In the Oval Office for the first time as president, Biden begins to roll back Trump’s legacy.
President Biden is no stranger to the Oval Office, but he walked into the White House’s most famous room for the first time as president on Wednesday, with new paintings hanging from the walls and a stack of executive orders sitting on his desk. Then, he got to work.
Mr. Biden sat down at the Resolute Desk and began trying to reverse former President Donald Trump’s legacy, signing 17 orders that will require people to wear masks in federal buildings, bring the United States back into the Paris climate agreement, repeal Mr. Trump’s order banning people from traveling to the country from several predominantly Muslim countries and temporarily halt construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, among other things.
Mr. Biden issued the orders from behind the same desk at which Mr. Trump often sat for the last four years, but the Oval Office itself, like the rest of the White House, had been quickly redecorated for Mr. Biden’s arrival.
Among the installations are portraits of former presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson, as well as Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, the former treasury secretary, according to The Washington Post. The Post reported that the office also includes busts of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Robert F. Kennedy and, behind the Resolute Desk, Cesar Chavez, the labor organizer who founded America’s first successful farm workers’ union.
Mr. Biden frequently conferred with former President Barack Obama in the Oval Office when he served as his vice president, but unlike at the end of Mr. Obama’s term, there was no ceremony for the outgoing and incoming presidents to meet. Mr. Trump did not meet with Mr. Biden and did not attend his swearing in, although he did leave behind a note for Mr. Biden. Mr. Biden told reporters that Mr. Trump’s letter was “very generous,” but that he would not share its contents until he had spoken with the former president.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national news. He is from upstate New York and previously reported in Baltimore, Albany, and Isla Vista, Calif. More about Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
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