Biden sweeps away Trump years with a $2trillion rebuild
JOE BIDEN is announcing new measures to reverse Donald Trump’s policies, rebuilding institutions, infrastructure and relations with the rest of the world.
The president, inset, wants 2 trillion dollars (£1.45 trillion) to re-engineer America’s infrastructure and expects the nation’s corporations to pay for it.
He is due in Pittsburgh to unveil what would be a transformation of the US economy as grand in scale as the New Deal or Great Society programmes that shaped the 20th century.
TheWhiteHouse said the spending over eight years would generate millions of new jobs as the country shifts from fossil fuel and combats climate change.
It is also an effort to compete against the technology and public investment made by China, the world’s second-largest economy, which is fast gaining on the United States’ dominant position.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is to sweep away Trump-era policies that largely banned transgender people from serving in the military, issuing new rules that offer them wider access to medical care and assistance with gender transition, defence officials said.
The new department regulations allow transgender people who meet military standards to enlist and serve openly in their self-identified gender and they will be able to get transition-related care authorised by law.
The changes come after a Pentagon review aimed at developing guidelines for the new policy, announced by Mr Biden days after taking office in January.
His executive order overturned the Trump policy and immediately prohibited any service member from being forced out of the military on the basis of gender identity.
Defence secretary Lloyd Austin then gave the Pentagon two months to finalise the more detailed regulations the military services will follow.
The new rules also prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
Elsewhere, the Biden administration is quietly ramping up assistance to the Palestinians after Mr Trump cut off nearly all aid.
Since taking office with a pledge to reverse many of Mr Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian decisions, the administration has allocated nearly 100 million dollars (£72 million) for the Palestinians.
The administration has already said it is giving 15 million dollars (£10.9 million) to vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza to fight Covid-19.