The Biden administration has gone into overdrive securing progressive policy goals from the impending Trump administration 2.0. From confirming progressive judges, to constraining American energy with environmental red tape, to simply spending every last unjustified dollar, the Biden administration is committed to ensuring their policies carry on into the Trump administration for as long as possible.

“It comes [down to] setting land mines and making it more difficult for the incoming administration to reverse those changes,” said Cato Institute policy analyst Tad DeHaven. “It matters or else they wouldn’t be doing it.” The American people have decisively rejected the Biden agenda. So, naturally, the Biden administration has responded by forcing their agenda upon Americans even harder, right down to January 20.

Employees

Across the bureaucracy, career government employees are lining up lawyers and setting up to lobby against mass firings, reports The Washington Times. At the end of Trump’s first term, by executive order he created a new class of federal workers (Schedule F) which would be easier to hire and fire. The Biden administration undid Trump’s change, and now the bureaucracy is afraid Trump might reinstitute it.

Employees in two divisions of the Justice Department are also rushing to unionize, according to the Times. This would make it more difficult to fire them. It also provokes the question, why? Shouldn’t their unimpeachable integrity and relentless pursuit of nonpartisan justice be enough to protect their positions?

Rulemaking

While executive branch employees rush to protect their jobs, executive branch agencies rushed to protect their progressive policies. For instance, the U.S. Department of Education is rushing to finalize a proposed rule canceling student loans for people with “financial hardships,” which it previously expected to finish in 2025.

Regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency have been particularly busy. They announced $3 billion in grants to facilitate a rule that requires local municipalities to replace lead pipes within 10 years. They finalized a rule on November 12 to fine oil and gas companies for “wasteful methane emissions.” They are also rushing to impose penalties and reach settlements with companies accused of violating their environmental regulations. The EPA also plans to grant California a waiver to enforce its rule banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles in the state by 2035.

Meanwhile, bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Energy are hurrying to complete a study on liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, which is expected to conclude that they are not “consistent with the public interest” because of their climate impact. This won’t directly stop the Trump administration from restoring America’s energy exports, but it could help anti-fossil fuel activists challenge the Trump administration in court. “Biden’s decision on LNG is the most consequential thing he can do on climate and fossil fuels before Trump takes office,” declared Fossil Free Media spokeswoman Cassidy DiPaola.

Other environmental rules the Biden administration is rushing to finalize include “narrowing the scope of an oil and gas lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” “restricting drilling, mining and livestock grazing across nearly 65 million acres … to save an imperiled bird,” and “finaliz[ing] three rules restricting the release of toxic chemicals.”

“From what we can tell, they’ve done a very good job lining this stuff up, so there’s not a whole lot at risk of getting punted into the next administration,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities. “I think everyone learned that lesson in 2016.”

The flurry of administrative rulemaking aimed to meet a late-November deadline, marking 60 days from the inauguration. Rules passed within 60 days of Trump taking office are subject to the Congressional Review Act, which means that the incoming Republican majority could block them, along with Trump’s approval.

Judges

Another area requiring cooperation between the administration and Congress is judicial appointments. Senate Democrats are hurrying to confirm Biden-nominated judges to the federal bench, leaving few slots open for Trump to fill.

Positions in the federal judiciary, which are tenured for life, are officially not partisan, but it is generally acknowledged that judges appointed by Democratic presidents tend to lean more progressive, while appointees by Republican presidents tend to lean more conservative. This means that the federal judges President Biden can get through a lame-duck Democrat-controlled Senate in the final days of his administration will likely look favorably on his progressive policies.

Before the Senate left for Thanksgiving break last week, Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise deal to vote on as many as 14 nominees for district court appointments, but not to vote on four appellate court nominations.

Spending

The Biden administration is also hurrying to spend the remaining money allocated by Congress’s stimulus spending in 2021-2022, so that it won’t be available to the Trump administration. The Washington Times cites unnamed officials who plan to spend the remaining $46 billion available in fiscal year 2025.

Foreign Policy

The Biden administration is also spending its lame-duck session making major foreign policy moves — which it declined or refused to make earlier — in hopes of constraining President-elect Trump’s diplomatic options. Biden is trying to spend $6.4 billion in aid for Ukraine — funds Congress allocated in April but have not been spent — and cancel $4.65 billion in debt owed by Ukraine to the U.S. Biden also permitted Ukraine to fire longer-range missiles into Russia, provoking further Russian escalation. The Biden administration is also working hard to finalize another major loan to Ukraine through NATO, before Inauguration Day.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the Biden administration pressured Israel to agree to a ceasefire with Hezbollah before Trump took office.

Why It Matters

The Biden administration is hoping to outfox the incoming Trump administration in a high-stakes, bureaucratic game of hot potato. Every time the White House changes hands, the incoming administration seeks to undo the rules adopted by their predecessors. Thus, in 2021, the Biden administration reversed administrative actions taken by the outgoing Trump administration, just as the Trump administration, in 2017, had reversed policy moves made by the Obama administration.

This back-and-forth has gone on at least since President Bill Clinton reversed President Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy, but it has recently expanded to cover an ever-growing number of issues. “It’s unfortunate but expected that [Biden officials] will try to throw as many roadblocks at what President-elect Trump has pledged to do,” said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance.

The reason why competing administrations play increasingly critical games of bureaucratic football is that they realize the legislative branch lacks either the ability or the will to stop them. And the sad truth of the matter is that progressives — with greater buy-in from employees of the executive branch and greater faith in the government’s problem-solving capabilities — are usually better at playing the game than conservatives. To the extent that there is a “Deep State” in “The Swamp,” this is it.

Ordinary Americans don’t spend their lives obsessing over politics, except for occasionally wondering why voting for good people never seems to produce the desired results. In my conservative opinion, the answer resides not in electoral results but in the long-term executive and judicial strategies that round out our system of checks and balances (and which is currently tilted in favor of the executive branch).

This is why bureaucratic maneuvering like these by the Biden administration matter. When President Trump takes the keys and slides behind the wheel on January 20, the success of his whole administration will depend on how quickly he can take America from zero to 60. This question — and particularly Trump’s first 100 days — will set the momentum for the next four years. And this question depends on how adroitly his deputies can remove these roadblocks thrown in their path by the Biden administration.

If Trump wants to return America to the prosperous, cruising state of 2019, he must undo four years of rulemaking by the Biden administration, and he only has four years to do so. Can his bureaucracy work faster than Biden’s? We’ll soon find out.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

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