Substacks
July 29, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson
One of the advantages of refusing the Democratic nomination for president is that his decision to do that has left President Joe Biden in the position of being above the political fray and being able to act for the good of the whole country.
Today, Biden noted that the American people have lost faith in the Supreme Court. When he was in office, Trump stacked the court with three extremists who have worked with extremist justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to overturn longstanding legal precedents that protect civil rights and move the country toward a theocracy overseen by a dictator. A statement from the White House today recounted how the Supreme Court has “gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office.” It also noted that “recent ethics scandals involving some Justices have caused the public to question the fairness and independence that are essential for the Court to faithfully carry out its mission to deliver justice for all Americans.”
Today, Biden called for three major changes to restore trust and accountability.
He called for a constitutional amendment to make clear that no president is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. This is a direct response to the Supreme Court’s decision of July 1, 2024, in Donald J. Trump v. United States that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed in actions that fall under a president’s “official duties.”
The White House wrote that “President Biden shares the Founders’ belief that the President’s power is limited—not absolute—and must ultimately reside with the people.” The “No One Is Above the Law Amendment will state that the Constitution does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as President.”
Biden also called for eighteen-year term limits for Supreme Court justices. Noting that Congress approved term limits for the presidency, Biden pointed out that “[t]he United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices.” “Term limits would help ensure that the Court’s membership changes with some regularity; make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come,” the White House wrote.
The administration is reacting, in part, to the fact that Trump, with the help of then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), denied Democratic president Barack Obama the right to appoint a Supreme Court justice, holding it for Trump, and then, after Trump had appointed a second justice, rushed through a third Trump appointee at the very end of his term, enabling him to appoint three hard-right justices who will be able to skew the court’s decisions for decades.
With those justices on the court, it has handed down a series of nakedly partisan decisions that represent the goals of the extremist Republican Party rather than the majority of Americans. They have overturned a ban on bump stocks for semiautomatic rifles, made partisan and racial gerrymandering easier, undercut business regulation, ceased to recognize the constitutional right to abortion, and, stunningly, ruled that a president has significant immunity from prosecution for committing crimes while in office.
Biden also called for Congress to “pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Supreme Court Justices should not be exempt from the enforceable code of conduct that applies to every other federal judge.”
This, too, reflects the problems of the modern court, where several justices, especially Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, have accepted large gifts from those with business before the court and have refused to recuse themselves from those cases. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced articles of impeachment against Thomas and Alito on July 10, and the measures currently have 19 co-sponsors.
As Ankush Khardori noted in Politico today, before Trump’s three justices took their seats, public approval of the court stood at 58%. After its decision to give presidents immunity, that approval fell to a record low of just 38%. More than 75% of Americans, including a large majority of Republicans, support eighteen-year term limits for justices.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post today, Biden wrote: “This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.”
He noted that as a senator he served as chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and has “overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today.” Noting that the current system makes it possible for a single president to radically alter the makeup of the court for generations to come, he warned: “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
“We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power. We can and must restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. We can and must strengthen the guardrails of democracy.
In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.”
Ian Millhiser of Vox points out that these reforms would currently be almost impossible to pass, but Biden’s embrace of them is a powerful political statement for the Democrats to carry into the 2024 election. Until now, Biden has lagged behind popular opinion on the issue of court reform. Now, though, the sitting president is rejecting the power the extremist modern-day Supreme Court conveyed on presidents and reinforcing the rule of law.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, immediately endorsed Biden’s proposals, meaning that she is willing to be bound by our historic understanding that presidents are not above the law. In contrast, Leonard Leo, who has been central to the stacking of the court and who has called for “flood[ing] the zone with cases that challenge misuse of the Constitution by the administrative state and by Congress,” called the plan “a campaign to destroy a court that they disagree with.” House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called it “dead on arrival in the House.”
For his part, Biden seemed more optimistic than Millhiser that his reforms could pass. When a reporter asked him how he would get court reform passed, he answered: “You’ve asked me that—on everything I’ve ever passed you’ve asked me that. We’re going to figure a way.”
Today, additional assistance provided to International Brotherhood of Teamsters pension plans thanks to the American Rescue Plan saved the pensions of an additional 70,000 New England Teamsters. This brings the total protected to 600,000. No Republicans voted for the American Rescue Plan, and Teamsters president Sean O’Brien stood next to Biden when he put the first protections into place. After O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, Vice President at large John Palmer announced he is challenging O’Brien for the leadership.
