President-elect Joe Biden will waste no time in rolling back many of the decisions of the Trump administration. Biden plans on releasing a plethora of executive actions within hours of transitioning to power.
Among the issues that Biden plans on addressing on Day One is an end to the restriction on immigration to the U.S. from some Muslim countries. He will also rejoin the Paris climate accord and mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel, according to his chief of staff Ron Klain.
Also, among the roughly a dozen actions that Biden will take will be measures to halt evictions and foreclosures and address student loan payments during the pandemic.
“During the campaign, President-elect Biden pledged to take immediate action to start addressing these crises and build back better,” Klain said. “As president, he will keep those promises and sign dozens of executive orders, presidential memoranda, and directives to Cabinet agencies in fulfillment of the promises he made.”
Biden plans on passing a $1.9 trillion virus relief bill to help the country’s economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Included in that will be the opening of schools and businesses.
But perhaps his biggest executive action, besides the proposed coronavirus relief bill, will be his immigration reform bill proposal. The bill, if it receives Congressional approval, will provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Under Biden’s proposal, immigrants will be put on an eight-year path. The proposal will allow for a faster track to citizenship for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The program shields people, who came to the U.S. as children, from deportation. Biden also has a plan to reunite families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
His second week in office will see him promote a “Buy American” policy, as well as take on criminal justice reforms to advance “equity and support communities of color,”, climate, and access to health care, Klain said. Some of his other actions are undergoing final legal reviews.
“While the policy objectives in these executive actions are bold, I want to be clear: the legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the [president]” Klain specified.
Biden will need the support of Congress for many of his initiatives. Yet, this may not be an obstacle as the Democrats now control both the House and the Senate, since, despite there being a 50/50 split in the Senate, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would have the deciding vote.
But some of the issues facing Congress may take a backseat given the plan of delaying the second impeachment trial of outgoing President Trump until after he leaves office and the new Senators are sworn in.
One issue that Klain didn’t mention concerns one of President Trump’s more controversial decisions, the withdrawal of the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the withholding of millions of dollars from the WHO. During his campaign, Biden made a promise to rejoin WHO on Day One and return to funding it as part of his re-engagement plan with the global community.
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