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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform. Didn't know that. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Joe Biden has been president for, what, like 10 days? And the biggest story in the United States is about a video game store at the mall. I'm not saying there's causation, just correlation maybe? But while the nation's eyes turn to GameStop and perhaps all the potential work the stock market could do to be best, President Biden has still been very, very busy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here we go again. Last week, we ran through Biden's first 17 executive actions with a bunch of Vox reporters and friend of the show, Harvey Shapiro. Just after that, Biden signed a dozen or so more actions relating to how the U.S. manages the pandemic. And since then, an additional 13 that run the gamut.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what do you think, Harvey? Stick to the 13? Stop wasting our time, Sean. Rom. Whatever. 13 minutes on the clock.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number one, Obamacare. With Vox's Dylan Scott, a really nice guy. So this week, President Biden signed an executive order that is meant to shore up the Affordable Care Act, which had come under attack during the Trump administration.
--:-- Dylan Scott: And that executive order does two important things. One is it creates a special enrollment period on healthcare.gov, which is the federal health insurance marketplace that most of the country uses, that will last from February 15th to May 15th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So anybody who is uninsured can log on to healthcare.gov, put in their information, and find out if they qualify for financial assistance and what health insurance plans they can sign up for in their area.
--:-- Dylan Scott: That is a step that the Trump administration was not willing to take during COVID-19. But given, you know, just that we're in a medical emergency, and that a lot of people have lost their jobs, and with their jobs, their health insurance during this crisis, the Biden administration is trying to send a signal to people like, hey, here's a new opportunity to sign up for health insurance, and they're planning to put about a $50 million ad blitz behind that special enrollment period.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The second piece of that executive order directs federal agencies to take a look at regulations and other waivers and other programs that were set up under the Trump administration affecting the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid.
--:-- Dylan Scott: They single out Medicaid work requirements specifically as something that the federal agencies should review. They should figure out, you know, is this going to lead to people losing health coverage or facing higher costs?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And really what it is, is a way to start the process of reviewing those Trump policies and potentially going about trying to undo them.
--:-- Dylan Scott: Now, actually undoing them requires a lot of paperwork. There's a long rulemaking process that goes into rolling back regulations. But what Biden is doing is sending a signal, it's time to start that process, and we need to figure out which of these policies maybe should stay and which of them need to go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number two, a travel ban. We're talking about Biden, right? People coming from the United Kingdom, from Ireland, from Brazil, and from South Africa, if you've been in one of those countries within the last 14 days before you're trying to enter the United States, you're not allowed to come anymore.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The reason for this is some of these new coronavirus variants that we have started to see pop up. One of them emerged in the United Kingdom. One of them has come out of South Africa. And they've started to be detected elsewhere across the world, including in the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number three, the climate. With Vox's Lily Pike. So one of the key actions here is that he is pausing all new leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
--:-- Lily Pike: Another key initiative here is that he intends to conserve 30% of land by 2030. That's up from just 12% today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Another key theme of this executive order is how he will use climate policy to address injustice. He intends to have his administration direct 40% of the benefits of all new investment in clean energy and infrastructure to disadvantaged communities.
--:-- Lily Pike: He also, in this executive order, wants to make sure that climate policy creates jobs. One of the ways he doing this is setting up a working group to help communities that are currently centered on fossil fuels to ensure that they receiving investment in good green jobs during this energy transition away from fossil fuels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's also going to make sure that when the U.S. government buys cars and electricity, that it's coming from clean sources and that those technologies are American made.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number four, scientific integrity. Same lady. So in this executive order, Biden is basically sending the message that science will once again be central to the government's decision making.
--:-- Lily Pike: You can see this as a direct rebuttal to the Trump era. Trump often attacked the use of science in decision making.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think one example of this is that Trump's EPA limited the use of scientific studies in decision making.
--:-- Lily Pike: So with this executive order, Biden is sending the message to all the agencies that all of their rulemaking needs to be based on science and there will be a review of their work to ensure that's actually happening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number five, the small council. How small? Eight minutes on the clock.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in this order, Biden reestablishes PCAST, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Trump set up PCAST, but it took him three years to do so.
--:-- Lily Pike: So in this order, Biden dismantles Trump's PCAST and sets up his own group of advisors on science and technology.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He gets to choose up to 26 advisors, and they will be responsible for helping him make scientific decisions on everything from health to climate change.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number six, federal workers. With Vox's Emily Stewart. Biden recently signed an executive order on protecting federal workers that does a few things.
--:-- Emily Stewart: One big thing is that it starts a process on requiring federal contractors to pay their workers at least $15 as a minimum wage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It also revokes some of Trump's executive orders that made it easier to fire federal employees and limit union activity.
