US Presidentelect Joe Biden plans to kick off his new administration Wednesday with orders to restore the United States to the Paris climate accord and the Health Organization, aides said.
Biden will sign 17 orders and actions just hours after being sworn in as US leader to break from policies of departing President Donald Trump and set new paths on immigration, the environment, fighting Covid19 and the economy, they said.
In firstday moves, he will end Trump’s muchassailed ban on visitors from several majorityMuslim countries and halt construction of the wall that Trump ordered on the USMexico border to stem illegal immigration, the aides said.
He will also set a mask mandate on federal properties to stem the spread of Covid19; restore protections of valuable nature reserves removed by Trump, and seek freezes on evictions and protection for millions behind on their mortgages due to the coronavirus pandemic.
US President Joe Biden delivers his inauguration speech on January 20, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. – Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the US. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLEROREYNOLDS / AFP)
He also plans to send a bill to Congress to revamp immigration policies and give millions of undocumented migrants living inside the country a path to citizenship that the Trump administration denied.
Biden’s staff said he wanted to hit the ground running given a deep health and economic challenges facing the country.
Biden “will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward,” the aides said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden delivers his inauguration speech on January 20, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. – Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the US. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLEROREYNOLDS / AFP)
“These actions are bold, begin the work of following through on Presidentelect Biden’s promises to the American people, and, importantly, fall within the constitutional role for the president.”
– New approach to Covid –
Many of the actions will take government policies back to where they were on January 19, 2017 — the final day of the Barack ObamaJoe Biden administration, before Trump entered the office and took a wrecking ball to many of their initiatives.
Jeff Zients, the new president’s pointman for fighting the pandemic, said Biden would start by establishing an office of Covid19 response inside the White House.
A 100day “masking challenge” will be led with a presidential order for wearing masks in all federal properties and activities, setting the standard for private companies, individual states, and communities to follow suit, Zients said.
Wednesday “starts a new day, a new, different approach to managing the country’s response to Covid19 crisis,” he said.
That includes reversing Trump’s decision to leave the Health Organization.
To underscore Biden’s decision, Zients said, leading US coronavirus expert Anthony Fauci will lead a delegation to take part in the WHO Executive Board meeting on Thursday.
“America’s withdrawal from the international arena has impeded progress on the global response and left us more vulnerable to future pandemics,” he said.
Gina McCarthy, the new administration’s chief climate advisor, said returning to the 2016 Paris accord was essential to making fighting climate change a central tenet of Biden administration policy.
Biden will reverse Trump’s decisions to ease emissions and efficiency standards, and rescind the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a large project that would bring relatively highpolluting Canadian oil into the United States.
“The dayone climate executive orders will begin to put the US back on the right footing, a footing we need to restore American leadership, helping to position our nation to be the global leader in clean energy and jobs,” said McCarthy.
Other actions by the new president will require a governmentwide, proactive equality effort for minority groups, in hiring, contracting, and service.
“The Presidentelect has promised to root out systemic racism from our institutions,” said Susan Rice, his Domestic Policy Council director.