Heading to the Oval to commence work right after his inauguration, President Joe Biden on Wednesday reversed a multitude of executive orders that were signed by President Trump in his four years as the President of the United States. From immigration to climate change, these are the policies that Biden sought to reverse on the very first day of his Presidency.
Among the 15 executive orders that were signed with a swift flick of a pen, Biden ordered a halt to the construction of Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, ended the ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries, declared his intention to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, and the World Health Organization and revoked the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, aides said.
Source: Moneycontrol
President Biden “will take action – not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration – but also to start moving our country forward,” a statement detailing the executive orders said. According to the orders, a series of measures will be enacted to tackle the coronavirus pandemic which has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the US and there will be a mandate to wear masks and practice social distancing on all federal government property as part of a 100-day mitigation strategy.
A new office will also be set up to co-ordinate the response to the pandemic and the US will halt the process – begun by the Trump administration – of withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO). He signed an executive order beginning the process of rejoining the 2015 Paris climate agreement, from which Trump formally withdrew the US last year.
Until now, in the history of the United States, only two recent presidents have signed executive actions on their first day in office — and each signed just one. But Biden, who will be facing a plethora of challenges including the devastating coronavirus pandemic, a damaged economy, and a riven electorate, showed a sense of urgency that he claimed to be missing under his Republican predecessor. “There’s no time to start like today,” Biden said in his first comments to reporters as president.
Source: Purdue Exponent
In other cases, Biden specifically targeted Former President Trump’s policies by reversing the environmental record, calling for a review of all regulations and executive actions that are deemed damaging to the environment or public health. Another order instructs federal agencies to prioritize racial equity and review policies that reinforce systemic racism. Biden also revoked a Trump order that sought to exclude non-citizens from the census and ordered federal employees to take an ethics pledge that commits them to uphold the independence of the Justice Department. Aides said he also revoked the just-issued report of Trump’s “1776 Commission” that promotes “patriotic education.”
On immigration, Biden has revoked the Trump administration’s emergency declaration that helped fund the building of a wall along the Mexican border and also ended a travel ban on some majority-Muslim countries. One of his orders seeks to fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, a signature effort of the Obama administration that provided hundreds of thousands of young immigrants protection from deportation and a pathway to citizenship. That’s part of a broader immigration plan that would provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status.
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