The Presidency of Joe Biden started on January 20, 2021. President Joe Biden being the current President means that he has old challenges and new challenges that he has to deal with politically. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 20, 1942. He is the son of Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. and Catherine Eugenia Finnegan. He was the first of four siblings. His ancestry is Irish, as he is the descendant of an Irish Catholic family that originated from Derry, Ireland. He has two brothers and a sister. Edward F. Blewitt, his great grandfather, was once a Pennsylvania State Senate. By September 1, 1957, Joe Biden attended Archmere Academy in Claymont. He was a skilled and popular halfback and wide receiver on the high school's football team. During his final year, Biden helped his team to move from a perennially losing team to an undefeated season. From 1961 to 1965, Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark. At the university, he was involved in sports and talking to people. He crammed his schoolwork in order for him to graduate. On August 27, 1966, Joe Biden married Neila Hunter. He met her in 1964 when they were on spring break in the Bahamas. Her parent was partly reluctant to Hunter and Biden's relationship. Biden won the parents' confidence. By this time, Joe Biden was a law student, and Niela Hunter came from a wealthy background in Skaneateles, New York. Hunter was a student at Syracuse University.
Because of Joe Biden's hard work, he moved on from the University of Delaware to received his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968. According to Joe Biden, the experience at the university was exceedingly boring. Biden used all-nighters to earn his Juris Doctor. By the early 1970's, Joe Biden practiced law in Wilmington, Delaware. He was a public defender at first and then he started his own firm, Biden and Walsh. Biden decided to run as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council and won by a large margin in the region (which was a typically Republican district). He served from 1970 to 1972 and then won the U.S. Senate election in 1972 by November 7. December 18, 1972, was one of the worst dates in Biden's life. That was when his first wife and daughter died in a car crash. They were shopping for Christmas in Hockessin, Delaware. His daughter was only one year old. Back in January of 1973, Joe Biden was the 6th youngest senator in American history. He served in the Senate by he was 30 years old. That is the minimum age to serve as a U.S. Senator. He worked in the U.S. Senate from January 3, 1973, to January 20, 2009.
January 1, 1981, was the time when Joe Biden was the U.S. Senate Committee Chair on the Judiciary. He was in the committee from 1987 to 1995. He worked in the same capacity from 1995 to 1997. Joe Biden ran his first candidacy for President on June 9, 1987. He was 44 years old. He was in the Democratic party, but his campaign was short-lived. The reason is that the Dukakis campaign revealed that Biden had plagiarized from Neil Kinnock, a British Labour Party leader.
By January 20, 2009, Joe Biden became the 47th Vice President of the United States of America. He served under President Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States of America. Joe Biden supported President Barack Obama throughout his both terms as President. They worked together to defeat Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan during the 2012 Presidential election. Biden's eldest son passed away from brain cancer at age 46, whose name was Beau Biden. As Vice President, Joe Biden was outspoken on many social and foreign policy issues. Joe Biden didn't run for President in 2015. By January 12, 2017, Joe Biden received the Presidential Medal of Freedom award from President Barack Obama. Joe Biden was surprised by the award as it was given out of the blue to him. The medal is the nation's highest civilian honor. The Biden Foundation was launched on February 1, 2017, by Joe and Jill Biden. It focused on many issues like foreign policy, Biden's cancer initiative, community colleges, and military, families, protecting children, equality, ending violence against women, and strengthening the middle class. Joe Biden is naturally a moderate politician. By April 25, 2019, he ran for President again. This time, he will win. Biden wanted to defeat Donald Trump during the 2020 election, and the terrible events at Charlottesville in 2017 inspired Biden to run for office too. The campaign for Biden was very difficult in the beginning. Many other candidates from Harris to Sanders attacked him as too moderate to stand up against Trump. Later, Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate on September 11, 2020. Biden and Trump debated each other in some of the most emotionally charged debates in Presidential election history. After a long campaign, Joe Biden won the election in November of 2020. The country rejoiced. We know about how he was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, as President of the United States of America. Vice President Kamala Harris was inaugurated on the same day as the first African American and Asian American Vice President in American history too.
