Government

Trump Administration Starts The Hard Work Of Smashing The Inventory On The Way Out

It’s no surprise that he doesn’t care about little things like what the majority of citizens actually want now that he’s being booted out of office.

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sneaking in a few final unpopular policies or controversial pardons is nothing new for a lame duck president. And we all knew, based on the decades-long putrefaction of his character, that if Donald Trump lost the election, he was going to throw a particularly large tantrum.

But some of this stuff … come on. Late last week, the Trump administration moved forward on a policy that would redefine the application of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act to prohibit the federal government from fining companies for practices that kill migratory birds, as long as the aim of those practices wasn’t to “intentionally” kill migratory birds. What constituency is clamoring for more incidental bird deaths? Doesn’t matter, I guess. Democrats apparently like the hawks, eagles, seabirds, storks, songbirds, and sparrows covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so on the way out the door Trump wants to make it easier to drown wildfowl in uncovered oil pits.

In another policy no one wants, the Trump Justice Department approved an amendment to the “Manner of Federal Executions” rule to allow federal executions to be carried out by methods other than lethal injection, in states that have authorized such other means. In practical reality, this probably won’t affect much, because there are only a handful of states which still have electrocution, firing squad, the gas chamber, and/or hanging on the books as possible alternatives to lethal injection, and also because the death penalty is a medieval holdover that doesn’t have any measurable deterrent effect on crime — sure, maybe there was a certain flavor of American frontier justice to the death penalty 150 years ago, but anyone who thinks it’s not on its way into the dustbin of history is only deluding himself. So why try to appear to expand death penalty methods in your own dying days of minority rule? Just as another fuck you to Democrats, and the whole country that failed to elect you, to playact as a tough guy, because you know they hate that.

But the tough-on-crime schtick only applies to the people not committing crimes on Trump’s behalf. The grant of clemency to Roger Stone is already old news at this point. More recently, Trump pardoned his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty as charged (under oath) before later trying to renege on that guilty plea. There are reports that Trump “lawyer” Rudy Giuliani discussed with Trump the possibility of securing a preemptive pardon for himself last week, although Giuliani strenuously denied the reports, for what his word is worth (absolutely nothing). You probably don’t recall that Giuliani already threatened to breach attorney-client privilege to release dirt on Trump if Trump ever turned on him, which makes a Giuliani pardon pretty likely if he wants one. There are going to be more of these Trump circle pardons throughout December, especially with Fox News host Sean Hannity urging the president to pardon himself and other Trump family members.

And all of that is only a small smattering of the unadulterated garbage Trump has been trying to sneak into official government policy in the waning days of his presidency. In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency, but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes. In 2020, Joe Biden bested Donald Trump, winning with a lead of more than 6.8 million in the popular vote. Trump has never governed with the mandate of majority rule (or governed at all, really, there was golf to play), so it’s no surprise that he doesn’t care about little things like what the majority of citizens actually want now that he’s being booted out of office.

Some aspects of this last gasp of minority rule will be easily undone by a Biden administration, others not so much. I suppose on the long list of serious renovations our democratic system needs in the wake of the Trump presidency, we could add shortening the presidential lame duck period like we did in 1933. Right now though, I’m just looking forward to soon not having to write about ridiculous new policies on pointless bird killings and the like.

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Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

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