The American public has spoken. On Nov 5th the American public clearly demonstrated it wanted Joe to interfere with the income administration and pardon Hunter.
Joe’s Last Hurrah
The Biden administration sprints to cement its legacy—and stymie the GOP .
By Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ
Dec. 11, 2024 11:01 am ET
Joe Biden might these days feel like an afterthought, but don’t mistake public absence for inaction. With just 40 days until Donald Trump’s inauguration, the current administration is racing to cement Biden’s legacy and “Trump-proof” the federal government. A look at what Team Biden is doing—or is debating doing—in it’s final days:
Spending: Immediately following Kamala Harris’s loss, Biden ordered departments to start shoveling money out the door, the better to deny Republicans the opportunity to claw it back for their own priorities. In a Monday memo, Chief of Staff Jeff Zients bragged that some 98% of money from Biden spending bills—including the 2021 infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—has already been allocated, flowing to clean-energy grants, high-speed internet, semiconductor plants and more. He said Biden has directed his team “to keep up this pace and obligate as much funding as possible before the end of the term.” Biden is similarly rushing out billions of available military dollars to Ukraine.
Federal judiciary: Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has for months ignored pressing Senate business in favor of confirming final Biden judges. Democrats have only picked up the pace since Election Day, and as of this past weekend Biden was just five judges behind Trump’s first-term record of 234 judicial confirmations—with more still in the hopper.
Student Loans: The Zients memo says Biden is planning in January to announce another round of student-loan debt forgiveness for public service workers. His Education Department is also hurrying to finalize a rule that would allow the administration to cancel student loans for those who claim financial hardship.
Healthcare: The administration is aiming a final kick at the privately run Medicare Advantage program with a proposal to tighten rules for insurers, and notification that it is considering another rate cut. The White House is also pushing Congress for a year-end healthcare package (see below).
Energy: The administration this week announced a pathetically small lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an attempt to sabotage larger Trump exploration plans. As Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy noted, the sale “limits exploration to the largest extent possible” and is “designed to fail.”
Labor Unions: Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley inked a contract with the American Federation of Government Employees union, allowing tens of thousands of employees to continue working from home even in the Trump administration. The administration is said to be working on other deals to insulate federal union workers from Elon Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Monuments: Biden on Monday announced a new national monument in Carlisle, Pa., to highlight the history of Native American boarding schools, and Westerners remain fearful he will move to lock up large swathes of land with final Antiquities Act designations. Activists are lobbying the administration in particular for new monuments in California and Nevada.
Immigration: Progressives are also pushing Biden to shield certain migrants from Trump immigration policies, by more quickly processing renewal applications for Dreamers and by extending the timeframe that certain migrants are allowed to be present under the temporary protected status program.
Pardons: No word yet on whether the president will follow Hunter’s sweeping pardon with a round of pre-emptive protections for political allies. But Biden is said to be mulling pardons that encompass broad classes of offenders, as he did in 2022 and 2023 when he pardoned thousands of Americans convicted on various federal marijuana charges. Progressives are calling on him to go further, to use his power to “rectify unjust and unnecessary criminal laws passed by Congress and draconian sentences given by judges.”
All of this is in addition to managing foreign conflicts, weighing in on Congress’s year-end legislation and Washington Christmas festivities. Biden might be out of sight, but his team is working harder than ever to seed progressive policy through the system and hamstring the incoming administration’s plans to change direction.
Congress’s Never-Ending Hurrah
Congress continues to wrangle over two year-end pieces of legislation—the National Defense Authorization Act and a continuing resolution for government funding—though the real fights have little to do with the contents of either bill. Negotiators are instead wheeling and dealing over just how much additional spending they can attach to those two “must pass” legislative vehicles.
The biggest prize will be a federal disaster aid package. The Biden White House started the bidding high, in November asking for $100 billion to deal with fallout with Hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as to top up Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. A final package won’t be that large, though Democrats are insisting a big numbers is their price if Speaker Mike Johnson wants their assistance passing the stopgap government funding bill, and plenty of Republicans are also eager to send more disaster money to their states.
That’s hardly all. Some members want to reauthorize billions for a decade-old workforce-development program; others are pushing to reauthorize the Older Americans Act, which funds services for seniors. Democrats and Republicans are trading proposals for a large-ish healthcare package that might include an extension of expiring (and expensive) ObamaCare subsidies. And those are just the pieces of legislation people are talking about openly. Americans won’t know the full scope of additions until final text is released.
Congress accomplished almost nothing this year, as members focused on elections and Schumer reserved almost all the Senate’s floor time to judicial confirmations. So the pent-up demand is understandable. But these routine, year-end spending surprises are no way to govern.
The Bragg Salvage Operation
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg lost big this week when a New York jury acquitted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. The prosecutor is throwing everything at ensuring he doesn’t suffer a repeat with his case against Trump, found guilty this spring of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. His 82-page brief to New York Judge Juan Merchan—a long list of alternatives to a dismissal of the Trump case—reads like an exercise in desperation.
The brief, made public on Tuesday, does at least concede that Trump is likely immune from state judicial action on his return to office. Yet it argues that Trump’s immunity doesn’t begin until the moment he takes the oath of office, and suggests the judge could therefore sentence the incoming president prior to Jan. 20. Alternately, the brief says Merchan could suspend the case until after Trump leaves office, and force him to endure sentencing then. The Bragg team even suggested the court could “abate” the case—ending any further proceedings but retaining the conviction on Trump’s record. The brief didn’t favor any one course, though it argued vociferously against the alternative—dismissing it altogether.
That’s of course what Trump’s team has requested, and has promised to appeal immediately any attempt to move ahead with sentencing. Merchan could issue his decision any day now, and clearly no one is more worried about that ruling than Manhattan’s bruised prosecutor.
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