President Donald Trump took over the nation's highest office from Barack Obama only two hours ago, but his administration is already working to undo some of his predecessor's actions. The first agenda item to grace Trump's new White House website Friday was an outline of his climate agenda, which promises to eliminate "harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan":
Established by Obama in 2013, the Climate Action Plan "proposed cuts to U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, in part by preserving forests and encouraging increased use of cleaner renewable fuels," Reuters reports. Trump's agenda also promises to eliminate the Waters of the U.S. rule, announced by the Obama administration in 2015, which protects American bodies of water.
Also Friday, the Trump administration canceled a program by the Department of Housing and Urban Development designed to make home-buying more accessible to first-time buyers and low-income borrowers. HUD announced in a statement that it would cancel a planned cut to the Federal Housing Administration's annual fee for most borrowers by 0.25 percentage points, Bloomberg reports; the reduction was set to take effect Jan. 27 after being ordered by Obama last week. Canceling the mortgage-fee reduction will make loans more expensive and difficult to obtain for some buyers, though Republicans have argued in the past that such fee cuts "put taxpayers at risk by lowering the funds the FHA has to deal with mortgage defaults," Bloomberg notes.
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