Shortly after Trump assumed office on Monday, he signed an executive order revoking dozens of his predecessorâs executive actions.
President Donald Trump
rescinded more than 70 executive actions of his predecessor on his first day in office on Jan. 20, mere hours after the official swearing-in ceremony.
Trump announced earlier in the day that one of his first actions as the 47th president would be undoing much of the previous administrationâs work, targeting former President Joe Bidenâs executive orders (EOs) on policies related to COVID-19, immigration, the environment, gender and race, health care, and others.
Here are some of the most significant Biden-era executive actions that Trump revoked on his first day back in the White House.
Actions on COVID-19
Trump rescinded multiple executive orders Biden signed regarding the governmentâs response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including one that created a government-wide response to the pandemic to expand testing and vaccine distribution and another that developed a plan to conduct studies, large-scale trials, and novel therapies to combat the coronavirus.
Bidenâs
order providing financial relief to individuals, families, and small businesses, as well as to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments during the pandemic, was also rescinded by Trump.
Immigration and Border Security
Trump was quick to revoke many of Bidenâs executive orders on immigration and border security after the latter did the same following his inauguration in early 2021.
One of the revoked orders established a federal coordinated effort to address the âRoot Causes of Migrationâ from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, while working with those countries to ramp up domestic development.
Notably, that order also expanded pathways for illegal immigrants to pursue asylum after crossing the border and revoked several of Trumpâs previous executive orders, including the end of âcatch and releaseâ and a memorandum to secure the southern border.
Another
order created humanitarian programs for refugee resettlement for illegal immigrants crossing the border through coordination with âprivate partners and American citizens in communities across the country.â
Climate and the Environment
Another key policy area that Trumpâs revocation order addressed was climate initiatives, as Biden signed many sweeping executive actions on the environment while in office.
Biden signed an
order on his first day in office that made it federal policy to âadvance environmental justiceâ while directing all agency heads to review the actions of the first Trump administration to determine whether any regulations, orders, or other policies conflicted with that goal.
Trump rescinded that order along with
another that mobilized government resources to tackle the âclimate crisis at home and abroad,â including a commitment to the Paris Agreement after Trump backed out during his first term.
Trump also pulled a Biden
order that implemented the energy and infrastructure provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which sought to accelerate the nationâs use of renewable energy technologies.
There was also Bidenâs 2023
presidential memorandum that withdrew certain areas of Alaska from oil or gas drilling to protect âmarine mammals, other wildlife, wildlife habitat, scientific research, and Alaska Native subsistence use.â Trump wrote another
executive order opening up vast lands in the United Statesâ northernmost state for fossil fuel extraction.
Gender and Race
After Trump issued a ban on allowing transgender troops to serve in the military during his first administration, Biden signed an executive order reversing that policy. Trump revoked that executive action along with several others based on gender, including one that added âgender identity or sexual orientationâ to the definition of âsex [based] discrimination,â and another that added those concepts to the protections afforded by Title IX, which was created to prohibit sex-based discrimination in schools and education programs.
Another Biden
executive action that met its demise on Monday was one that sought to use the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to ensure access to transgender medical care for both minors and adults, while making it a federal priority to combat âunlawful discriminationâ of those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex.
Health Care and Medicine
In health care and medicine, Trump revoked a Biden executive order that strengthened Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Trump tried and failed to repeal the ACA during his first term, and he has been back and forth recently on whether he would pursue an end to the Obama-era legislation or suggest a replacement medical program.
Another Biden
order that Trump axed was one that extended Medicaid eligibility to additional residents in key states, extended the ACA enrollment period by a month, and removed additional documentation requirements to make Medicaid and ACA enrollment easier.
Trump also pulled Bidenâs
order to use the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to lower prescription drug costs for Americans, which gave the former president the power to negotiate prices on key drugs with Medicare and Medicaid programs, leading to savings for many who are enrolled.
Other Actions
There were several other Biden executive actions that Trump reversed on Monday, including one that had revoked several of Trumpâs from his first term. Some of those Trumpâs orders targeted by Biden included an executive order that promoted âbeautiful federal civic architecture,â a memorandum that threatened to withhold funds from major cities like Portland, Seattle, and New York that were experiencing heightened protests in the summer of 2020, and an order that sought to overhaul U.S. social assistance programs.
The president also ended Bidenâs
executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) security risks, which required developers of AI systems that may pose national security, economic, and public health or safety threats to the United States to report their safety test results to the federal government prior to releasing them to the public.
Another notable
executive order from Biden that ended yesterday was a reversal of the first Trump administrationâs policy to remove millions of U.S. residents without legal immigration status from the nationâs census. Prior to Trumpâs move in 2020, no residents had been excluded from the national population tallies based on immigration status since the first U.S. census in 1790.
Reuters contributed to this report.
