Fifteen executive orders - Student loan freeze - Trump’s final pardons

Some of the executive actions undo significant actions from Donald Trump’s administration, including halting the travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, and ending the declaration of a national emergency used to justify funding construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border. He also signed an order allowing the United States to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and end the Trump administration’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets.
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In other moves, Biden also revoked the permit granted for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and instructed all executive agencies to review executive actions that were “damaging to the environment, [or] unsupported by the best available science.” Biden also ordered all executive branch employees to sign an ethics pledge and placed limits on their ability to lobby the government while he is in office.
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The president also moved quickly to address Covid-19, signing orders to mandate mask wearing and social distancing in federal buildings and lands and to create a position of a Covid-19 response coordinator. It’s not unusual for an incoming president to take executive action immediately after being sworn into office, a move meant to show the nation that the newly inaugurated president is getting to work.

The Constitution gives the president broad clemency powers over federal offenses, including the authority to pardon crimes and commute sentences. Trump has spent the final days of his presidency fixated on his power to issue pardons, meeting with advisors to hash out who should be on his list. Trump granted pardons to 73 people and commuted the sentences of 70 others.
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Bannon — Trump's former White House chief strategist who was in charge of the final months of his 2016 presidential campaign — was indicted in August along with three others on wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges. Among the others pardoned are rapper and music executive Lil Wayne, rapper Kodak Black, Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
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Lil Wayne, a Trump supporter whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., pleaded guilty in December to a federal weapons charge after he carried a handgun from California to Florida on his private jet. "A pardon for Mr. Carter is consistent with the views of many jurists — including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — that prosecuting a non-violent citizen for merely possessing a firearm violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," the artist's lawyer Howard Srebnick said in a statement.

The former civil servant, Anchan Preelert, was sentenced to 87 years, but her prison term was cut in half because she agreed to plead guilty. The onetime civil servant’s crime was to share audio clips on social media that were deemed critical of Thailand’s monarchy. It was the longest sentence yet for violating Thailand’s notoriously tough lèse-majesté law, which makes it a crime to defame senior members of the royal family, according to the group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.
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Thailand has seen a spike in lèse-majesté cases since late last year, after more than two years during which Section 112 of the criminal code, which applies to criticism of top royals, was not enforced, according to Thai legal groups. The three-year pause came at the behest of King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who wanted such prosecutions halted, according to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.
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But that was before a protest movement surged last year, targeting both the king and the prime minister. [Protesters in Thailand] have demanded scrutiny of the palace’s finances, as the king’s lavish lifestyle has contrasted sharply with the economic pain caused by the pandemic. And they have campaigned for the removal of Mr. Prayuth, a former army general who took power in a 2014 coup, promising to protect the royal family from ill-defined threats.

Joe Biden, the second-ever Catholic U.S. president, was greeted on his Inauguration Day with contrasting messages from his church: A warm blessing from Pope Francis — and a statement by the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops saying that Biden “will advance moral evils,” including contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage. Within hours, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago and an ally of Francis, issued a sharp rebuke to [Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, president of the USCCB] and his supporters in putting together the statement.
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USCCB statements about previous presidential elections and inaugurations took a more positive and collaborative tone. Biden’s Catholic image has angered many U.S. bishops, who last year created a special committee in response to the reality of a Catholic U.S. president who supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
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“Under your leadership, may the American people continue to draw strength from the lofty political, ethical and religious values that have inspired the nation since its founding,” [Pope Francis said in a Wednesday message to Biden]. Like Biden, Francis focuses on Catholicism’s broad call for the disenfranchised and suffering, and less on Catholic doctrine about topics such as abortion, gender identity and sexuality.

Many [of the 17 executive actions Mr. Biden signed on his first day in office], including his action on student debt and an extension on eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, are aimed at relieving Americans from economic burdens worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. As recently as last week, Mr. Biden has thrown his support behind Congressional action to cancel $10,000 of federal student debt per borrower, but some of his more progressive Democratic colleagues say that's not enough.
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Last year federal student loan debt reached an all-time high, nearing $1.6 trillion among more than 40 million Americans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. On average, student loan borrowers owe between $200 and $299 every month; about one in every five borrowers is in default, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
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Prior to Mr. Biden's executive action, payments were scheduled to resume at the end of January. In its 2020 annual report, [the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos] said it expects loan servicers and the federal government will "face a heavy burden in 'converting' millions of borrowers to active repayment." Some of those borrowers, the report warns, will become delinquent.