Momentum behind Vice President Harris continues to build. Today John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, the third-largest city in Arizona, wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic explaining why “as a Republican mayor, I support Kamala Harris over Trump.” He blamed Trump for abandoning cities while Biden and Harris have made historic investments in them and brought thousands of new jobs to Arizona. Giles urged his fellow Republicans to reject MAGA Republicans and turn back to the principles of an older Republican Party. “Our party used to stand for the belief that every Arizonan, no matter their background or circumstances, should have the freedom, opportunity and security to live out their American Dream,” he wrote.
But today’s Republicans are political extremists who are trying to disrupt elections and who killed immigration reform. “Trump poses a serious threat to our nation,” he wrote. “We can’t have a felon representing us on the national stage, let alone one who would threaten to abandon NATO and ruin our standing abroad.”
“Arizona Republicans like me can emulate Sen. John McCain’s motto of ‘Country First’ and beat back Trump and his threat to democracy,” Giles wrote. “Kamala Harris is the competent, just and fair leader our country deserves.”
In the New York Times, Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush echoed Giles’s autopsy for his party but, in an important shift, examined its recent changes through a lens of the political theories of autocracy. He concluded: “It’s hard and haunting to know that the political party to which I devoted a significant part of my life has become the greatest political threat to the country I love.”
More than 40 former officials from the Department of Justice agree. On July 25 they wrote an open letter endorsing Harris and warning that “Trump presents a grave risk to our country, our global alliances and the future of democracy. As president, he “regularly ignored the rule of law.” In contrast, as the elected attorney general of California, Harris “oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. She forged strong relationships with law enforcement to keep people safe, fought for American consumers and fought against those preying on the American people…. The stakes could not be higher.”
Tonight, White Dudes for Harris held an online fundraiser. Actor Jeff Bridges, who played The Dude in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, recounted Harris’s popular policies on the call. “I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris,” he said. “A woman president, man, how exciting!” Minnesota governor Tim Walz added: “How often in 100 days do you get to change the trajectory of the world? How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come? And how often in the world do you make that b*st*rd wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his a** and sent him on the road?”
The Trump-Vance ticket continues to stumble. In the Washington Post today, Jennifer Rubin noted that the Republicans appear to have gone out of their way to pick a presidential ticket that would offend women. Trump is, she pointed out, “an adjudicated rapist” who bragged about sexual assault, demeans and insults women, “mused about punishing women for having an abortion,” and boasts that he was behind the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Vance wants to ban abortion in all cases, wants the federal government to stop women from traveling across state lines to obtain abortion care, says childless women don’t have a stake in the country’s future, and has implied that women should stay in abusive marriages.
The Republicans embrace the ideas of right-wing groups whose members want to roll back women’s rights; their call for a “revival of faith, family, and fertility” is a tenet of fascism. “When Harris declares ‘We’re not going back,’” Rubin notes, “the message has particular resonance among women.”
Finally, the world is watching events in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro has claimed victory despite exit polls that showed him losing to opposition candidate Edmundo González by more than 30 points. CNN’s Jim Sciutto commented: “Don’t underestimate the loss of U.S. soft power in moments like this after a U.S. president—and current candidate for president—attempted to overturn an election here.”
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Notes:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ocasio-cortez-impeachment-articles-against-supreme-courts-thomas-alito/
https://www.vox.com/scotus/363557/supreme-court-biden-kamala-harris-reform-term-limits-ethics
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/29/biden-supreme-court-reform-00171667
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/29/turmp-vance-women-misogyny/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/
https://meidasnews.com/news/republican-mayor-of-3rd-largest-city-in-az-endorses-harris
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/opinion/trump-vance-republican-party.html
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4783088-teamsters-exec-challenge-obrien-rnc-speech/
https://archive.ph/4Ecyi#selection-1897.3-1897.150
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-reform-biden-harris-trump-ffd48f3a2023aeca841bb53c2147ef03
https://apnews.com/live/venezuela-election-updates-maduro-machado-gonzalez
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TheTNHoller/status/1818085003684684012
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Substacks
Trump’s Back. What Now? Oliver Wiseman
Yesterday, we saw the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, he did it his way. He danced onstage with the Village People the night before he took the oath of office. He moved the ceremony inside the Capitol because of the cold. He gave tech CEOs choice seating in the rotunda. And he delivered a speech that at times felt less like an inaug…
Substacks
Trump’s Back. What Now? Oliver Wiseman
It’s Tuesday, January 21. I’m Olly Wiseman and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. It’s good to be back.
