“Despondent” Biden officials are mulling how to protect their national security priorities before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office in January, according to a report in Politico. Whether it’s sending funds to Ukraine, or imposing new sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers, an array of options are on the table.
But there’s no formal plan yet for how to lock in President Joe Biden’s big-ticket policies against a Trump effort to dismantle them, a senior Biden administration official said. Some administration officials also believe that having such a plan won’t make a difference.
Trump is sure to quickly halt or reverse much of what Biden’s team manages to push through in these final months, multiple current and former U.S. officials said. He will have broad executive authority to do so, as well as enough support in Congress and in the judiciary, that almost nothing will stop him. “You really can’t ‘Trump-proof,’” one U.S. official said. “You can ‘Trump delay,’ you can throw sand in the gears, but there is no way short of legislation to ‘Trump-proof.’”
The U.S. weapons flowing to Ukraine is the top priority of these folks, with their plan to ram through the remaining $6 billion in military aid to Kyiv before Jan. 20. It’s not clear what Trump will do, if anything, to halt the weapons shipments and contracts with the U.S. military industry for more air defense systems that will arrive in years to come, Politico says. But the Pentagon will likely be unable to send everything it has pledged to bring those accounts down to zero by Inauguration Day, given that it takes weeks, or months, for munitions and other equipment to arrive in Ukraine from whenever the U.S. announces it. Once Trump is in office, he could decide not to send Kyiv those weapons—even if they’ve already been promised.
