President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office earlier this year, a mere two weeks after a riot at the U.S. Capitol. In the first 100 days in office, the Biden administration has already committed to several executive orders and policies that tackle everything from the effects of COVID-19, racial equality, and climate change. 

COVID-19:

A series of measures put in place by the Biden-Harris administration will be enacted to tackle the pandemic that has cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. This administration set a mandatory mandate stating that everyone needs to wear masks and practice social distancing measures while on federal government property. This mandate was noticeably opposing former president Donald Trump’s relaxed approach. 

Along with this, President Biden plans to create a new position of COVID-19 Response Coordinator, who would respond directly to the President. This position would also entail launching a ‘100 Days Masking Challenge’ which asks Americans to wear masks in public for 100 days and practice social distancing measures. 

Several executive orders have also been invoked in response to this pandemic. These include expanding access to COVID-19 treatments, strengthening public health supply chain, promoting safety in domestic and international travel, and promoting data-driven responses to COVID-19. The executive order for strengthening public health supply chain was intended to ramp up healthcare supplies needed for the pandemic response and requested the heads of several departments to access the nationwide availability of personal protective equipment and develop a strategic method to manufacture supplies for future biological threats and pandemics. The Biden-Harris administration is focused on effective methods to contain this pandemic which included expanding the access to COVID-19 treatments especially for those in critical care and long-term care facilities such as nursing homes. 

Racial Equality:

The Biden-Harris administration has been setting precedents in order to launch a whole-government initiative to advance racial equality. This includes ‘Identifying Methods to Assess Equality’ and ‘Allocating Federal Resources to Advance Fairness and Opportunity’. These precedents that go toward eliminating the racial divide were a crucial part of Biden’s first Racial Equality Address which was announced on January 21st of this year. 

A memorandum was also issued on Tuesday, January 26th, and was titled ‘Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States’. With this memorandum, a statement was put out by President Biden, who had made a public pledge to crack down xenophobia against the Asian American community in the wake of an increase of harassment and violence as a result of this pandemic. 

During Biden’s visit to George, in the wake of the shootings, he met Asian-American leaders who introduced a coronavirus-related hate crimes bill earlier this month. This COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act would boost the Justice Department’s efforts to combat this type of violence. 

Climate Change:

The Biden-harris administration has confirmed their commitment to global acts of climate change by signing an executive order which began the process of rejoining the Paris climate agreement, which aimed to sustainably reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature rise in this century alone. 

President Biden has also revoked the Presidential permit granted to the controversial, Keystone XL Pipeline. This has been fought for by environmentalists and Native Americans for more than a decade. 

Through these executive orders, mandates, and policies, the Biden-Harris administration is certainly changing the face of the federal government throughout these past few months. They’ve worked on several present-day issues in order to change America amongst the global community. While COVID-19 certainly takes precedence over some other topics, the Biden-Harris administration continues to work for the good of the American people.