‘Midnight decisions’: How Biden tried to protect his legacy in the final days of his presidency
Image source, Getty Images
Joe Biden has strived with a flurry of measures approved in the final weeks of his mandate to protect his legacy ahead of the imminent start of Donald Trump’s second presidency on January 20.
The outgoing president of the United States has approved, among others, measures with an impact on immigration, the environment and energy, relations with Cuba, and support for Ukraine, as well as a list of presidential pardons that includes the most controversial, the one granted to his Son Hunter.
Although the intense recent activity of the Biden White House has caught the attention of many observers, Martha Joynt Kumar, an expert on presidential transitions and professor emeritus at Towson University (Maryland, USA), tells BBC Mundo that it does not It’s something unusual.
“It is a pattern that repeats itself that, when the new president is from another party and arrives with a different philosophy, the outgoing president wants to take advantage of every moment so that his policies remain for posterity” and adopts many of those in political jargon American regulations are known as “midnight regulations or decisions,” explains the specialist.
In fact, a Congressional Research Service report published last year found that “federal agencies typically increase the pace of their regulatory activity in the final months of a presidential term.”
“In the case of Biden, there is also bitterness about the way in which he is going to leave office,” without being able to run for re-election due to pressure from his own party, says Kumar.
Image source, EPA
According to the expert, it could be part of the explanation for Biden’s intense agenda at the end of his term.
Below, we review Biden’s most relevant “midnight decisions” and the chances of them being maintained once Trump has assumed the presidency.
Extension of Temporary Protection to migrants from Venezuela, El Salvador and other countries
TPS protects from deportation and gives work permits to migrants who, if forced to return to their countries of origin, would face extreme difficulties, either due to armed conflicts or natural disasters there.
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As announced by the Department of Homeland Security, Venezuelans, Salvadorans, Ukrainians and Sudanese who are already in the United States under the program will have their protection extended for another 18 months from the expiration of the current one, which in practice would allow them remain until at least the summer of 2026.
It is estimated that there are around one million foreigners in the US who benefit from TPS, a program that Trump promised to eliminate and from which in his first term he tried to exclude Salvadorans. A court decision prevented him from doing so.
The measure approved by Biden seems to be one more obstacle for the new president to put into practice his promised toughening of immigration policies, which would include “the largest deportation” in the history of the United States.
Experts say Trump will not be able to get rid of a program approved by a 1990 law without going through Congress, at least as far as citizens covered by the latest extension are concerned before it expires in 2026.
“As President Biden has extended protections for nationals of these countries, President Trump will not be able to deport them anytime soon,” he told The New York Times Steve Yale-Loehr, immigration expert at Cornell Law School.
Biden wants to go down in history as one of the presidents with the best and greatest environmental legacy and has made the fight against climate change one of his flags.
He returned the United States to the Paris Agreement against climate change, from which Trump had removed it, and in his final weeks he has approved ambitious environmental protection measures.
The president signed an executive order on January 6 banning new drilling for oil and gas along most of the US coast.
“The relatively minimal fossil fuel potential” of the affected areas “does not justify the environmental, public health and economic risks of new leases and drilling,” Biden said in a statement.
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During his term, Biden has also approved measures that protect extensive areas from exploitation, some of them sacred to the indigenous peoples of the United States, in California, Nevada and South Dakota, confirming himself as the president who has declared the most federal land under protection. according to the count of The New York Times.
Biden’s latest environmental measures are “devious” for Trump and he has promised to reverse them “immediately.”
The Republican denies the threat of climate change and has pledged to intensify the extraction and use of fossil fuels, but experts believe that the latest protection measures approved by Biden could pose a serious obstacle to his plans.
In 2017 he already tried to eliminate the protection of large areas of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans approved by Obama, but two years later a court ruled that he was not empowered to alter his predecessor’s decision.
Cuba leaves the list of states that sponsor terrorism
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According to Washington’s official statement, Cuba “has not provided any support for international terrorism in the last six months” and “has given guarantees” that it will not do so in the future, which justifies a measure advised to Biden by “many leaders.” world, especially in Latin America.
US media reported that the measure is part of an agreement with the Cuban government to release dozens of protesters imprisoned in the July 2021 protests on the island.
And shortly after Biden’s decision was known, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the release of 553 inmates, although it linked the measure to the Vatican’s intervention and did not give details of their identity or when they will be released.
Cuba’s departure from the list, on which it was included in 1982, opens the door to the softening of US economic sanctions. Being part of it prevents access to aid from Washington and hinders trade and tourism.
Image source, Reuters
It is not clear whether the new Trump administration will even give time for this latest decision by Biden to take effect.
Democrats and Republicans seem to have a radically different view of the island since Barack Obama’s presidency.
Obama carried out a diplomatic approach to Castro’s Cuba and in 2015 removed it for the first time from the list, in which it was included again in 2021 by Donald Trump then about to conclude his term.
A prominent Republican such as Senator Ted Cruz immediately spoke out against it and promised to work with President Trump “to immediately reverse” the decision and “limit the damage caused” by it.
Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s choice as envoy for Latin America in his second government, criticized the measure, but warned that reversing it requires a process and “will take time.”
“In the meantime we can take other measures that will have an even greater impact,” he said.
And Marco Rubio, the American son of Cubans appointed by Trump as secretary of state, said at his congressional confirmation hearing that he considers Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.
Although he avoided committing to returning it to the list, Rubio stated that “nothing that has been decided is irreversible or binding.”
Clemency for those sentenced to death and a controversial pardon
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Biden announced last Christmas Eve that he was commuting the death sentences to life imprisonment for 37 of the 40 sentenced to death in federal prisons.
In announcing his clemency, the president reiterated his conviction that “we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
His position contrasts with that of Trump. With him in the White House, the US government resumed federal executions, which had been on hold since 2003.
The states were still and continue to be the ones that apply the death penalty the most in the country, but the federal government had stopped doing so until Trump arrived.
In the recent election campaign, Trump once again declared himself a supporter of capital punishment and advocated expanding its use to punish crimes such as drug and human trafficking, and foreigners who kill Americans.
Although he had ruled out doing so, the president signed a pardon measure that Trump and many other Republicans have harshly criticized.
One last shipment of aid for Ukraine
Image source, getty
The president announced on January 3 the sending of a $2.5 billion military aid package to Ukraine as part of the final effort to deliver all the funds approved by Congress to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion.
“The United States will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war for the remainder of my time in office,” said Biden, who knows that his successor has aimed for a very different policy on this issue.
Trump and Republicans have complained about the costs of the large aid packages to Ukraine approved by Biden to sustain it while it fights Russia, and the president-elect has promised to reach a peace deal quickly, although he has not explained how he will do so.
The Biden administration has accelerated the timeline for weapons to reach Ukraine to give Kyiv the strongest negotiating position possible before Trump’s inauguration on January 20 with the prospect that he will force a deal that involves cessions of Ukrainian territory. to end hostilities.
The man who is emerging as head of diplomacy, Marco Rubio, was asked in his confirmation hearing in Congress last Wednesday about a possible solution to the conflict and said that “concessions will have to be made.”
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