Controversial last-minute decisions of Joe Biden and other US Presidents

Periods of presidential transitions are a stiltedly honored American tradition; they last for weeks between the November election and the January inauguration. It is a time when new administrations can set up a cabinet.

Still, these are also the last weeks of the old Administration, and these are the last chances for it to make the last decisions to secure policies or pose obstacles to the next President.

In a 2009 article, The Week said some presidents set policies that would be difficult for the next President to undo. We collected some of those decisions from this century.

The examples have been evident in the past few weeks with former President Biden, even with actual last-minute pardons minutes before President Trump's inauguration.

According to the AP, Mr. Biden set the presidential record for most individual pardons: over 3,000. He also issued extraordinary preemptive pardons to his relatives, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, and the members of the Jan. 6 attack investigation committee.

Mr. Biden authorized the first use of US-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine. He ordered a stop to new oil and gas drilling across millions of acres of coastal water and issued sweeping extensions of deportation protections.

The Biden Administration also announced it was removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and easing economic restrictions in exchange for the release of political prisoners.

The decision mirrored another by President Trump at the end of his past Administration. It designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism in its last weeks of power after it was removed by the Obama administration in 2015.

According to ProPublica's 2021 assessment of his last days in office, Mr. Trump made over 80 last-minute decisions. The outlet tracked the most controversial and consequential regulations.

ProPublica said the President signed orders to simplify the process for companies to designate workers as contractors, complicated H1B visa processes, and reduced VA benefits for injured vets.

He also issued orders to reduce protected lands, excluded oil and gas exploitation from EPA oversight, and loosed gas pipeline construction and maintenance safety standards.

According to the BBC, he also authorized a record string of federal executions for death row inmates. It named Mr. Trump the country's most prolific execution president in over a century.

According to CNN, former President Obama scaled up his executive power moves to solidify his legacy before President Trump took office for the first time. Many of his actions were not easily reversed.

Mr. Obama issued sanctions against six Russian individuals and five Russian entities related to election meddling, allowed a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements, and dismantled a Bush-era program that was used to track mainly Muslim and Arab men.

He reduced the sentences of over 1,000 and pardoned around a hundred non-violent drug criminals. He advised lawmakers to transfer nearly two dozen prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

He also pushed a drive to register people for health care through the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces, created two national monuments, and banned drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic.

According to an NBC 2009 article, the Bush Administration Labor Department rushed a new rule weeks before the Obama inauguration to make it difficult for the government to regulate the chemicals that workers could be exposed to.

And finally, according to The Week, former President Clinton signed an executive order reducing the permissible levels of arsenic in drinking water, expecting Bush to rescind the order, having to explain to electors why he wanted more arsenic in the water.

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