Jan 20, 2025

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President-elect Donald Trump arrives at a rally ahead of the 60th Presidential Inauguration, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025, in Washington.

Today, Donald Trump will be sworn in at noon inside the Capitol Rotunda, the very room through which an angry mob of supporters rampaged four years ago. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Good Monday morning, and happy Inauguration Day. This is Jack Blanchard on Playbook debut. Stay warm out there.

DRIVING THE DAY

THE SECOND COMING: Donald Trump will today complete a political comeback for the ages, sweeping back into the White House for an historic second term as president. A mere 1,475 days since the Capitol riot seemed to mark an ignoble end to Trump’s rollercoaster career, the political resurrection of the century is upon us — and today, the second act begins. With 77 million voters cheering him on across America, Trump will be sworn in at noon inside the Capitol Rotunda, the very room through which an angry mob of supporters rampaged four years ago. Democrats will be watching proceedings through their fingers; gleeful Republicans can just sit back and lap it up.

Get ready: Former White House strategist Steve Bannon predicts “days of thunder”; incoming border chief Tom Homan has promised “shock and awe” from Day One. Fox News was briefed last night that as many as 200 executive actions will be signed off today as Trump looks to hit the ground running. “Like hell we’re going to do it over weeks! We’re going to sign them at the beginning!” Trump told delighted fans at his victory rally in D.C. on Sunday afternoon. Details are already leaking out fast — plenty more on all that below.

But first things first … Let’s get British for a moment, and talk about the weather. This is the coldest Inauguration Day since Ronald Reagan’s second in 1985, when the ceremony was also shifted inside. After yesterday’s intense snow flurries, the Capital Weather Gang is predicting a dry and sunny day Monday — but with temperatures of just 21F. (Your newly arrived Playbook author has just converted this into celsius and holy moly, that is cold.) Trump assured NBC Saturday it’s going to be way more “comfortable” indoors, and he’s probably right.

Setting the scene: “Trump at noon Monday takes office as the 47th president of the United States, marking an unprecedented and audacious return to the White House after weathering conviction on 34 felony counts and surviving an assassination attempt that left him bloodied and defiant,” our Megan Messerly and Adam Cancryn write in a useful scene-setter this morning.

“His early moves suggest the personal sense of vindication Trump carries to Washington after four years out of office has not chiseled the former president into a more archetypal politician. Rather, he takes office more emboldened and demanding of loyalty than ever — and bent on revenge against his perceived political enemies, including those who sought to hold him accountable. His policy ambitions have grown dramatically.”

Important reminder: It’s also Martin Luther King Jr. Day today. Bernice King, the youngest of MLK’s four children, was on NBC yesterday explaining why it’s “wonderful wonderful that this occurs on the King holiday.”

How today pans out: President Joe Biden and first lady Jill will be waking up around now after spending their final night in the White House. The Trumps were due to spend last night just around the corner, at Blair House, and will head to church first thing for the traditional pre-inauguration prayers. Expect footage of the Trumps, Vice President-elect JD Vance and others arriving at St. John’s Episcopal Church for a private service at around 8:15 a.m.

In downtown D.C. … An expanded security perimeter around the Capital One arena will come into place at 8 a.m. Expect road closures and parking restrictions across the center of town, with Metro stations due to stay closed throughout the day. Wall-to-wall TV coverage will begin across the networks at 9 a.m. All of America will be tuning in.

Gloriously … after church, the Trumps head over to the White House for a pleasant cup of tea with the departing Bidens, a pleasingly British-style tradition. (This, of course, did not happen in 2021.) Expect to see pictures from around 9:40 a.m. Sadly, they’re not miccing up the whole affair — the chit-chat around that coffee table should be something else.

The main event: Biden and Trump will then share a limo to the Capitol, CNN reports, with the motorcades arriving around 10:30 a.m. Trump and Vance are due to be sworn in at noon, with just a few hundred people crowded into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the historic moment. Senators, representatives, former presidents and the big tech “bro-ligarchy” (h/t Bannon) will be among the lucky ticket-holders — as will Playbook’s very own Eugene Daniels, natch. The unlucky rest get dumped into an “overflow room” to watch on big screens. Have fun!