Joe Biden was 78 years old in 2021 being the oldest person to assume the office of the Presidency. The inauguration was filled with security and National Guard troops, only weeks after the January 6, 2021, terrorist insurrection. He is the 2nd Roman Catholic President after President John F. Kennedy and the first president whose home residence is Delaware. Right now, Biden is early in his Presidency. In 2021, Joe Biden has signed some of the most progressive legislation in American history. In his first two days as president, Biden signed 17 executive orders. By his third day, orders had included rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, ending the state of national emergency at the border with Mexico, directing the government to rejoin the World Health Organization, face mask requirements on federal property, measures to combat hunger in the United States, and revoking permits for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. In his first two weeks in office, Biden signed more executive orders than any other president since Franklin D. Roosevelt had in their first month in office.
On February 4, 2021, the Biden administration announced that the United States was ending its support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. Joe Biden had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic too. It would kill over 1 million Americans alone and millions more worldwide. On March 11, the first anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus relief package he proposed and lobbied for that aimed to speed up the United States' recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recession. The package included direct payments to most Americans, an extension of increased unemployment benefits, funds for vaccine distribution and school reopenings, and expansions of health insurance subsidies and the child tax credit. Biden's initial proposal included an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, but after the Senate parliamentarian determined that including the increase in a budget reconciliation bill would violate Senate rules, Democrats declined to pursue overruling her and removed the increase from the package. More migrants came to America from Mexico by March 2021.
Biden told migrants, "Don't come over." In the meantime, migrant adults "are being sent back", Biden said, in reference to the continuation of the Trump administration's Title 42 policy for quick deportations. Biden earlier announced that his administration would not deport unaccompanied migrant children; the rise in arrivals of such children exceeded the capacity of facilities meant to shelter them (before they were sent to sponsors), leading the Biden administration in March to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help.
On April 14, Biden announced that the United States would delay the withdrawal of all troops from the war in Afghanistan until September 11, signaling an end to the country's direct military involvement in Afghanistan after nearly 20 years. In February 2020, the Trump administration had made a deal with the Taliban to completely withdraw U.S. forces by May 1, 2021. Biden's decision met with a wide range of reactions, from support and relief to trepidation at the possible collapse of the Afghan government without American support. On April 22–23, Biden held an international climate summit at which he announced that the U.S. would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50%–52% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. Other countries also increased their pledges. On April 28, the eve of his 100th day in office, Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress.
Biden said that he supports Israel during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of May of 2021. He visited the world on June 2021. Biden took his first trip abroad as president. In eight days, he visited Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. He attended a G7 summit, a NATO summit, and an EU summit, and held one-on-one talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
On June 17, Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, which officially declared Juneteenth a federal holiday. Juneteenth is the first new federal holiday since 1986. In July 2021, amid a slowing of the COVID-19 vaccination rate in the country and the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, Biden said that the country has "a pandemic for those who haven't gotten the vaccination" and that it was, therefore "gigantically important" for Americans to be vaccinated. In September 2021, Biden announced AUKUS, a security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to ensure "peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term"; the deal included nuclear-powered submarines built for Australia's use.
By the end of 2021, 40 of Biden's appointed judges to the federal judiciary had been confirmed, more than any president in their first year in office since Ronald Reagan. Biden has prioritized diversity in his judicial appointments more than any president in U.S. history, with the majority of appointments being women and people of color. Most of his appointments have been in blue states, making a limited impact since the courts in these states already traditionally lean liberal.
In the first eight months of his presidency, Biden's approval rating, according to Morning Consult polling, remained above 50%. In August, it began to decline and lowered into the low forties by December. The decline in his approval is attributed to the Afghanistan withdrawal, increasing hospitalizations from the Delta variant, high inflation and gas prices, disarray within the Democratic Party, and a general decline in popularity customary in politics.
