A new report by The Hill says that President-elect Joe Biden’s best chance at keeping his promise to support the Black voters who got him into office will be using executive orders.
During his victory speech, the president-elect acknowledged the strength of the Black electorate that carried major state flips in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
“And especially in those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me,” he declared, “You’ve always had my back and I’ll have yours.”
Now, as the Biden-Harris administration creates its own transition path, many believe the president-elect will use his first 100 days to undo many of Donald Trump’s actions.
Robert Tsai, a law professor at American University told The Hill, “A president is bound by existing statute… generally a president is not allowed to exceed what Congress has set down.”
But Tsai believes Biden could simply reverse Trump’s executive orders as soon as his first day in office.
“Anything that the previous president did purely through executive order, the incoming administration [is] going to have [its] lawyers go through everything. [Biden will] reverse any of those he can,” Tsai predicted.
During his presidency, Trump signed 194 executive orders, including the highly contested Muslim travel ban.
By definition, an executive order is put in place unilaterally, but there are limits, including that they generally only build on or enforce legislation that Congress has already passed.
Andre Banks, a member of the activist organization Color of Change, told the news outlet, “I think there’s a lot that can be done by executive order, a lot of this is just undoing the mean spirited, and often racist policy decisions that Trump has executed with a stroke of a pen.”
The Biden-Harris administration has their work cut out for them to push forward important legislation for the Black community and other marginalized communities to undo Trump-era harm, including the president’s rollbacks of fair housing and ban on federal diversity training.
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