Is Biden really as good as his word?

The 46th president’s first full week in power is drawing to a close, and we’re getting more of a sense of where his priorities lie, writes Holly Baxter

Biden signs an executive order on climate change on Wednesday (AP)

As we come to the end of the first full week of the Biden presidency, most reporters here in the US are breathing a sigh of relief. After spending four years in a state of constant trepidation, the relative calm of an administration doing everything as it’s expected to is strange. 

As Biden unpicks the complicated threads of a Trump legacy – rolling back the Muslim ban, stopping work on the infamous border wall, promising to reunite children separated from their parents while claiming asylum with their families, implementing a mask mandate to try and halt the spread of Covid-19, revoking the transgender ban in the military – we are trying to get a feel for what his own priorities might be beyond “bringing back unity” after such divisiveness. 

What will be the 46th president’s own Obamacare or big, beautiful wall? What will he be famous for long after we’ve moved on to a President Kamala Harris, a President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or even – perish the thought – a President Tucker Carlson?