Biden entered office nine months into a recovery from the COVID-19 recession and his first year in office was characterized by robust growth in real GDP, employment, wages and stock market returns, amid significantly elevated inflation. Real GDP grew 5.7%, the fastest rate in 37 years. Amid record job creation, the unemployment rate fell at the fastest pace on record during the year. By the end of 2021, inflation reached a nearly 40-year high of 7.1%, which was partially offset by the highest wage and salary growth in at least 20 years. Biden withdrew American military forces from Afghanistan. It was controversial, but it was the right thing to do. The problem was that Biden's withdrawal was rushed, messy, and it wasn't coordinated efficiently. In retrospect, Biden should have withdrawn in stages in a more measured fashion. There was the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement with a May 1 deadline. By early July 2021, most American troops were already gone from Afghanistan.
On August 15, the Afghan government collapsed under the Taliban offensive, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Biden reacted by ordering 6,000 American troops to assist in the evacuation of American personnel and Afghan allies. He faced bipartisan criticism for the manner of the withdrawal, with the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies described as chaotic and botched. On August 16, Biden addressed the "messy" situation, taking responsibility for it, and admitting that the situation "unfolded more quickly than we had anticipated." He defended his decision to withdraw, saying that Americans should not be "dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves." That comment would be controversial.
On August 26, a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. service members and 169 Afghans. On August 27, an American drone strike killed two ISIS-K targets, who were "planners and facilitators", according to a U.S. Army general. On August 29, another American drone strike killed 10 civilians, including seven children; the Defense Department initially claimed the strike was conducted on an Islamic State suicide bomber threatening Kabul Airport, but admitted the mistake on September 17 and apologized.
The U.S. military completed withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, with Biden saying that the evacuation effort was an "extraordinary success", by extracting over 120,000 Americans, Afghans and other allies. He acknowledged that between "100 to 200" Americans who wanted to leave were left in Afghanistan, despite his August 18 pledge to stay in Afghanistan until all Americans who wanted to leave had left. President Joe Biden promoted the Build Back Better agenda in 2021. He wanted the American Jobs Plan too. It was a 2 trillion-dollar package addressing issues including transport infrastructure, utility infrastructure, broadband infrastructure, housing, schools, manufacturing, research and workforce development. After months of negotiations among Biden and lawmakers, in August 2021 the Senate passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, while the House, also in a bipartisan manner, approved that bill in early November 2021, covering infrastructure related to transport, utilities, and broadband. Biden signed the bill into law in mid-November 2021.
The other core part of the Build Back Better agenda was the Build Back Better Act, a $3.5 trillion social spending bill that expands the social safety net and includes major provisions on climate change. The bill did not have Republican support, so Democrats attempted to pass it on a party-line vote through budget reconciliation, but struggled to win the support of Senator Joe Manchin, even as the price was lowered to $2.2 trillion. After Manchin rejected the bill, the Build Back Better Act's size was reduced and comprehensively reworked into the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, covering deficit reduction, climate change, healthcare, and tax reform.
Before and during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), Biden promoted an agreement that the U.S. and the European Union cut methane emissions by a third by 2030 and tried to add dozens of other countries to the effort. He tried to convince China and Australia to do more. He convened an online Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change to press other countries to strengthen their climate policy. Biden pledged to double climate funding to developing countries by 2024. Also, at COP26, the U.S. and China reached a deal on greenhouse gas emission reduction. The two countries are responsible for 40% of global emissions. In early 2022, Biden made efforts to change his public image after entering the year with low approval ratings due to inflation and high gas prices, which continued to fall to approximately 40% in aggregated polls by February. He began the year by endorsing a change to the Senate filibuster to allow for the passing of the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act, on both of which the Senate had failed to invoke cloture. The rules change failed when two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, joined Senate Republicans in opposing it.
In January, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, a moderate liberal nominated by Bill Clinton, announced his intention to retire from the Supreme Court. During his 2020 campaign, Biden vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court if a vacancy occurred, a promise he reiterated after the announcement of Breyer's retirement. On February 25, 2022 Biden nominated federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 7 and sworn in on June 30, 2022.