--:-- Emily Stewart: The federal government is a big employer in the United States. In fact, it's the biggest employer in the United States. So that's going to affect a lot of people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number seven, made in America. Just like me. The president also recently signed an executive order to buy American, which basically is aimed at boosting American manufacturing through federal procurement processes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It deals with requirements for purchasing products and services that are from U.S. workers, and it closes some loopholes that companies use to offshore production and jobs.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My B. Quick break so Harvey can go do, like, a TikTok dance or whatever. Very funny. Well, maybe I'll dance to Today. Today explain. Today explain. But also maybe not. So, yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community. And Bilt wants you to go out and do things in the community. You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Bilt members every month.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Harvey, we're back. That was fast. How are we doing on time? Six minutes on the clock. Okay. Chop, chop, muchacho.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number eight, HUD. Who? HUD. No, I'm Harvey, but here's Vox's Leezo. On the efforts that he has already introduced to promote racial equity, Joe Biden actually has a new package of four measures aimed at achieving that same goal.
--:-- Leezo: The first of these measures is acknowledging discriminatory housing practices that have hurt people of color for years, including redlining and mortgage discrimination.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's trying to roll back Trump practices that exacerbated that issue.
--:-- Leezo: So there was a rule that the Trump administration actually put forward that made it tougher for people to file housing discrimination claims. And Biden wants his agency to effectively undo that and roll it back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number nine, prisons. Still we.
--:-- Leezo: The second of these measures is one that would end the federal government's use of private prisons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the reason behind this is that there has been research that shows that private prisons are more harmful to both inmates and correctional officers.
--:-- Leezo: Many experts in the space have said that this is a good start, but that it feels more symbolic at this time and that they'd like to see him take more efforts that address public prisons as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It only ends the federal government's relationship with those prisons. Currently, there are 14,000 people who are inmates in these prisons, so it only apply to those people and not necessarily state relationships with those same institutions.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number 10, respect for tribal sovereignty. It's the Liso Show, everybody. The third of these relates to tribal sovereignty and acknowledging Native American tribes' ability to have self-governance, which is something that's been long established.
--:-- Leezo: But that was really brushed aside during the Trump administration in terms of protections for Native lands and respect for these relationships.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what Biden's measure does is calls on federal agencies to evaluate tribal governments' needs when they are developing policies and for them to appoint a point person that will be a liaison to work with tribal governments as they develop different issue areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number 11, discrimination. You are so beautiful to lead. And then the fourth of these measures is intended to condemn the racism that Asian Americans have faced during the pandemic and to really mark a stark shift away from the way that the Trump administration talked about the pandemic and its use of racist terms like China virus and Kung flu.
--:-- Leezo: What Biden is asking is for federal agencies to not provide documentation that promotes racism. So stripping out terms like that from the types of communications they use.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he's asked the Department of Justice to collect data about incidents of hate crimes and harassment that Asian Americans have faced.
--:-- Leezo: I think the intention is that if they're able to collect this data, they can then go on and pursue legal actions to address these various incidents of potential hate crimes or harassment and to provide guidance on how different local governments, too, can do the same.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Number 12, who can serve? With Caitlin Burns. Careful you don't burn yourself. You're running out of time, Ramos Firm. Two minutes left. What this executive order essentially does is reverse the Trump policy, which ostensibly banned trans people from serving in the military.
--:-- Caitlin Burns: The Trump administration tried to make the argument that it was not a ban on trans people serving because they built a carve out within the rule for trans people to serve within their, quote, biological sex role.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they said, we're not actually banning trans people from serving. We're just banning them from serving and being openly trans at the same time.
--:-- Caitlin Burns: So this is essentially resetting the clock back to the Obama era.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is important to some trans people because the military traditionally has been an easy way for Americans to escape poverty. And of course, trans people are one of the most impoverished communities in the country.
--:-- Caitlin Burns: It's assumed it's been estimated that the U.S. military is perhaps the world's largest employer of trans people. That's taking into account people who are serving openly and who are closeted at the same time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trans people have an unusually high rate of commitment to service in the armed forces. Rolling back this rule just opens up more opportunities for trans people to both serve their country and, you know, take advantage of an employment system that is open to, you know, most other Americans.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And finally, in the nick of time, number 13. Reproductive health with Vox's Anna North. Basically, this memorandum does two main things.
--:-- Anna North: The first thing it does is it revokes the Mexico City policy, which reproductive health groups also call the global gag rule.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is a rule that bars groups abroad that get U.S. family planning funds from providing, referring for, or even talking about abortion.
--:-- Anna North: It's kind of a political light switch. It started with President Reagan, and then every Democratic president turns it off, every Republican president turns it back on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But President Trump actually expanded it so it applied not just to family planning money, but all health money.
--:-- Anna North: So even organizations working on diseases like malaria or tuberculosis abroad were affected.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The second thing that the memorandum does is a little more complicated, and it has to do with a domestic version of this rule, what some people call the domestic gag rule.
--:-- Anna North: In addition to the Mexico City policy, the Trump administration introduced a rule barring healthcare providers in the U.S. that get federal family planning funds under Title X, which is this big government program for underserved and low-income Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It basically barred those providers from providing or referring for abortion.
