On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump departed from the White House for his Mar-a-Lago resort in the final hours of his presidency.
At noon, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were officially sworn into office. The pair wasted no time getting to work, with Biden signing dozens of executive orders undoing some of the Trump administration's policies and Harris swearing in three Democratic Senators at the Capitol, officially solidifying the Democratic majority.
Biden and Harris also took ownership of the @POTUS and @VP Twitter accounts, respectively, and the official White House Twitter account shifted to reflect the building's new occupant.
In its first tweet after Biden's inauguration, the White House assured the Biden administration would be working to undo the harms of its predecessor.
The tweet highlighted the unprecedented crises—a devastating pandemic, a siege on the Capitol, a divided populace—left by Trump, with the White House vowing to take "decisive actions" to alleviate them, an area where Trump all too often fell short.
The promise to "restore America's place in the world" came only a day after the former President boasted in his pre-taped farewell address that "the world respects us again." This is despite a mountain of evidence from the past four years that the United States' reputation abroad only suffered under Trump.
Another facet of undoing these harms comes with a specific vaccine distribution plan to fight the pandemic that's upended every facet of daily life in the United States. The Trump administration had previously put the bulk of the vaccine burden on individual states while crediting Trump, despite there being no coherent federal distribution plan.
Twitter users were still adapting to the White House account's newfound sensibility.
They're excited for these improvements to get underway.
Biden is set to sign 10 additional executive orders on Thursday, including the invocation of the Defense Production Act, compelling private companies to begin making supplies and distributing them to fight the virus that, as of this week, has killed over 400 thousand Americans.