In early February, Biden ordered the counterterrorism raid in northern Syria that resulted in the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the second leader of the Islamic State. In late July, Biden approved the drone strike that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second leader of Al-Qaida, and an integral member in the planning of the September 11 attacks.
Also in February, after warning for several weeks that an attack was imminent, Biden led the U.S. response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, imposing severe sanctions on Russia and authorizing over $8 billion in weapons shipments to Ukraine. On April 29, Biden asked Congress for $33 billion for Ukraine, but lawmakers later increased it to about $40 billion. Biden blamed Vladimir Putin for the emerging energy and food crises, saying, "Putin's war has raised the price of food because Ukraine and Russia are two of the world's major bread baskets for wheat and corn, the basic product for so many foods around the world."
China's assertiveness, particularly in the Pacific, remained a challenge for Biden. The Solomon Islands-China security pact caused alarm, as China could build military bases across the South Pacific. Biden sought to strengthen ties with Australia and New Zealand in the wake of the deal, as Anthony Albanese succeeded in the premiership of Australia and Jacinda Ardern's government took a firmer line on Chinese influence.
On July 21, 2022, Biden tested positive for COVID-19 with reportedly mild symptoms. According to the White House, he was treated with Paxlovid. He worked in isolation in the White House for five days and returned to isolation when he tested positive again on July 30, 2022. In April 2022, Biden signed into law the bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 to revamp the finances and operations of the United States Postal Service agency.
On July 28, 2022, the Biden administration announced it would fill four wide gaps on the Mexico–United States border in Arizona near Yuma, an area with some of the busiest corridors for undocumented crossings. During his presidential campaign, Biden had pledged to cease all future border wall construction. This occurred after both allies and critics of Biden criticized his administration's management of the southern border.
In the summer of 2022, several other pieces of legislation Biden supported passed Congress. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act aimed to address gun reform issues following the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The gun control laws in the bill include extended background checks for gun purchasers under 21, clarification of Federal Firearms License requirements, funding for state red flag laws and other crisis intervention programs, further criminalization of arms trafficking and straw purchases, and partial closure of the boyfriend loophole. Biden signed the bill on June 25, 2022.
The Honoring our PACT Act of 2022 was introduced in 2021 and signed into law by Biden on August 10, 2022. The act intends to significantly improve healthcare access and funding for veterans who were exposed to toxic substances during military service, including burn pits. The bill gained significant media coverage due to the activism of comedian Jon Stewart.
Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law on August 9, 2022. The act provides billions of dollars in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States, to compete economically with China.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, resulting from continuing negotiations on Biden's initial Build Back Better agenda, which Manchin had blocked the previous year. The package aimed to raise $739 billion and authorize $370 billion in spending on energy and climate change, $300 billion in deficit reduction, three years of Affordable Care Act subsidies, prescription drug reform to lower prices, and tax reform. According to an analysis by the Rhodium Group, the bill will lower US greenhouse gas emissions between 31% and 44% below 2005 levels by 2030. On August 7, 2022, the Senate passed the bill (as amended) on a 51–50 vote, with all Democrats voting in favor, all Republicans opposed, and Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie. The bill was passed by the House on August 12 and was signed by Biden on August 16, 2022. On September 2, 2022, in a nationally broadcast Philadelphia speech, Biden called for a "battle for the soul of the nation." Off camera, he called active Trump supporters "semi-fascists." President Biden continues to work on his Presidency. President Biden is a centrist on most issues, but he has been pushed to the left on stimulus issues. Biden supported the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. That used subsidies in mass transit, Amtrak, bus, and subway. Biden voted for NAFTA and the controversial TPP. He supports the Affordable Care Act (ACA) too. Biden said that he is against regime change but sending non-military support to opposition movements. By 2021, he or President Biden rightly and heroically recognized the Armenian genocide, being the first U.S. President to have done so. President Biden is the type of person who is complex with his gaffes, with his tendency to evolve on issues, and his action of being decisive when he believes that he is right on an issue.
