As Biden prepares to exit the Oval Office in January, bowing out of the 2024 race, he’s setting the stage for a legacy that might outlast a potential Trump return. The Biden administration has been busy finalizing hundreds of regulations this spring, putting them just out of Trump’s reach for a quick repeal, should he reclaim the presidency.
Among Biden’s regulatory blitz are environmental rules that Republicans argue are unnecessary and detrimental to consumers, protections for the federal workforce that the GOP derides as the “deep state,” and a controversial rewrite of Title IX regulations affecting colleges nationwide. Trump has been vocal about his plans to overhaul the federal workforce, promising sweeping reforms that would allow the president to fire executive branch employees at will. “The deep state must and will be brought to heel,” he declared in 2022. By “deep state,” Trump refers to the approximately 2.2 million federal employees who, in his view, operate beyond the president’s direct control and thus are unaccountable to taxpayers.
Trump’s grand plan involves reintroducing a classification called Schedule F, a move he initiated late in his first term. This classification would place about 50,000 key policy-making and policy-advocating jobs under presidential control, a significant increase from the 4,000 positions currently filled by presidential appointees. However, Biden swiftly dismantled Schedule F upon taking office, and no one was fired under the new classification.
To thwart any attempts to revive Schedule F, Biden finalized regulations in April designed to protect federal employees from such changes. These regulations were cemented early enough to avoid the Congressional Review Act, which provides Congress a 60-day window to disapprove executive branch regulations through an expedited process. Once this window closes, a future Trump administration would face a lengthy and cumbersome process to reverse these rules.
Trump has vowed to reinstate Schedule F on his first day back in office. However, due to the new regulations, this would only mark the beginning of a process that could drag on for over a year. An executive order alone would no longer suffice. “A future administration would have to go through a new regulatory process,” a Biden official told CNN, explaining that any new rule would need to justify why it’s better than the existing one.
Democrats argue that Trump’s plan would turn the government into a haven for “loyalists” vetted for their allegiance rather than competence. On the other hand, Trump-aligned groups like the America First Policy Institute assert that Schedule F would affect a small fraction of the federal workforce and merely restore a pre-existing norm that stood for nearly eight decades.
In this regulatory chess game, Biden’s maneuvers are aimed at safeguarding his administration’s achievements while complicating any swift reversals by a potential Trump administration. Whether these measures will stand the test of time remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the regulatory landscape of the federal government is set for a protracted battle.
