President-elect Joe Biden plans to issue a flurry of executive orders in his early days in office, signaling a sharp break with his predecessor by reversing or reviewing the Trump administration’s contentious policies on immigration, climate change, coronavirus and other urgent issues, his entry chief of staff said.
Biden plans to sign about a dozen executive decrees after his Jan. 20 pledge, followed by 10 days of additional action he can take without having to wait for Congressional action, Ron Klain said in a memo to the senior team.
Noting that the country faces four overlapping crises – the pandemic, the economic crisis caused by the virus, racial inequality and climate change – Klain said that Biden “will take action – not just to reverse the Trump administration’s most serious damage, but also to start moving our country forward. “
The volley of symbolic and substantive actions was designed to signal a sharp break with political drift under President Trump, who since November has focused on overthrowing Biden’s victory, and to build momentum for other items on the agenda that will require legislative action.
Like most incoming presidents, Biden is remembering President Franklin Roosevelt, who took office in the depths of the Great Depression and carried out a series of radical measures in his first 100 days to restore faith in the government and the future of the country.
The actions Biden plans on inauguration day include ending Trump’s restriction on immigration from countries with a Muslim majority, returning to the Paris climate agreement and requiring masks to be worn on federal properties and during interstate travel, according to the memo.
It will also extend a moratorium on student loan repayments and measures to prevent foreclosures and evictions, the memo said. An eviction moratorium was instituted by the Trump administration last September, giving relief to struggling tenants across the country who are affected by the coronavirus, but it expires in late January. According to the memo, more than 25 million Americans now face possible eviction from their homes.
Klain sought to dispel criticism that executive orders could exceed Biden’s authority, suggesting that Trump’s similar strategy for meeting his own agenda sometimes exceeded those limits.
“I want to be clear: the legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents the restoration of an appropriate constitutional role for the president,” he wrote.
Trump also used executive orders and White House signing ceremonies to bypass Congress and create an impression of momentum for his supporters. Many of his orders have been challenged and even blocked by courts.
Klain acknowledged that the “full realization” of the new government’s agenda will require Congress to pass a $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill outlined by Biden on Thursday, as well as a comprehensive immigration plan that the President-elect plans to reveal during his first day in office.
This plan is expected to provide a path to citizenship for the approximately 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status; it would also provide a shorter path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protection status and beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals who were brought to the United States as children. It would probably also cover certain essential frontline workers, most of whom are immigrants.
Gaining Congressional support for his legislative agenda can be difficult for Biden with a narrowly divided Senate, where Republicans have enormous power to slow or block legislation, although Democrats hold the majority.
Biden said he wants to build bridges with the Republican Party and bring bipartisanship back to Washington. But Republicans, after ignoring the growing deficits under Trump, expressed concern about the growth in government spending and questioned the need for more relief for Americans affected by the virus.
The day after Biden’s inauguration, Klain said, he plans to order actions aimed at expanding virus testing and accelerating the reopening of schools and companies whose operations have been halted. A day later, he will focus on providing more economic relief, said Klain.
Biden “will guide his Cabinet agencies to take immediate steps to provide economic relief to working families who are bearing the brunt of this crisis,” Klain wrote.
The vaccination effort is a departure from the Trump administration’s approach, which left states and localities to decide how to allocate and administer vaccines and avoided responsibility for testing the coronavirus, which killed more than 395,000 Americans.
In his second week of work, Biden plans to take additional measures related to criminal justice reform, climate change and immigration, including measures to accelerate the reunion of families that have been separated on the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump.
Trump has taken hundreds of sometimes interlinked actions in relation to immigration, from underreported administrative adjustments to radical policy changes, which will not be easily reversed by Biden quickly.
Klain said Biden will expand a “Buy America” clause that requires the government to buy goods and services domestically, take steps to promote “equality and support communities of color” and expand access to health. The memo does not describe the steps below.
Biden’s plan to return to the 2015 Paris climate deal reverses the U.S. exit completed in November by the Trump administration. The deal aims to keep the average world temperature rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to pre-levels -industrial.
The Paris agreement requires countries to set their own voluntary targets to reduce greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and to increase these targets steadily every few years. The only mandatory requirement is that nations accurately report their efforts.
Trump’s immigration ban on Muslim countries covers five nations – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen – as well as North Korea and some Venezuelan government officials. The government was forced to revise the original order twice to resolve legal issues about due process, implementation and the exclusive selection of Muslim countries.