Today we answer the big questions about the transfer of power in Washington. Among them: Will Trump fight lawfare with lawfare? Will TikTok survive? Is neoliberalism dead? Is Trump cool? Does that even matter? Are we at war with Panama now? And: that hat.
But first: the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, he did it his way. He danced onstage with the Village People the night before he took the oath of office. He moved the ceremony inside the Capitol because of the cold. He gave tech CEOs choice seating in the rotunda. And he delivered a speech that at times felt less like an inaugural address and more like a State of the Union / campaign speech mashup. Ignoring unifying inaugural speech traditions stretching back to George Washington, he trashed his political opponents and touted new policies that would bring about a “golden age.”
His proposals were a Trumpian mix of serious (action on immigration and inflation) and, well, strange. It’s the Gulf of America now, and we’re “taking back” the Panama Canal, baby!
His promised day-one executive orders included:
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Declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, unlocking federal funding for a border wall, reinstating the “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, and designating drug cartels as “global terrorists.”
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Cutting regulations around oil and gas production by declaring another national emergency, this one on energy. (“We will drill, baby, drill.”)
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Ending the environmental rules he calls “Biden’s electric vehicle mandate.”
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Establishing an “external revenue service” to collect tariffs.
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And ending the “government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” (You read about Trump’s repudiation of gender ideology in the federal government first in The Free Press on Sunday.)
Later in the day, Trump signed these orders. He also pardoned members of the mob who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. Trump’s January 6 pardons went further than his closest allies appear to have anticipated. Earlier this month, J.D. Vance said that those who committed violence during the riot “obviously” should not be pardoned. But Trump has commuted the sentences of members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Back to Trump’s speech. If there was a theme, it was that his own astonishing political comeback portends a national revival, one that he’ll deliver.
“I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do,” he said. “In America, the impossible is what we do best.”
Trump went further. His comeback, and his country’s, he claimed, weren’t just linked but were providential. Recalling the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, he said: “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Gone was the grim “American Carnage” theme of his first inaugural speech. He spoke of the many challenges that “will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing in the United States of America.”
It is a promise both populist and popular, a reminder of why Trump won.
It is also, as my colleague Peter Savodnik argues in his column today, the death knell of neoliberalism and the end of cool.
Here’s Peter: Trump’s critics, “the so-called progressive elites, are howling at the idea that this chump, who is so very unserious, is The One who will restore our seriousness. They miss the point. Only the brawling, bumbling ringleader of the great circus that is today’s Republican Party could break open our sclerotic overclass and lay it bare for the whole republic to see not simply its emptiness but its rot.”
Read Peter’s article, “Trump Is Uncool. And That’s a Good Thing.”
Joe Biden’s Unpardonable Last Act
Another promise Trump made was to “rebalance” the scales of justice. “The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department of our government will end,” he said in his inaugural address. This would normally sound like a partisan gripe, if it weren’t for the final presidential acts of his predecessor, writes Eli Lake in The Free Press.
Just moments earlier, Joe Biden had issued sweeping preemptive pardons for his siblings and their spouses. The outgoing president did the same for some of his successor’s high-profile opponents, including Anthony Fauci and Liz Cheney. The level of clemency is without precedent, writes Eli, and inconsistent with Biden’s 2020 promise to uphold the rule of law. Indeed, four years ago Biden expressed his concern that Trump would pardon his own political cronies.
Trump now faces a choice: continue Biden’s erosion of norms, or end the cycle of lawfare. Which will it be?
Read Eli’s full report on Biden’s final act as president—and how Trump might respond.
TikTok on the Clock
The first big internal MAGA dustup of Trump’s second term centers on TikTok, the Chinese-owned social network. Congress passed legislation that forced either the ban or the sale of the app, but on Sunday Trump gave TikTok an eleventh-hour reprieve announcing his intent to keep the app alive for 90 days. Hours after going dark, the short-video platform blinked back on.
This was welcome news to the crowd at a TikTok-sponsored inauguration party Sunday evening. Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold was on the scene and spoke to influencers who say: “We the people are for TikTok.” Read her full dispatch here.
Meanwhile, Joe Lonsdale, a prominent Silicon Valley supporter of Donald Trump, argues that the new president’s TikTok maneuvers undermine the rule of law. Now that Congress and the Supreme Court have weighed in, it doesn’t matter what Trump thinks of the TikTok ban. “The law must take effect,” writes Joe. “Because in our republic, it is the Congress that writes the law. If President Trump disagrees, he can try to change Congress’s mind.”
