United States President Joe Biden speaks out on combating climate change before signing executive measures in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on January 27, 2021.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
President Joe Biden will sign executive measures on Thursday aimed at expanding access to Obamacare during the coronavirus pandemic and withdrawing the anti-abortion measures expanded by former President Donald Trump.
The latest moves complement the president’s more than three dozen other orders, and memoranda Biden signed in his first week in office are at a record pace.
Biden will be signing an executive order from mid-February to mid-May setting a special enrollment deadline for Healthcare.gov, the health insurance login page set up under former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
The ordinance also instructs federal agencies to review and potentially reverse policies restricting access to health care, including those that have made it difficult to enroll in Obamacare and Medicaid, the federal health insurance program.
Trump had tried unsuccessfully to repeal the law, Obama’s legislative achievement, but had taken steps to undercut the law.
Biden will also sign a memorandum to immediately repeal so-called Mexico City policy, also known as the “global gag rule”. These decades of policy prohibit international nonprofits from receiving US funding for providing abortion counseling or referrals.
This policy was expanded under the Trump administration to refuse to support foreign non-governmental organizations that fund other groups that support abortion services.
Biden will sign the two executive actions according to his press schedule at 1:30 p.m. in the Oval Office. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m.
In his first seven days in office, Biden has taken extensive steps to erase Trump’s achievements. Biden signed orders for the US to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, to end the construction and financing of the border wall between the US and Mexico, to end the travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries, to include undocumented immigrants in the ten-year census and Lift the ban on transgender people who openly serve in the military.
