TThe sky above the White House was cold and gray. Joe Biden welcomed the winning Boston Celtics basketball team, made a quip about his Irish ancestry and threw a basketball into the crowd. But the US president could not resist drawing broader lessons.
“Even when you get knocked down, you get back up,” he said. “As my father would say, ‘Wake up, Joe.’ Wake up. ‘Keep your faith and keep going, that’s the Celtic way of life. That’s sports. And that’s America.’
Such events remain among the ceremonial duties of a “lame duck” president whose influence is waning. Biden has shrunk his numbers in recent months, first giving up a chance to seek re-election and then finding himself removed from Vice President Kamala Harris’ fateful presidential campaign.
But with his own legacy at risk from Donald Trump, the president faces demands to defuse the looming storm. Advocacy groups say Biden, who turned 82 this week, will accelerate spending on climate change and health care, secure civil liberties and secure at least some fundamentals of American democracy that can withstand a Trump presidency. He said he could still take action during the final two months of his term.
Trump’s campaign promise was to crack down on illegal immigration. During his first term, he nominated officials such as Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, who promoted family separation at the southern border, to use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants. Then he clarified.
The plan includes forced detention, potentially keeping migrants fighting deportation in inhumane conditions for years. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is leading the opposition effort to urge Biden to halt the current expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, particularly those with a record of human rights abuses. I am asking you to do so.
Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, said the Ice detention facility is “characterized by abusive conditions, widespread neglect, and a complete disregard for the dignity of those in its custody” in President Trump’s logistics plan. He said that this is the key.
According to the ACLU, dozens of deaths have occurred in ice detention facilities (most of which are owned or operated by private prison corporations) over the past four years, and are 95% preventable if proper medical care was provided. It is highly likely that it was possible. But the Biden administration supports opening new ice detention facilities in states where none previously existed, including Kansas, Wyoming and Missouri.
“We are calling on the Biden administration, in the final days of its administration, to end all efforts to expand immigrant detention and take action to close down abusive facilities once and for all,” she said on a Zoom call. he told reporters. week. “There is no need for the Trump administration to clear airstrips in order to deploy a mass detention and deportation machine.”
She warned: “We know that the anti-immigrant policies of the second administration will be far more aggressive than those seen in the first term, and that designing and implementing these policies will likely require mass arrests. and detention will become the norm.” Unless we do everything in our power to stop them, deportation operations will cease. ”
Another key area where Biden should hold out until the end is criminal justice. President Trump oversaw more executions in his first term than the previous 10 presidents combined. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, then imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.
President Trump has indicated his intention to resume such executions and even expand the death penalty. His attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, was Florida’s top law enforcement official in 2013 when she decided to execute a convicted murderer because it conflicted with fundraising efforts for her re-election campaign. He issued a public apology after attempting to delay the event.
Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Death Penalty Project, told reporters via Zoom that President Trump has said he will “work to expand the death penalty.” He’s trying to extend it to people who didn’t commit murder. He has called for extending the death penalty to his political opponents as well.
“But perhaps the most dangerous is Project 2025 (the Heritage Foundation think tank’s policy blueprint), which we believe every word of: He promised to try to kill every death row inmate. And why should we believe this and take Donald Trump’s record of executing 13 people in six months very seriously?
That’s why the ACLU and other groups are pressuring Biden to commute the sentences of all federal death row inmates to life in prison, fulfilling a campaign promise and preventing possible executions under the Trump administration. are. “What Biden can really do to make it harder for President Trump to resume executions is commute,” Stubbs added.
The Rev. Brandi Slaughter, executive director of the pressure group Death Penalty Action, told reporters this week: “We know what the next president is going to do if there are any remaining prisoners sentenced to death under the Biden administration.” ” he said. We’ve been there and done that. ”
Biden has also received 8,000 clemency petitions from federal prison inmates serving sentences other than the death penalty, seeking commutation or clemency. The former senator has long been criticized for his role in drafting the 1994 criminal law that led to thousands of black men and women being imprisoned for drug crimes.
