Stacks on stacks on stacks.
Stacks on stacks on stacks. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

We are only three days into this new era and the recently inaugurated president's hand is on fucking fire. President Biden has already signed over two dozen executive actions and proclamations, largely undoing many of Trump's most destructive policies.

In his first week in office, Biden's orders primarily focused on bolstering the federal government's coronavirus response, reversing Trump's ass-backward environmental rollbacks, halting paranoid immigration policies, and attempting to provide a wee bit of economic relief. These executive actions can be pretty dry, so we're hoping to make this a little fun for you. Note: We just said a little fun, not a lot of fun.

Grab some coffee and let's get to work.

DAY ONE


Executive Order on Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing
1. Biden says you've got to wear a fucking mask on federal property. This order requires mask-wearing by all federal employees and for everyone who steps foot on federal property, as well as social distancing whenever possible. The order also encourages state and local officials to do the same, kicking off Biden's 100 day masking challenge.

Executive Order on Organizing and Mobilizing the United States Government to Provide a Unified and Effective Response to Combat COVID-19 and to Provide United States Leadership on Global Health and Security
2. Biden creates the position of a COVID-19 Response Coordinator. The role, filled by Jeff Zients, will report directly to Biden, managing vaccine and medical equipment production and distribution.

Letter to His Excellency AntĂłnio Guterres
3. Biden says we are rejoining the World Health Organization, goddamnit. This order stops the withdrawal of the United States from the WHO, a process initiated by Trump. Dr. Anthony Fauci has been named the head of the American delegation to the international body and delivered remarks to the organization's executive board this week.

Proclamation on the Termination Of Emergency With Respect To The Southern Border Of The United States And Redirection Of Funds Diverted To Border Wall Construction ï»ż
4. Biden says fuck Trump's wall. This order halts the construction of Trump's unhinged and expensive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden says he'll direct a "careful review" of the resource$ Trump redirected to construct the blasted thing.

Preserving and Fortifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
5. Biden wants Dreamers to keep on dreamin'. This memo bolsters DACA, a program that protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children—known as Dreamers—from deportation. Trump targeted DACA for years, but Biden's order calls on his Cabinet to preserve the program. It also asks Congress to create legislation that gives the 700,000 Dreamers permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship.

Executive Order on the Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities
6. Biden undoes Trump's expansion of immigration enforcement. During his only term in office, Trump aggressively expanded the government's efforts to find and deport undocumented immigrants. This order undoes the previous administration's policies.

Proclamation on Ending Discriminatory Bans on Entry to The United States
7. Biden puts an end to the so-called Muslim ban. This tells the State Department to restart the visa process for people from the affected countries and reconsider denied visas. The White House also promises to improve the screening of visitors through information-sharing with other countries.

Reinstating Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians
8. Biden wants Liberians whose immigration status has expired to stay. This memo extends work authorizations and eases the burden of residency applications for Liberians living in America.

Executive Order on Ensuring a Lawful and Accurate Enumeration and Apportionment Pursuant to the Decennial Census
9. Biden says non-citizens should get counted too. This order overturns a Trump administration plan to exclude non-citizens from the census count.

Pausing Federal Student Loan Payments
10. Biden says you can put the money you would have put toward your student loan in your savings instead. Ok, he didn't say that exactly but he directed the Acting Secretary of Education to put a hold on federal student loan payments and collection until at least September 30, keeping the interest rate at 0%. Just cancel it already!

Extending Pandemic Eviction Moratorium and Foreclosures
11. While we're chatting about cancelations, let's cancel the rent, too. Biden is not, but this order will expand the eviction and foreclosure moratorium to March 31.

Paris Climate Agreement
12. Biden says we care about the environment. The acceptance undoes Trump's 2017 decision for the United States to withdraw from the agreement. The process to rejoin will take 30 days.

Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis
13. Biden cancels the Keystone XL pipeline. In this confusingly titled order, President Biden cancels the Keystone XL pipeline (to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's chagrin) and directs federal agencies to review and reverse more than 100 of Trump's actions on the environment. This order also places a temporary moratorium on the oil and natural gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, undoes a decision to slash national monuments, and re-establishes a working group on the social cost of greenhouse gases. Republicans are, predictably, freaking out.

Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation
14. Biden makes sure queers can be queer at work. This order reinforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requiring the government not to discriminate based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also directs federal agencies with protections against sex discrimination to interpret those protections to also include discrimination on the basis of gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, consistent with the Bostock v. Clayton County Supreme Court ruling in 2020. This is largely seen as a reversal of Trump-era policy goals.

Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government
15. Biden revokes Trump's 1776 Commission. As one of his final acts in office, Trump released the inaccurate alternative history of the United States, conceived as a response to the racial justice protests of last summer as well as the New York Times' "1619 Project." President Biden undid all that. The order also directs federal agencies to advance racial equity in their departments.

Executive Order on Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Federal Regulation
16. Biden reverses Trump's new regulations implemented before he left office. This order undoes Trump's regulatory approval process to give federal agencies more tools to fight the pandemic, climate change, racial justice, and economic recovery. In another memo to agency heads, Biden also directs the Office of Management and Budget director to modernize regulatory review.

Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel
17. Biden brings ethics back to the White House. In this executive order, President Biden requires all executive branch appointees to sign a pledge promising to "restore and maintain public trust in government." Appointees must pledge not to interfere with the independence of the Department of Justice, not use their appointments for personal gain, and invokes a two year lobbying ban.

ARE YOU STILL THERE!?!?!? Let's move on to...

DAY TWO


Executive Order on Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel
18. You have to wear the damn masks on planes and trains. This is a double-punch building on Day One's mask mandate on federal property. Taking place immediately, all you conservative freaks are required to wear masks on certain forms of domestic travel, like commercial aircrafts, ferries, and intercity bus services. Somewhere in there it probably says "no whining," too.

Executive Order on Improving and Expanding Access to Care and Treatments for COVID-19
19. Turn up the volume on COVID-19 care, DJ. Day Two is (mostly) all about the coronavirus. This one directs Health and Human Services to back-up research that looks into "the most promising treatments for COVID-19 and future high-consequence public health threats."

Executive Order on Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats
20. The Biden administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic will be based in science and data and FACTS. This is what Biden's been saying all throughout the campaign trail/in his bunker. Nothing that new here, but it solidifies the data-driven approach through an executive order.

Memorandum to Extend Federal Support to Governors’ Use of the National Guard to Respond to COVID-19 and to Increase Reimbursement and Other Assistance Provided to States
21. The National Guard will help grandmas get jabbed. The Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are now ordered to assist governors' responses to COVID-19 with the deployment of the National Guard. A sexy little item for states stressing about budgets: "FEMA shall fund 100 percent of the cost of activities associated with all mission assignments for the use of the National Guard."

Executive Order on a Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain
22. Government departments can use the fuckin' Defense Production Act to fulfill supply chain issues. It also urges departments to "immediately review" PPE supplies. Pricing is an important section in this order, ordering everyone to watch out for price gouging and hoarding. I don't think that means they're coming for your toilet paper hoard, but let it be known that you're on notice, Susan.

Executive Order on Ensuring an Equitable Pandemic Response and Recovery
23. We're getting a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, baby! This is another one of those things we knew about a while ago, considering it was built into his transitional advisory board, but now it's official.

Executive Order on Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers
24. The Education Department needs to work with the Department of Health and Human Services to reopen schools safely. A lot of these orders are akin to a dad making his kids talk to each other, which, under President Trump, wasn't happening. The departments will create "Safer Schools and Campuses Best Practices," something that you'd think would've already happened but, again, this country's been a shithole.

Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety
25. Fuck the old standards, the Labor Department must issue new COVID-19 safety guidelines to employers. They've got two weeks to come up with them!

Executive Order on Establishing the COVID-19 Pandemic Testing Board and Ensuring a Sustainable Public Health Workforce for COVID-19 and Other Biological Threats
26. WHEW! Last one for Day Two, and it's got a lengthy title. The TL;DR here is that a "COVID-19 Pandemic Testing Board" is in the works and it will implement a "Government-wide, unified approach" to "promote COVID-19 diagnostic, screening, and surveillance testing." Creating a "government-wide, unified approach" is a big theme with these executive orders, seeing as the last guy in office could hardly connect two ends of a sentence, let alone two government bodies.


And now, for Friday...

DAY THREE

Executive Order on Economic Relief Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic
27. Bitch better have my (stimulus) money. Nearly eight million Americans have still not received either their $1200 or $600 stimulus checks from last year. This order asks the Treasury Department to hurry the hell up, calling on them to examine their delivery structure to make sure everyone gets their money on time. It also expands food stamps, increasing the amount of money families get for food each month.

Executive Order on Protecting the Federal Workforce
28. Biden lays the groundwork so the minimum wage for federal workers can raise to $15 an hour. Glad that the feds have finally caught up to Seattle (almost). The requirement for federal contractors to raise their wages won't happen immediately (within the first 100 days, says the White House), but the order also restores collective bargaining and other worker protections revoked by Trump. This is your friendly reminder that $15 an hour still doesn't cut it.