Biden’s first 17 actions (in 17 minutes)

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Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram for him. The president is Joe Biden. He's been in office for one day and he's been a very busy Biden. As we mentioned on the show yesterday, 17 executive orders, proclamations, memorandums were signed almost immediately after he took office. Together, They represent a major reversal of the former administration's policies and an attempt to rejoin the international order. We could probably spend 17 episodes of the show spelling it all out. Or we could do 17 presidential actions in 17 minutes. Do the one that sounds fun, ding dong.

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Sean Rameswaram: Wow. First, rude. But you're right. Here we go. Number one, rejoin the WHO. With Vox's Julia Beluz.

Julia Beluz: Back in July, Joe Biden tweeted that the U.S. would rejoin the WHO on his first day as president and, quote, restore our leadership to the world stage. And he's made good on that promise. So even if the WHO is imperfect, it's the only global health agency we have. And obviously a pandemic is a global event. So withdrawing during a pandemic was just a crazy thing to do, basically. America led the effort to eradicate smallpox and stop polio. America's long been the world leader in funding for global health, and the U.S. contributes more money to the WHO than any other country. But Trump obviously made withdrawing from these types of multilateral agreements a priority of his administration.

Julia Beluz: One thing I did hear from people in the global health community when I wrote about this is that the new administration is going to have its hands full trying to rebuild relationships with people in the international community and that it's not going to change overnight. The U.S. has lost credibility and its standing with how it's dealt with the pandemic over the last year. So I think, yeah, there's definitely going to be some work to do ahead, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

Sean Rameswaram: Number two, mask up. With Vox's Dylan Scott.

Dylan Scott: This executive order would require federal employees, federal contractors, and anybody who goes into a federal building or onto federal land to wear a mask and to practice social distancing. First and foremost, this is just a break from what the Trump administration had done, which had refused to put any similar order into place. But it's also about sending a signal. The federal government only has so much authority in terms of what it can require state or local governments to do, in terms of businesses or state parks. Those are state and local government decisions. So what Biden is doing here is trying to set an example.

Dylan Scott: These are the standards that we're going to have at federal facilities, and we're going to encourage state and local governments to follow suit. You know, as much as anything, this is about signaling a break from the Trump era and showing that the federal government is taking COVID-19 more seriously.

Sean Rameswaram: Number three, leadership on the pandemic. Duh! So this executive order will establish a new position in the White House, a COVID-19 response coordinator, somebody who will be responsible for overseeing the entirety of the federal response and who will report directly to President Biden on those issues. And so to date, I think there's been a lot of confusion about who exactly is in charge of what in the federal government when it comes to COVID-19. There are a bunch of different agencies involved, HHS, Department of Labor, Department of Education. And so if you're in one of those agencies or if you're a governor out in the states who's trying to get more N95 masks or more ventilators or figure out when you're going to get more vaccine doses, you might not be sure who you're supposed to be in touch with to try to resolve that problem.

Sean Rameswaram: And so by creating this new response coordinator position, a new chain of command, hopefully it'll bring more structure to the federal response.

Sean Rameswaram: Number four, extend the eviction moratorium. What's a mori... whatever you said. Vox's Emily Stewart will explain.

Emily Stewart: People aren't going to be evicted from their homes, whether they renters or homeowners through March 31st. It's a good idea because we don't want people losing their homes during the pandemic. Now the Biden administration estimates that 1 in 5 renters and 1 in 10 homeowners are behind on payments. So this is a big deal. But a big question going forward is to make sure that these people don't fall off a cliff once these moratoriums end. If you haven't been able to pay your rent for a long time, we don't want people on the streets once those eviction moratoriums end on April 1st.

Emily Stewart: So in the stimulus bill passed in December, we did see some rental assistance for renters and for landlords. And one thing that Biden has been talking about with Congress is sending more money out to those people so that they aren't in a ton of debt. And so that, again, once the eviction moratoriums end, they don't lose their homes because they're caught up on their rent.

Sean Rameswaram: Number five, don't worry about your student loans for now. Thank goodness. There is a pause on federal student loan payments and interest payments through at least September 2021. Tens of millions of Americans have federal student loan debt totaling about $1.5 trillion. And black borrowers in particular face a really heavy burden here because they tend to have more debt and they have a harder time paying it off. So this is going to be really helpful for them.

Sean Rameswaram: It is worth noting that there are also borrowers with private student loans that are left out of this who aren't getting help and haven't gotten help at all.

Sean Rameswaram: Number six, racial equity. Racial equity? That's going to take more than 17 minutes. It's just a presidential order. How much time do we have? You're at six minutes. Here's Vox's Fabiola Sinius.

Fabiola Sinius: So this is a new administration coming in and saying, hey, we see and we understand that economic health and climate crises basically affect communities differently because of this country's history of inequity and also this country's history of just not providing equal rights to everyone. So Joe Biden and his administration are basically trying to be comprehensive and saying this needs to come from the federal government in order to advance equity, civil rights and racial justice across all areas of American life.