This week, members of Congress, including Ayanna Pressley and James Clyburn, led 64 of their colleagues in a letter to Biden, calling for “to reunite families, address long-standing injustices in our legal system, and protect our people.” “I urge you to exercise your pardon power to put us on track to bring the matter to a large-scale end.” Imprisonment.”
Also present at the Capitol news conference was Maria Garza, 50, a prison reform advocate from Illinois who spent 12 years in state prison. She said in an interview: “There is a sense of urgency because many of those waiting for pardons have effectively been sentenced to life in prison and will die in prison if they do not receive[pardons].Many of their unjust sentences are , through the 1994 crime bill of which he was a founding father.”
A prominent thinker on what can be done to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms under President Trump’s administration. From our opinion desk.
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Mitzi Wall, whose 29-year-old son Jonathan is in prison for 7 1/2 years on federal marijuana charges, urged Biden to keep his campaign promise to pardon more than 4,000 people in federal prison on non-violent marijuana charges. asked. crime.
“We voted for President Biden,” she said. “He gave us hope, and we ask him to do nothing but keep his word.”
“President Biden was partially responsible for drafting the 1994 crime bill that pushed families into extreme poverty and suffering,” added Wall, 63, from Maryland. I know he’s sorry about that, and with the power of his pen he can right that wrong. I am appealing to him as a father whose son (Hunter) is very likely to go to prison. ”
In other efforts to protect civil liberties, the ACLU is recommending a moratorium on all warrantless purchases of Americans’ personal data by the federal government. They are also calling on Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Not For Sale Act to prevent possible abuse of surveillance technology under the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, President Trump has promised to cancel unused funds from Biden’s landmark climate change and health care bill and halt clean energy development projects. White House officials are working against the clock to award billions of dollars in grants to existing programs to minimize President Trump’s ability to cancel or redirect those funds. . Earlier this month, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced more than $3.4 billion in grants for infrastructure projects across the country.
Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said Trump has seizure powers to stop the government from leaving the government and could order the cancellation of programs funded by Congress. do.
“The unique thing that Joe Biden can do is facilitate the flow of federal funding in all of his programs,” Shiller said.
“All the money that is supposed to be coming out of the treasury for schools, food safety, and environmental protection that hasn’t been distributed yet needs to be distributed. It’s like literally emptying your piggy bank before you go on a trip. President Biden literally needs to get as much money into the hands of states, local governments, and community organizations as possible.”
Another White House priority is getting as many federal judges confirmed by the Senate as possible, given the potential impact of judicial challenges to Trump administration policies. “Federal judges restricted hundreds of Trump administration policies in his first term, but they are likely to play a key role in determining the trajectory of his second term,” the nonprofit news organization The Marshall Project said. ” he pointed out.
Senate Republicans this week forced numerous procedural votes and late-night deliberations in an attempt to delay confirmation. The final deal put Biden within range of 234 judicial confirmations made during President Trump’s first term, but four of Biden’s appellate court nominees will not be considered. Become.
The outgoing president could also work with Democratic-led states and localities to strengthen protections and establish a “firewall” against President Trump’s policies, especially in areas such as immigration. These collaborations could include strengthening sanctuary city policies and providing resources to states likely to face pressure from the Trump administration.
“It will be interesting to see how or what President Biden is working with states, especially those with Democratic leadership, to tighten themselves up and do more,” said Chris Scott, a former director of Harris’ coalition. “It’s about being able to arm yourself with a lot of protection.” Already, places like Michigan and Illinois have governors who vow to ensure protections, even under President Trump. ”
But as Barack Obama discovered before handing Trump the keys to the Oval Office in 2017, there are limits to what a lame-duck president can do. Trump will enter office with a flurry of executive orders, a supportive Congress and fewer guardrails than he did the first time around.
Bill Galston, a former adviser in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “On January 20th, Donald Trump will take control of all the tools of government, but it will be up to the courts and public opinion to restrain him at that point.” There will be,” he said. ”
