In honor of President Trump’s last seven days in the Oval Office, we are listing seven things we look forward to in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration:
1. A Cabinet of competent individuals who reflect the make up of America. Biden’s choices have expertise in their fields, experience in public service and the qualifications to lead their departments. This is a pleasant change from the last administration, whose choices often left something to be desired and whose constant turnover led to mass confusion. Biden’s Cabinet (as announced so far) will have 10 women, including four women of color and one Native American woman; two Black men and three Latino men; and one openly gay man.
2. The first woman of color to be elected vice president. Kamala Harris is shattering the glass ceiling as she becomes the first female, first Black and first South Asian American vice president-elect. We look forward to seeing what she accomplishes as the president’s right-hand woman.
3. Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement. Signed by nearly 200 countries, the agreement lays out a global plan for combatting climate change and for keeping the earth from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Climate change is a major threat not only to the environment but also to economies and societies as major weather events — droughts, hurricanes, storms, floods — become more severe and cause more damage.
4. Rejoining the Iran nuclear deal (formally. the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). As Business Insider reports, tension with Iran has steadily increased since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018. Negotiating with Iran won’t be easy for the Biden administration — Iran has already started to pour greater efforts into its nuclear stockpile and is demanding relief from U.S. economic sanctions — but we’re hopeful Biden will find success.
5. No longer worrying that a tweet could start a war at any moment. Social media will undoubtedly continue to be the place for political squabbles with real-world consequences, but we’ve spent the last four years constantly afraid that a single tweet from Donald Trump would instigate WWIII. Biden and his administration will likely have their own social media gaffes, but we’re not worried anymore that a sitting president’s posts will lead to mutually assured destruction and nuclear annihilation.
6. Having a leader who stands up to authoritarian regimes, rather than courts dictators. Trump and Kim Jong Un traded “love letters,” as White House officials called them, and Trump said at a rally that he and the North Korean dictator “fell in love.” When it comes to Putin, Trump may have held his cards close to his chest, but he was more than pleased to bask in Putin’s praise, repeating Putin’s compliments.
7. Having a president who recognizes America’s systemic problems — racial inequality, the wealth gap, lack of affordable health care, etc. — and has committed to making progress toward rectifying these issues. Will Biden and his administration solve all our troubles overnight? No, he won’t. But for too long, the cracks in the U.S.’s foundation have been covered up and ignored, and it’s past time that we addressed these problems head-on.
