The New York Times on Wednesday published an article headlined “Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab,” criticizing President Donald Trump’s use of executive authority while ignoring questionable actions by former President Joe Biden.
The article, written by NYT reporter Charlie Savage, outlines the ways in which Trump allegedly disregarded legal restrictions, including citing his policies on TikTok, asylum seekers and executive firings. However, it fails to reference a single example of the Biden administration’s numerous actions that faced legal challenges.
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“Other presidents have occasionally ignored or claimed a right to bypass particular statutes,” Savage wrote. “But Mr. Trump has opened the throttle on defying legal limits.”
“Mr. Trump has effectively nullified laws, such as by ordering the Justice Department to refrain from enforcing a ban on the wildly popular app TikTok and by blocking migrants from invoking a statute allowing them to request asylum,” he added. “He moved to effectively shutter a federal agency Congress created and tried to freeze congressionally approved spending, including most foreign aid. He summarily fired prosecutors, inspectors general and board members of independent agencies in defiance of legal rules against arbitrary removal.”
Biden, during his presidency, imposed vaccine mandates, pressured social media platforms to censor content, attempted to implement a student loan forgiveness plan that was ruled unconstitutional and unilaterally declared that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had become law despite lacking congressional approval.
Biden in December 2020 pledged not to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate once he became president, but issued multiple mandates upon taking office.
His administration required federal employees and contractors to get vaccinated or tested for the virus and also imposed a vaccine-or-testing rule for private businesses with more than 100 employees. The Supreme Court struck down the private sector mandate in January 2022.
Under the Biden administration, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin required service members to take the COVID-19 vaccine, discharging over 8,000 service members for refusing. Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 27 to reinstate them, restoring them to their prior rank with full back pay and benefits.
The Biden administration also pushed Big Tech companies to restrict content during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, it pressured Facebook to censor posts regarding the pandemic that it deemed misinformation, according to documents published by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan in July 2023.
Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an injunction on July 4, 2023, ruling that the Biden administration likely breached the First Amendment when it collaborated with social media platforms to censor information it opposed.
Doughty described the censorship as “Orwellian,” stating that Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri “produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.”
Biden’s White House also influenced Amazon in March 2021 to restrict the visibility of books that expressed skepticism regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, according to emails the House Judiciary Committee obtained.
Moreover, although the Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student debt in June 2023, his administration continued to press ahead with student forgiveness schemes until the very end of his presidency. In total, the administration forgave over $180 billion in student loan debt affecting more than 5 million borrowers.
The former president also published a statement on Jan. 17 unilaterally declaring that the ERA “has become part of our Constitution.” He asserted that as of 2020, 38 states ratified the amendment and that it should now be recognized as “the law of the land.”
Congress passed the ERA in 1972, but the amendment failed to be ratified by the required three-quarters of states within the seven-year deadline.
“Today, I affirm the Equal Rights Amendment to have cleared all the necessary hurdles to be added to the U.S. Constitution now,” Biden said at a press conference on Jan. 17. “The Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land now. It’s the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, now!”
Although presidents have the authority to issue pardons, Biden received blowback from both parties for the sweeping pardons he issued to his son Hunter and other members of his family in the final days of his presidency. He also criticized Trump in December 2020 over reports that claimed Trump was considering pardoning his family members.
“It concerns me, in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,” Biden said during the CNN interview.
The NYT did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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