We are not out of Oz yet. Squadrons of flying monkeys are still plotting raids on government and awaiting the “go” code from “Q” or Donald Trump.
Just after noon today, Jan. 20, the disastrous Trump presidency is scheduled to end. In an inauguration like no other, former Vice President Joe Biden will take the oath of office and become the 46th president of the U.S. Kamala Harris will become the first Black woman to serve as vice president.
Trump leaves Washington, D.C. a pariah. The city is “under militarized fortification” against a repeat of the insurrection by pro-Trump extremist who sacked the Capitol Jan. 6. (Wire services are clear of reports of new attacks.) The outgoing president will not attend the swearing-in. He cannot even get friends to see him off at the airport.
What Trump will do is snatch as much of Biden’s limelight as he can. Early this morning he granted clemency or pardons to 143 people, among them a rogues’ gallery of cronies, donors and potential future donors. It seems he was dissuaded from issuing preemptive pardons to himself, family members, or personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. But the morning is young.
In addition to issuing pardons this morning, Trump rescinded his 2017 executive order barring former White House employees from lobbying the government. Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said of Trump pardoning cronies, “Amazingly, in his final 24 hours in office, Donald Trump found one more way to fail to live up to the ethical standard of Richard Nixon.”
Biden’s plate as new president is overflowing. He is expected to issue a flurry of executive orders his first day in office, many to undo policies put in place by Trump. Most pressing will be instructions aimed at gaining ground on the coronavirus pandemic Trump once assured Americans would “disappear as if by magic.” That was 400,000 dead Americans ago. Biden will institute a national mask mandate for federal employees and revoke the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
Biden will reestablish the National Security Council’s directorate for global health security and biodefense. (Trump had disbanded it.) He will revoke Trump’s order to exclude noncitizens from the 2020 census count as well as the travel ban from several Muslim and African countries. Biden will also cancel Trump’s 1776 Commission whose widely panned report released Monday reads like a Bircher re-write of American history.
Moreover, Biden will press ahead with other proposals aimed at easing the economic burdens on Americans stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic:
He will also ask three key agencies — the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development — to extend foreclosure moratoriums for federally backed mortgages under their purview through at least the end of March.
Incoming White House officials emphasized the need for Congress to approve his larger relief package, which would extend unemployment benefits; dole out an additional $1,400 in stimulus payments for millions of Americans; and devote tens of billions of dollars to economic needs such as rental, housing and food assistance, among other measures.
Biden’s overarching challenge will be to lead a country that seems almost ungovernable, made so, says sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, by a “political civil war dividing the white middle strata between those who want to be part of a multiracial, inclusive future, and those who fear and refuse that.”
The tensions behind that will remain long after the virus is vanquished. Clicking our heels together three times will not take us back to any version of Kansas we remember. If only.
In the meantime, Trump has left the building.