US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that former President Donald Trump wrote a very generous letter to him.
"The president wrote a very generous letter," Mr Biden told reporters at the White House. "Because it was private, I won't talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous."
After taking the oath of office and a brief dash to shake some hands, Mr Biden made it safely to the White House in a barricaded city guarded by more than 25,000 troops and devoid of the hundreds of thousands of spectators who normally throng to the quadrennial ritual.
The unprecedented precautions ensured the new US president and Vice President Kamala Harris took office free of incident in a ceremony outside the US Capitol, two weeks to the day after a mob attacked the building in a failed attempt to keep Congress from certifying their victory.
After being driven from the Capitol in a slow motorcade, Mr Biden briskly walked the last block from the Treasury to the White House, unexpectedly greeting some invited and screened guests and members of the news media along the way in a highly secured area. Ms Harris walked part of the way to her office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House.
Day One executive orders
Mr Biden on Wednesday began signing 15 executive actions addressing the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and racial inequality, and undoing some policies put in place by his predecessor Mr Trump.
The actions, fulfilling his promise to move quickly on Day One of his presidency, initiate the process of the United States rejoining the Paris climate accord.
America’s return to the international agreement is the centrepiece of a raft of executive orders aimed at restoring US leadership in combating global warming.
The announcements will also include a sweeping order to review all of Mr Trump's actions weakening climate change protections, the revocation of a vital permit for TC Energy's Keystone XL oil pipeline project from Canada, and a moratorium on oil and gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that Trump's administration had recently opened to development, Biden aides said.
The steps Mr Biden is taking will also end a travel ban Trump put in place on some majority-Muslim countries. He is also calling upon his administration to strengthen the DACA program for immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The new president is also ordering the wearing of masks and social distancing in all federal buildings and on all federal lands and is ending a national emergency declaration that was the basis for diverting some federal funds to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.
