article to read more