Having withdrawn from his reelection bid and acknowledged the possibility that former President Donald Trump may succeed him, President Joe Biden has worked with Democrats and his federal agencies to lock in a legacy that won’t be easy for Trump to erase. From pumping out regulations to insulating government scientists to enshrining foreign policy commitments, the Biden administration is leaving behind policies that will be procedurally difficult or politically costly to abandon.
Biden will be leaving office in January after bowing out of his reelection bid, but even if his party loses control of the White House, he’s working to cement a legacy that Trump can’t easily undo.
The Biden administration finalized hundreds of regulations this spring, putting them out of reach of a quick repeal should Trump retake the presidency.
Among the regulations Biden is hoping to solidify are environmental measures Republicans have decried as unnecessary and harmful to consumers, efforts to protect the federal workforce that GOPers call the “deep state,” and an attempted rewrite Title IX regulations at colleges across the country.
We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States,” Trump said in 2022. “The deep state must and will be brought to heel.”
When he says “deep state,” Trump is referring to roughly 2.2 million federal employees who are beyond the reach of the president and thus, according to conservatives, unaccountable to taxpayers. Though Trump said “every” executive branch employee would be fireable if he won, his actual proposal would only affect a small percentage of them.
Trump created an employee classification called Schedule F late in his first term, which would bring about 50,000 “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” jobs under the president’s control. Currently, presidents can appoint about 4,000 people in the federal workforce.
Biden removed the Schedule F designation upon taking office, and ultimately, not a single person was fired.
However, to guard against a second Trump term, Biden moved in early April to finalize rules that would put federal government employees behind a regulatory wall that could not easily be torn down.
Read more at Washingtonexaminer.com
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