Democrats press Biden to protect executive branch from Trump’s return

Capitol Hill Democrats are pressing the White House to pull out all the stops to gird the executive branch against Donald Trump's promised efforts to tear down federal agencies and restructure them to his liking.

The lawmakers want President Biden to get aggressive — and creative — with unilateral actions in the final weeks of his administration. The idea is both to protect the Democrats’ policy victories and to fortify the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies and other offices in Trump’s crosshairs.

“There’s a lot that the Biden administration can do, and I know that they’ve done some scenario planning,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “It would be a huge political malpractice for them not to anticipate this scenario and have some plans in place.”

The Democrats are quick to point out that, with Republicans in control of the lower chamber, no major legislative changes are likely in the post-election, lame-duck session. With that in mind, they see Biden as a kind of preemptive firewall against Trump’s vows to claw back their legislative wins and gut large parts of the federal bureaucracy in a “deep state” purge designed to streamline government and root out his executive branch critics.

“I’ve been here long enough to know you can do some really good things in a lame duck,” said Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), senior Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

The Democrats’ concerns have been fed by reports that Trump is eying plans to purge the Pentagon of “woke” generals.

And they were fueled further over his picks for top positions in the next administration, including former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as U.S. attorney general, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to be director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as head of the Health and Human Services Department. All three have vowed major shake-ups to the agencies they would oversee.

Trump’s critics are also alarmed by his plans to create a new Department of Government Efficiency, led by the wealthy tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. In announcing the endeavor, Trump said it “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”

Democrats see those goals as a euphemism for Trump abusing his power to advance his personal interests, over those of the country. And those pressing Biden for unilateral action laid out a menu of potential options for pushing back.

Many want the president to launch a blitz of new executive orders, finalize 11th-hour regulations and open the spigots of funding for federal projects that's already been appropriated by Congress. Some of those strategies might be more effective than others, the Democrats acknowledge, but Trump’s imminent return, they add, demands a spaghetti-at-the-wall approach to see what sticks.

“We should do everything that we can — everything that we possibly can — and I'd say all of the above,” said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). “He's still the president until the last moment.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) singled out one area where Biden could guard against Trump’s promised housecleaning: He suggested tweaking the union contracts for federal employees in order to bolster worker protections from any Trump purge.

“Those can be amended,” Sherman said. “It's just a contract we would have with the union. That's exclusively an executive branch issue.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, argued the importance of seating as many Biden-appointed federal judges as possible in the few weeks remaining in the president’s term — a push that’s already underway in the Senate, where Democrats are set to lose their majority next year.

Nadler also wants Biden to explore how to protect the generals Trump might expel at the Pentagon.

“That will be terrible for the preparedness of the country,” Nadler said. “What Biden can do about that to prevent it, I don't know. But he should be looking at it, because that's a terrible threat to our armed forces.”

Ukraine aid is another topic of concern for Democrats, since Trump has been cold to the notion of supplying the U.S. ally another round of military aid as Kyiv fights to repel Russia’s invading forces. Rep. John Larson (Conn.), former head of the House Democratic Caucus, said the administration needs to be “doing everything they can to get the [Ukraine] money out the door, that has already been appropriated.”

Other Democrats went a step further, urging the administration to allocate not only the Ukraine aid, but also other funding earmarked for Biden-era projects — including those adopted under the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act — before Trump can come in and claw it back.

“Across the board, so much of what we've been able to push out under the IRA and the infrastructure law is at risk if we don't get that money out the door, get it encumbered, figure out bulwarks against either non-implementation or outright repeal,” Huffman said. “So I think there's a real serious effort under way in that regard."

Vargas pointed to another area where he thinks Biden could exert some last-minute influence, urging the president to shield certain federal lands from oil, gas and mining development.

“I'd try to protect as much land as you can with these guys who are gonna come in and try to drill and destroy,” Vargas said. “He could set those lands aside, and he should.”

There are obvious limitations to Biden's powers to prepare for Trump's return to the White House. Aside from the fact that Republicans control the Speaker's gavel, there's little time to finalize regulations. And any executive orders Biden adopts in the final months could be quickly overturned by Trump.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) noted that Biden should understand the short-lived nature of executive actions, since he used his first days in office in 2021 to repeal a number of executive actions adopted by Trump in his first term. As part of that effort, Biden eliminated Trump’s Schedule F designation for some federal employees, which made it easier to fire them.

“You’ve got to be careful because any executive order that he issues can be reversed on the first day, as Joe Biden did four years ago,” Beyer said.

Still, Beyer also proposed that forcing Trump to undo popular executive orders might be worth the effort, since it would highlight a stark contrast between the parties when it comes to worker protections and other hot-button issues.

“He may do some anyway,” Beyer said, “just to make the point.”