What To Expect with Biden as President
- New Lockdowns & Mask Mandates
- Firearm Regulations & Restrictions
- Age of the President
- Censorship & Cancel Culture
- Terrorism & Cyberattacks
- Stimulus & Debt Deferral or Cancellation
- Criminal Justice Reform
There have already been announcements that there will be a “ mask challenge “ in the first 100 days of the Biden administration to encourage people to wear their masks and get ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the federal government cannot regulate how the States enforce mask mandates or lockdowns, they can control these with regards to interstate travel. Any travel between states will require masks, and airports and travel depots could be forced to close in areas of high outbreaks.
While lockdowns cannot be mandated by federal law, states will have more generous support for choosing to evoke a lockdown. Most states provide the governor the power to act in the public’s health and safety during a declared emergency. Many governors will be encouraged to implement lockdowns with the knowledge that the federal government will support their efforts.
At the current vaccination rate, it is possible that kids might return to school sometime after summer. Teachers and school employees will likely need to present vaccination records to return to work. Federal and state employees, as well, will probably need to present vaccination records before being allowed to return to government jobs or offices. If the virus is not suitably under control by the summer of 2021, people may need to present vaccination records or a vaccination record card of some sort before being allowed into many public places.
Biden will very likely invoke the Defense Authorization Act and create the avenue for other companies to retool themselves to produce millions and millions of more doses of the vaccines. The vaccine’s actual effectiveness will begin to be realized, assuming the virus does not mutate, vaccine escape does not occur, and that enough people receive the vaccine. With more doses and more vaccines administered, the best projections show decreased transmission rates by the late summer of 2021.
2- Firearm Regulations & Restrictions
On the JoeBiden.com website, he outlines his position that “gun violence is a public health epidemic.” With the National Rifle Association filing for bankruptcy and the Congress controlled by Democrats, the first year of a Biden administration may see significant reforms in gun laws. First may be a repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which Biden lobbied against. Such a repeal would make manufacturers civilly liable for their products. Second, may be bans on firearms deemed “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines. Third, more stringent background checks for new gun purchases will likely be mandated.
You may live in a state with strict or lenient gun laws. Still, there is no doubt that a Biden administration will seek to implement policy and legislation that will slow the proliferation of high capacity guns and increase the length of sentences for people who offensively use guns. These actions at a federal level will impact every state and every level. You can expect pushback from the 2A crowd as they protest new measures. Any incident of gun violence, anywhere, for any reason, will be viewed as justification by some leading to stricter measures and a response by others as to why more people should possess legal firearms. This will be a flashpoint topic in the coming years. You will see more armed protests and more measures enacted to reduce the number and types of firearms people have available to them.
In anticipation of these stricter measures, expect a surge in gun sales. If your prepping supplies include any new guns or ammo, you would be wise to get the paperwork in motion on those, but you may find you have missed the boat. Usually, you can still obtain a personal handgun, hunting rifle, or shotgun, as these are viewed as more personal protection and for hunting.
3- Age of the President
No discussion of what to expect in the next four years of a Biden administration would be complete without addressing the President’s age. Biden turned 78 in November of 2020. He will be the oldest president ever. Ronald Reagan was 77 years and 349 days old when he left office. The average life expectancy of an American male is around 78 3/4 years. Knowing that the president has the best medical care and staff looking after him, he would be 82 years old when he left office if he only served one term. If he served two terms, he would be 86 years old when he left office.
What does this mean to Americans? Well, if everything runs smoothly and the economy chugs back stronger, and people feel a greater sense of being united behind their commonalities, it could mean nothing. If America remains divided, it could mean the political theater from both sides grows even more potent. If the president dies in office, his successor becomes the Vice President, and many see the current VP as an extremist.
We wish that politics weren’t so impactful to our community. We would rather be preparing for natural disasters than civil unrest or civil war, but we try to stay hard focused for you on today’s real threats. Those are the real threats of today. Biden’s advanced age could be a non-issue, or it could throw the country down a wild path of power grabs, posturing, and standoffs.
