At least according to this report from the Washington Post, it’s almost certainly bound to disappoint. The EO doesn’t do much other than order HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to start looking for ways to counter Dobbs through federal authority. That may placate progressives for a moment, but it raises other questions about Biden’s leadership:

Biden, joined by Vice President Harris, plans to deliver a speech from the Roosevelt Room at the White House on his efforts to protect access to reproductive health-care services.

He is also planning to sign an executive order that, according to a statement released late Thursday by the White House, will attempt to safeguard access to abortion medication and emergency contraception, protect patient privacy and bolster legal options for those seeking access to such services.

The order directs Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to submit a report within 30 days that would address many of those items. Becerra is also charged with finding ways to increase public outreach so that those seeking reproductive health-care services, including abortion, know how to access them.

In a nod to some of the legal battles that could come, Biden is also directing the attorney general and the White House counsel to convene private pro bono attorneys, bar associations, and public interest organizations to encourage legal representation for those seeking or offering reproductive health services.

Politico sounds a bit skeptical about the impact of this move, and for good reason:

The administration will also “consider” several additional actions to shore up privacy rights for patients using digital apps like period trackers and those who are now at risk of being reported to law enforcement by a medical provider. They will also “consider” strengthening protections for doctors performing abortions in medical emergencies by updating the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and plan to stand up another interagency task force that includes the Attorney General.

Biden has already asked the administration to explore many of these steps, while others remain vague on their exact mechanisms. The White House stressed that none of them would fully restore abortion rights to the tens of millions of people who recently lost them, and argued “that the only way to secure a woman’s right to choose is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe as federal law.”

“Vague” is right, and even that might overstate the impact of this EO. Is that even a start to an official White House response? This looks more like a delegation of a task to a subordinate than any significant presidential action, and even worse, delegation of nothing more than spitballing that could have started months ago. Biden’s basically passing a hot potato to Becerra, not dissimilar to the way Biden passed the border crisis onto Kamala Harris last year.

Even more, why issue this spitballing EO only now? Why not issue it in early May, when the draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito made it clear that the court was going to vacate Roe and Casey and return the issue of abortion to the states? For that matter, why not do it in December of last year, when the Supreme Court held its oral arguments on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health? Or even in September of last year, when the court scheduled the December argument? That research would have come in mighty handy two weeks ago when the Dobbs decision officially got published, if for nothing else than to make the White House look prepared for the inevitable.

If you’re a supporter of abortion, you have to look at this EO as pretty weak sauce after this much lead time. At least according to the WaPo’s description, it doesn’t even include any concrete actions that Biden plans to take. All it does is ask Becerra to look into what actions might be possible under federal law, a task that could have easily begun ten months ago or even longer.

It’s akin to setting up a web page as a response to a months-long baby formula shortage. Or for that matter, using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a desperate attempt to lower gas prices that rose sharply as a direct and predictable result of Biden’s energy policies to restrict and eventually eliminate supply of fossil-fuel-based energy. Or for that matter, passing a massive and unnecessary stimulus bill in the middle of distribution disruptions and supply chain crises and then spending months denying that runaway inflation exists or that it had any connection to Biden’s policies. For that matter, the border crisis followed that exact same pattern and still does to this day.

In other words, it’s an ongoing pattern of entirely reactionary governance from Biden. Biden doesn’t plan, let alone strategize or prepare. Biden and his entire team keep getting caught flat-footed by events and then rush to play catch-up, usually with a lame and almost non-sequitur response. This may not be quite as bad as dealing with a lack of infant-formula supply by passing along the manufacturers’ customer service numbers, but it’s not much of an improvement over it — if you’re someone who expected Biden to do something significant to support abortion access.

Biden’s team will hope that holding a PR event and signing a meaningless EO will mollify his supporters. Maybe, but the problem is that the number of Biden supporters keeps growing smaller in direct proportion to the number of occasions and issues on which he proves himself incompetent. It should be fun to watch him prove it again today.