Joe Biden IS gonna be President in 40 days….
Trump’s people have announced changes for the Defense Dept., Immigration, Enviromental and other things…
Few if any of these actions are gonna last….
It’s almost like the outgoing people have nothing to do but DELIBERATELY mess with Biden’s incoming efforts….
Defense…
“At best, these distract from an orderly transition and at worst are a deliberate attempt to box in or hobble the incoming administration,” said Mark Jacobson, a former senior Defense official in the Obama administration and historian of special operations now at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.
The transition declined to comment on what Biden plans to do about the Pentagon’s recent changes. The National Security Council referred questions to the Defense Department, which also declined to comment.
The administration on Thursday announced an ambitious long-term blueprint for Navy shipbuilding. The plan would shift resources to achieve Trump’s promised 355 ships within 10 years and nearly 400 within 20 years, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Office of Management of Budget Director Russ Vought wrote in the Wall Street Journal, leaning heavily on building a new fleet of small, multimission ships.
The plan is designed to counter China’s rapid military buildup, particularly in the South China Sea, O’Brien and Vought wrote.
But the strategy is dead in the water, as the Biden administration will submit its own budget request to Congress early next year, possibly ignoring or heavily revising the Trump blueprint.
Naval experts said while the plan would have been taken seriously three years ago, submitting it just weeks before Trump leaves office is a political move. If the Biden team tries to reverse it, they are vulnerable to criticism that they are shortchanging national defense….
Immigration…
The Trump administration finalized a regulation on Thursday that greatly restricts access to asylum in the United States, part of a last-minute immigration crackdown that incoming President-elect Joe Biden will likely try to reverse.
The final rule cuts off asylum access for most migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border through a series of changes to eligibility criteria, according to experts and advocates. In addition, it directs immigration judges and asylum officers to deny broad types of asylum claims, such as those based on domestic abuse and gang violence, with some exceptions.
The new policy will almost certainly face legal challenges, which have sidelined other immigration initiatives put in place by Republican President Donald Trump….
Environment ….
Down to its final weeks, the Trump administration is working to push through dozens of environmental rollbacks that could weaken century-old protections for migratory birds, expand Arctic drilling and hamstring future regulation of public health threats.
The pending changes, which benefit oil and gas and other industries, deepen the challenges for President-elect Joe Biden, who made restoring and advancing protections for the environment, climate and public health a core piece of his campaign.
“We’re going to see a real scorched-earth effort here at the tail end of the administration,” said Brian Rutledge, a vice president at the National Audubon Society….