President-elect Joe Biden will issue a memo on his first day to “halt or postpone actions by the Trump administration at the last minute,” Biden’s transition team announced Thursday.
The Biden-Harris White House plans to publish a regulation summit the afternoon of Jan. 20 that will stop or delay the Trump administration’s so-called “ midnight rules ” that won’t go into effect until after Inauguration Day, said incoming White Press Secretary. House Jen Psaki during the transition team’s final briefing for the new year. Such last-minute actions are typical of lame-duck presidents, she said.
What are Midnight Rules?
According to George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, “the final months of an outgoing presidential administration typically generate a significant amount of regulatory activity.”
“The midnight period is typically defined as the period between the presidential election in November and the inauguration day on January 20 of the following year,” the center writes, and “has already been documented during the transition from the Carter administration to Reagan, and has been accompanied by of every presidential transition since then, regardless of political party. ”
The Biden government will quickly address changes made during this period, as other administrations have done, Psaki said. The freeze applies to both regulations and guidance documents, which agencies provide to explain or clarify rules and policies.
As an example, Psaki cited a rule proposed by the Trump administration’s Department of Labor regarding the authority of corporations to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Independent contractors give up most of the benefits that employees receive, such as overtime or minimum wage protection, paid length of sickness, family leave, and the right to form or join a union.
The Department of Labor is expected to publish a final rule before January 20 that would make it easier for companies to call their employees independent contractors to avoid minimum wage and overtime protection. If it goes into effect, the rule will make it easier. to misclassify workers as independent contractors, costing workers nearly $ 3.7 billion annually, “she said. Biden’s memo “could potentially freeze this rule and not allow it to be implemented,” Psaki said.
When asked what the Biden administration will do with possible upcoming actions and executive orders that the freeze memo cannot stop – such as reports that the Trump administration will designate Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism – Psaki acknowledged that there are “additional actions that the government will take. Trump and members “of the team can absorb the next few weeks that are damaging and destructive to our policies, be it national security policy or domestic policy.” “
She and Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden-Harris transition, said delays and barriers in the transition process have made it difficult to assess certain issues. She said the Biden team had hoped for “more cooperation” from critical agencies. ‘including the Ministry of Defense. ”
The transition coincided with significant delays in vaccine distribution. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID Data Tracker, more than 2 million people have been vaccinated in the United States – far from the 20 million Trump administration officials promised by the end of the year.
“The pace is not what it needs to be,” Psaki said, adding that the upcoming government will push for more funding for vaccine distribution in the new year. “The bill currently under discussion will not be enough.”
Biden will also withdraw some of Trump’s “harmful” executive orders, Psaki said, and some of the upcoming government’s priorities will include Affordable Care Act. “