President Biden’s first order of business on his first day on the job was to immediately reverse some of President Trump’s key policies and agendas.
“Some of the things we are doing are really going to be bold and vital and there’s no time to start like today,” President Biden said while sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Top of his priority: getting the COVID pandemic under control.
Biden’s first Executive Order, signed while wearing a mask requires face coverings on all federal lands, along with a pledge to deliver 100 million vaccine shots in his first 100 days in office. He plans to sign 10 pandemic-related orders today.
“It’s requiring as I said all along, where I have authority, mandating masks be worn, social distancing can be kept on federal property and interstate commerce,” Biden told reporters gathered for the Executive Orders signing.
With a stroke of several pens, the incoming president then signed more than a dozen other executive orders, the most a president has ever done on his first day.
“An incredibly broad scope of bold and aggressive actions, some of which are designed to roll back some of the most egregious actions of the Trump administration,” said Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director
Among them, Biden repealed Trump’s travel ban preventing people from countries where terrorism is a problem – certain Muslim and African countries – from entering the United States.
And as part of his campaign promise to re-engage the world, the president rejoined the World Health Organization and the controversial Paris Climate Accords, which President Trump pulled out of.
The new president also revoked plans for a Keystone XL oil pipeline.
“The United States continues to be one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. And we need to put in place policies and take steps here to address that as well,” said Jen Psaki, Biden’s White House press secretary.
Some argue nixing the Keystone pipeline project and rejoining the Paris Treaty will hurt American workers and further weaken an economy already reeling from COVID.
“The biggest concerns with the Paris Climate Accords is that it will impose a lot of costs on American families and businesses without much climate benefit to show for it,” Nicolas Loris with Heritage Foundation told CBN News. “The reality is that regulations that are promulgated on the energy industry are going to increase those prices which are going to have dramatic ripple effects throughout the economy disproportionately impacting the lowest income families in America.”
The Biden administration plans to sign more executive orders in the days ahead, including rolling back restrictions on abortion funding and revoking the ban on transgenders from serving in the military.
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