President Biden moved swiftly to dismantle former President Trump's legacy on his first day in office, signing a series of executive actions that reversed course on immigration, climate change, racial equity, and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. With the stroke of a pen hours after taking the oath of office, Biden ordered a halt to the construction of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall, ended the ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries, declared his intent to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization, and revoked the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the AP reports.
The 15 executive actions, and two directives, amount to an attempt to rewind the last four years of federal policies with striking speed. Only two recent presidents signed executive actions on their first day in office—and each signed just one. But Biden, facing the debilitating coronavirus pandemic, a damaged economy, and a riven electorate, is intent on demonstrating a sense of urgency and competence that he argues has been missing under his Republican predecessor. "There’s no time to start like today," he told reporters. More:
- Biden wore a mask as he signed the orders in the Oval Office—a marked departure from Trump, who rarely wore a face covering in public and never during events in the Oval Office. But virus precautions are now required in the building. Among the executive actions signed Wednesday was one requiring masks and physical distancing on federal property and by federal employees.
- Biden's order also extended the federal eviction freeze to aid those struggling from the pandemic economic fallout, created a new federal office to coordinate a national response to the virus and restored the White House’s National Security Council directorate for global health security and defense, an office his predecessor had closed.
- Biden's blitz of executive actions went beyond the pandemic. He targeted Trump's environmental record, calling for a review of all regulations and executive actions that are deemed damaging to the environment or public health, aides said Tuesday as they previewed the moves.
- Another order instructs federal agencies to prioritize racial equity and review policies that reinforce systemic racism. Biden revoked two Trump orders related to the 2020 census. The first attempted to discern the citizenship status of every US resident, and the second sought to exclude people in the US illegally from the numbers used for apportioning congressional seats among the states.
- He also ordered federal employees to take an ethics pledge that commits them to upholding the independence of the Justice Department.
- The president also revoked the just-issued report of Trump’s “1776 Commission” that promotes “patriotic education.”
- Those moves and others will be followed by dozens more in the next 10 days, the president’s aides said, as Biden looks to redirect the country without having to go through a Senate that Democrats control by the narrowest margin and will soon turn to the impeachment trial of Trump.
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