Donald Trump was the 45th President of America who was President from 2017 to 2021. He is indeed one of the worst Presidents in American history and the most racist President in American history since Woodrow Wilson. Donald Trump is overt in what he is. He is a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, and a far-right extremist. He is so extreme that even some conservatives reject his views as antithetical to democratic principles of the rule of law or separation of powers. To start, he was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City. He was the fourth child of Fred Trump, a Bronx-born real estate developer whose parents were German immigrants. His mother was Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, an immigrant from Scotland. Trump grew up with older siblings Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and younger brother Robert in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens and attended the private Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, he was enrolled at the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, and in 1964, he enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a B.S. in economics. In 2015, Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen threatened Trump's colleges, high school, and the College Board with legal action if they released Trump's academic records. Now, Michael Cohen is one of trump's leading critics.
When Trump was in college, he got four student draft deferments during the Vietnam War era. In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based on a medical examination, and in July 1968, a local draft board classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was classified 1-Y, a conditional medical deferment, and in 1972, he was reclassified 4-F due to bone spurs, permanently disqualifying him from service. In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They had three children: Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivanka (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984). Ivana became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988. The couple divorced in 1992, following Trump's affair with actress Marla Maples. Trump and Maples married in 1993 and divorced in 1999. They have one daughter, Tiffany (born 1993), who was raised by Marla in California. In 2005, Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron (born 2006). Melania gained U.S. citizenship in 2006. Trump joined the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens in 1959. Later, he joined many churches and was influenced by famous pastor Norman Vincent Peale. Later, his personal pastor was Paula White in 2019. By 2020, he said that he is a non-denominational Christian. Forbes estimates his wealth at $2.4 billion in 2021 making him the wealthiest President in American history. As of October 2020, Trump had over $1 billion in debts, secured by his assets. He owed $640 million to banks and trust organizations, including Bank of China, Deutsche Bank, and UBS, and approximately $450 million to unknown creditors. The value of his assets exceeds his debt. Trump has owned wealth in the Trump Organization for decades. He has Manhattan developments too. He has been on TV for decades from being on the Howard Stern Show to having shows like The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. Trump, who had been a member since 1989, resigned from the Screen Actors Guild in February 2021 rather than face a disciplinary committee hearing for inciting the January 6, 2021, mob attack on the U.S. Capitol and for his "reckless campaign of misinformation aimed at discrediting and ultimately threatening the safety of journalists." Two days later, the union permanently barred him from readmission.
He changed parties many times. He was a Republican in 1987. Then, he was part of the Reform Party, a Democrat in 2001, a Republican in 2009, unaffiliated in 2011, and a Republican in 2012. Trump promoted the lie that President Barack Obama wasn't born in America. By 2015, he started his Presidential campaign. He first started his campaign by scapegoating undocumented immigrants as criminals, drug dealers, and other evil people. Donald Trump became the front-runner in March 2016. After a landslide win in Indiana in May, Trump was declared the presumptive Republican nominee.
Hillary Clinton led Trump in national polling averages throughout the 2016 campaign, but in early July her lead narrowed. In mid-July Trump selected Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate, and the two were officially nominated at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Trump and Clinton faced off in three presidential debates in September and October 2016. Trump twice refused to say whether he would accept the result of the election. Trump's abhorrent views are well known. He wants a new wall on the U.S./Mexican border, he wants no climate change regulations like the Paris Agreement, and he advocates repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. He wants low taxes for the super wealthy, and he wanted to ban immigrants from Muslim-majority counties. The racist David Duke supported him. The racist Steve Bannon supports him. The alt-right movement supported him due to the alt right's opposition to multiculturalism and immigration. Hillary Clinton lost the election to Trump on November 8, 2016. Trump received 306 pledged electoral votes versus 232 for Clinton. The official counts were 304 and 227 respectively, after defections on both sides. Trump received nearly 2.9 million fewer popular votes than Clinton, which made him the fifth person to be elected president while losing the popular vote. Hillary Clinton said and wrote that sexism played a part in her political defeat which is true. Trump is the only president who neither served in the military nor held any government office prior to becoming president.