Read Joe Lonsdale’s op-ed: “Mr. President, Don’t Abandon the Rule of Law to Save TikTok.”
Fashion Police: Inauguration Edition
Okay, now the important stuff: the outfits. Suzy Weiss answers some of the really pressing inauguration questions: How did Melania pull off a hat that obscured half her face? Was there a hidden message in Trump’s choice of tie? And Lauren Sanchez’s white lace corset under a blazer: inappropriate or awesome? (Answer: both.) Read Suzy’s full fashion report here.
(Of course, the best-dressed crowd in D.C. this past weekend came to the party we threw. Read about that here.)
More Notes on the Inauguration. . .
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Did the inauguration really need to be inside? Freezing temperatures forced proceedings indoors for the first time in forty years. But America’s ruling class wasn’t always so sensitive. As my colleague Chuck Lane points out, yesterday’s weather, frigid as it was, couldn’t hold an icicle to the 30-below wind chill at Ulysses S. Grant’s second inauguration on March 4, 1873. Chuck describes the frosty scene at that evening’s inaugural ball, held in a hangar-like temporary pavilion, in his book The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction: “Dignitaries gamely shuffled across the dance floor in their overcoats, as horn and tuba players squeaked out music through the frozen valves of their instruments. Dozens of birdcages dangled from the ceiling; the canaries inside were supposed to accompany the orchestra. But the cold was so intense that the birds shivered, tucked their beaks under their wings, and then began to drop dead.”
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In the beginning—i.e., last Friday—there was the $TRUMP meme coin. It’s kinda sorta like Bitcoin, only Trumpier. On the day it was issued, as traders anticipated the new president’s inauguration, it rose from $10 to $75, giving it a total value of more than $10 billion—billions, we should point out, backed by nothing but Trump’s considerable celebrity. It was yet another signal that his administration would embrace crypto. Then came the $MELANIA meme coin. Weirdly, its arrival caused the $TRUMP coin to drop down to $40. Then $TRUMP rose again in anticipation of the inauguration. Then, both the $TRUMP and $MELANIA coins fell by 30 percent as he gave his inaugural address. Strange. Or maybe not. The volatility of meme coins is a given—that’s kinda the point for traders—and anticipation is always a more powerful driver than the actual event. What does the future hold for $TRUMP and $MELANIA? Probably more extreme volatility. But maybe people will figure out the coins’ value is built on air and they’ll collapse—at which point, maybe the president might decide to regulate crypto after all.
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Indicted New York mayor Eric Adams ditched MLK Day celebrations in his city to attend the president’s inauguration. It’s the latest act of Adams’ MAGA charm offensive, which has included a trip to Mar-a-Lago and a shift in his position on immigration, saying he is open to a rollback of sanctuary city policies. Many speculate Adams—who faces federal bribery and fraud charges—is angling for a pardon. Whatever Adams’ next chapter, his eyebrows will still be flawless.
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Carrie Underwood improvised an a cappella performance of “America the Beautiful” after technical difficulties nixed her backing track. “You know the words—help me out here,” the country singer said, before launching into the patriotic anthem. . . and nailing it.
The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
Substacks
January 20, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson
The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”
As Salmon noted, “The emoluments clause of the Constitution,” which prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any gift or title from a foreign leader or government, “written in 1787, hardly envisaged a world where a president could conjure billions of dollars of wealth out of nowhere just by endorsing a meme.” Salmon also pointed out that there is no way to track the purchases of this coin, meaning it will be a way for those who want something from Trump to transfer money directly to him.
Former Trump official Anthony Scaramucci posted that “anyone in the world can essentially deposit money” into the bank account of the president of the United States.
On Sunday, Trump’s wife Melania launched her own coin. It took the wind out of the sales of Trump’s coin, although both coins have disclaimers saying that the coins are “an expression of support for and engagement with the values embodied by” the Trumps, and are not intended to be “an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.” Her cryptocurrency was worth more than $5 billion within two hours.
CNN noted that the release of the meme coin had raised “serious ethics concerns,” but those who participate in the industry were less gentle. One wrote: “Trump’s sh*tcoin release has caused possibly the greatest overnight loss of credibility in presidential history. He made $60B. Great for Trump family, terrible for this country and hopes we had for the Trump presidency.”
Walter Schaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics under Trump in his first administration, who left after criticizing Trump’s unwillingness to divest himself of his businesses, wrote to CNN: “America voted for corruption, and that’s what Trump is delivering…. Trump’s corruption and naked profiteering is so open, extreme and pervasive this time around that to comment on any one aspect of it would be to lose the forest for the trees. The very idea of government ethics is now a smoldering crater.”
