Joe Biden has arrived at the White House, for the first time as President of the United States and is hitting the ground running with a flurry of legislation and executive action.
The former vice president walked the final 200 meters to his new home, flanked by his wife, children and grandchildren, just hours after taking the oath of office.
He greeted a number of politicians that lined the streets of Washington D.C., with the public prevented from attending the event, both due to Covid-19 and security fears.
Now inside the White House, President Biden is expected to sign 17 executive orders which will roll back some of the major Trump policies. He is expected to reenter the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organisation, as well as reverse Trump’s Muslim travel ban, as well as sink the Keystone XL pipeline.
In a flurry of orders before leaving office, Donald Trump rolled back rights for transgender people seeking refuge, as well as permit discrimination in housing on the basis of sexual orientation. Biden is expected to roll back these policies just hours after they were instated, with the first weeks of his presidency likely geared towards overturning the past four years.
President Biden will overturn Mr Trump’s “1776 commission”, which was set up to “restore patriotic education to our schools”, which sought to prevent the teaching of racial injustices within the history of America.
Biden will also sign a number of orders in relation to tackling Coronavirus, beginning at home, with the White House installing perspex glass in staffers’ offices and mandating mask-wearing and mandatory testing for the press pool.
He will also sign a mandate that masks must be worn in all federal buildings, whilst in the coming days, the new administration is set to table more legislation to ensure the passage of more wide-ranging Coronavirus restrictions; these could include masks in all public places.
The new administration will also table a bill in the coming days for a new Coronavirus stimulus package, set to be more than double the package introduced by Barack Obama in 2009. There is discussion of a $1.9 trillion stimulus, including larger cheques for individuals across the United States, building on the $600 that was passed in the final weeks of the Trump administration.
In his inaugural address, Biden talked about the joint threats of Coronavirus, climate emergency, racial injustice and many others. It appears that he wishes to hit the ground running, passing a number of bills across wide-ranging policy areas, capitalising on Republican goodwill in the wake of the Capitol insurrection.