Hottest ticket in town: Indeed, the last-minute move indoors has raised the very real possibility that not all lawmakers will actually get seats in the Rotunda to see the oath-of-office ceremony, a revelation which “has cast a chill over the occasion in some congressional offices,” our Jordain Carney, Daniella Diaz and Meredith Lee Hill report. “Simply put, there’s not enough room,” a senior Republican aide tells them. “It’s a shitshow.” Eek. NYT’s Teddy Schleifer says there’s also a “furious effort” among major GOP donors to get tickets for the main event.

And then comes the “weird shit”: If the 2017 “American carnage” speech is anything to go by, Trump’s inaugural address will set the tone for his second premiership. Trump told ABC on Saturday his address will focus on “unity, strength and fairness” — a delightfully vague set of platitudes which might yet prove the basis for the sunnier version of Trump we have been promised … or, you know, it might not.

After all: Trump’s definition of “fairness” seems to involve enacting revenge upon those he believes treated him badly during his years out of power. “You have to be treating people fairly,” he told NBC, in a separate phone interview Saturday. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, everything’s going to be wonderful.’ You know, we went through hell for four years with these people. And so, you know, something has to be done about it.”

What he’ll say: “I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success. A tide of change is sweeping the country,” Trump is slated to say, according to an excerpt shared exclusively with WSJ’s Alex Leary. “My message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization.”

Knives out: Former Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian tells David Siders that Trump would be well served to deliver a straightforward address — but that it would be nonsensical to give a speech about “warmth and unity, when hardly anybody means it.” After all, Khachigian notes: “24 hours later [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer’s going to have his stiletto out and try to cut his guts open.” Seriously, American politics is the best.

Whatever happens … It’s all eyes on former President George W. Bush for his considered verdict.

After the speech: Trump and Vance will take part in a signing ceremony at the Capitol, where the first of many executive orders are likely to be unveiled, before heading into a grand luncheon with members of Congress. After that, Trump travels to Capital One Arena at around 3:30 p.m., where 20,000 of his most ardent supporters will have been watching proceedings on big screens, along with a slimmed-down parade. Incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jason Miller told CNN we’ll likely see more executive orders signed there, presumably right in front of the cheering crowds. It should be quite a scene.

And then … it’s on to the White House, where staff will have been working flat-out to ship the Bidens’ belongings out the building and get things ready for its new inhabitants. Melania says she picked out the furniture she wants weeks ago, so they’ve really got no excuse this time around. And yes, the White House Diet Coke button should be reinstalled, too.

After a brief rest and a bite to eat: It’s party time for the president, who will attend three of tonight’s glitziest inauguration balls in person. The Commander-in-Chief Ball, the Liberty Inaugural Ball (featuring Nelly, among others), and the Starlight Ball are the places to be seen this evening, though there are plenty more events to keep VIPs entertained elsewhere (including Mark Zuckerberg’s early evening bash.) Highlights — if you can call them that — from last night’s festivities included Donald Trump Jr. dancing onstage with the Village People at the Turning Point USA party (h/t our own Dasha Burns). There are some things that cannot be unseen.

But outside on the streets: Tens of thousands more Trump supporters will be milling around in the freezing cold today, watching the proceedings in bars, cafes and (terrifyingly overpriced) hotel rooms. These are ordinary people who spent a fortune to be here for a festival of democracy — only to be abruptly told last Friday their tickets were now merely “commemorative.”

Indeed: NYT’s Shawn McCreesh explores the curious divide among those in DC this weekend — the haves, at their champagne parties and their celebration gala balls, and the have-nots, who came all this way for a victory parade which never happened.

And don’t forget us: There will be street protests, too, of course, as there have been throughout the weekend — though nothing on the scale of what we saw in 2017.

But but but: Don’t expect any of that to dampen supporters’ cheers when the new president speaks — or when the flurry of executive orders start dropping soon after. By the end of the day, it will be policy, not pomp and ceremony, which is leading the bulletins.

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EXECUTIVE ACTION

SO LET’S GET TO IT: At the parties and the brunches and the balls across D.C. this past weekend, the policy talk was focused on one big question — which executive orders are coming, and when? Well, details began emerging rapidly last night, and it’s fair to say that Trump is going big.

