34 NEWSWEEK.COM NOVEMBER 27, 2020
ELECTION 2020Republicans used that tactic to undo several last-
ditch Obama rules upon Trump’s arrival in 2017, but
it requires undivided government.
Another fear is that Trump officials will attempt
“to destroy documents or evidence that would point
to really bad behavior,” Ornstein says. Information
about emails involving Commerce Secretary Wilbur
Ross’s efforts to curtail the 2020 census, Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos’s dealings with private univer-
sities or HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s involvement
with no-bid contracts, for instance, could vanish.
“You can think of a million things because we’re deal-
ing with a level of miscreants that know no bottom,”
he says. “Yes, there are laws that theoretically prevent
people from destroying documents, but once they
are destroyed, they’re destroyed.”
Lu finds this prospect more remote, if only be-
cause career civil servants in much of the govern-
ment make backups of most sensitive records. “Even
if I were to go into my hard drive and wipe clean all
of my files, it’s still been backed up somewhere,” he
says. “Look, anything is possible, but it’s not the eas-
iest thing to do. You really need the cooperation or
the assistance of career officials to help you do a lot
of these things, and if they stand up and say, ‘We’re
not doing this,’ then that it gets much harder.”
Ornstein, nonetheless, thinks Biden’s team should
be on high alert: “They would be guilty of dereliction
of duty if they didn’t go into this with their eyes wide
open about the dangers and the risks.”
If there’s a comforting thought for those con-
cerned about Trump’s actions, it’s that he will be
replaced by “one of the most qualified, experienced
people to become president,” Lu says. Biden, having
been vice president only four years ago and hav-
ing served 36 years in the Senate, has an intimate
understanding of what needs to be done and how
the levers of government work. “That should giveEND GAME
The days are numbered
for key members of the
Trump administration,
including Cabinet
secretaries and other
ofɿcials (seen at right at a
2019 meeting of the White
House Opportunity and
Revitalization Council),
as well as White House
Chief of Staff Mark
Meadows (below).Executive orders, too, are on the menu—although
they can be reversed easily so even liberal alarmists
doubt they will have much impact. JoshHorwitz,
executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Vio-
lence, says,“His sons are big into hunting and things
like that, so maybe there are some rules around big
game trophy importation or the export of certain
firearms he could change by executive order.”
One increasingly faint silver lining: If Democrats
win the Senate by flipping both Georgia Senate seats
in the January 5th runoffs, there is more recourse
because of the Congressional Review Act. That gives
Congress the ability to undo executive-branch rules
passed within the prior 60 legislative calendar days.“There are laws that theoretically prevent
people from DESTROYING DOCUMENTS, but once
they are destroyed, they’re destroyed.”