| Inauguration Day is here. We spent part of the weekend watching President-elect Donald Trump depart from Palm Beach, Florida — the last time he did so before taking office today. The pool reporters who showed up Saturday afternoon at the Palm Beach airport were greeted by the sight of not just Trump Force One — his highly recognizable private plane — but also an Air Force plane parked nearby. Trump’s family members boarded both planes, some snapping photos on the tarmac to memorialize the final departure before his second term, and then the president-elect, Melania Trump and Barron Trump climbed the stairs to the Air Force plane. It was a stark reminder of Trump’s reentrance into the official trappings of Washington after four years of making his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach the center of the political universe — and something more than that during the transition, as he hosted a steady steam of world leaders and business titans there. It was also a return to normalcy, in a way, with the outgoing president apparently sending a government plane for the president-elect to take to Washington for his inauguration. That did not happen in January 2021, as President-elect Joe Biden chartered a private plane to D.C. amid Trump’s continued denial of his loss. In other ways, today is anything but normal. A winter storm has upset long-planned pomp and ritual, canceling the parade and moving the swearing-in ceremony inside the Capitol Rotunda. And we’re all awaiting what comes after, when Trump has promised major and immediate changes. Looming over the day’s events are memories from four and eight years ago, when the vibes in Washington were entirely different. When Trump first ascended to the presidency, protests broke out around the city, including women famously marching in knitted pink hats. This year, resistance looks very different. The transition of power has also been far smoother than Trump’s departure from the White House, when his supporters tried to overturn his loss and he skipped Biden’s inauguration. Here are four of the most anticipated moments to look forward to today: The Trump-Biden meeting This morning, Trump and his wife will follow the ritual of meeting Biden and first lady Jill Biden at the White House for tea. The two couples will then head to the inaugural ceremony together, according to the White House. Biden and his allies have made note of the differences compared to January 2017. “The only president ever to avoid an inauguration is the guy that’s about to be inaugurated,” Biden said in an interview last month with MeidasTouch, a liberal media company. While Trump has criticized some of Biden’s last-ditch policy decisions to cement his agenda on the environment, justice and more, Trump also expressed his thanks to Biden about the transition when they met after the election. “I appreciate it very much — a transition that’s so smooth it’ll be as smooth as it can get,” Trump told Biden during his White House visit. The swearing-in ceremony Moving the swearing-in ceremony, as well as the inaugural address and other speeches, inside the Capitol has left most of the about 200,000 people who had received tickets to attend the ceremony out in the cold, unable to be at the ceremony itself — the first time that the inauguration hasn’t been held outside since Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural. This will be a more intimate affair. The Rotunda will be packed with lawmakers and other dignitaries — including former presidents and tech titans — rubbing shoulders as Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance take their oaths. The cavernous hall was also the site of some of the most infamous scenes of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, when a mob of Trump’s supporters clashed with police. Some Democrats have taken note of the significance of the setting. “Well the great thing about moving Trump’s inauguration to the rotunda is that all of his supporters already know how to get there,” Democratic operative Doug Landry posted on X. The speech When he became president in 2017, Trump gave an inaugural address promising to end the “American carnage” that he said had made the United States a country in decline. Former president George W. Bush famously observed, according to one report, that the speech “was some weird s---.” Eight years later, Trump still speaks about the state of the nation in deeply pessimistic terms, especially when discussing the country under Biden. Will he opt for a repeat of “American carnage” or leave a more positive impression? After all, the premise for Trump’s speech — the vibes, if you will — is markedly different this time. Trump has spent the 2024 transition basking in the glow of not only decisively winning the election, but also being welcomed by corporate and world leaders who were less swift to accept him after his 2016 upset. One thing that feels overlooked about the moment, however, is that Americans are in a more sour mood today than they were eight years ago. Gallup found last month that only 19 percent of Americans were satisfied with the direction of the country, down from 27 percent in December 2016. Trump and his allies have promised his speech will focus on “unity.” Steve Bannon, an architect of the “American carnage” idea, told ABC News yesterday that Trump now needs to bring together his coalitions behind his agenda. “I think he’ll lay out the challenges, and he’ll lay out the beginning in some sort of 65-, 60,000-foot level what his policies and proposals are, but it will all be about unifying the country and going forward,” Bannon said. The executive orders All signs point to Trump using his first hours in office to issue a raft of executive orders related to the most important issues from the election. It is typical for a new president to do so, but Trump and his allies have been telegraphing a scenario far more sweeping than usual. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) previously predicted there would be “shock and awe with executive orders,” and during his pre-inauguration rally Sunday in Washington, Trump confirmed as much. “You’re going to see executive orders that are going to make you extremely happy — lots of them. Lots of them,” Trump said, adding that the orders would include the “most aggressive, sweeping effort” to secure the border. One immediate focus is the federal ban on TikTok. Trump promised yesterday that he will issue an executive order today to delay the ban and give the company more time to find an American buyer, our colleague Cristiano Lima-Strong reports. Congressional Republicans received a briefing yesterday from Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller about executive orders that would include sweeping changes related to the southern border, energy and the federal government workforce, our colleagues Marianna Sotomayor, Jacqueline Alemany and Hannah Knowles report. On the campaign trail, Trump made a litany of promises about what he would do on “day one” in a second term, such as “clos[ing] the border” and ending what he called Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate.” Some of the day one promises were realistic, while others were less so, either because they were simply too vague or would probably require congressional cooperation to implement. Then there’s the issue of pardons for people charged with crimes in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. That was also a day one promise, but the scope of such pardons remains to be seen, and Vance recently said those who “committed violence” that day “obviously” shouldn’t be pardoned. “Tomorrow, everybody in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision on the J6 hostages,” Trump told his supporters at yesterday’s rally. | 
Meryl Kornfield and 