Start with this: “Trump will sign more than 200 executive actions on Inauguration Day — a massive, first wave of policy priorities focused on border security, energy, reducing the cost of living for American families, ending DEI programs across the federal government, and more,” Fox News scooped last night, citing a “senior administration official” who’d been authorized to give the network a run-through of what’s coming. The official said Trump will sign multiple ‘omnibus’ executive orders that each contain dozens of major executive actions.

Numbers game: It’s safe to say we’ve never seen anything like this on the first day of a presidency. Trump signed just a single executive order on his first day in 2017.

The list of what’s coming today is dizzying:

— Declare a national border emergency and direct the U.S. military to the southern border

— Designate drug and crime cartels as foreign terrorist organizations

— Reinstitute the “Remain in Mexico” policy for those seeking asylum

— Grant emergency powers to detain undocumented migrants on the southern border

— End “Catch and Release” for undocumented migrants

— Sweeping new support for natural gas, ports, fracking and pipelines

— Abolish the Green New Deal and terminate other Biden-era energy policies

— Pause all offshore wind leases

— Abolish the electric vehicle mandate

— Withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord

— Assert tough new presidential controls over federal workers

— End all Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs across federal government

… and that’s just a flavor of what’s in store today.

Drill, baby, drill: Republican leaders were briefed on the plans Sunday, our Benjamin Guggenheim and Meredith Lee Hill report in their own scoopy write-through of what’s coming. They were informed of “a 35-page energy omnibus geared toward unlocking energy pipelines and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.” And “in addition to summarizing immigration, energy, and government reform executive orders, the [Trump team] officials also discussed the process for removing ‘insubordinate employees’ and the legal and constitutional guardrails that may prevent Trump from firing employees who don’t follow orders.”

And there’s more: Trump is also lining up an executive order on “Male and Female,” The Free Press’ Emily Yoffe reveals, a sure sign that Trump intends to bring his culture war rhetoric from the election campaign to the White House. Trump’s initial plans would remove self-identification on government-issued IDs like passports and personnel records, and halt the practice of “housing men in women’s prisons and taxpayer-funded ‘transition’ for male prisoners.”

And lest we forget … Trump has also promised an executive order today to give TikTok some breathing space from the new law which briefly caused the app to go dark in the U.S. on Sunday morning. We’re also expecting some high-profile immigration raids in urban areas as early as today or tomorrow, designed to show supporters that Trump is taking action. And that’s before we get onto pardons for at least some of the Jan. 6 rioters — likely those convicted of nonviolent offenses — which Trump has also promised to address on Day One.

There’s even some actual legislation coming: The Senate will meet at 4:30 p.m. today to take up the Laken Riley Act, with a vote on the bill’s passage expected at 5:30 p.m. GOP leadership are hopeful of sending this first immigration bill through to the White House for Trump to sign by the end of the week.

Take a step back: This is not how new governments normally work. New leaders tend to pick their battles, grab a few easy wins, get their teams firmly in place before preparing carefully for more controversial steps further down the line. But not Trump. Not this time.

So what’s the hurry? A smart piece from NYT’s Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman explores the thinking behind this flurry of presidential activity. “[Trump] knows from experience that he must move fast,” they write. ”He begins his presidency as a lame duck. And after the 2026 midterms, when attention will turn to his successor, Mr. Trump will be unlikely to command the same sway with congressional Republicans and corporate America.”

Move fast and break things: “Interviews with more than a dozen people who have recently spoken with Mr. Trump describe a president-elect who views his power much differently than he did on the eve of his first inauguration in 2017,” they continue. “Back then he was on the defensive; the resistance to his presidency was fierce after his shock win and he was more deferential to Washington veterans, heeding their advice on whom to pick and what to prioritize. Now, he smells weakness all around — on Capitol Hill, in the C-suite and in the news media. And he sees himself as his own best adviser.”

But but but: Let’s not get too carried away. At various points, Trump also promised to end birthright citizenship on Day One — a move which most believe would surely require an almighty legal fight first — and that he would end the Ukraine war “within 24 hours” of regaining the presidency. That gives him until about midday Tuesday to cut deals with Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy … Good luck, as they say, with that.

And don’t forget: Team Trump also hoped for a record number of cabinet confirmations from the Senate on Day One (h/t our very own Rachael Bade). Instead, it looks like only Marco Rubio’s nomination as Secretary of State will be formally approved today. (That’s actually one fewer than Trump managed the first time around.) Republican senators do expect most of Trump’s picks to sail through over the coming days, though Tulsi Gabbard is seen as still having plenty of work to do.

