Donald Trump Can’t Torch All of Joe Biden’s Legacy

Senator Chris Coons was speaking quickly. He needed to get to the Senate floor to confirm the last batch of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, adding to the largest number of appointments in a four-year term since the Carter administration. “It’s not just going to be a record number. It’s going to be a broad, diverse, experienced, qualified, younger federal judiciary, hundreds of judges at the circuit court, district court, and Supreme Court level,” Coons tells me. “These are lifetime appointments. Joe Biden’s legacy in the federal judiciary will last for a generation.”

But at the moment, Biden’s weightiest legacy appears to be an awful one: a disastrous final year in office that helped return Donald Trump to the White House. Last summer, as Biden clung to his party’s nomination, a senior Democratic strategist described to me, presciently, the stakes of the president’s sticking it out: “Everything will be seen as his fault. Every Senate seat lost, every House seat lost, every right that Trump takes away. You own everything.” Biden finally quit the race, of course, but not until late July; the timing, coupled with his wide and deep unpopularity, helped put the Democrats in a deep political hole from which Kamala Harris did not climb out.

And now, Trump will try to tear up many of the good things Biden did during his term. The former and future president spent a great deal of time on the 2024 campaign trail vowing to reverse Biden’s policies and positions on everything from transgender rights to immigration restrictions. Trump might also attempt to undo regulatory changes made during the final 60 days of Biden’s presidency. Yet for all the fulminating that may or may not turn into action, and for all the real damage Trump is sure to inflict, there are major Biden accomplishments that are Trump-proof.

Three deserve particular recognition because they will have an impact, to varying degrees, on existential issues. Most starkly: Instead of engaging in isolationist posturing and weird sycophancy toward Vladimir Putin, the US pushed back aggressively against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, organizing international resistance and sending billions in American aid. Could Biden have defended Ukraine even more forcefully? Perhaps. “I think the piecemealing of sending weapons systems became a real obstacle to greater Ukrainian success,” says Michael Allen, a White House national security specialist under former president George W. Bush. Then again, the risks of escalation, especially considering Russia’s nuclear arsenal, made a gradual approach prudent. Ukraine remains an independent nation and thousands of its citizens are alive today because Biden was president for the past four years. Buying them that time has real value, including the chance of a negotiated cease fire, even if Ukraine’s next four years turn out to be bleak. “The situation in Ukraine is certainly desperate,” says Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO. “But let’s also look at the other side of the ledger. The Russian army has been destroyed, literally destroyed. NATO has been strengthened significantly. There’s no doubt in my mind that the world is a better place today because of Biden than it would have been under Trump.”

Closer to home, though also of global importance, was Biden’s successful 2022 battle to pass a signature piece of legislation. Its name, the Inflation Reduction Act, was a bit of political spin: True, the IRA included meaningful health care and tax policy changes designed to bring down costs. But the bill’s core was devoted to climate change. It pumped hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies into clean energy and climate programs, and sparked a wave of private investments by offering billions in tax credits. Trump regularly rails against the climate change provisions of the IRA, and he may be able to cancel some of its mechanisms. But there’s no clawing back the cash that has already flowed into green energy projects. The benefits will be felt across the country. “Together with the CHIPS and Science Act, that’s resulted in almost $1 trillion in public and private sector investment,” says Gina McCarthy, who was Biden’s first White House national climate adviser. “It wasn’t spent to deny fossil fuels. It was spent to recognize that a clean energy economy would be enormously beneficial, not just for the climate but for getting people good jobs. It was designed as a 10-year horizon, and in three years we are far, far exceeding expectations—new technologies for manufacturing plants, new batteries to power energy, ground-source heat pumps, electric vehicles.”

The place where it will be least possible for Trump to turn back the clock is, fittingly and ironically, the place where Biden is least likely to receive credit. The president’s infrastructure push has built or rebuilt roads, bridges, sewer systems, and railroad projects from coast to coast. Way back in 2014, when he was a mere vice president, Biden said LaGuardia Airport seemed more suited to “some third-world country” than to New York City. New York’s governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, spearheaded the renovation plans, but Biden’s infrastructure act has allocated more than $113 million to boost the airport overhaul. Meanwhile, a makeover is also underway for the eternal snarl of I-95 south of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which is personal for Coons, who occupies the Delaware Senate seat Biden held for 35 years. “The interchange is nearing completion,” he says, “and it will dramatically improve development in the area, and reduce the huge air quality and health impacts from traffic.”

Do all of these multiple unsexy victories on foreign policy, climate change, and infrastructure outweigh the implications of Harris’s high-profile defeat, particularly if Trump enables a national abortion ban or constructs mass detention camps? Probably not. But some of the gains—achieved by a man who served his country honorably for decades and is about to leave the White House—will last beyond his administration. Someone should at least name an airport, a rail line, or a stretch of interstate after him.