Biden signs 17 executive actions
US President Joe Biden signed 17 executive actions shortly after being sworn in on Jan 20, undoing policies put in place by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, and making his first moves on the pandemic and climate change.
Signing several actions in front of reporters in the Oval Office that afternoon, Biden said there was “no time to waste” in issuing the executive orders, memorandums and directives.
“Some of the executive actions I’m going to be signing today are going to help change the course of the COVID-19 crisis, we’re going to combat climate change in a way that we haven’t done so far and advance racial equity and support other underserved communities,” said Biden. “These are just all starting points.”
Aides said the actions the Democratic president signed included a mask mandate on federal property and for federal employees, an order to establish a new White House office coordinating the response to the coronavirus, and halting the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization.
Hours after being sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, Biden signed an executive order returning the US to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, reversing Trump’s decision to abandon the deal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on that day welcomed the new US administration’s announcement to re-enter the Paris Agreement.
Trump announced the withdrawal soon after he took office in 2017, citing concerns about the pact’s threat to the US economy.
Biden picked former Secretary of State John Kerry to be his special envoy for climate, indicating the importance of this issue in his foreign policy.
He also reversed the US process of withdrawing from the WHO, signing an executive order ceasing the withdrawal process initiated by Trump last year.
According to media reports, Biden picked Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, to lead a US delegation at the WHO’s annual meetings this month.
Trump and his administration had repeatedly assailed the WHO. Experts and Democrats had criticized the Trump administration for trying to shift blame for its mishandling the COVID-19 response, saying it would be counterproductive to addressing the public health crisis.
Trump pardoned his former chief strategist Steve Bannon as part of a flurry of clemency actions in the final hours of his presidency that benefited more than 140 people, including rap performers, ex-members of US Congress, his other allies and members of his family.
The last-minute clemencies, announced on Jan 20, follow separate waves of pardons over the past month for Trump associates as well as for the father of his son-in-law. All together, the actions underscored Trump’s willingness, through his four years in the White House, to flex his constitutional powers in ways that defied convention and explicitly aided friends and supporters. Trump and his children were not on the list.
Among a raft of orders addressing immigration, Biden revoked Trump’s emergency declaration that helped fund the construction of a border wall and ended a travel ban on some majority-Muslim countries.
The Day One plans were just the start of a flurry of executive actions Biden would take soon after entering office, said his press secretary Jen Psaki.
In Europe, top officials of the European Union rejoiced the day of the inauguration, expressing their readiness to mend the broken partnership with the US and laying out expectations for renewed transatlantic cooperation.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council said: “Today is the opportunity to rejuvenate our transatlantic relationship, which has greatly suffered in the last four years.”
Michel called on the two sides to work on five priorities — boosting multilateral cooperation, combating COVID-19, tackling climate change, rebuilding economies while promoting a digital transformation, and joining forces on security and peace.
Also on Jan 20, the Syrian Foreign Ministry demanded the “immediate and unconditional withdrawal” of US forces from Syria, according to the state news agency SANA.
In a statement, the ministry condemned what it called the “hostile practices” of US forces in northeastern Syria.
It accused US forces of “systematic theft” of oil and agriculture resources in northern Syria in addition to bringing in military reinforcement to that part of the country.