Biden reverses many Trump policies
President Biden has spent his first days reinstating many Obama-era policies
Mikaela Foehr / Copy Editor
In recent administrations, executive orders have become a common quick-fix for presidents looking to enact change, and President Joe Biden is continuing this pattern. Since taking office on Jan. 20, Biden has signed 28 executive orders as listed on the Federal Registrar. These orders have followed two major themes: addressing coronavirus and reversing Trump-era policies.
Executive orders are pieces of quasi-legislation addressing the function of the Executive Branch, which presidents have the power to enact unilaterally. While swift in enactment, executive orders do not have the strength of a law, are often contested in court, and can be easily reversed by a new head executive.
The Trump policy reversals Biden has taken on include allowing transgender people to serve in the military, re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement, revoking the Keystone XL Pipeline permit, including non-citizens in apportionment counts, and reinforcing Affordable Care Act provisions. In addition, Biden has signed memorandums, which are not as forceful as executive orders, repealing the travel ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim nations and reinforcing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Many Democrats and liberals have praised these actions; however, the ease in which Biden enacted them also shows how easily they can be reversed. Nearly all of the policies that Biden has reversed were campaign promises that President Trump made in 2016, indicating that four years of work can be dismissed with the stroke of a pen if concrete laws are never passed to support them.
More pressing than the easily-erased policy legacies of past presidents is the fact that some of these boomeranging executive orders deal explicitly with the lives and rights of certain groups of people: allowing transgender people to serve in the military, for example. According to the AP, there were an estimated 14,700 transgender people serving in military ranks, both active and reserve, in 2019. These service members have had their professional careers in limbo for the past five years, from when Obama passed an order allowing open service by transgender people, to the reversal by Trump, through years of court challenges, to the current policy of the Biden administration.
These executive orders, while undoing some of Trump’s most controversial policies, are not necessarily permanent, and will likely need action taken by Congress and the President together to outlast the next administration’s preferences. There are also expected challenges in the Supreme and district courts.