--:-- Anna North: So if you get Title 10 money you can do abortions you can even refer someone out to get the procedure. That ended up meaning that Planned Parenthood and a lot of other groups ended up exiting the program and some clinics closed as a result.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And since Title X went through the federal rulemaking process rather than being something that's just enacted by the president, what Biden is doing with this memorandum is he's telling the Department of Health and Human Services to review the rule with an eye to potentially rescinding it.
--:-- Anna North: So this is something he promised to get rid of this rule, but he's not exactly doing it with a stroke of the pen. And he's saying to HHS, like, can you take a look at this and see if it needs to be gotten rid of?
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, Harvey, thanks again.
--:-- Harvey Shapiro: Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Cut the music, Dad. Cut the music. Come on. What's up? Isn't this today explained? What's going on here? Is Biden just going to keep signing stuff? Isn't Congress supposed to do stuff? Do your job, Sean.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know what, Harvey? You're right. I know. Let's ask Vox's Herman Lopez.
--:-- Herman Lopez: I mean, we all know the constitutional system. It's supposed to be that the legislation is passed by Congress and then the president can sign that legislation, veto the legislation, and so he has influence there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The thing, though, is that America's political system over the past few decades has gotten increasingly dysfunctional, as in it's very hard to get anything through a very, very polarized Congress.
--:-- Herman Lopez: And so what we saw at the end of the Obama years was like Obama had spent a lot of time trying to pass all sorts of legislation that he ran two campaigns on. It just really did not seem to get through Congress.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even big bills that were advertised as like bipartisan budget deals and that kind of thing, bipartisan immigration deals. It just did not seem to get through Congress.
--:-- Herman Lopez: So Obama at that point started ratcheting up how many executive actions he did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that back then did get a lot of criticism from Republicans, conservatives, who just didn't like that the president was doing this thing.
--:-- Herman Lopez: And Trump got a lot of criticism for this, too, when he did it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is Biden getting heat already?
--:-- Herman Lopez: Yeah, you're already seeing some of it. I mean, the New York Times editorial board criticized Biden for this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This seems to be just a constant thing in American politics, where people are uneasy with the president taking what they look at as unilateral action.
--:-- Herman Lopez: I should say, though, what Biden's doing is not illegal. Like, the president does have these powers. They're given to him by the laws that Congress passes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, some of them might end up being struck down by courts. They're going to go through litigation, especially as Biden gets more aggressive on issues like climate change.
--:-- Herman Lopez: I would expect there to be, like, big legal battles over that. Same thing with immigration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there a chance that it all just gets reversed by the next president?
--:-- Herman Lopez: It is, of course, entirely possible that the next president just decides to flip a switch on all this stuff and just go the other way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The thinking, though, is once you implement some of these executive actions, it's going to be harder. And especially if they prove popular, it's going to be harder to walk back some of them.
--:-- Herman Lopez: And you're already seeing stuff like, for example, Biden has a pledge for the economy to just pollute less, go to zero carbon emissions. And you're already seeing car companies line up behind that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, car companies have to plan years ahead.
--:-- Herman Lopez: But these actions are generally vulnerable to getting repealed by the next president. That is true. It's just a question of how many exactly can be overturned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if Biden wants to affect lasting change on all of these policy fronts, be it the environment, be it health care, be it racial justice, the economy, he's going to need to pass legislation through Congress.
--:-- Herman Lopez: Yeah. And in fact, Biden's people have told reporters repeatedly now. I've been through a bunch of these executive action calls by now, and they emphasize time and time again that they would love Congress to do a bunch of these things through legislation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're still pushing for some of their agenda in terms of like the economic stimulus bill instead of a COVID plan. All that stuff that he ran on, they would love for that to be done through bills.
--:-- Herman Lopez: But given that Congress is, particularly the Senate, is a 50-50 split, that it's highly polarized, that even some of the moderate Democrats are skeptical of some of the bigger things that Biden ran on, this is him trying to do what he can facing those realities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks, Herman.
--:-- Herman Lopez: Thanks, Harvey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you going to thank me? Nope. Great. Thanks as well to Anna North, Caitlin Burns, Leezo, Emily Stewart, Lily Pike, and Dylan Scott.
--:-- Harvey Shapiro: Harvey comes to us courtesy of Afim Shapiro, our engineer. If you want to be his agent, get in line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The rest of the Today Explained team includes Amina Alsadi, Muj Zadi, Will Reed, Halima Shah, and Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Harvey Shapiro: Big help this week from Jillian Weinberger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cecilia Lay is our fact checker.
--:-- Harvey Shapiro: Music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts.
--:-- Harvey Shapiro: And Golda Arthur was our supervising producer. She's off to explore Canada, as so many have recently considered doing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will miss you, Golda. Thank you for everything.
--:-- Harvey Shapiro: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I did it for the Pop-Tarts.
