The parts of Joe Biden's legacy that are most — and least — in danger under Trump
What Biden laws and executive actions Donald Trump could undo, including on immigration, student loan forgiveness and transgender rights.
WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden relinquishes power in January, some parts of his legacy will be secure, while others may be undone by President-elect Donald Trump and a new Republican-controlled Congress.
The pieces of Biden’s legacy go into four buckets. Trump can easily undo executive actions on matters like immigration and transgender rights, while a Republican Congress can unravel spending programs passed by Democrats on a partisan basis. But it will be difficult for Trump to undo bipartisan legislation, such as measures about infrastructure and preventing gun violence, and the judges Biden appointed can’t be unseated.
Republican lawmakers told NBC News they expect Trump to quickly undo many of Biden’s executive actions and the GOP-controlled Congress to use the budget process to roll back some of his spending measures, including parts of one of the signature achievements of his administration, the Inflation Reduction Act.
In his almost four years in office, Biden has taken executive action on border security and keeping migrant families together to abortion access, birth control and protecting LGBTQ rights. His programs forgiving billions of dollars in federal student loan debt face an uncertain future after Trump ran against them.
Biden’s immigration orders are ripe for Trump to target after he ran on a platform of mass deportations and clamping down on border security. In June, Biden signed an executive action to temporarily shut down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters tops 2,500 between official ports of entry, which Trump may seek to supersede with one of his own. The same month, a second Biden order allowed undocumented spouses and children of U.S. citizens to apply for legal status without leaving the country if they've lived in the U.S. for 10 years or more.
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