On January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave his inauguration speech at the Capitol, becoming the 46th President of the United States. In his inauguration speech, he called Americans to unity several times.
“History, faith and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect… For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury,” Biden said.
Since the inauguration, he has been signing executive orders and meeting with Republicans and Democrats to pass his proposed legislation. In his first month of office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed 30 executive orders, the record for the most signed in the first month in office. On February 3 NPR reported that Biden had signed 28 executive orders after being in office for approximately three weeks.
“While these numbers are large, these actions aren’t barrier breaking. They call for the creation of task forces, direct agencies to begin a regulatory process or explore a policy change,” NPR White House Correspondent Tamara Keith said. Executive orders are the first step for Biden in a much longer process of passing legislation that will reverse a lot of the actions President Trump took during his four years in office.
One of the first executive orders Biden signed required the wearing of masks on federal property. Biden also encouraged all Americans to wear masks with a “100 days masking challenge.”
Executive orders cannot make laws, but they put into action a lot of the plans that Biden wants to focus his presidency on. Under the Trump administration, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization. Biden has used executive order to reunite with them. He signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, as a part of his pledge to get rid of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and create a carbon-neutral country by 2050. He has also begun changing many of the immigration policies that were created during Trump’s presidency.
Here are just a few examples of executive action, and each of the outcomes are slowly becoming more specific.
In terms of climate change, Biden has used executive orders to place a ban on some energy drilling in order to top oil and gas leases on public lands and create more off-shore energy produced by wind by the year 2030.
The energy drilling previously mentioned was revoked when Biden withdrew the cross-border presidential permit. This permit had allowed the Keystone XL pipeline to be finished. This pipeline was meant to carry oil sands from Alberta, Canada, into the Gulf Coast of America. The Canadian oil sands are a large deposit of crude oil, which is a mixture of sand, water, clay, and an oil called bitumen.
It is a controversial pipeline, because some environmental groups think that fossil fuels should be left in the ground to avoid more greenhouse gas emissions that affect climate change. However, those in the oil industry groups are not as supportive.
"Killing 10,000 jobs and taking $2.2 billion in payroll out of workers' pockets is not what Americans need or want right now," said Andy Black, President and CEO of the Association of Oil Pipelines, in an NPR interview.
In terms of immigration, there are many executive orders that Biden has signed. He strengthened the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects immigrants who are brought to the US as children from being deported. He also revoked the plan of the Trump administration that excluded non-citizens from the census count, and cancelled a Trump executive order that made efforts to deport unauthorized immigrants more aggressive.
According to a White House statement that went out on February 2, the steps Biden is taking to reform the immigration system are as follows: “Create a task force to reunite families...Develop a strategy to address irregular migration across the southern border and create a humane asylum system...[and] restore faith in our legal immigration system and promote integration of new Americans.”
Currently, Biden is also pushing a 1.9 trillion dollar coronavirus relief package through Congress to get it approved as early as March 14, which is when the unemployment assistance currently in place is set to expire. The Senate approved the proposal along partisan lines on Friday, January 29. Vice President Harris was the tie-breaking vote. The legislation is the next step.
Biden is asking for spending to include money for vaccine distribution, upgrades to hospitals and schools, $1,400 stimulus checks for many Americans, and growth in pandemic unemployment aid. The package could also include raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the expansion of paid leave, help for state and localities, and financial help for parents.
A lot of legislation changes are being made in the White House as Biden begins his term as president. It will take time to discover what else is in store under the new administration. In his inauguration speech, though, unity was stressed as the goal.
“To all those who did not support us, let me say this: hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart. And if you still disagree, so be it. That’s democracy. That’s America. The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our republic, is perhaps our nation’s greatest strength.”