President Joe Biden spent his first day in office signing a flurry of executive orders in a first step toward undoing the disastrous legacy of his predecessor. Issuing a total of 17 orders, proclamations and memoranda, Biden took on the big issues of the pandemic, the nation’s immigration crisis, and attacks on the environment. As part of his pandemic response Biden has issued a 100-day “mask challenge,” and on Thursday released a federal government blueprint called the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. The plan includes invoking the Defense Production Act to marshal industries to generate supplies, expand vaccine supplies and strengthen distribution. The new administration was reportedly aghast upon finding that the plan to distribute vaccines nationwide was nonexistent, with one person telling CNN, “There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch.” Biden also rejoined the World Health Organization, prompting the government’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci to give a speech praising the resumption of global cooperation to end the pandemic. The pandemic continues to rage in the U.S. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now projected there may be 100,000 additional deaths from the virus in the next few months. 

As part of his day-one initiatives Biden reversed via executive order several anti-immigrant policies that had been enacted over the past four years. These included reversing the so-called Muslim Ban, strengthening the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ending the emergency border proclamation that was used to justify building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and ensuring undocumented immigrants are counted in the U.S. Census. On Wednesday the Biden administration also sent a fact sheet outlining a comprehensive immigration reform plan to lawmakers that would offer a path to legal residency and then citizenship to DACA registrants, TPS (Temporary Protected Status) holders, and farmworkers, while also allowing other undocumented immigrants a longer pa...