Editor’s note: We endeavor to bring you the top voices on current events representing a range of perspectives. Below is a column arguing that Biden has abandoned his earlier calls for unity. You can find a counterpoint here, where Professor Jason Nichols argues that Biden is governing as a unifier.

Since announcing his candidacy for president in April of 2019, Joe Biden has insisted that unifying the nation was his primary objective. After four years of President Trump fomenting hatred and division, Biden alleged, it was necessary that the nation elect him so he could “restore the soul of America” and calm tensions between political foes.

Despite this feel-good rhetoric from the president, Americans are beginning to recognize the truth. While Joe Biden has talked about the need for “unity” and “healing,” Biden’s administration has done precisely the opposite of what is needed to bring together the country.

A prime example of President Biden’s actions failing to align with his rhetoric is his signing of dozens of destructive executive actions in his first week in office, unprecedented in modern American history.

One of Biden’s first orders put a stop to further construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which estimates indicate will immediately kill numerous American jobs. This move by the White House was so radical that even Justin Trudeau, the far-left prime minister of Canada, spoke with Biden and expressed his disagreement with the policy of the new administration.

With this move, President Biden has single-handedly undermined American energy independence and economic progress at a time when just the opposite needs to be done. How is a decision as damaging as this one supposed to unify the nation? The priorities of the Biden administration in its first few weeks have been the total opposite of promoting what’s best for the country.

This was the first of many moves which signaled that the Biden administration is much more interested in pushing the agenda of the president’s socialist allies than bringing Americans together.

Biden’s next move was to sign an executive order mandating that the United States rejoin the Paris Agreement. While the White House has tried to spin this as a move which will assist Americans by promoting green energy, this talking point could not be further from the truth. As vice president in former President Obama’s administration, Biden’s effort to create an explosion in green jobs was a spectacular failure. Moreover, one study found that the Paris Agreement would cost the average family of four more than $20,000 in lost income and increased energy costs.

Biden’s abandonment of any effort to unify the nation in favor of pursuing the radical left’s policy preferences didn’t end there. Biden’s crackdown on fracking by banning drilling leases on federal land for the next year was met with outcry from officials in Texas and New Mexico on both sides of the aisle. Republicans and Democrats alike pointed out that such a move would seriously damage the economies of these states, but these objections fell on deaf ears.

The lack of unity extends even to COVID relief: the efforts of the White House and Democrat leadership in Congress to use the partisan reconciliation process to pass yet another round of budget-busting COVID relief, potentially including a $15 minimum wage hike, exposes the calls for “unity” and “bipartisanship” as what they are — lies.

If Joe Biden’s first few weeks in office have taught us anything, it’s that the president’s “unifying America” line which was so frequently used during the campaign as a rebuke of former President Trump, was a cheap talking point and nothing more. During his time in White House, President Biden has shown the nation that he will gladly ignore the wishes of half of the electorate if it means furthering the far left’s policy goals.

While defenders of the president may continue to claim otherwise, it has become clear that the Biden administration has abandoned calls for national unity. Now, the American people are paying the price.

Parissa Sedghi is an Executive Vice President at FreedomWorks