Special: President Joe Biden’s Latest Executive Actions

AMNA NAWAZ: Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I’m Amna Nawaz.

Joining us tonight are three reporters covering it all: Garrett Haake is correspondent for NBC News; Weijia Jiang is senior White House correspondent for CBS News; and Anita Kumar is White House correspondent and associate editor for Politico. Welcome to you all.

Well, as we know, President Joe Biden has signed more executive orders during his first week in office than any other U.S. president, and many of them are aimed at dismantling former President Donald Trump’s policies, including expanding COVID-19 vaccine distribution, halting new oil and gas leases, expanding access to reproductive health care, and a slew of many other key issues. Weijia, I want to start with you and I want to kind of take a step back because we’ve reached a milestone here, the first full week in office for President Biden. When you look at this rush to sign executive orders, what should we understand about that? What’s fueling that right now?

WEIJIA JIANG: Well, I think when you look at how close the election was, and when you look at where we are as a country and how fractured we are, you know, President Biden has made it very clear that he wants to try to unite the country, so in order to do that I think he wanted to clear the table before he could reset it, and that’s why we’ve seen so many rollbacks and reversals of the most controversial policies that, you know, his predecessor implemented. And I think, you know, for President Biden a lot of these are more symbolic than they are practical, and that’s important to him as he tries to push his agenda forward, wants to send a message especially to his supporters that, you know, he is there to fulfill the promises that he has kept. But he’s also really trying to reach out to everyone who didn’t vote for him, and you know, that’s why he’s made clear that his priorities have to do with the economy and the pandemic and trying to, you know, get back to some sense of normalcy that we haven’t had for nearly a year now.

MS. NAWAZ: Anita, he’s clearly, obviously, a different president than his predecessor. It’s also a different time in this country. And since you’ve covered both, I want to ask you, what’s striking you after this first full week about how he’s stepping into the office, the way in which they’re governing so far?

ANITA KUMAR: Well, I mean, it actually reminds me a little bit of President Obama because they are very disciplined. They have sort of this message of the day or sometimes two messages that they want to get out. They want to show at the White House that they’re being very calm and they’re tackling things and it’s not the chaotic Trump White House. I think they’re being very careful to try to do that. You know, I did expect all these executive actions and executive orders to come because remember this is someone who ran against – I mean, he’s standing for things, of course, but he also ran against Donald Trump. The people that voted for him were ready for that change, and so he wants to show those people that voted for him that he’s going to make that change. Now, I will say I think that we’re going to see in the future a little bit less. He’s going to have some more executive orders this week, but then it’s going to get – you know, he’s going to stop doing that, and I think that’s important because if he’s really trying to get support from Republicans, if he’s really trying to get that unity he talked about so much, he needs to stop these executive orders that they’re already criticizing. They’re saying there are too many of them, you know, he’s doing too much by – you know, by executive order. So if he wants to work with Republicans, he probably needs to shift into talking to them and doing less executive orders.

MS. NAWAZ: Well, Garrett, Weijia mentioned a word that stood out to me, which was normalcy – some sense of normalcy, right? And in some ways things in Washington have shifted dramatically and in some ways they have not changed at all, so you’ve got Biden’s first full week in office overlapping with a time the Democrats have a slimmer majority in the House, they have newly-won control of the Senate. How is all of this unfolding on Capitol Hill? What’s changed and what’s the same?

GARRETT HAAKE: Well, it’s interesting, we’re hearing much more traditional kinds of fights between the outside party and the White House. You know, I’ve heard a lot of Republican complaints about Joe Biden’s executive orders on things like getting rid of the Keystone Pipeline, his environmental orders – like, it sounds like we’re having debates we used to have in 2014 and 2015 more than the ones that we’ve had over the last several years of the Trump administration. Stay tuned, by the way, for the immigration executive orders that come next week; I think we’re going to hear a lot of arguments that we got used to hearing in the earlier part of the last decade when that comes around. But there’s also a sense that even among many Republicans they’re giving the Biden administration a little bit of time to sort of test out its sea legs. We know, for example, that Joe Biden called Susan Collins and Rob Portman both this week to talk a little bit generally but a little bit also about the COVID relief bill that he’s hoping to get their support on. I can’t think of any positive outreach like that done by the last administration towards senators in the other party at all. So we’re seeing a little bit of time travel on Capitol Hill, if you will.

