House Democrats are hoping to blunt Donald Trump’s sweeping legislative agenda by putting pressure on President Joe Biden before the Republican president-elect returns to the White House.
Trump is expected to enter office with GOP control of the House and Senate and plans to gut Biden’s achievements by reversing executive orders, swiftly passing an extension of his 2017 tax law and implementing anti-immigration measures aimed at the US-Mexico border.
The president-elect’s “day one” agenda includes an executive order that would end the legal right to citizenship for children born in the US if their parents are “illegal aliens.” His administration is also expected to revive a “denaturalization” plan that could strip Americans of their citizenship — a project that was abandoned in his first term.
Trump also has announced plans to mobilize federal, state and local law enforcement for a massive “deportation operation” that could see millions of people forcibly removed from the country.
Democratic members of Congress are planning to push the Biden White House on bolstering immigration policy, including fast-tracking citizenship and legal residency paperwork for immigrants living in the US, according to Axios, speaking to congressman Greg Casar of Texas.
“This is going to be a very challenging time,” outgoing Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal told reporters on Monday.
Trump has already announced his plans for Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to return to his administration; Miller, an architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda in his first term and a key policy aide in his re-election campaign, and Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were responsible for “a lot of the first Trump administration’s horrific immigration policies,” Jayapal said.
With Republican majorities in the House and Senate, “we’re going to have to find out how to fight that best,” she said.
Biden could also issue executive orders to protect institutions that Trump is threatening, from career civil servants across the federal government to the Department of Justice and Department of Education, according to lawmakers.
Lawmakers also are working getting funds earmarked to their districts from Biden’s chief economic achievements — the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and CHIPS and Science Act — “out the door as quickly as possible,” Japayal told Axios.
The White House already is navigating ways to “Trump-proof” Biden’s legacy, from his environmental policies to foreign policy, but he faces a radically reshaped federal judiciary from Trump’s first term that have paved the way for massive legal blows to Biden’s agenda over the last four years.
Biden’s 213 judicial appointments in office were dwarfed by Trump’s 234, as well Trump’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices — setting the ideological makeup of district and appellate courts across the country and establishing a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court for a generation.
Last week, a Trump-appointed judge struck down a new Biden administration program that would provide a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.
A coalition of immigrant advocacy and civil rights groups are also preparing to file a volley of lawsuits to slow the Trump administration’s agenda, once in office.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed 434 legal actions against Trump in his first term, is prepared to once again “challenge him in the courts, at the state legislatures, and in the streets,” according to executive director Anthony D. Romero.
The Independent has requested comment from the White House.