At a rally Sunday night at the Capital One Arena in Washington, Trump highlighted the performance side of his public persona. He teased the next day’s events and let his audience in on a secret that echoed the “neokayfabe” of professional wrestling by leaving people wondering if it was true or a lie. After praising Elon Musk, he told the crowd “He was very effective. He knows those computers better than anybody. Those vote counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good…. Thank you to Elon.”
This morning, hours before he left office, President Joe Biden pardoned several of the targets of MAGA Republicans, including “General Mark A. Milley, Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee.” Biden clarified that the pardons “should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.” He noted, “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
But, he said, “These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.” He later pardoned his siblings and their spouses to protect them from persecution by the incoming president.
Before he left office, Biden posted on social media: Scripture says: “I have been young and now I’m old yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken.” After all these years serving you, the American people, I have not seen the righteous forsaken. I love you all. May you keep the faith. And may God bless you all.”
This morning, members of the far-right paramilitary organization the Proud Boys marched through the capital carrying a banner that read “Congratulations President Trump” and chanting: “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Two days ago, Trump moved his inauguration into the Capitol Rotunda, where his supporters had rioted on January 6, 2021, because of cold temperatures expected in Washington, D.C. Even with his supporters excluded, the space was cramped, but prime spots went to billionaires: Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook, Google chief Sundar Pichai, TikTok chief executive officer Shou Zi Chew, and Tesla and SpaceX chief executive owner Elon Musk, who appeared to be stoned.
Right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who launched the Fox News Channel in 1996, was there, as were popular podcaster Joe Rogan and founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk.
Although foreign leaders are not normally invited to presidential inaugurations, far-right foreign leaders President Javier Milei of Argentina and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni were there, along with a close ally of Chinese president Xi Jinping.
The streets were largely empty as Trump traveled to the U.S. Capitol. Supporters watched from Capital One Arena as Trump took the oath of office, apparently forgetting to put his hand on the Bibles his wife held. After Vice President–elect J.D. Vance had taken the oath of office, sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had sworn in Trump, the new president delivered his inaugural address.
While inaugural addresses are traditionally an attempt to put the harsh rhetoric of campaigns behind and to emphasize national unity, Trump’s inaugural address rehashed the themes of his campaign rallies. Speaking in the low monotone he uses when he reads from a teleprompter, he delivered an address that repeated the lies on which he built his 2024 presidential campaign.
He said that the Justice Department has been “weaponized,” that Biden’s administration “cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad,” that the U.S. has provided “sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals,” that the government has “treated so badly” the storm victims in North Carolina,” and so on.
Fact-checkers at The Guardian noted the speech was full of “false and misleading claims.”
Trump went on to promise a series of executive orders to address the crises he claimed during his campaign. He would “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” he said, and “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” (Border crossings are lower now than they were at the end of Trump’s last term.) He promised to tell his cabinet members to bring down inflation (it peaked in 2022 and is now close to the Fed’s target of 2%), bring back manufacturing (the Biden administration brought more than 700,000 new manufacturing jobs to the U.S.), end investments in green energy (which has attracted significant private investment, especially in Republican-dominated states), and make foreign countries fund the U.S. government through tariffs (which are, in fact, paid by American consumers).
He also vowed to take the Panama Canal back from Panama, prompting Panama’s president José Raúl Mulino to “fully reject the statements made by” Trump, and Panamanian protesters to burn the American flag.
With a declaration about the Pennsylvania shooting that bloodied his ear, Trump declared that he believes he is on a divine mission. “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
After his inaugural address, former president Biden and former first lady Dr. Jill Biden left, and Trump delivered a much more animated speech to prominent supporters in which CNN’s Daniel Dale said he returned to his “lie-a-minute style.” He rehashed the events of January 6, 2021, and claimed that then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi is “guilty as hell…that’s a criminal offense.”
But the bigger story came in the afternoon, when Trump held a rally at the Capitol One Arena in place of the traditional presidential parade. Supporters there had watched the inauguration on a jumbotron screen, booing Biden and jumping to their feet to cheer at Trump’s declaration that he had been saved by God. In the afternoon, Elon Musk spoke to the crowd, throwing two salutes that right-wing extremists, including neo-Nazis, interpreted as Nazi salutes.
