Headline: President Joe Biden: Inauguration and First Orders

Author: Madison Kwiecinski; News Editor

On January 20th at noon eastern time, a new White House legacy began. This inauguration marked the commencement of Joe Biden as President and Kamala Harris as Vice President for the next four years. 

As Biden took the oath of office, a new tone was set in America. He took a rather different approach than former President Trump, preaching unity across the nation in his inaugural address. 

“Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together.” Biden stated in his address, “ Uniting our people. And uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause.” 

President Biden believes that with unity, American can begin to address some of the issues he has promised to work to rectify while in office. “Extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, hopelessness,” President Biden is ready to come together to address these issues within our society, and he has already begun taking steps to do so. 

The same day, Biden began signing executive orders, memorandums, and agency directives. Within his first day in office, Biden signed 17 separate executive moves, beginning to shift the power and show the public what a Biden White House will look like. 

“There’s no time to start like today,” President Biden said to reporters as he began signing orders. “I’m going to start keeping the promises I made to the American People” 

Many of Biden’s first-day executive orders are direct opposite takes to the policies from former President Trump. With the signature of a few orders, Biden has halted funding for Trump’s border wall, helped move toward more progressive environmental policies, and reversed Trump’s travel ban that targeted those from Muslim countries. 

Biden, as promised to the American people, halted the United States’ withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) and began the process of re-entering the Paris Climate Accord. 

The Biden administration is also making major changes within the White House itself by instituting a Coronavirus Response Coordinator to oversee vaccine and medical supplies distribution. Also, a federal mask-wearing mandate is now being enforced in all federal buildings.

The alterations the Biden White House is making to address the virus signify a dramatic shift in power and perspective, following a year of the Trump Administration downplaying the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Biden’s COVID approach is different than former President Trump’s, Biden speaks passionately for the need to address this virus head-on. 

“Few people in our nation’s history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we’re in now.” Biden stated in his inaugural address, “Once-in-a-century virus that silently stalks the country. It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II.” 

Due to the tremendous amount of lives the United States has lost to this virus, the Biden Administration had made the pandemic one of its central focuses for at least the first several days in office. 

The Biden White House is choosing policy themes for the first several days following the inauguration. They will focus on topics in the upcoming days such as economic relief, equity, healthcare, and immigration. Many more executive orders are expected to follow in order to further progress these agendas. 

The Biden Administration has also released that February will be focusing on what they title “restoring America’s place in the world.” 

As the old administration shifts into the new vision of the Biden-Harris White House, it is important to recognize that this is the definition of Democracy. 

“Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.” Biden said, “ The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded. We have learned again that democracy is precious.”