With Court Victories, Conservatives Push Back on Biden Policies

After rewriting Title IX regulations to include protections for gender identity, President Biden told trans students: “We see you.” When he announced in April his latest executive actions to waive student loan debt, he proudly proclaimed that “this relief can be life-changing.”

And standing in front of a group of immigrant advocates on June 18, Mr. Biden boasted that he had used the power of his presidency to provide a new path to legal status for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens — ending fear and uncertainty for a half-million people.

“We can fix that,” Mr. Biden said. “And that’s what I’m going to do today: fix it.”

In all three cases — and a long list of other executive actions — Mr. Biden’s promises of progress and relief have been stymied by aggressive legal challenges led by conservative activists, lawmakers and Republican state attorneys general. Their efforts to disrupt the president’s agenda have in many cases been upheld by local judges, appellate courts and, in some cases, the majority of conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

The president’s use of executive orders was supposed to have been the solution to a closely divided Congress paralyzed by politics and unable to reach consensus, especially as the 2024 election got underway. Of his six signature bills that Mr. Biden signed into law during his presidency, none came after December of 2022.

But as Mr. Biden nears the end of his presidency, the effort to bypass Congress with regulatory changes, executive orders and presidential memorandums has faltered. That outcome is likely to affect Mr. Biden’s legacy and could make it more difficult for Vice President Kamala Harris to point to progress as she campaigns for the White House this fall.

In many of the