Reuters/CCTV. President Donald Trump on Monday (January 20) signed a number of executive orders that included an end to birthright citizenship, an exit of the World Health Organization (WHO) and curtailing diversity provisions.
The move means the U.S. will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months' time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The departure will likely put at risk programs across the organization, according to several experts both inside and outside the WHO, notably those tackling tuberculosis, the world’s biggest infectious disease killer, as well as HIV/AIDS and other health emergencies.
Trump also quickly moved to fulfill campaign promises to roll back policies put in place by the Biden administration, which prioritized implementing diversity measures across the federal government.
Trump repealed 78 executive orders signed by Joe Biden, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.
Speaking as he signed his executive orders, Trump talked of a deal to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, stopping the purchase of oil from Venezuela and called on NATO nations to bump spending.
U.S. President Donald Trump late Monday signed an executive order to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord.
The move means the U.S. will withdraw from the climate accord for the second time, with Trump having previously exited the country from the agreement during his first term in office.
During his inauguration speech, Trump, who has long regarded clean energy as expensive and wasteful, also vowed to redouble the efforts to extract and utilize fossil fuels.
The United States has something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have -- the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, Trump claimed, adding that the country is going to use it.
Adopted in December 2015, the Paris Agreement is an international endeavor to tackle human-caused global warming and related crises, which the United States formally joined in September 2016.
The first Trump administration officially took the United States, one of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, out of the Paris climate accord in November 2020, dealing a major blow to international efforts to combat the climate crisis. However, Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump to become the 46th U.S. president in 2021, signed an executive order on his first day in office to bring the United States back into the Paris climate accord.
The latest executive order by Trump will mark another round of back-and-forth moves regarding the U.S. commitment to dealing with climate change on the global stage.