A QUICK TRIP TO PLANET CRYPTO

STUFF THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN IN THE UK: It took just two days for the Trump family’s new crypto token, $Trump, to launch into the stratosphere of the most valuable forms of crypto in the world, “creating the potential for a multibillion-dollar payout to the family but also generating a storm of questions about the conflicts of interest the new venture creates,” NYT’s Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany write.

By the numbers: “At least on paper, the Trump tokens in the market as of Sunday late afternoon had a total trading value of nearly $13 billion, and a total of $29 billion worth of trades had taken place in just two days.” Um, what?

Reminder: Among the immediate to-do list for Trump in his initial wave of executive orders is one to ease up on regulation of the crypto industry, which could pour jet fuel on the price of bitcoin and other assets, WaPo’s Tony Romm notes.

Quite the quotes, via Jasper Goodman and Declan Harty: “It’s absolutely preposterous that he would do this,” said Nic Carter, founding partner at the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, and someone who describes himself as an “avowed and explicit” Trump supporter. “It’s awful,” added a Washington lobbyist granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sector. “This is a horrible look for the industry already trying to make the case that we’re not a bunch of hucksters, scammers and fraudsters.”

Meanwhile: There’s now a $Melania coin too. Because of course there is. Your Playbook author has no idea what any of this means.

BYE BYE BIDEN

THE END OF A PRESIDENCY: As President Biden exits the White House with barely a whisper at noon, the NYT asked more than 2,000 Americans about how they’ll remember the 46th president. Here’s the big takeaway, and it’s not pretty reading for Dems: “Republicans, in particular, pointed to Mr. Biden’s mental state and age as the top thing they remember. Many Democrats relayed memories of Mr. Biden’s kindness and empathy, while others cited the economy, at times in a positive light and other times negatively. A quarter of respondents could not think of a memory at all or declined to share one.”

Final acts: On his way out, Biden “posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s,” AP’s Colleen Long writes. “Also receiving pardons were a top Virginia lawmaker and advocates for immigrant rights, criminal justice reform and gun violence prevention.”

More to come? Two federal death row inmates are asking to be exempted from Biden’s sweeping commutations “as they seek to appeal their cases and prove their claims of innocence,” CNN’s Dakin Andone reports. Is there time for a final flurry of pardons this morning? Watch this space.

Wasted opportunity: Over the course of his presidency, Biden rarely took advantage of the bully pulpit that the office offers, The Bulwark’s Sam Stein writes. “It wasn’t just that his growing infirmities compelled him to do fewer interviews or primetime speeches, conduct less travel, and take fewer political risks — it was that he preferred a carrot-heavy, stick-light, and confrontation-averse approach, as a matter of governance and personality.”

In practice … Biden “liked wooing lawmakers domestically and bolstering allies internationally more than browbeating opponents or outwardly confronting antagonists. The approach had its successes, both home and abroad. But as Democrats brace for the coming Donald Trump era, many look back with frustration at the opportunities lost — the wasted carrots and the sticks left unused.”

THE BRITISH ARE COMING

A quick word on your author: If Playbook feels a little different today, that’s because it is. POLITICO’s post-election reshuffle continues apace, and as you heard in last Monday’s newsletter via our global editor-in-chief John Harris, that means a new-look team here at Playbook Towers, too. Your author — Jack Blanchard — takes over today as managing editor today, with the great Eugene Daniels becoming chief Playbook correspondent. Our crack team of reporters and producers — Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine — are going nowhere, thank the Lord.

Coming to America: Your author flew in from London last weekend, having spent the past decade covering the rolling chaos that is modern British politics. That period covered six prime ministers, four general elections, two referendums and the death of the world’s longest-serving monarch. You guys have some serious catching-up to do.

Mission statement: The plan is simply to make Playbook an indispensable guide to the day ahead in politics — an impartial, unmissable tip sheet that’s both fun to read and brings you quickly up to speed with everything you need to know. I’m excited and grateful to be here. Please send tips, thoughts, advice, feedback to jblanchard@politico.co.uk … They’ll get me a proper dot-com email address soon, I promise.

First question: Where on earth do you get a decent cup of tea in this town? Hit me up.