| ||
|---|---|---|
Incumbent Tenure
Presidential campaigns Vice presidential campaigns Published works  | ||
The Joe Biden administration pledged to pass government ethics reform. [1] [2] The Biden administration also pledged to pass legislation and enforce policies to enforce electoral reform, in response to the influence of special interests and gerrymandering in elections. [2]
The Trump administration has been accused of multiple ethics violations and removing lobbying bans for personal profit and political benefit for reelection, and officials had been accused of violating the Hatch Act of 1939 multiple times. [3] The administration used the White House lawn during the 2020 Republican National Convention and had Secretary of State Mike Pompeo deliver remarks on an official visit overseas, which many outside sources said violated the Hatch Act.
Trump engaged in multiple attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election.
Biden has suggested that the 2022 United States elections could be illegitimate if his proposed election laws are not passed due to Republican-controlled legislature's enacted legislation. [4] [5] [6]
The Biden administration supported the For the People Act (also known as HR 1) which seeks to expand voting rights, reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. The bill was passed by the House on March 3, 2021, and is currently in the Senate. On March 7, 2021, the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Biden signed an executive order extending National Voter Registration Act of 1993 agency designation to federal agencies wherever permitted by state governments, allowing federal agencies, upon state request, to provide opportunities for those who access their services to be provided voter registration and education opportunities. [7] [8]
Following the attempts to overturn the 2020 election, calls were made to make revise the 1887 Electoral Count Act. Such revisions were deemed necessary to clarify and adjust the roles of Congress and the Vice President in counting electoral votes. Reforms were included in a December 2022 omnibus bill, which Biden signed into law on December 29, 2022. [9]
Biden signed Executive Order 13989, Ethic Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel, which set the follow lobbying restrictions for political appointees: [10]
Executive Order 13989 also stated the commitments of political appointees to conduct that upholds the independence of law enforcement and precludes improper interference with investigative or prosecutorial decisions of the Department of Justice. [10] Biden promised during the campaign trail that Attorney General Merrick Garland would work for the American people and not as the President's personal lawyer. [11]
Biden restarted the usual routine of daily press briefings that had been stopped by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic in light of frequent criticisms and gaffes. [12] In the Biden administration's first press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated that her focus was on "bringing truth and transparency back to the briefing room" and that she had a "deep respect for the role of a free and independent press in our democracy and for the role all of [them] play". [13]
The Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law. Its main provision prohibits civil-service employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the president and vice president, from engaging in some forms of political activity. It became law on August 2, 1939. The law was named for Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico. It was most recently amended in 2012.
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign.
The United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871. U.S. state and local government entities often have comparable civil service systems that are modeled on the national system to varying degrees.
Douglas William Domenech is an American government official who served as the Assistant United States Secretary of the Interior for Insular Areas in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2021. He is a former a George W. Bush administration political appointee who served in roles of Deputy Chief of Staff of the United States Department of the Interior, and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior, as well as held a position on the White House Working Group on the Political Status of Puerto Rico.
In the United States, a presidential transition is the process during which the president-elect of the United States prepares to take over the administration of the federal government of the United States from the incumbent president. Though planning for transition by a non-incumbent candidate can start at any time before a presidential election and in the days following, the transition formally starts when the General Services Administration (GSA) declares an “apparent winner” of the election, thereby releasing the funds appropriated by Congress for the transition, and continues until inauguration day, when the president-elect takes the oath of office, at which point the powers, immunities, and responsibilities of the presidency are legally transferred to the new president.
Jennifer Rene Psaki is an American television political analyst and former government official. A political advisor who served under both the Obama and Biden administrations, she served the Biden administration as the 34th White House press secretary until May 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the Obama administration as the White House deputy press secretary (2009); the White House deputy communications director (2009–2011); the spokesperson for the United States Department of State (2013–2015); and the White House communications director (2015–2017). Psaki was a political contributor for CNN from 2017 to 2020. As of March 2023, she hosts a weekly television program, Inside with Jen Psaki, on MSNBC.
