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In the Oval Office for the first time as president, Biden begins to roll back Trump’s legacy.

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On Day 1, Biden Signs Flurry of Executive Orders

President Biden signed 17 executive orders, memorandums and proclamations from the Oval Office on Wednesday, including rejoining the Paris climate accords and mandating masks on federal property.

I thought with the state of the nation, today is no time to waste. Get to work immediately. As we’ve indicated earlier, we’re going to be signing a number of executive orders over the next several days, the week. And I’m going to start today on the compounding crisis of Covid, Covid-19, along with the economic crisis following that, and climate crisis, racial equity issues. And the first order I’m going to be signing here is, relates to Covid. And it’s requiring as I said all along, and where I have authority, mandating masks be worn, social distancing be kept on federal property and interstate commerce, etc. This is the first one I’m signing. The second one I’m signing here is the support for underserved communities ... as it relates to how we treat people in health care and other things that you can, we’ll give you copies of these executive orders. And the third one I’m going to sign, and that one we’ll do while you’re all here, is a commitment I made that we’re going to rejoin the Paris climate accord as of today.

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President Biden signed 17 executive orders, memorandums and proclamations from the Oval Office on Wednesday, including rejoining the Paris climate accords and mandating masks on federal property.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

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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