In exactly one week, Donald Trump will move back to Washington as he becomes the 47th President of the United States. While preparations— and policies— are well underway for the new administration to come in, President Joe Biden is tying loose ends, keeping his schedule full during his last full week in the White House.
The outgoing president is set to make several public appearances throughout the week, seeking to highlight his legacy and giving words of wisdom to Americans as well as his colleagues in government.
Biden is set to deliver an address to the State Department on Monday. The allocution will be focused on foreign policy, according to The Associated Press. The speech will point out his administration's efforts to expand NATO, rally dozens of allies to provide Ukraine with a steady stream of military aid to fight Russia, forge a historic agreement between Japan and South Korea to expand security and economic cooperation, and more.
That speech will mark a bookend to his presidency, as he also picked the State Department for his first major foreign policy speech at the start of his presidency nearly four years ago. Back then, Biden sought to send a signal to the world that the United States was ready to resume its role as a global leader after Trump's "America First" agenda.
Biden is expected to hold an event in the White House on Tuesday, where he will celebrate the creation of two new national monuments in California to honor Native American tribes. The announcement was supposed to take place last week in California, but it was cancelled due to dangerously high winds.
The conservation proclamations name the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California. The declarations bar drilling and mining and other development on the 624,000-acre (2,400-square-kilometer) Chuckwalla site and roughly 225,000 acres (800 square kilometers) near the Oregon border in Northern California.
The announcement is also part of his administration's effort to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 through his "America the Beautiful" initiative. But the cancellation of the trip— coupled with the devastating fires in Southern California— also highlights a harsh reality facing the administration, and one being denied by the incoming one: climate change and extreme weather.
Perhaps the highest-profile event will occur on Wednesday, when the Democratic leader is scheduled to deliver his farewell address from the Oval Office, publicly closing out his decades-long political career and his one-term presidency.
He will deliver his last address at 8 p.m. EST from the emblematic office in the White House, which is typically reserved for momentous speeches. Biden's press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre didn't provide further details as to what the President will discuss in his speech, or whether he would give a final press conference when questioned about it during the White House briefing Friday.
On Thursday and Friday, the President will close out his week-long farewell tour by attending a Department of Defense farewell ceremony and speaking in front of the U.S. Council of Mayors, respectively.
Then, next Monday, the Democratic president will officially leave office, giving way for the new administration to take his place, while also joining the most exclusive club in the world with a current membership of four people: former living U.S. presidents.
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