Op-Ed: Michael Chamberlain: ‘Trump-Proofing’ is nothing new for the Biden-Harris administration

Schedule A offers an alternative to the strictly competitive career civil service procedure and is supposed to be used to hire people with disabilities, or specialists (scientists, chaplains, etc.). But the hundreds of positions the administration filled at DOJ have included more than 150 Antitrust Division attorneys and more than 100 immigration judges who will be there permanently.   

Science has been a big area of Trump-proofing focus that cuts across agencies. According to HuffPost, the new collective bargaining agreement agreed upon between the EPA and its employees’ unions created mechanisms for employees to report any other employee who they deem to have “improper influence” on scientific study, which pits employees against other employees and creates an environment of fear, and an opportunity to thwart attempts at reversing any of the Biden-Harris administration’s agenda. Protecting even the most cherished environmental theories hardly justifies STASI-fying civil servants.

 Politico further reported that “the NIH has designated an official to identify political meddling in the agency’s work and is tasking a soon-to-be-established scientific integrity council with reviewing those cases. The White House knows Trump could still cast those plans aside but is calculating that doing so will set off alarms with the media, Congress and the public.”

 Such moves might go down easier if government science bureaucrats hadn’t been so busy generating public distrust. PPT has created a portfolio of at least a dozen breaches of scientific integrity over the last few years. It includes multiple examples from NIH and its sister organizations during the pandemic. It includes the inflated, arbitrary “Billions Project,” from the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

The Project is a go-to reference for climate activists. Another example is former Climate Envoy John Kerry’s laughable claim that “fifteen million people are dying every single year around this planet as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.”

More than just individual departments and offices, the Biden-Harris administration is shot through with bald-faced hypocrisy about science. Upon taking office, President Biden issued a Scientific Integrity Memorandum demanding “the highest level of integrity in all aspects of executive branch involvement with scientific and technological processes” and that “[s]cientific findings should never be distorted or influenced by political considerations.”

But the following year, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy “formally recognized” indigenous knowledge as “one of the many important bodies of knowledge that contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States, and to our collective understanding of the natural world.” Further, “Agencies do not need to judge, validate, or evaluate Indigenous Knowledge using other forms of knowledge in order to include Indigenous Knowledge in Federal policy, research, or decision making [emphasis added].” 

Doesn’t sound very science-y, does it? They even searched for ways to exempt indigenous knowledge from FOIA. Indigenous knowledge was cited as a factor in the Interior Department’s cancelation of oil and gas leases in Alaska.

The rot has set in elsewhere, from the deep problems at the Secret Service to FEMA officials telling relief workers in Florida to avoid houses with Trump signs. Was that an example of Trump-proofing federal aid?

A key message opposing President Trump’s re-election was that he poses a threat to “our democracy.” Setting aside the merits, or lack thereof, of that claim, right before our eyes many of the same people who made that argument have been busy sabotaging democracy. The constitution stipulates that every four years, the people and the states decide whether they want a change in the direction of the executive branch — whether they prefer the ideas of other temporary caretakers.  

Any effort to use deception, insubordination, or resistance planning to hamstring the actions of coming administrations is anti-democratic and at the very least inimical to the constitution. It’s disenfranchising the future.