The weak part of President Trump’s administration is likely to be defined by his relentless effort to overturn the results of the 2020 elections, which culminated in the US Capitol insurrection after Trump asked his supporters to go to the Capitol to try to prevent certification of the results. . But Trump’s struggle against the electoral reality was not the only important thing that happened in his last two and a half months. Here’s a look, through several key numbers, at some of the really big things that Trump and his administration did and did not do in the final weeks …
6 plays
The use of the death penalty at the state level has declined, especially in liberal-tending states, but also in conservatives. At the federal level, the government has not executed anyone since 2003 – during most of the presidency of George W. Bush and the entire presidency of Barack Obama – until last July. But former attorney general William Barr, backed by Trump, has prioritized prioritizing allowing federal executions to continue. The federal government has executed 13 people since July, including six since it became clear that Joe Biden won the 2020 elections.
In other words: almost half of the federal executions in the past 18 years took place in the final two months of Trump’s term.
These six executions, in particular, infuriated liberals as Biden opposed the death penalty as a candidate and his team may have postponed those executions once in office.
77,000 deaths
More than 77,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in December, according to the COVID Tracking Project, the most lethal month of the virus outbreak in the United States so far. (December is notable because it was Trump’s last full month in office.) Coronavirus deaths have increased since the beginning of November, rising from about 1,000 deaths a day to more than 3,000 a day in the past few weeks.
Part of the increase was expected, as people were more likely to retreat into the house as it got colder during fall and winter, so the increase was certainly not just Trump’s fault. But that level of daily death probably would have been treated as a major crisis by another president. Instead, Trump was basically turned off from dealing with the virus in the post-election period.
3 million vaccinations
About 3 million Americans were vaccinated against COVID-19 in December, well below the 20 million that had been the goal of the Trump administration. Again, the struggle to get more people vaccinated is not something that can be attributed solely to the Trump administration, since state and local governments are heavily involved in the vaccination effort. And the pace of vaccinations is accelerating. But it is likely that another president, Democrat or Republican, would have made vaccination his top priority in a way that Trump did not.
13 judges
Thirteen of Trump’s court nominees to federal district or district courts have been confirmed by the United States Senate since Biden was declared the winner of the election. (In contrast, no judicial candidate for Obama was confirmed after July 2016, well before the end of his term, with Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans in the majority.) Putting more conservatives in the bank has been a top priority for Trump and McConnell , and they continued to advance even after the elections.
Thomas Kirsch’s confirmation was particularly notable. He replaced Amy Coney Barrett at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals after Coney Barrett’s confirmation at the Supreme Court. With the appointment of Kirsch, Trump appointed 54 judges to the country’s 13 federal appellate courts, almost the same number (55) that President Barack Obama appointed in eight years in office. More than a quarter of the currently active federal judges have been appointed by Trump, an impressive feat considering he will serve only a single term.
1776
In one of its final acts before leaving office, the Trump administration released a 45-page document called “The 1776 Report”. The report, written by conservative academics and management figures, was intended to serve as a replica of The 1619 Project, published in 2019 by The New York Times Magazine, which argued that much of America’s history is best understood with the nation’s foundation in mind. in 1619, when slaves from Africa were first brought to the United States. The White House report was a strong denunciation of the so-called identity policy, critical of the founders of the United States for tolerating slavery and other ideas often advocated by more liberal Americans.
Many scholars have refuted the findings of the 1776 report. But the content of the report and its release shortly before Trump left office was a fitting conclusion for a government that was defined in many ways by its racial (and sometimes racist) policy.
5 pardons
In the post-election period, Trump pardoned five people who had been convicted of crimes as part of special attorney Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. These pardons were the definitive demonstration of presidential power – Trump basically eliminated the results of an investigation of which he had long complained and sought to undermine. And pardons are one of the clearest examples of Trump’s willingness to completely break with democratic values. These pardons undermined the idea of equal justice under the law, as they were part of a broader Trump standard granting clemency to friends and allies. And Trump undermined the law enforcement process by suggesting to former campaign president Paul Manafort that Manafort would obtain forgiveness if he did not cooperate with Mueller.
Trump will step down from office much more unpopular than he was when Biden secured victory in the elections. Trump’s net approval is now -19 (39% approve, 58% disapprove), compared to -7 (45% approved, 52% disapproved) on November 7. But much of that drop is probably due solely to Trump’s role in feeding the Capitol attack, unlike the things mentioned in this article. It is likely that many Americans are not even aware that, in their final days, the Trump administration basically restarted the federal death penalty, tried to undermine one of the most prominent projects of perhaps the country’s most important news institution, and swept through the sentences of Probe Mueller. Research suggests that most Americans already thought Trump was dealing badly with COVID-19, so the high number of deaths and the low number of vaccinations may not affect the public’s perception of Trump much.
Therefore, Trump’s last days probably wouldn’t have mattered in his poll numbers if it weren’t for the attack on the Capitol. But research aside, when you consider the attack on the Capitol and everything else that happened, Trump’s last few weeks in office were perhaps the most important of his entire tenure.