Joe Biden Begins to Spell Out What He’ll Do Immediately When He Gets to the White House

The president-elect’s transition team is laying out its policy plans.

President-elect Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Chase Center on November 07, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

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Much of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-environment, climate change-denying, pro-police, anti-civil rights agenda—to name some of its prominent features—was enacted through executive power, via Trump’s executive orders and rule changes made by his cabinet. President-elect Joe Biden can therefore set to work reversing much of Trump’s work on his first day in office, without needing approval of a potentially Republican controlled Senate. And his team is putting in place plans to do just that.

On January 20, Inauguration Day, Biden would set in motion the process of rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. His administration would also reverse Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization, repeal the travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, and reinstate the Obama era program to protect Dreamers, according to the Washington Post.

On Sunday, the president-elect rolled out his transition website—along with social media feeds—detailing how he would tackle four prominent issues: COVID-19, the ongoing economic crisis, racial equity, and climate change. Named after his campaign policy platform Build Back Better, the transition plan shows how a Biden administration could quickly change official government policy.

Biden’s most immediate task will be getting the coronavirus, which is currently reaching record infection levels, under control. His transition team on Monday will launch a coronavirus task force that will prepare to implement a national pandemic plan when Biden takes office. On his first day, he intends to name a “national supply chain commander” and create a “pandemic testing board,” in the mold of President Franklin Roosevelt’s War Production Board. His seven-bucket transition plan includes a whole host of proposals, including how he’d attempt to create mask mandate across the country, greatly expand testing by doubling the amount of drive-through sites, and make a national website to track the level of infections in your local area.

But Biden’s transition team will not have access to agency information nor the millions of federal dollars dedicated to presidential transitions until the General Services Administration has determined that Biden won the election. More specifically, that task falls on Emily Murphy, a Trump appointee. If Murphy waits until the Electoral College certifies the results on December 14, it would cost Biden’s team important time for orchestrating a successful transition amidst an ongoing economic and public health crisis.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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