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After setting my phone notifications to Do Not Disturb for the next four years, I spent Inauguration Day watching nonstop sports. All of the teams and individuals I was rooting for lost. (I guess you can run, but you can't hide.) Since I worked hard to avoid the proceedings, I don't want to pile on with coverage of them. Instead, I'll focus on one American splitscreen. On the way out, Joe Biden offered preemptive pardons for members of the House Committee that investigated Jan 6th, and other individuals including Gen. Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, and Liz Cheney. As these patriots, truth-tellers, and life-savers were being pardoned because of threats of revenge, America’s richest CEOs locked arms with the guy making the threats. It doesn't get much more stark than that.
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+ Or maybe it does: In a move as shameful as it was predictable, Trump Pardoned the January 6 rioters. "The pardons and pending dismissals also covered more than 600 rioters were charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers at the Capitol, nearly 175 of whom were accused of doing so with deadly or dangerous weapons including baseball bats, two-by-fours, crutches, hockey sticks and broken wooden table legs." NYT (Gift Article): What to Know About Trump’s Broad Grant of Clemency to Jan. 6 Rioters.
+ Biden's concern over Trump's thirst for revenge seems well-founded. He's already terminated John Bolton’s security detail, fired Mark Milley and Jose Andres (remember, heroes are villains in the upside-down), and ordered the portrait of Milley to be taken down from Pentagon wall.
+ Meanwhile, Elon Musk appeared to make back-to-back fascist salutes at inauguration rally. Maybe he has a frozen shoulder and was just trying to say his heart goes out to us. In The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel ponders, Did Elon Musk actually toss off a Sieg heil! at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally today? We're entering a(nother) era in which we'll be left to wonder whether or not to believe what we see with our own eyes. Might as well get started on day one. Whatever Musk's intent, right wing extremists and neo-Nazis were abuzz over the salute. It's unlikely to be the last time this administration goes viral with these groups.
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Using the Pen as a Sword
It was a busy first day of a executive orders highlighted by a series of immigration directives (including declaring an immigration emergency and plans to end birthright citizenship), plans to pull out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreements, the rolling back DEI and protections for transgender people, and granting TikTok a 75 ban reprieve. Also, "Trump planned to sign an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, making it the Gulf of America. The highest mountain in North America, now known as Denali, will revert back to Mount McKinley."
+ NYT: Trump’s Executive Orders: Reversing Biden’s Policies and Attacking the 'Deep State.'
+ "The lawsuit by the 18 states, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, claims Mr. Trump's initiative violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which the federal government has long interpreted to mean that those born on American soil are citizens at birth." 18 states sue Trump administration over order seeking to overturn birthright citizenship.
+ "A few dozen migrants had already scored appointments. Some of them had waited almost a year in Mexico, applying every day for the chance to cross the border legally. And then, within minutes, their dream of making a new life in the U.S. was undone." NPR: Almost as soon as Donald Trump became President Trump, the phone application that allows migrants appointments to seek asylum in the United States went down.
+ NYT (Gift Article): Trump Signs Orders to Promote Fossil Fuels and End Climate Policies.
+ Trump admin removes commandant of Coast Guard, citing border failures and focus on DEI.
+ And just one example of how detailed the new administration is being when it comes to the delete button: A federal website on reproductive rights has vanished.
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Whiplashes to Ashes
"As air warms, its capacity to hold moisture rises, and the increase is not linear but exponential. Higher temperatures thus boost evaporation, with two apparently opposing results—fiercer rains and deeper droughts. Southern California has experienced both extremes in recent years: the past two winters were exceptionally wet; the summer and fall of 2024 were exceptionally dry. During the wet periods, grasses and shrubs on L.A.’s ridges and canyons thrived. In the dry seasons, the brush withered into kindling waiting to ignite. In a paper published earlier this month, a group of researchers led by Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the California Institute for Water Resources, dubbed such swings from wet to dry 'hydroclimate whiplash.' The phenomenon, the paper demonstrated, is on the rise worldwide. 'I don’t see this as a failure of firefighting,' Swain said of the devastation in L.A. 'I see it as a tragic lesson in the limits of what firefighting can achieve under conditions that are this extreme.'" Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker: Climate Whiplash and Fire Come to L.A.
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What a Difference a Day Makes
"Fifty-one days ago, Ryan Day stood frozen as the victorious (again) Michigan Wolverines planted a flag in the middle of Ohio Stadium. All around him were tears and jeers and calls for his job. Players fought. Pepper spray wafted through the air. It felt apoplectic then." It probably feels better now. Day's Ohio State team are national champs after a win against a game Notre Dame team.
+ Earlier this season, Ryan Day hired security at his house because of threats after Ohio State's loss to Michigan. (Sidenote: He has a remarkably high winning percentage.)
+ Meanwhile, in the age of NIL, money reigns supreme. After all that, the richest school wins the college football playoff.
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Extra, Extra
Cease and Release: "In an Instagram story, which was shared by Israeli media, Damari thanked her family and the large protest movement that coalesced to advocate for the release of the hostages. 'Thank you thank you thank you I’m the happiest in the world,' she said." The much-anticipated beginning of the Gaza ceasefire has held and the first three hostages were released over the weekend. Another four are expected to be freed this weekend.
+ Cecile Richards: "Cecile Richards, the dynamic former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and one of the country’s most well-known defenders of abortion rights, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 67."
+ Booze Clues: "The industry’s fortunes began to change toward the end of 2022 and into 2023 and 2024, when sales of spirits fell after 20 years of roughly continuous growth, bringing the entire industry into decline. The only spirits to see growth last year, according to Nielsen, were tequila and Canadian whisky." Dry January may extend into more months. Why America is in an alcohol recession.
+ Nth Avenue Freeze Out: "The ambulance parked up by a green in central Berlin is small, almost toy-like; a thick orange stripe across its sides, a tangle of wires looping from the ceiling. It is one of three retrofitted and operated by Tomorrow.Bio, Europe's first cryonics lab, whose mission is to freeze patients after death, and one day bring them back to life." (I wonder if one can sign up to just be frozen for four years?)
+ Say Cheese: "For most of the past half-century, cottage cheese has been known as a food that you eat when you’re on a diet and trying not to eat much food. But these days, Americans who are obsessed with health, wellness and longevity are so hungry for rich sources of protein that cottage cheese has become one of the sexiest products in the grocery store." We Grew Up Hating Cottage Cheese. Now We’re All Eating It. (Ever have one of those days when you realize you've spent your entire adult life trying to achieve internet fame only to realize that effin' cottage cheese went viral before you did?)
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Bottom of the News
Canadian man's home security camera captures the sight and sound of a meteorite strike. (It was either that or a really aggressive DoorDash delivery...)<