Fabiola Sinius: And importantly, the action counters something that Trump did during his administration, which was basically set up the 1776 Commission. And that commission was an effort to basically erase a lot of American history. So Joe Biden is rescinding the 1776 Commission with this action.

Sean Rameswaram: Number seven on the basis of sex. Vox is Anna North.

Anna North: Under the Trump administration, LGBTQ rights activists would say there was like no federal agency that didn't have some kind of mandate to restrict LGBTQ and especially trans rights. This is aimed at kind of undoing some of that as well as really shoring up protections for LGBTQ Americans. It's based on a Supreme Court case from 2020, Bostock v. Clayton County, that found that federal laws banning sex discrimination also ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Anna North: Basically, it requires that all federal agencies go through the regulations, all their stuff, make sure they're compatible with Bostock and with equity. If not, they need to make a plan to make them compatible, and they need to do that in 100 days.

Sean Rameswaram: Number eight, an executive order for some executive orders. With Vox's Lee Zoe.

Lee Zoe: This executive order is called the Order on Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Federal Regulation. What that basically means is that it's an executive order intended to undo other executive orders that Trump had put forward in his administration related to regulations that agencies could use. So if you'll recall, Trump had a pretty famous executive action where he required all agencies to eliminate two regulations for every one regulation they wanted to add.

Lee Zoe: And that was intended to cut costs or streamline how they approached these rules. But Biden is going forward and undoing this because he thinks that agencies need more freedom and more flexibility to determine how they respond to the current pandemic and the economic crisis.

Sean Rameswaram: I need a break. I need a break. OK, well, we can do some ads.

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Sean Rameswaram: All right, we're back. Harvey, how are we doing on time? You've got about eight minutes left, so make haste, scallywag. You need to be nicer.

Harvey: Number nine, orders in Paris. With Vox's Umair Irfan.

Umair Irfan: One of the first things President Trump did was withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Because of the way the agreement works, the U.S. wasn't actually able to exit the agreement until the day after the election. But even in that intervening time, the Trump administration weakened and lost a lot of momentum in the U.S. where we were reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Umair Irfan: And so there's a little bit of lost time here. Now, Biden has fulfilled his campaign promise to reverse course and get the U.S. back into the agreement. And in 30 days, the U.S. will be back at the table. And at the same time, other countries have been kind of submitting lackadaisical goals of their own on climate change, like Saudi Arabia, like Brazil, using the fact that the U.S. was pulling out of the accord as cover. But now that the world's second largest greenhouse gas emitter is back in the game, the spotlight is back on everybody else who is not doing their part to reduce their impact on the climate.

Sean Rameswaram: Number 10, the environment at home. Same guy. This executive order represents one of the biggest sources of whiplash between the administrations. The Trump administration started rolling back more than 100 different environmental regulations that were implemented under Obama. And now Biden is going to start undoing those rollbacks.

Umair Irfan: Some of the provisions that he's undoing are the Keystone XL pipeline. He's revoked the permit for that. He's also declaring a moratorium on drilling on public lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He's also expanding federal land protections that were shrunken under the Trump administration. But more broadly, he's targeting environmental rules across the federal government.

Umair Irfan: He's directing federal agencies to incorporate climate change into their planning, looking at things like the environmental impacts, the economic impacts, and the health impacts, and as well as directing federal agencies to look at things like fuel economy emissions, methane standards, and other types of regulations that will help reduce the U.S.'s greenhouse gas emissions across the government.

Sean Rameswaram: Number 11, viva DACA. Vox's Nicole Norea.

Nicole Norea: This proclamation is an important statement from Biden since Trump had been trying to end the program for much of his presidency and stopped accepting new applicants to the program for several years. The Supreme Court had temporarily prevented Trump from ending DACA, but his administration was still working on dismantling it during his final days in office.

Nicole Norea: This proclamation impacts not only the 700,000 people already enrolled in the program, but also the 1.3 million immigrants who became eligible for the program in the years when Trump had refused new applicants. But it really seems to be more of a gesture from Biden than anything that will actually change the status quo. They still need Congress to act in order to have permanent assurance that they will be able to remain in the U.S.

Sean Rameswaram: Number 12, the travel ban. Same lady. This order ends Trump's travel ban on non-citizens from 13 countries, which was one of his most controversial and high-profile immigration policies. Under the ban, citizens of seven countries, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea, couldn't obtain any kind of visas, which largely prevented them from entering the U.S.

Nicole Norea: There were also restrictions on citizens of Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, and Sudan, as well as Tanzania. They could still visit the U.S., but for the most part, they couldn't get green cards or other kinds of visas that would have allowed them to settle in the U.S. permanently. This executive order would impact the 41,000 people who were denied visas under the ban, And it's also likely that many people refrained from even applying for visas, knowing that they would be rejected.

Nicole Norea: So that number could actually be quite a lot larger. Many of those people were separated from their families since the ban was first implemented in January 2017. And so now they will be able to enter the U.S. and immigrate.