Trump made a huge upset in the 2016 victory, but many people underestimated the racism and sexism in American society in 2016 too. Trump proclaimed himself as a populist, but he wasn't. He is an elite person who exploited the pain of others to gain prestige and profit. Trump won 30 states; included were Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which had been part of what was considered a blue wall of Democratic strongholds since the 1990s. Clinton won 20 states and the District of Columbia. Trump's victory marked the return of an undivided Republican government—a Republican White House combined with Republican control of both chambers of Congress. Trump's election victory sparked protests in major U.S. cities in the days following the election. On the day after Trump's inauguration, an estimated 2.6 million people worldwide, including an estimated half million in Washington, D.C., protested against Trump in the Women's Marches. Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. Immediately, he signed six executive orders: interim procedures in anticipation of repealing the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, reinstatement of the Mexico City policy, authorizing the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline construction projects, reinforcing border security, and beginning the planning and design process to construct a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner became his assistant and senior advisor, respectively. His cabinet had members with conflicts of interest. He was sued many times. Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history, which began in June 2009 and continued until February 2020, when the COVID-19 recession began.
By December of 2017, Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. It has passed by both Republican-controlled chambers of Congress without any Democratic votes. It reduced tax rates for businesses and individuals. It eliminated the ACA's individual requirement to obtain health insurance. Revenues in 2018 were 7.6 percent lower than projected because it also sent tax cuts for the super-wealthy. Trump saw the federal budget deficit increase by almost 50 percent to nearly 1 trillion dollars in 2019. The U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion by the end of his term. He failed to deliver on the one trillion-dollar infrastructure spending plan that he had campaigned on. Trump rejected the scientific consensus on climate change. He reduced the budget for renewable energy research by 40% and reversed Obama-era policies directed at curbing climate change. He ended the Paris Agreement, so he was a very anti-environment President. Trump rolled back more than 100 federal environmental regulations, including those that curbed greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and the use of toxic substances. He weakened protections for animals and environmental standards for federal infrastructure projects and expanded permitted areas for drilling and resource extraction, such as allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Trump aimed to boost the production and exports of fossil fuels; under Trump, natural gas expanded, but coal continued to decline.
Donald Trump believes in deregulation massively. He ended many federal regulations on health, labor, and the environment. He signed Executive Order 13771, which directed that for every new regulation administrative agency issue "at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination." During his first six weeks in office, he delayed, suspended or reversed ninety federal regulations. One good news is that Donald Trump failed to completely repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). He lied and said that he saved the coverage of the pre-existing conditions provided by the ACA, but Trump joined a lawsuit to end the entire ACA. By January 2020, Trump wanted to consider cuts to Medicare and other social safety net programs. In response to the opioid epidemic, Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy. U.S. opioid overdose deaths declined slightly in 2018 but surged to a record 50,052 deaths in 2019. Trump supported far-right judges in courts across America. Trump had an anti-marijuana approach. Trump pardoned both wicked people and people who paid their debts to society. He pardoned the wicked Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and the racist hypocrite Dinesh D'Souza. He commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson after a request from Kim Kardashian.
In November and December 2020, Trump pardoned four Blackwater private security contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre; white-collar criminals Michael Milken and Bernard Kerik; and daughter Ivanka's father-in-law Charles Kushner. He also pardoned five people convicted as a result of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex van der Zwaan, and Stone, whose 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction he had already commuted in July, and Paul Manafort. Trump is clear that he wants to ban birthright citizenship, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and form a wall. He abhors legal asylum seekers wanting to escape tyranny. The Trump administration separated more than 5,400 children of migrant families from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border while attempting to enter the U.S, a sharp increase in the number of family separations at the border starting from the summer of 2017. By April of 2018, Trump wanted a zero-tolerance policy. That means that every adult suspected of "illegal entry" would be criminally prosecuted. This caused massive family separations. Many adults were in criminal detention and children were separated from their parents. This policy caused a public outage as it was cruel. Trump violated a court order to unite families by continuing family separations with more than 1,000 migrant children's separations.