According to the United States Office of Government Ethics, a political appointee is "any employee who is appointed by the President, the Vice President, or agency head". As of 2016, there were around 4,000 political appointment positions which an incoming administration needs to review, and fill or confirm, of which about 1,200 require Senate confirmation. The White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is one of the offices most responsible for political appointees and for assessing candidates to work at or for the White House.
Tomasz "Tom" P. Malinowski is an American politician and diplomat who was the U.S. representative from New Jersey's 7th congressional district from 2019 to 2023. A Democrat, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Obama administration.
Executive Order 13770, entitled "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees," was an executive order issued by US President Donald Trump on January 28, 2017, that directs executive branch employees on a ban from becoming a lobbyist for five years. The order, which reflected an increasingly standard practice of issuing such ethics rules by executive order early in a new administration, borrowed language from similar orders issued by past administrations.
Karine Jean-Pierre is an American political advisor who has served as the White House press secretary since May 13, 2022. She is the first black person and the first openly LGBT person to serve in the position. Previously, she served as the deputy press secretary to her predecessor Jen Psaki from 2021 to 2022 and as the chief of staff for U.S. Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Emily Webster Murphy is an American attorney and former government official who served as the administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) from 2017 to 2021. Before serving in the GSA, Murphy was an attorney for the Republican National Committee and worked for several congressional committees and executive departments in the field of acquisition policy.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
A Schedule F appointment was a job classification in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service that existed briefly at the end of the Trump administration during 2020–2021. It would have contained policy-related positions, removing their civil service protections and making them easy to fire. It was never fully implemented, and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration.
Joe Biden's tenure as the 46th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2021. Biden, a Democrat from Delaware who previously served as vice president under Barack Obama, took office following his victory in the 2020 presidential election over Republican incumbent president Donald Trump. Upon his inauguration, he became the oldest president in American history. Biden entered office amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic crisis, and increased political polarization.
The presidential transition of Joe Biden began on November 7, 2020, and ended on January 20, 2021. Unlike previous presidential transitions, which normally take place during the roughly 10-week period between the election in the first week of November and the inauguration on January 20, Biden's presidential transition was shortened somewhat because the General Services Administration under the outgoing Trump administration did not recognize Biden as the "apparent winner" until November 23.
Joe Biden's immigration policy is primarily based on reversing many of the immigration policies of the previous Trump administration. During his first day in office, Biden reversed many of Trump's policies on immigration, such as halting the construction of the Mexican border wall, ending Trump's travel ban restricting travel from 14 countries, and an executive order to reaffirm protections for DACA recipients. The Biden administration and Department of Homeland Security, under leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas, dramatically reined in deportation practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), prioritizing national security and violent crime concerns over petty and nonviolent offenses. However, Biden has also faced criticism for extending Title 42, a Trump administration border restriction that arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as restarting the use of expediting families in Central America, which can cause families to be sent back in weeks, compared to years for an average immigration case. In the fiscal year 2021, the US Border Patrol confirmed more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the US-Mexico border, more than quadruple the number in the previous fiscal year and the largest annual total on record. In January 2023, Biden announced a program to strengthen the admission of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, while at the same time his administration will crack down on those who fail to use the plan's legal pathway and strengthen border security. In May 2023, the Biden Administration approved sending 1,500 more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border following Title 42's expiration.
The social policy of the Joe Biden administration is intended to improve racial equity, increase access to safe and legal abortions, tighten restrictions on gun sales, among other aims. A number of policies aim to reverse the former policies of President Donald Trump, including the "Muslim" travel ban and loosened anti-discriminatory policies relating to LGBT people.
U.S. President Joe Biden stated in February 2021 that his administration will pursue cannabis decriminalization as well as seek expungements for people with prior cannabis convictions. It can still be found on his campaign website under sentencing reform. As of October 2022, Biden pardoned thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession under federal law. However, according to the Marshall Project, nobody was released from prison as a result of the October 2022 pardons, as no federal inmates were incarcerated for simple marijuana use at the time.
Executive Order 13989, officially titled Ethic Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel, was signed on January 20, 2021, and is the fifth executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden. The order works to guarantee that the Executive Branch makes ethical commitments.
Protect Democracy is a nonprofit organization based in the United States. A nonpartisan group, Protect Democracy seeks to check authoritarian attacks on U.S. democracy.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
