Biden Administration News: Live Updates

As the stage where he was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday was dismantled and the tens of thousands of National Guard troops deployed to the capital stood down, President Biden prepared to spend his first full day in the White House addressing a confluence of crises.

Moving with a speed meant to underscore the urgency of the moment, Mr. Biden signed executive orders to undo signature policy initiatives of the Trump administration while preparing to push ahead with his own sweeping agenda.

But Mr. Biden will need the cooperation of Congress, where Democrats now control both chambers, to push through a $1.9 trillion rescue package.

With the coronavirus having already claimed 406,000 American lives and experts warning that 100,000 more could die in the next month, the pandemic was at the top of the agenda.

Mr. Biden unveiled a 21-page national strategy that promised to harness the broad powers of the federal government in combating the virus.

Even before he spent his first night in the White House, he signed an order requiring masks be worn in federal buildings and he urged all Americans to take this most basic of precautions for 100 days.

He restored a global health unit to the National Security Council and embraced the World Health Organization, announcing that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci would lead the U.S. delegation to its executive board.

But untangling and speeding up the distribution of vaccines — perhaps the most pressing challenge but also the most promising path forward — will be a desperate race against time as states across the country including New York and California have warned that they could run out of doses as early as this weekend.

Inheriting an economy battered by the pandemic, the Biden administration is moving to extend a federal moratorium on evictions and has asked agencies to prolong a moratorium on foreclosures on federally guaranteed mortgages.

Mr. Biden also moved to undo some of the harshest immigration policies of his predecessor, including ordering officials to work to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected hundreds of thousands of people who came to the country as young children from deportation.

And the United States will once again strive to meet the goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, rejoining the accord and signaling a return to multilateralism in foreign policy.

But the mission Mr. Biden laid out for his administration in his inaugural address went beyond policy. It was more elemental.

He set the goal of uniting a fractured country, restoring faith in the institutions of democracy and ending an “uncivil war” that will require rejecting “the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”

As Mr. Biden himself noted, it will be a monumental task.

“We’ll…