President Biden signed 50 bills into law on Christmas Eve, as the year and his time in office draw to a close.
The bills Mr. Biden signed include socialite and activist Paris Hilton’s bill to protect teenagers living in residential treatment facilities, a bill setting anti-hazing standards on college campuses, and a bill preventing members of Congress from collecting pensions if convicted of certain crimes.
Hilton is the force behind the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which passed the House and Senate last week. The legislation creates a federal work group on youth residential programs to oversee the health, safety, care, treatment and placement of minors in rehab and other facilities. The new law is personal for Hilton, who has testified before Congress that she faced abuse in such facilities as a teen.
Another measure the president signed, S. 932, prohibits members of Congress convicted of crimes related to public corruption from receiving their retirement payments. Previous law allowed members to continue to receive checks only after the exhaustion of all appeals. The new bipartisan law comes after Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey was found guilty this year of using his political influence to benefit businessmen and foreign governments in return for bribes.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act requires higher education institutions to disclose hazing incidents reported to campus or local police authorities in their annual security reports. The new law also requires schools to teach students about the dangers of hazing, among other things.
Yet another new law, S. 4610, makes the bald eagle the official bird of the U.S. The federal government had never designated an official bird.
On Monday, the president granted clemency to 37 of the 40 federal inmates facing death sentences, commuting their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The move prompted both consternation and praise. Mr. Biden also vetoed a bill on Monday that would have created 66 new federal judgeships, saying the House had rushed it through without resolving important issues about how it would be implemented.