BIDEN’S FIRST EXECUTIVE ORDERS: END ‘MUSLIM BAN’, WHO, PARIS AGREEMENT, HALTING BORDER WALL

Thu 21 January 2021:

After his inauguration at the US Capitol on Wednesday, Biden signed 15 executive actions that his team earlier said aimed to “reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration”.

President Joe Biden within his first hours in office signed a flurry of executive orders, many aimed at reversing Trump-era policies. Biden made good on a campaign promise to reverse the so-called “Muslim Ban” enacted by the previous administration.

The executive order signed by President Trump in 2017 placed travel bans on predominately Muslim and African countries.

The list included Iran, Yemen, Syria, and several others. The Trump administration cited national security concerns at the time.

The travel ban drew protests, a battle in the Supreme Court, and divided families.

The ban was revised several times and added Venezuela and North Korea to the list.

“The president put an end to the Muslim ban – a policy rooted in religious animus and xenophobia,” Biden’s White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a Wednesday evening briefing.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed the decision as “an important first step toward undoing the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies of the previous administration”.

“It is an important fulfilment of a campaign pledge to the Muslim community and its allies,” the group’s executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement.

Biden signed an order on Wednesday afternoon to institute a 100-day mask mandate across the US and appoint a COVID-19 coordinator to manage a national response to the pandemic.

While the Council on American-Islamic Relations praised the Biden Administration for taking swift action in reversing the travel ban, the national organization released a 33-point list of additional concerns.

The list included ending profiling of the Muslim community, more inclusive representation of American Muslims in Federal government, and ending national security overreach.

Coronavirus, WHO

Biden told reporters in the Oval Office that there was “no time to waste”.

Biden launched his “100 Days Masking Challenge”, ordering a mandatory mask mandate in all US federal buildings for the first 100 days of his administration to try and curb the spread of COVID-19.

“Some of the executive actions I’m going to be signing today are going to help change the course of the COVID crisis, we’re going to combat climate change in a way that we haven’t done so far and advance racial equity and support other underserved communities,” he said, as reported by the Reuters news agency.

He has also announced that the US would remain a member of the WHO, and that Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would attend the ongoing WHO Executive Board meeting at the head of the US delegation.

Paris agreement

The US will once again become a party to the Paris Agreement, Biden also announced.

Biden’s executive action, signed in the White House on Wednesday, will see the US rejoin the international effort curb the dangerous heating of the planet, following a 30-day notice period. The world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases was withdrawn from the Paris deal under Donald Trump.

In November, the US became the first country in the world to withdraw from the treaty – a move that fuelled tensions between Washington and its allies in Europe and drew a widespread rebuke from environmental and human rights groups.

Halts border wall construction

In one of his first official actions as US president, Joe Biden halted the construction of the border wall by rescinding an emergency order imposed by Donald Trump along the Southwest border.

Biden’s executive order, which was signed around 5:40 p.m. EST on Wednesday, dissolved a proclamation issued in 2019 by Trump that had declared an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. Proclamation 9844, which Trump issued on Feb. 15, 2019, was “to deal with the border security and humanitarian crisis” at the border, and it allowed the president to access military funds for border security measures.