Biden seeks to immediately turn page from Trump era

President Biden sought to turn the page on the Trump era immediately upon taking office, calling on the nation to move past the political warfare that defined the last four years and signing a slew of executive actions reversing the last president’s most controversial policies.

Biden halted the construction of both the southern border wall and the Keystone XL pipeline hours after taking the oath, while reversing former President Trump’s order restricting migration from certain majority-Muslim countries.

The new president began the process of reentering the U.S. into both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement on climate change, while freezing regulations issued by the Trump administration in the past 60 days.

Day one was just the beginning for Biden, who in the coming days will end Trump’s ban on transgender people serving openly in the military and allow federal funds to flow to providers of abortion services.

Biden is asking Congress to deliver a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package to bolster the economy and a flagging vaccine distribution program.

He also sent an immigration proposal to Congress that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, revamp border security and look to address root causes of migration to the U.S.

The policy signals reflected a new era in Washington from the “America First” effort championed by Trump and a GOP Congress in 2017. Biden’s executive actions and legislative proposals were the difference between night and day when compared to Trump’s decisions that withdrew the nation from multilateral efforts while building a wall on the Mexican border and imposing what critics labeled a travel ban on Muslim countries.