Continue to prepare for the possibility of civil unrest coming to your neck of the woods or your block of the neighborhood. Take a look at some of the other videos on this channel about surviving martial law or surviving an extended lockdown, and prepare accordingly. Again, many competent people live lives far beyond the national average. It isn’t a line in the sand, and people we all know live well into their eighties and nineties full of energy and ideas, but prepare as if that may not be the case here.
4- Censorship & Cancel Culture
Censorship and the cancel culture will remain big topics as the lines between free speech and big tech continue to be established and refined. Conservative social media sites like Parler have been entirely removed from the internet. It cannot be downloaded and lacks the server space to operate. It is interesting to note that a hacker legally copied the entire site before it was pulled down, effectively recording all user posts and geo stamps. Plus, it is being relaunched by a development team out of Russia, so make sure you’re aware of these implications.
This isn’t so much of a problem for anyone not posting things that could be interpreted as “bad” or “anti-establishment”; however, it drives the really bad characters underground, and it makes it harder for intelligence agencies to catch the few bad apples that might be out there. Expect to see several court cases around what constitutes free press and the responsibility of platforms to regulate speech.
Expect first amendment rights to rise to prominence in social discourse and court cases. This may affect many of the platforms you use to communicate with friends and family or to entertain yourself, so make sure you have alternate means. TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Gab, Instagram, even YouTube will all be scrutinized for either being too aggressive or not aggressive enough in scrubbing their users’ posts.
As people turn to other platforms that may spring up, they are also, unknowingly, exposing themselves to systems that may not have the same level of years of hardened security. Personal information will be a growing commodity amongst hackers over the next several years, as a result. As you prep yourself and your supplies, take the time to strengthen your online security and make sure you can function without technology. You may not have those helpful Do-It-Yourself YouTube videos when you need them, and you certainly wouldn’t have them in a grid down situation. Make sure you are learning what you need to know now. Make sure you have alternate means of communication with those with whom you want to stay connected. Make sure you have a plan for when systems go down or are canceled out of existence.
Four real threats are coming out of the censorship and cancel culture: the security of your personal information, the evil actors being driven underground with deepening plots, your potential loss of access to information and people, and your possible loss of access to information.
5- Terrorism & Cyberattacks
Terrorism and cyberattacks are likely on a scale we cannot yet fathom. Domestic terrorism incidents are on the rise, and the nation remains deeply divided. Political ideologies have spawned zealots across the spectrum. Though any domestic zealot can take things too far, any acts of violence or intimidation against civilians is considered terrorism. By that definition, we could be continuing down the current path and see more armed conflicts, more bombings like we have seen in Oklahoma City or Nashville, and more wide-scale civil unrest leading to fires, looting, and vandalism. That is all just on the domestic side of the equation.
From an international standpoint, our intelligence collection assets are weakened when countries are closed off to each other. State-sponsored terrorism from other countries seeking to strike America when we are already reeling from a grueling 2020 is not unlikely. The nation’s enemies and enemy regimes will seek to capitalize upon the opportunity they see, especially when any strike within our borders can easily be blamed on one of the domestic factions, which would further divide and fan the flames of internal conflict.
Even if all the intelligence agencies charged with thwarting terrorist activities are successful, and we are, thankfully, unharmed and unchallenged, the largest and most extensive cyberattack in history occurred last year. Systems will need to be rebuilt in many cases, and 100s if not 1000s of company systems were breached. The full extent of the trove of compromised data is not yet known. All that data out there, once interpreted, could lead to further hacks and breaches. Critical infrastructure, typically the last systems to be upgraded or rebuilt, is still vulnerable to larger attacks. As I have explained in other videos, it only takes a slight push in a few systems to have them spin out of control.
Preppers sometimes too easily dismiss the threat of terrorism because it seems too far away from them, or cyberattacks, because they are just average computer users; however, these attacks can have dramatic effects that ripple out across many systems. From power outages to system failures to the malicious destruction of systems and ransomware, any single attack can exponentially grow outside its original area of impact and disrupt travel, food supplies, and production, communication, or a host of other systems.
Be prepared for disruptions in systems most people rely upon. Make sure your preps can sustain you through a prolonged period of a grid down situation. Make sure your systems are protected and redundant. Download apps like Bridgefy that can work independently of a cellular connection by sending offline messages. Consider a CB radio and an emergency radio in your supplies. Make sure you have the means to generate electricity, heat, and light.
