Trump won. Here are 3 Biden priorities under scrutiny
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President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign that he wants to roll back a number of policies championed by his soon-to-be predecessor in the White House.
Ahead of the election, the Biden White House tried to "Trump-proof" some of its key priorities. Here's a look at three of them.
Protecting the civil service
Trump has long railed against what he calls the "deep state" — opposition to his plans from within the civil service.
In the final weeks of his first term, Trump issued an executive order creating a new class of federal workers known as Schedule F who would be exempt from the United States' traditional merit-based civil service program. The Biden administration saw this as a blatant attempt to politicize and dismantle the traditional nonpartisan federal workforce.
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President Biden rescinded that executive order in his first week on the job. The Office of Personnel Management — the government's human resources department — issued a final rule in April to further solidify job protections and make it more difficult to overhaul the federal workforce for ideological reasons.
Then-OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said the new rule would help "ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty."
An OPM official speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the November election told NPR that they believe the current regulation is "extremely strong" and that any effort to repeal it would have to go through multiple steps.
Once a rule is on the books, it can't just be changed via executive order, so the new Trump administration would have to propose a new rule — a long and somewhat tedious regulatory process that could take months or even years.
"They would have to put it out for public comment, and they then would have to issue a final rule that survived judicial scrutiny, because it would almost certainly be challenged," said Howard Shelanski, who was the head of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration.
"I actually think it would take a fair bit of luck for a Trump administration to actually rescind the rule and get that affirmed by a court within the one presidential term he would have," said Shelanski. "But it's certainly possible."
Climate measures in the Inflation Reduction Act
Trump has threatened to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate legislation passed by Democrats in 2022 that contains the largest federal clean energy investment in U.S. history.
The law includes more than $300 billion in spending to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spur investments in clean energy. As part of that package, it offers tax breaks for consumers and subsidies for manufacturing.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has already talked about trying to rescind elements of the law.
Particularly vulnerable are tax credits for people who want to purchase electric vehicles and incentives to build electric-charging infrastructure.
"Trump has a weird obsession with those two policies," said Josh Freed, senior vice president of climate and energy at the left-leaning think tank Third Way.
"And there's an enormous tax bill that will be negotiated in 2025 that would give a Trump administration a pathway to do just that," Freed said in an interview.
But the Biden administration believes that the Inflation Reduction Act has spurred investments in manufacturing projects in a large number of Republican congressional districts — and influential private companies have already built the tax credits into their business plans. That could make rollbacks politically unpopular, a senior administration official told NPR, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly ahead of the election.
A group of House Republicans underscored these points in a letter to Johnson, the House speaker, a few months ago. "Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing," they wrote.
Military and economic support for Ukraine
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the White House quickly came to Ukraine's aid. Biden repeatedly said that U.S. support for Ukraine would not waver.
Congress approved more than $112 billion in support for Ukraine during that year. But when that money ran out, Biden had to fight for months to get another $61 billion package across the finish line as Republicans balked.
Trump, who has long campaigned on the idea of American isolationism, has criticized the scale of this financial support. He has not explicitly said he would cut off all aid, but he has called for an end to the war and has suggested that there would be changes when he takes office.
Over the last several months, knowing the election would create uncertainty about support for Ukraine, the Biden White House took a series of steps.
This summer, NATO took on a larger role in coordinating military support and training for Ukraine — an effort that previously had largely been spearheaded by the United States. Then, in September, Biden announced that he would ensure all remaining funds for Ukraine would be allocated by the end of his term, leaving no money for the next president's discretion. And a month later, the G7 announced a new plan to provide additional support for Ukraine — a $50 billion loan. The United States plans to provide $20 billion of that total, getting the money out the door beginning in December, ahead of Inauguration Day.
The loan would be paid back with interest earned on frozen Russian sovereign assets. "In other words," Biden said in a statement, "Ukraine can receive the assistance it needs now, without burdening taxpayers."
The situation on the battlefield might also look different by the time Trump takes the oath of office, said Elizabeth Hoffman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"A big question in my mind is: Will the Biden administration, before they leave, authorize any kind of deeper strikes into Russia? That could really make a difference, too," Hoffman said.
Copyright 2024, NPR
