# Presidential Emergency Action Documents **Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs)** are pre-drafted executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress, held in reserve for immediate presidential signature in a catastrophic emergency. They originated in the Eisenhower administration as part of nuclear-era [[Continuity of Government]] planning and were later broadened to cover emergencies short of nuclear attack. **56 were in effect as of 2017**, up from 48 two decades earlier. **Not one has ever been publicly released.** Reporting by the Brennan Center for Justice, which obtained more than 500 pages of PEAD *review* material from the George W. Bush Presidential Library under FOIA while roughly 6,000 further pages were withheld in full as classified, indicates that historical drafts contemplated warrantless detention, censorship of communications, and suspension of habeas corpus. The structural point is not the content, which remains unknown, but the absence of any check: PEADs rest on no statute, carry no congressional notification requirement, and have never been subject to judicial review. See [[Continuity of Government Structure]]. ## See also - [[Continuity of Government]] - [[Continuity of Government Structure]] - [[Enduring Constitutional Government]]