6- Stimulus & Debt Deferral or Cancelation
There are significant differences between how Democrats and Republicans approach the economy. As different as they are, however, there are some similarities. They both have the Fed print more money than we have, which sells off our debt to China, and just prolongs our day of reckoning. We have frequently discussed on other blogs both the weakening of the dollar and the not so rosy outlook for the next few years. This alone should encourage you to be a prepper.
A Biden administration will seek to put stimulus money directly in the hands of tax-paying citizens. The stimulus checks, by the way, are tied to a person’s 2019 taxes. If you didn’t file taxes, you probably didn’t get a stimulus check. This third round of $1400 to $2000 per person checks will be a top priority. Adding a 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package to an already exponentially growing debt during a time of anemic GDP…well, we don’t think there’s anyone who can’t do the math on that. It’s not good for the long term economy under the same way the US government has operated since the eighties.
If the first checks are any indicator, many will use these checks to survive. People who don’t need the money right away will either sit on it in their savings accounts or use it to pay off debt. After the first modest stimulus check, national credit card indebtedness dropped for the first month in years. Many people have seen this as an opportunity to realign their finances. As an incentive, they couldn’t go out to restaurants and bars anyway, so they suddenly found more money in their pockets. Even learning to cook at home has resulted in savings. Whatever people do with the money, the stimulus checks will serve as a lifeline for many but likely will not stimulate the economy too significantly.
Small businesses will continue to fail. If you can support small businesses, this is the time to do so. Do what you can to keep the dollars circulating within your community. This will make the whole economy stronger as a result.
Finally, student loan payments and evictions will probably be postponed until the Biden administration feels that the economy is accelerating again. In an all-out effort to try to get the economy churning again, there could be continued debt deferrals and possibly even some loan forgiveness. This does put money into working people’s pockets, but it doesn’t translate into a boost in the economy when uncertainties of the future loom.
A trade war with China and a global recession have created a shortage of imported raw materials and items. While trade may increase slightly, particularly with building and construction materials, the economy will move slowly through most of next year. When it is this strained, any natural disaster can dramatically impact stability. Perceived threats can spurn massive selloffs and volatile swings. Prep your finances like you prep your supplies– with cautious attention to detail and with a plan for things to possibly worsen in the future.
7- Criminal Justice & Policing Reform
Criminal justice and policing reform is a top priority of the Biden administration. Kamala Harris’s prior profession was as a prosecutor in the state of California. Expect legislation to be signed that will eliminate the cash bail system. Expect that first-time and non-violent offenders will be released rather than incarcerated pending their court date. As we have seen in some states where this policy is already in place, sometimes the first time offender continues their crime binge once released and becomes a repeat offender.
Though there is little mention of police reform on the joebiden.com site, which I will provide a link to the policy page in the comments below, it will assuredly be a topic during the Biden administration. Law enforcement officers can expect training programs to increase sensitivity, terminations, and suspensions of LEOs who have a prior reputation for heavy-handed tactics and a reduction in funds to purchase military equipment.
Mental health programs will be strengthened in an effort to prevent people who are perceived as unstable from acting upon their impulses and causing harm. I know from living in a state where many of these measures have already been enacted that some of them work, and some are met with resistance from the local sheriff’s department and citizenry. Do be prepared for a rise in petty crime and drugs as federal, state, and local agencies try various solutions.
Conclusion
Just the first few hours and days of a Biden Administration will see many policies revoked, Executive Orders signed, and bills pushed through Congress. The first few months and years will see the most ambitious plans put forth and debated. The years following will see dramatic changes in everything from firearm regulations to lockdowns and criminal justice reform. Add to this the ever-growing threat of cyberattacks and foreign and domestic terrorism, and we may be in store for continued national division. It is clear that push back, blowback, and conflicts will not be just confined to our country’s or your state’s capitol. As we saw from 2020, it can spill out onto the streets or suddenly appear in our neighborhoods. As preppers, we need to continue to prepare for civil unrest. Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. Remember that you have to strive to bring the same stability to your outside world as you try to bring to your inside world.
As always, please stay safe out there. 
Responses