On January 27, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which suspended the admission of refugees for 120 days and denied entry to citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days, citing security concerns. The order took effect immediately and without warning, causing confusion and chaos at airports. Protests against the ban began at airports the next day. Legal challenges to the order resulted in nationwide preliminary injunctions. A March 6 revised order, which excluded Iraq and gave other exemptions, again was blocked by federal judges in three states. In a decision in June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could be enforced on visitors who lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States."
The far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 resulted in violence and death. Trump made initial comments to make a moral equivalence of Neo-Nazi terrorists and peaceful protests which caused massive resignations and condemnation from people from across the political spectrum. We know that Trump is a racist. He said that one Mexican American judge is biased because of his Mexican heritage. That is racist. He called nations of color like Haiti, etc. in cursing terms.
The temporary order was replaced by Presidential Proclamation 9645 on September 24, 2017, which restricted travel from the originally targeted countries except for Iraq and Sudan, and further banned travelers from North Korea and Chad, along with certain Venezuelan officials. After lower courts partially blocked the new restrictions, the Supreme Court allowed the September version to go into full effect on December 4, 2017, and ultimately upheld the travel ban in a June 2019 ruling. In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen—all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans—should "go back" to the countries they "came from.' Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his racist comments. White nationalist publications and social media sites praised his remarks, which continued over the following days. Trump continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign. Trump made sexist comments about women for decades. He has been accused of sexual harassment and rape for years.
In 2018, Trump refused to extend government funding unless Congress allocated $5.6 billion in funds for the border wall, resulting in the federal government partially shutting down for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019, the longest U.S. government shutdown in history. Around 800,000 government employees were furloughed or worked without pay. Trump and Congress ended the shutdown by approving temporary funding that provided delayed payments to government workers but no funds for the wall. The shutdown resulted in an estimated permanent loss of $3 billion to the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. About half of those polled blamed Trump for the shutdown, and Trump's approval ratings dropped.
To prevent another imminent shutdown in February 2019, Congress passed and Trump signed a funding bill that included $1.375 billion for 55 miles (89 km) of bollard border fencing. Trump's foreign policy is right wing nationalist. He has isolationist, non-interventionist, and protectionist views. He has praised the authoritarian governments of Russia including Putin. He questioned the need for NATO too. Following a 2017–2018 renegotiation, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) became effective in July 2020 as the successor to NAFTA. Trump was involved in a trade war against China too. Trump said he resisted punishing China for its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the northwestern Xinjiang region for fear of jeopardizing trade negotiations. In July 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against senior Chinese officials, in response to expanded mass detention camps holding more than a million of the country's Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority. Trump supported Saudi Arabia's war against the Houthis in Yemen. Trump supports Israel and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He even supports Israel controlling the Golan Heights which is very controversial. Trump send missile strikes in Syria, opposed the Iran nuclear deal, supported a surge of troops in Afghanistan, and met with North Korea before. Trump has rarely criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin. After he met Putin at the Helsinki Summit in July 2018, Trump drew bipartisan criticism for accepting Putin's denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, rather than accepting the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies. Trump did not discuss alleged Russian bounties offered to Taliban fighters for attacking American soldiers in Afghanistan with Putin, saying both that he doubted the intelligence and that he was not briefed on it.
Many of the Trump cabinet members have been fired, resigned, or prosecuted. Two of Trump's 15 original cabinet members were gone within 15 months. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September 2017 due to excessive use of private charter jets and military aircraft. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in 2018 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in January 2019 amid multiple investigations into their conduct. Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett as members of the Supreme Court. Trump disparaged the courts when they disagree with his views. Trump played down the COVID-19 pandemic which started in Wuhan, China in December of 2019. America saw it on January 20, 2020. It was an outbreak in America as declared by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar on January 31, 2020. Trump lied to the public and said that the outbreak wasn't too big at first. By mid-March 2020, most of the public saw it as a big deal.
