WASHINGTON – In the past week, President Barack Obama’s administration overturned a decades-old policy toward Cuban immigrants, forged two major agreements to address racial bias in big-city police departments and approved an unexpected cut in mortgage rates for hundreds of thousands of low-income and first-time home buyers.
Officials even made time to add the rusty patched bumble bee to the list of endangered species.
In the final days before President Obama leaves office, administration officials are rushing to complete dozens of tasks that will affect millions of lives and solidify the president’s imprint on history. But in many cases, their permanence is uncertain, and President-elect Donald Trump is already pledging to undo some of them after taking office.
“He is clearly using executive power aggressively and trying to do as much as possible in his final days,” Princeton history and public affairs professor Julian Zelizer said in an email. “It is clear that a president who was once reluctant to use the power of his own office has changed his heart, especially now that he sees a radically conservative Congress and Republican president-elect are getting ready to dismantle much of what he has done.”
On Thursday alone, the administration designated three new national monuments and expanded another two in sites ranging from a forest in the Pacific Northwest to a school for freed slaves in South Carolina; took away one of the special immigration privileges Cubans arriving in the United States without visas have enjoyed for 50 years; announced sanctions designations against 18 senior Syrian officials for their role in the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon in 2014 and 2015; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Joe Biden; and accused Fiat Chrysler of cheating on national emission standards for some of its diesel trucks.
For weeks, congressional Republicans and members of the Trump transition team have questioned why the White House is pressing ahead given that the GOP will control both the executive and legislative branch for at least the next two years.
On Dec. 5, 23 GOP senators wrote Obama a letter asking that his administration “cease issuing new, nonemergency rules and regulations given the recent election results of Nov. 8.”
“It is our job now to determine the right balance between regulation and free market principles and make sure that our federal government no longer stands between Americans and financial success,” they wrote.
