President Biden on Wednesday signed 15 executive orders as he set about to overturn key directives of his predecessor, President Donald Trump, in his first hours working from the Oval Office.
A tired-sounding Biden, 78, signed three orders in front of reporters in the Oval Office. His press secretary, Jen Psaki, later told reporters at an evening briefing that Biden signed another 12 orders Wednesday.
Biden’s first three orders recommitted the US to the Paris Climate Accord, promoted “racial equity” in health care and other areas and required that anti-COVID-19 masks be worn in federal buildings.
Psaki said he also signed an order ending Trump’s 2017 travel ban on a group of predominately Muslim countries including Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Trump said the ban was for security proposes but Psaki called it “the Muslim ban, a policy rooted in religious animus and xenophobia.”
Psaki said Biden signed orders to halt construction of Trump’s US-Mexico border wall, rejoin the World Health Organization, resurrect a White House global health team, extend a pandemic ban on evictions and foreclosures, halt student loan payments, reverse Trump environmental deregulation and affirm the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects from deportation people brought illegally to the US as children.
A press release from the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group said Biden also signed a “wide-ranging executive order concerning sexual orientation and gender identity” that prohibits discrimination.
Biden was expected to sign up to 17 executive orders right away, most of them overturning directives of his predecessor. He said in the Oval Office that additional orders would come “over the next several days to a week.”
“I thought there’s no time to wait. Get to work immediately,” said Biden next to a high stack of executive orders. “There’s no time to start like today.
“I’m going to start by keeping the promises I made to the American people. There’s a long way to go, these are just executive actions. They are important, but we’re going to need legislation for other things we’re going to do,” Biden told reporters.
He also said Trump left him a “very generous letter” despite skipping the inauguration for a Wednesday morning flight to Florida.
“The president wrote a very generous letter. Because it was private, I will — won’t talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous,” Biden said.
But during her first briefing Wednesday evening, Psaki suggested there was no scheduled call between the two men.
“This is a letter that was private, as he said to you all. It was both generous and gracious, and it was just a reflection of him not planning to release the letter unilaterally, but I wouldn’t take it as an indication of a pending call with the former president,” Psaki said.
Psaki on Monday said Biden will reimpose a COVID-19 travel ban on Brazil, the UK and Europe’s 26-country Schengen Zone, but it was not immediately clear if Biden signed that order Wednesday, which would reverse a two-day-old order signed by Trump. Without action by Biden, travel from Europe and Brazil would resume next week for travelers with a negative COVID-19 test.
The mask order, Biden said in the Oval Office, is “requiring, as I said all along, where I have authority, mandating masks indoors and social distancing be kept on federal property and interstate commerce, etcetera.”
“The second one I’m signing here is the support for underserved communities … we’re going to make sure we have some better equity equality as relates to how we treat people in health care and other things,” he said.
“Third … is a commitment I made that we’re going to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord as of today.”
Biden added, “Some of the executive actions I’m going to be signing today are going to help change the course of the COVID crisis, and we’re going to combat climate change in a way that we haven’t done so far, and advance racial equity in support of our underserved communities. We are going to rebuild our economy as well. And these are just all starting points.”
Biden also was expected to sign an executive order rescinding a permit for construction of the Keystone Pipeline between the US and Canada, which drew a rebuke from his counterpart to the north.
“Earlier today, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America. While we welcome the President’s commitment to fight climate change, we are disappointed but acknowledge the President’s decision to fulfill his election campaign promise on Keystone XL,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a written statement.
“I spoke directly with President Biden about the project last November, and Ambassador Hillman and others in our government made the case to high-level officials in the incoming administration.
“Workers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and across Canada will always have our support. Canada is the single-largest supplier of energy to the United States, contributing to U.S. energy security and economic competitiveness, and supporting thousands of jobs on both sides of the border.”
The 1,700-mile pipeline was planned to carry roughly 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
“As a result of the expected revocation of the Presidential Permit, advancement of the project will be suspended,” the Calgary, Alberta-based company said in a statement Wednesday.
Keystone XL president Richard Prior said over 1,000 jobs, the majority unionized, will be eliminated in the coming weeks.