[ad_1]
US President Joe Biden was expected to unveil his administration’s plans to address the coronavirus crisis on Thursday as he begins his first full day in the White House with the United States facing a host of challenges.
Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, making a calming call to heal a nation divided by bitter divisions that had deepened during Donald Trump’s four years.
Biden took the presidential oath standing on the steps of the United States Capitol, the complex of buildings that had been attacked two weeks earlier by a pro-Trump mob seeking to overturn his victory. Moments earlier, Kamala Harris had been sworn in to officially become the first vice president of the United States.
“Democracy is precious, democracy is fragile, and at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed,” Biden said before a National Mall that was practically empty due to ultra-tight security and a raging COVID-19 pandemic that promised to face. quickly.
Trump was absent from the ceremony, who had left Washington for Florida, breaking 152 years of tradition by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration.
Trump has not publicly admitted defeat and spent the months since the November election falsely claiming he was misled for a second term.
However, former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama attended the inauguration.
“I think that if Americans loved their neighbor as they would like to be loved themselves, much of the division in our society would end,” said Bush, a Republican.
Shortly after entering the White House, with his wife Jill by his side, Biden signed a series of executive orders, beginning with rejoining the 2015 Paris climate accord from which the United States withdrew under Trump.
“We are going to fight climate change in a way that we have not done before,” said the new American leader, speaking in the Oval Office as he signed documents on the Paris agreement that was negotiated when Biden was Obama’s vice president.
Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki said her first call to a foreign leader would be to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday, after Biden blocked the Keystone XL pipeline fiercely opposed by environmentalists but backed by Ottawa.
Biden also halted the United States’ departure from the World Health Organization, halted construction of Trump’s beloved wall on the border with Mexico, and struck down a ban on visitors from several Muslim-majority nations.
A complete inbox
Biden’s presidency will initially be determined by his response to Covid-19, which has killed more than 400,000 people in the US, and the associated economic emergency.
He will try to move quickly in coordinating a federal plan to fight the virus, which for months swept across the country when the Trump administration failed to respond.
Biden is expected to outline his administration’s plans later Thursday after his COVID-19 team briefs him.
While Trump rarely acknowledged the tragic toll the virus was taking on Americans, Biden paused his inaugural address to offer a moment of silent prayer for the victims.
The veteran Democrat also appealed to Trump supporters, who broke political norms by ruthlessly disparaging rivals, denouncing entire ethnic groups and trying to question basic facts.
“I will be a president for all Americans,” Biden said.
Still, it faced head-on rising domestic extremism, as evidenced during the Trump presidency by the assault on the Capitol, deadly attacks on synagogues and immigrants, and a violent march by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The United States faces “an increase in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and will defeat,” Biden said.
Biden’s opening ceremony, while steeped in pomp and tradition, was different from previous events, with no crowds and the National Mall closed.
Washington normally has a lot of fun after an inauguration, but the US capital was quiet Wednesday.
The A-listers made a valiant effort to keep the energy going on a mostly virtual pre-produced show called “Celebrating America.”
At 78, Biden is the oldest American president, a job he first sought in 1987, and is only the second Roman Catholic president after John F. Kennedy.
Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, became the highest-ranking woman in American history, and the first black person and the first person of Asian descent as number two in the country.
She and her husband Doug Emhoff, America’s first “second gentleman,” were escorted to the inauguration by Eugene Goodman, a black Capitol police officer who became a hero by driving away the mostly mob White House of the Senate. . – French Media Agency