MS. NAWAZ: (Laughs.) Time travel on Capitol Hill, that is a first. Anita, I want to start with you, and I want to go around to everyone here, because let’s look forward for just a minute. Garrett just mentioned we do expect some kind of action on the immigration front. We’ve already seen Republicans trying to block Biden’s nominee to run the Homeland Security office, of course, Ale Mayorkas, as well. But when you look ahead, what is it you’re focusing on over the next week? There are big problems that need fixing in the rest of the country out of Washington. What questions are you looking to answer over the next week? What stories need to be told?

MS. KUMAR: Yeah, I mean, I think really the attention is going to move to the coronavirus bill. There’s just really nothing else. There are a number of issues that the Biden presidency – you know, Biden administration is talking about, from climate change and race relations, but nothing matters as much as that coronavirus bill. And I think we’re going to get an idea in the next week really how that’s going. You know, are Democrats going to try to move forward without Republicans? I think we already saw a little hint today. President Biden for the first time, I felt like, really shifted. And, you know, after saying he wanted so much Republican support we heard him say it’s going to pass no matter what. You know, we want that support, but we’re moving forward. And I think we’re really going to start seeing that next week.

MS. NAWAZ: Garrett, what about you? Do you agree with that? Is that what we’ll focus on next week?

MR. HAAKE: I agree that the coronavirus bill is the most important bill, but I’m not convinced it’s the most interesting. I’m very curious how the immigration actions the Biden administration takes sets things up for how they’re going to deal with the opposition party. And what I mean by that is we’ve already seen some public polling that shows that the majority of the people in this country want to see Republicans work with a Biden administration.

But when an immigration executive order comes out, when we start seeing policies that are very unpopular with the right, do Republicans retreat to safe ground and fight this administration on immigration, like they did with the Obama administration? That’s something they know how to do and it’s something that I think Republicans will see as an opportunity to coalesce with their voters. Or, do they still hold out and say: Maybe we can still work with this guy? Or is immigration the issue that, you know, switches everyone back to a more confrontational tone? I’m very interested to see how this plays out.

MS. NAWAZ: Well, Weijia, the administration’s very much finding its footing on some of these issues, right, where they’re going to be getting pushback from Republicans. And it’s more of a wartime footing as well, with multiple crises they’re facing. So look ahead for me. Where are you focusing and what are the questions you want answered next?

MS. JIANG: Well, I’m really going to be looking at the trends of the pandemic because people need to be realistic about their expectations, that just because there is a new administration and a new president, that doesn’t mean you can automatically change people’s beliefs and behaviors about mitigating the virus. And so are the numbers going to start coming down when we see, you know, the messaging change and more outreach efforts, and more education in the communities? And I also want to see how these community sites are going to work, because we know that FEMA is already working in several states to set up some sites and to help people get up and running.

But, you know, is that really going to make a difference, again, in terms of these trends that are so important to understand how we can curb the virus? And my worry is that it’s not going to make a difference for quite some time because people have already cemented their activities and how they behave in the world. And so despite everything that the administration is doing to try to bring down the numbers, they could stay the same for quite some time, which means this pandemic will drag out even longer – you know, even though the president is trying to do so much to change that.

MS. NAWAZ: And we’ve seen them temper those expectations, right, saying that there are many months ahead in this pandemic for Americans. A lot of questions out there, and a lot of people out there who need help. We’re going to leave our conversation there for tonight.

Thank you, again, to Garrett, to Weijia, and to Anita for your thoughtful insights and for joining me tonight. And thank you to all of you for joining us as well. Please make sure you sign up for our Washington Week newsletter on our website. We’ll give you a behind the scenes look into all things Washington.

For now, I’m Amna Nawaz. Good night from Washington.