President Biden signed a wave of Inauguration Day executive orders designed to reverse some of former President Donald Trump’s signature policy decisions, drawing praise from Democrats and many of Trump’s critics abroad.
“One of the first things we must do is undo the Trump regression, and executive orders are one of the most effective tools to accomplish just that,” newly sworn-in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said approvingly.
The full suite of orders covered a range of Biden’s campaign trail promises, including an end to construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall that Trump pledged to build throughout the 2016 election cycle. The new orders also include a coronavirus-related one that mandates mask-wearing on federal property and a cancellation of the so-called “Muslim ban” restricting travel from several countries.
“From the reversing the heinous Muslim ban and inhumane family separation policies to reentering the Paris climate agreement, mitigating the spread of COVID-19, and accelerating vaccine distribution, the executive orders announced by the Biden-Harris administration today are just the beginning,” continued Schumer, a New York Democrat.
America’s return to the climate pact that former President Barack Obama’s team crafted alongside European negotiators was a particular prize across the Atlantic.
“We will be stronger to face the challenges of our time,” French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted. “Stronger to build our future. Stronger to protect our planet. Welcome back to the Paris Agreement!”
To @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris.
Best wishes on this most significant day for the American people!
We are together.
We will be stronger to face the challenges of our time. Stronger to build our future. Stronger to protect our planet. Welcome back to the Paris Agreement!— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 20, 2021
The Paris deal has loomed large in the minds of allies since 2017, when Trump’s withdrawal from the deal dismayed climate activists and was, to Europeans, a symbol of disrespect for that continent’s shared priorities.
“Europeans, on the whole, are turned off by what they perceive as this administration’s disregard for multilateralism,” a senior European diplomat told the Washington Examiner earlier this year. “And that primarily, but not exclusively, comes down to climate change in the Paris Agreement.”
Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization reinforced that perception in Brussels, despite widespread anger that WHO officials amplified false information from China while suppressing their own misgivings about Beijing’s lack of candor about the contagion that spread around the globe over the last year.
“President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward,” incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain wrote in a memo previewing the moves earlier this week before Biden was sworn in.
Biden’s round of executive orders addressed economic and racial issues, as well. He extended a moratorium on foreclosures until March, due to the economic fallout of the pandemic, and signed another to pause federal student loan repayment.
The bulk of the orders focused on immigration policy. In addition to halting border wall construction and the travel ban, he ordered an end to “harsh and extreme immigration enforcement” of immigration law within the United States, moved to “fortify protections” for beneficiaries of Obama’s DACA program, and extended deportation relief for Liberians.
Biden also ordered that the federal government interpret civil rights law as a ban on “workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
He also launched an initiative “rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions.” That plan includes the withdrawal of Trump’s just-released report from the 1776 Commission, “which has sought to erase America’s history of racial injustice,” as a fact sheet from his team put it.
