Joe Biden signs executive orders on climate change, masks, DACA, and more.

By: Sammy Quarrato

President Joe Biden has already begun working on campaign promises and giving aid to the American people through Executive Orders.

President Joe Biden has signed more Executive Orders on his first day than George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have, in their first days, combined. These Executive Orders are a strong backlash to some of Trump’s most infamous policies.

One of the Executive Orders is a Mask Mandate on all Federal Property, a policy that was not being enforced by the Trump Administration in Washington DC which arguably caused a large number of Trump Cabinet members, Republican Senators, and other associates to contract COVID-19.

President Joe Biden is also revoking the motion of President Trump’s withdrawal of the World Health Organization, the organization that has almost removed Polio from the face of the earth.

Arguably one of the most important Executive Orders he did today was to bring back the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense which was introduced towards the end of the Obama Administration in the time of the Ebola epidemic which was ultimately dispersed into different roles by Trump in the Government which was one of the reasons as to why the US Government was so unprepared for COVID-19.

He has also continued a Federal Moratorium to block attempted evictions of people from their homes up until March, there will surely be pressure to continue that moratorium, especially due to rumors stating that there will not be a stimulus bill passed until March.

There is also a continuation on the pause of interest and other transactions on Student Loan Debt up until September.
Biden does indeed have the Executive Authority to forgive all Student Loan Debt, but according to his platform when running for President, he said he would forgive $10k of Student Loan Debt to each individual.

There are however other more Establishment voices such as Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer who are calling President Biden to forgive up to $50k of Student Loan Debt for each individual.

This is most likely due to the fact that Schumer has a primary upcoming in 2022 and is attempting to cover his left flank.
President Biden also seems to be wanting to add $1,400 on top of the $600, essentially making it subsequent instead of just a flat $2,000.

This couldn’t be a bigger mistake in terms of Democrats’ chances in the 2022 Midterms where historically speaking, the opposition party to the Presidency is often the favorite to win at least one of the Chambers of Congress.

Due to the unprecedented time that the United States is in with the COVID-19 Pandemic, the first one-term president since 1993, the attempted Insurrection in the Capitol alongside the Republican Party inevitably heading into a civil war with one another, Democrats have a real chance of keeping their majority and potentially even expanding it with good policies to materially improve the lives of everyday Americans.

There are other Executive Orders that were anticipated to be signed such as bring the United States back to the Paris Climate Accord, a small but necessary step to fight against climate change.

He also signed to end the Keystone XL Pipeline alongside revoking any sort of development of oil and gas at national wildlife monuments which comes to about 100 permits and such.

Biden also signed an executive order making it where the Census will count undocumented immigrants, this is important due to the fact that the census not only represents the people who live in the community through the Electoral College and district but also decides where to allocate funds based off the population of people who live in said areas.

Biden has also ended the Muslim ban that Trump put in place from over a dozen countries such as Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, etc.

A common misconception is that Obama did the same actions as Trump did with Syria, which is grossly misrepresented.
President Obama put more scrutiny when it came to people traveling to countries such as Iraq and Syria, they were not citizenship based travel bans.

In simple terms, if a citizen of Finland traveled to Syria during this time, this legislation would apply to them, the Obama administration only added more scrutiny to people of those countries, they rejected the premise of a travel ban based on citizenship or defacto religious reasons that Trump gave.

President Biden has also halted all funds going to Trump’s border wall, has limited the power of ICE on focusing on undocumented immigrants that do not have criminal records, has solidified the status of DACA while also calling on an immigration plan to come from Congress which will give a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (in general) to receive green cards in 5 years and citizenship in 3 more years.

Biden has also prolonged the amount of time a group of Liberians can stay in the country, up to 2022.

President Biden has taken the initiative to broaden the federal protections of LGBTQ citizens, federal workers right to unionize, has removed Trump’s 1776 commission that was claiming that the American education system was taking a too liberal approach to history and has created a process where people who are appointed in the Justice Department must not act in personal interests and aim to be as objective as possible and to follow the constitution as much as possible.

There are far more Executive Orders coming to fruition which comes to show that Joe Biden has actually been at the very least, slightly opening up to the idea of using more Executive Orders to not just take down Trump’s Agenda but to add to his own.

Each day is going to have a common theme when it comes to Executive Orders, Thursday will be based on COVID-19 and Friday while being based on Economic Relief.
Joe Biden is planning to do a total of 53 Executive Orders in the span of 10 days, much more than his predecessors.

This is an unprecedented time in the United States, 400,000 Americans are dead from COVID, millions of people are jobless, 60% of small businesses are closed, perhaps the closest crisis to this being the Great Depression, President Joe Biden must not be afraid to make popular decisions to help Middle and Working Class Americans.

If he really wants to be remembered as a modern-day FDR or even similar to him, he must not underestimate the severity of this situation and must not commit the same mistakes of Neo-Liberalism and Corporatism as his predecessors did that allowed an Authoritarian such as Trump to have an opportunity to rise, again.