Sean Rameswaram: Number 13, immigration enforcement. Still her. It repeals Trump's executive order that enabled a massive expansion of immigration enforcement inside the U.S. and basically meant that no undocumented immigrant, even families and longtime residents, were safe from deportation. It allows the Biden administration to set priorities for which immigrants it will target for enforcement.

Nicole Norea: And actually another action that he took during his first stay in office, Biden set those priorities as people who committed felonies and people who engage in acts of terrorism or espionage or otherwise pose some kind of national security threat to the U.S. People who entered the U.S. after November 1st or who were apprehended while trying to cross the border after November 1st are also being prioritized for deportation.

Sean Rameswaram: This action is going to be a relief to the estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. They really been living in fear of being swept up in wide-scale immigration raids under the Trump administration, so this will abet that to an extent.

Sean Rameswaram: 14, the wall. All right, okay, there's a lot of immigration stuff. This action immediately halts construction of Trump's border wall and makes arrangements to deal with existing construction contracts that could be hard to exit.

Nicole Norea: Trump constructed 450 miles of border wall during his time in office, but Mexico didn't end up paying for it as he had promised on the campaign trail. Instead, he used taxpayer money and diverted Department of Defense funds to pay for it. There's still an open question of what's going to happen with the $1.4 billion that were transferred but haven't been used yet.

Sean Rameswaram: Biden's action makes provisions for redirecting that money elsewhere. Continuing construction would have had an adverse impact on border communities since the government has seized private land to construct the wall as well as the environment. The wall was disrupting many animals' natural habitats, which drew lawsuits from environmental advocates.

Sean Rameswaram: Fifteen, Liberians. I hope Nicole gets a raise, man. This memorandum will extend temporary protection from deportation and work authorization for Liberians under the Deferred and Forced Departure Program until June 30, 2022.

Nicole Norea: Under the program, the president can protect people of certain nationalities from deportation at his discretion. The Trump administration had terminated work permits for Liberians covered under the program on January 10 of this year. So this action from Biden was actually quite urgent.

Nicole Norea: This will impact 4,000 Liberians living in the U.S. under the Deferred and Forced Departure Program and give them some sense of stability. Many of them came here between 1989 and 2003 on account of civil war in their home country. But conditions there haven't vastly improved. The economy is still not doing so well and the country was hit hard by the Ebola epidemic.

Sean Rameswaram: Number 16, the census. With Vox's Ian Millhiser.

Ian Millhiser: The Trump administration did a lot of things that were designed to sort of skew the census towards Republicans. One thing that they did is they said that they would exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count. So undocumented immigrants wouldn't count in determining how many seats each state would get.

Ian Millhiser: The problem with that policy is that it is unconstitutional. The Constitution says, and I'll just read this language to you, that representatives shall be a portion among the several states counting the whole number of persons in each state. And last time I checked, Undocumented immigrants are persons. So all that Biden's executive order does is say that we're going to follow the Constitution and undocumented immigrants will be counted.

Sean Rameswaram: It may be that other problems with the census will be discovered later. So we'll find out later if he needs to do more.

Sean Rameswaram: 17, ethics. Where in Washington? Give me a break. I'll give you more than a break. You're done. We're at 17. Finally, you've got a minute left to wrap up the show. Goodbye forever. So the question of how you can keep people in government from being self-interest is a very old problem. Like the Constitution has things like the emoluments clause, which the framers put in there to deal with this problem. But the last guy, I think, is perceived as particularly corrupt. And Trump is perceived as particularly corrupt by President Biden.

Sean Rameswaram: So Biden, I think, wants to deal with this problem. He wants a clean break from the Trump administration. And so what he did is he put in place an ethics order that's even a little stronger than what Obama did. If you worked as a lobbyist before you entered government, you can't work on the same issues that you worked on as a lobbyist. And then after you leave, it's a new two-year ban where you can't lobby on the same issues that you worked on while you were in government.

Sean Rameswaram: Thanks to Harvey for his help today and to all the Vox reporters who explained, Ian Millhiser, Nicole Norea, Umair Irfan, Lee Zoe, Anna North, Fabiola Sinias, Emily Stewart, Dylan Scott, and Julia Beluz. You can read much more from them about all the new policies and orders at Vox.com.

Sean Rameswaram: The Today Explained team includes Muj Zaydi, Amina Al-Sadi, Will Reed, Halima Shah, Noam Hassenfeld, and Nafim Shapiro, who's our engineer, extra help, from Jillian Weinberger, welcome back, facts checked by Cecilia Lay, who checked 200 facts on yesterday's show all by herself.

Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for that. Our supervising producer is Golda Arthur, and Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. Music for the show from Noam and the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. You can get in touch with us via email. We're todayexplained at vox.com. We're also on Twitter at today underscore explained. I'm at Ramis Firm. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Sean Rameswaram: Okay, we're done. Finally, can I get my headphones back? And my money, please?