Trump and his family arrived after 5:00 for the inaugural parade. The new president spoke again in rally mode after six, and then staged a demonstration that he was changing the country by holding a public signing of executive orders. Those appeared to be designed, as he promised, to retaliate against those he feels have wronged him. Among other executive orders, he withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, drawing approving roars from the crowd.
As Jonathan Swan of the New York Times noted, “Signing executive orders and pardons are two of the parts of the job that Trump loves most. They are unilateral, instantaneous displays of power and authority.” After signing a few executive orders for the crowd, Trump threw the signing sharpies into the crowd, and then he and his family left abruptly.
Back at the White House, retaliation continued. Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the January 6 rioters who had been convicted of crimes related to the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election, including Enrico Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys who was serving 22 years for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
His pardon also included Daniel Rodriguez, who was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to tasing Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who suffered cardiac arrest and a traumatic brain injury. “Omg I did so much f—ing s— r[ight] n[ow] and got away,” he texted to his gang. “Tazzed the f— out of the blue[.]”
Trump signed an executive order that withdraws the U.S. from the World Health Organization, another that tries to establish that there are only two sexes in the United States, and yet another that seeks to end the birthright citizenship established by the Fourteenth Amendment. He signed one intending to strip the security clearances from 51 people whom he accuses of election interference related to Hunter Biden’s laptop, and has ordered that an undisclosed list of Trump appointees immediately be granted the highest levels of security clearance without undergoing background checks. He also signed one ordering officials “to deliver emergency price relief.”
Behind the scenes today, officials in the Trump administration fired the acting head of the U.S. immigration court system as well as other leaders of that system, and cancelled the CBP One app, an online lottery system through which asylum seekers could schedule appointments with border agents, leaving asylum seekers who had scheduled appointments three weeks ago stranded. Trump officials have also taken down a government website that helped women find health care and understand their rights. They have also removed the official portrait of former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley from the hallway with the portraits of all the former chairs…now all minus one.
But for all their claims to be hitting the ground running, lawyers noted that some of the executive orders were poorly crafted to accomplish what they claimed—an observer called one “bizarre legal fanfic not really intended for judicial interpretation”—and lawsuits challenging them are already being filed. Others are purely performative, like ordering officials to lower prices.
Further, CNN national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand reported that almost an hour after Trump became president, “current and former Pentagon officials say they don’t know who is currently in charge of the Defense Department,” a key position to maintain U.S. security against adversaries who might take advantage of transition moments to push against American defenses.
Bertrand reported that the Trump transition team had trouble finding someone to serve as acting secretary until the Senate confirms a replacement for Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Trump’s nominee, former Fox News Channel weekend host Pete Hegseth has had trouble getting the votes he needs, although tonight the Senate Armed Services Committee approved him by a straight party line vote.
Bertrand notes that two senior department officials declined to take on the position. The Trump administration swore in Robert Salesses, deputy director of the branch of the Pentagon that focuses on human resources, facilities, and resource management—who has already been confirmed by the Senate in that position—as acting Defense Secretary.
Beginning tomorrow, the Republicans will have to deal with the fact that the Treasury will hit the debt ceiling and will have to use extraordinary measures to pay the obligations of the United States government.
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Notes:
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/18/trump-meme-coin-25-billion
https://apnews.com/article/trump-pentagon-defense-secretary-hegseth-7bf18dfaaa53e3e75a76e3fd768a7fdd
https://time.com/7208371/trump-inauguration-2025-photos/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/20/us/trump-executive-orders
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06/news/walter-shaub-office-of-government-ethics-resignation/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/20/tech/meme-coins-donald-melania-trump-intl-hnk/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/19/politics/key-lines-trump-rally-dc-inauguration-eve/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2025/trump-inauguration-attendees/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpqeq82rvo
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/trump-inaugural-address-factcheck
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/01/19/trump-immigration-agenda-second-term/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/us/politics/border-immigration-drop-biden.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-trump-inauguration-speech-2025/
https://giia.net/insights/two-years-inflation-reduction-act-transforming-us-clean-energy
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-trump-inauguration-speech-2025/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/president-trump-speech-inauguration
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/trump-inaugural-address-factcheck
https://apnews.com/article/biden-pardons-family-trump-white-hous-caee326c4723a4ba6d972f7daf750a0b
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-self-soothes-in-better-speech-right-after-first-one/
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/20/nx-s1-5169190/biden-voter-registration-executive-order
https://www.newsweek.com/inauguration-day-2025-donald-trump-schedule-live-updates-2017568
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.229256/gov.uscourts.dcd.229256.160.0_1.pdf
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