President Joe Biden has been a lame-duck president ever since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. But now that the election is over — and Donald Trump is president-elect — Biden no longer has to worry whether his decisions will hurt Kamala Harris’ chances of winning.
Could Biden potentially use this newfound wiggle room over the next few months to take steps that might’ve been politically damaging for Harris before Election Day?
Here are two areas of greatest attention:
The president, for example, could make good on warnings to Israel that his administration would cut military aid if humanitarian conditions in Gaza don’t improve. Such a move is “on the table” but would “still run into significant political backlash in the US,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Clayton Allen.
Plus, now that Bibi knows that Trump is heading to the White House in January, the effectiveness of conditioning assistance would be limited, says Allen.
“Bibi knows that things are going to get better for him in two-and-a-half months,” adds Allen, and would be unlikely to shift course in Gaza over a move that Trump could undo once he’s in office.
Biden could also take action by declining to veto UN Security Council resolutions seeking to hold the Jewish state accountable for its actions in Gaza. His administration has done this before, refusing to veto a resolution calling for a cease-fire back in March, stoking Netanyahu’s ire. But these measures would be largely symbolic, accomplishing little with Netanyahu, who has already signaled that the UN’s views on the Jewish state’s prerogatives amount to a hill of beans.
Another move could be approving the use of long-range weapons by Ukraine on targets in Russian territory, which the US has imposed restrictions on so far. That is a “more likely potential shift” than Biden taking any major steps to challenge Israel, says Allen, noting that the administration was already considering a move like this even before Trump won.
There could also be steps taken to “try and codify some sort of security commitment to Ukraine via the NDAA process,” adds Allen, referring to an annual defense funding bill, but that would depend on garnering support in Congress.
But at the end of the day, the lame-duck period is unlikely to yield lasting changes in policy, a fact that Zelensky seemed to acknowledge in his congratulatory tweet to Trump, in which he told the president-elect that he hoped to work together to achieve a “just peace.” Trump, for his part, has pledged to end the war within 24 hours after assuming office — but hasn’t expanded on how he’d accomplish this.
