President-elect Joe Biden will issue a memorandum on his first day in office to “stop or delay” the Trump administration’s last-minute actions, Biden’s transition team announced Thursday.
The White House of Biden-Harris plans to issue a freeze note of regulations by the afternoon of January 20 that will stop or delay the so-called “midnight regulations” introduced by the Trump administration that only take effect after the inauguration day, said the incoming Press Secretary of the White House Jen Psaki during the last review team briefing before the new year. Such actions at the last minute are typical of crippled presidents, she said.
What are midnight regulations?
According to the George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, “the last months of a resigning presidential government usually generate a significant amount of regulatory activity.”
“Midnight is usually defined as the period between the November presidential election and the inauguration day on January 20 of the following year,” the center wrote, and has been “documented throughout the Carter administration’s transition to Reagan and accompanied every presidential transition since then, regardless of the political party. ‘
Biden’s administration will quickly address changes made during this period, as other administrations have done, Psaki said. The freeze will apply to both regulations and also to clues, issued by agencies to explain or clarify rules and policies.
Psaki cites a rule proposed by the Trump administration’s Department of Labor regarding the authority of companies to classify workers as independent contractors, rather than employees, under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Independent contractors waives most of the benefits that employees receive, such as overtime or minimum wage protection, paid sick leave, family leave and the right to start or join a trade union.
“The Department of Labor is expected to publish a final rule before January 20 that will make it easier for businesses to call their workers independent contractors to avoid minimum wage and overtime protection. If it goes into effect, it will be easier to “Biden’s memo ‘could possibly freeze this rule and not allow it to be implemented,'” Psaki said. said.
Asked what the Biden government is going to do about potential actions and executive orders that the freeze note cannot stop – such as reports that the Trump administration will designate Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism – Psaki acknowledged that there are ‘additional actions what the Trump government and members are the team can take in the coming weeks that is detrimental and destructive to our policies, whether it be national security policy or domestic policy. ‘
She and Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden-Harris transition, said delays and obstruction in the transition process made it difficult to assess certain issues. She said the Biden team had hoped for ‘greater co-operation’ from key agencies, ‘including the Department of Defense. ”
The transition coincided with significant delays in the distribution of vaccines. According to the COVID Data Tracker of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2 million people in the United States have been vaccinated – far from the 20 million Trump officials by the end of the year.
“The pace is not what it should be,” Psaki said, adding that the incoming administration in the new year will contribute to more funding for the distribution of vaccines. “The bill currently being discussed is not going to be enough.”
Biden will also revoke a number of Trump’s’ harmful ‘executive orders, Psaki said, and some of the incoming government’s priorities will include’ restoring the protection of Dreamers, joining the Paris climate agreement, the return of President Trump’s environmental environments ‘and’ the protection and strengthening of the Affordable Care Act. “