Biden has reversed Trump's plan to cut $27.4 billion from government spending

• President Joe Biden has told Congress he will rescind a last-minute move by President Donald Trump to cut nearly $30 billion in funding to multiple federal agencies.
• "I am withdrawing 73 proposed rescissions previously transmitted to the Congress," the president wrote in a letter to Congress.
• Trump had written a letter on January 14, a week before he left office, notifying Congress that he planned to block $27.4 billion in federal funding.

President Joe Biden has told Congress he will rescind a last-minute move by President Donald Trump to cut nearly $30 billion in funding to multiple federal agencies.

President Biden announced the reversal in a letter Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Senate president.

"I am withdrawing 73 proposed rescissions previously transmitted to the Congress," the president wrote.

President Trump had written a letter on January 14, shortly before he left office, notifying Congress that he planned to block $27.4 billion in federal funding.

It came in response to what Trump called "wasteful spending" contained in the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill - the legislation which included a $600 paycheck for every adult citizen as well as a host of other measures.

Trump had said he would support the bill on the condition that he would add "many rescissions" to it.

"I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed," Trump said in a December 28 statement.

"I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill."

Top Democrats had immediately rejected Trump's proposed rescissions, which affected a total of 28 government agencies, including the Treasury and the Departments for Agriculture, Commerce, and Education, partly on the grounds that Trump had less than a month left in office.

Biden's move to rescind Trump's proposed budget cuts forms part of his wider effort during his first weeks in office to undo many aspects of the former president's legacy.

Within hours of taking office, Biden moved to halt the building of the wall on the US-Mexico border and lifted Trump's travel ban on arrivals from Muslim-majority countries.

The president has also signalled a break from the Trump era by rejoining the Paris climate accord, halting the US withdrawal from the World Health Organisation, and mandating the wearing of masks in federal buildings.