On March 6, Trump signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act into law, which provided $8.3 billion in emergency funding for federal agencies. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the spread of COVID-19 as a pandemic, and Trump announced partial travel restrictions for most of Europe, effective March 13. That same day, he gave his first serious assessment of the virus in a nationwide Oval Office address, calling the outbreak "horrible" but "a temporary moment" and saying there was no financial crisis. On March 13, he declared a national emergency, freeing up federal resources. As early as September of 2019, Trump ended the United States Agency for International Development's PREDICT program, a $200 million epidemiological research program started in 2009 to provide early warning of pandemics abroad. Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force existed on January 29, 2020. Trump said the racist term of "Chinese virus." From April to May 2020, the virus got worse. I believe that Trump's terrible response to the pandemic contributed him to losing the 2020 election. The COVID-19 virus caused the 2020 recession in America and the world. Trump criticized the WHO constantly. Trump had the virus on October 2, 2020. By the 2020 election, Trump lost it. By November 2020, America saw more than 100,000 cases in a single day for the first time. Many members of the Trump administration or Trump associated had links with Russian officials. That is why Trump was impeached twice. He was first impeached on December 13, 2019, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Starting in spring 2020, Trump began to sow doubts about the election, claiming without evidence that the election would be rigged and that the expected widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud. He refused to say if he would accept the results of the election and have a peaceful transition of power if he lost. Trump accused Biden of causing lawlessness, and Trump supporters used racism. Trump lost. Biden won the election on November 3, receiving 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232. To this day, Trump believes in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. After multiple investigations, court decisions, and other research, it is proven by Biden won the election. Trump at first blocked government officials from cooperating with Biden's presidential transition team. Trump supporters in Arizona and other places by this time promoted the election lies and harassed people constantly involved in election matters. December 14, 2020, was when the Electoral College formalized Biden's victory. On February 10, 2021, Georgia prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to subvert the election in Georgia. The Pentagon was on high alert, because of their fears that Trump might declare martial law.
On January 6, 2021, while congressional certification of the presidential election results was taking place in the United States Capitol, Trump held a rally at the Ellipse, Washington, D.C., where he called for the election result to be overturned and urged his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like h___." Trump's speech started at noon. By 12:30 p.m., rally attendees had gathered outside the Capitol, and at 1 p.m., his supporters pushed past police barriers onto Capitol grounds. Trump's speech ended at 1:10 p.m., and many supporters marched to the Capitol as he had urged, joining the crowd there. Around 2:15 p.m. the mob broke into the building, disrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. During the violence, Trump posted mixed messages on Twitter and Facebook, eventually tweeting to the rioters at 6 p.m., "go home with love & in peace", but describing them as "great patriots" and "very special", while still complaining that the election was stolen. After the mob was removed from the Capitol, Congress reconvened and confirmed the Biden election win in the early hours of the following morning. There were many injuries, and five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died. Trump was impeached a 2nd time too.
On June 1, 2020, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. This came during the protests of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The summer of 2020 saw many people see a reckoning on race, police brutality, and other important issues that we must confront as part of the human race. Trump then walked to St. John's Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before; he posed for photographs holding a Bible, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos. Trump said on June 3 that the protesters were cleared because "they tried to burn down the church [on May 31] and almost succeeded", describing the church as "badly hurt."
Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump's proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police brutality protesters. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, later apologized for accompanying Trump on the walk and thereby "creat[ing] the perception of the military involved in domestic politics." After his Presidency, Trump still stole classified documents from his home. He supported new voting restrictions, and he has been involved in hate-filled rallies of election deniers. Georgia officials and the Department of Justice investigate him now. The New York Attorney General Letitia James charged Trump and others of fraud and misrepresentation in the form of a lawsuit in September 2022. The FBI is investigating him too. Trump is the only President to never reach a 50% approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938. Therefore, the Presidency of Donald Trump is one of the worst Presidencies of American history filled with scandals, racism, sexism, xenophobia, violent rhetoric, hatred, and demonization of progressive people. The end.
By Timothy
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