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Joe Biden is signing three executive actions on Wednesday designed to tackle the climate crisis, including one order pausing new oil and gas leases being granted on federal lands, another directing the government to acquire electric vehicles and a third formally establishing an office of domestic climate policy.
A new Morning Consult poll has meanwhile found that Mr Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, remains popular within the Republican Party, with 50 per cent of respondents saying he should play a significant role in the GOP’s future. A huge 81 per cent of those surveyed said they still held a positive opinion of him, even after the Capitol riot.
Their party lost a vote in the Senate on Tuesday seeking to block Mr Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial as “unconstitutional”, given that he is no longer in office, but the ballot appeared to confirm the contention of Kentucky’s Rand Paul that the matter is “dead on arrival”, with insufficient GOP support to convict the 45th president for inciting insurrection.