US President Donald Trump exits Paris climate agreement for second time

US President Donald Trump signed an order to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement for a second time on Monday. 

The step is viewed as a defiant rejection of global efforts to combat planetary warming as catastrophic weather events intensify worldwide, as reported by the Associated Press.

Trump followed this by signing a formal letter to the United Nations, notifying the global body of the country's intent to leave the landmark 2015 accord, which seeks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.

Trump also reversed numerous directives from Biden, including those related to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, climate change, and sanctions on Israeli settlers engaged in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. After signing the orders, he threw the pens into the crowd.

“We won, we won, but now the work begins," Trump said before a crowd of people in “Make America Great Again” hats.

The Republican president abandoned the more solemn tone of his inaugural address from earlier in the day and taunted his Democratic predecessor while scrawling his name in thick black ink on his executive orders.

“Could you imagine Biden doing this?" he said. "I don't think so!”

In the four years since losing to Biden, Trump overcame impeachments, criminal indictments and a pair of assassination attempts to win another term in the White House, and his re-ascendence was fervently welcomed by his followers.

At the Capitol, Vice President JD Vance was sworn in first, taking the oath from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on a Bible gifted to him by his great-grandmother. Trump followed, using both a family Bible and the one used by President Abraham Lincoln during his 1861 inauguration. Chief Justice John Roberts administered his oath.

Trump said he would lead a government that “expands our territory,” a reference to his goals of acquiring Greenland from Denmark and restoring U.S. control of the Panama Canal, AP reported.

He also said he would “pursue our manifest destiny into the stars" by launching American astronauts to Mars. Musk, the owner of a space rocket company with billions of dollars in federal contracts, cheered and pumped his arms above his head as Trump spoke.

(With inputs from AP)