By Ruth Moreno
For all its talk of unity, the Biden administration has proven itself to be as hyper-partisan as it gets after only a month and a half in office. The nearly two trillion dollar spending bill that passed the Senate last week was only the latest episode, as President Biden and Democrat leadership cast aside their former bipartisanship to ram through a bill that broke decades of precedent against using our tax dollars to fund abortion.
This was just one example, though, of the administration's left-wing response to supposedly bipartisan issues. Last week on March 5, the administration also tried to fire the general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Sharon Gustafson. The EEOC is an independent and bipartisan agency, but Gustafson's decision to stand up for religious liberty when it comes to litigation involving conscience rights put a target on her back.
Monday, on "Washington Watch," Tony Perkins sat down with Roger Severino, a former official in the Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and current senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, to discuss this most recent injection of partisanship into America's already divided political landscape.
Severino knows what it's like to be forced out of government. Near the end of the Trump administration, he was appointed to the council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, but was then told the Biden administration wanted him out. If he refused to resign, he would be fired. Severino has now sued the Biden administration for this blatant display of partisanship, a display in which the Trump administration did not partake. According to Severino, President Trump did not dismiss independent federal agents confirmed to their positions by the Obama administration, but despite his emphasis on unity President Biden has done the exact opposite.
Gustafson, like Severino, is not planning on going down without a fight, and is purportedly refusing to resign until her term ends in August of 2023. Thus far, Gustafson has been a champion for religious freedom in an area of politics which is often trampled by the LGBTQ agenda.
Why is Gustafson being targeted?
As Severino said, "she's the general counsel of the EEOC. They're the ones who are in charge of all the litigation that touches all the hot button issues that touch on transgender issues and conscience and what pronouns you could use in the workplace."
Severino explained that the Biden administration's decision to go after independent federal agencies says a lot about where the president really stands on the subject of unity, and noted the backlash President Trump would have received had he taken similar actions.
"The media would have gone crazy over that," Severino told Tony.
Indeed, the media was eager to point out actions the Trump administration took which could have been construed as partisan or divisive. They also loved to point out supposed "hypocrisy." The examples are too numerous to count.
Now, though, with a new administration in office, the media has remained deathly silent on even these most obvious cases of needless and dangerous partisanship. Preserving things as important as religious liberty and the integrity of bipartisan institutions should not be compromised for the sake of pure partisan politics.
As Severino noted, "the supreme irony here is that President Biden is smashing through precedent, in essence adopting the typical conservative view that the president has the authority under the Constitution to do this." For all the criticism of President Trump, as Severino observed President Trump did not operate this way.
We, for one, are glad that Severino and Gustafson are helping point this out, and refuse to go down without a fight.
