As a historic presidential inauguration comes to a close, here are our key takeaways from the day.
It was a day of historic firsts.
With her hand on two bibles – one from the late Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, and one from family friend Regina Shelton – Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first woman, and as the first Black and South Asian American woman to become vice-president. She was sworn in by the supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the nation’s highest court. It was an emotional moment for many across the country. “In tears watching this extraordinary moment for women in the US and the world,” said Oprah Winfrey.
Soon after her inauguration, Harris swore Democrats Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff and Alex Padilla into the Senate. Warnock is the first Black senator from Georgia, and Ossoff is the first Jewish senator from the state. Padilla, who was appointed to take the California Senate seat vacated by Harris, is the first Latino senator to represent a state where Latino residents make up 40% of the population.
“As I traveled to Washington from Los Angeles, I thought about my parents and the sacrifices they made to secure the American dream for their son,” Padilla said.
“It’s a new day, full of possibility,” said Warnock, who has the unique title of “senator reverend” – his last job was pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr used to preach.
A new Senate later voted to confirm Avril Haines as the director of national intelligence – and she became the first woman to hold the post.
The pandemic cast a pall over the day.
This inauguration day was also historic in that it took place amid a historic, tragic pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 Americans. We saw Biden, Harris, and their guests – including former presidents and other dignitaries – wearing masks, keeping their distance from one another. An event that would normally have been attended by hundreds of thousands, or more than a million, was tempered by a respiratory infection that has prevented Americans, and the world, from gathering for big celebrations.
In lieu of an inaugural ball, Biden and Harris held a virtual celebration, which the Guardian’s arts writer Adrian Horton describes as a “seamless Zoom compilation” of speeches and performances. There were cheery, even joyful moments. Harris was escorted to the White House by the famed Showtime Marching Band of Howard University, her alma mater.
But there was a heaviness hanging over the day. In his inaugural address, Biden asked: “ I would like to ask you to join me in a moment of silent prayer to remember all those we lost this past year to the pandemic.
“To those 400,000 fellow Americans – mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. We will honor them by becoming the people and nation we know we can and should be.”
Reversing Trump’s legacy was Biden’s first order of business.
Just hours after taking office, Biden signed a stack of 17 executive actions aimed at reversing Donald Trump’s legacy on public health, immigration and climate change.
His first move was to mandate masks and physical distancing in federal buildings, and on federal land – in a sharp contrast to his predecessor, who denied public health research and refused to don masks, Biden did so while wearing a mask.
The 46th president halted Trump’s travel ban aimed at Muslim-majority countries, ended emergency funding for the construction Trump’s border wall and moved to rejoin the World Health Organization.
He also signed an order allowing the United States to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and end the Trump administration’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. “I think some of the things we’re going to be doing are bold and vital, and there’s no time to start like today,” he said.
There was a return to presidential norms.
The idea that the US could – or should – get back to norms after a tumultuous year defined by a deadly pandemic and a racial reckoning has been rightly met with dismay by activists, journalists, and many Americans who contend that normal wasn’t working.
“In the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice,” poet Amanda Gorman said at the inauguration.
But at the very least, Biden is reinstating some traditions – small and big. He’s bringing dogs back to the White House after his predecessor became the first president in a century to refuse a presidential pet. He had his executive orders fully vetted by the Office of Legal Counsel, as presidents are meant to.
One of the most significant norms to return: daily press briefings. During a cordial first briefing, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, answered some questions, obfuscated a bit, and promised to return the next day. After weeks and weeks without a coronavirus update from top health officials, Psaki promised that those become a regular affair as well. Journalists will still have to maintain their skepticism. But after the hostile, fantastical – and ultimately absent – press briefings of the Trump era, hearing Psaki say, “I’d love to take your questions,” came as a relief to many in the press corps.
The outfits were inspirational.
Yeah, yeah, it was a grave, historic, momentous day. But did you see Michelle Obama’s Coat? Or Jill Biden’s? Or Kamala Harris’ suffragette-purple? Or Bernie Sanders’ cozy beige Burton.
It was a big day for coats, and gloves and mittens. While Obama’s flawless monochromatic maroon look by Black designer Sergio Hudson drew gasps, Sanders’ grumpy-chic, eco-friendly knitwear look, launched a thousand, or ten thousand memes. Amid the array of sartorial choices, there was something for everyone. Janet Yellen’s was blanketed. Harris’ daughter Ella Emhoff wore bedazzled Miu Miu.
Honored guests and dignitaries, young and old served us thrilling looks. There was baby Beau Biden in a navy bonnet. Kamala Harris’s niece Meena Harris rocked sparkly cowboy boots, and her husband, Nikolas Ajagu, came in Air Jordan Dior 1s.
It was a nice reprieve to admire, for a few moments, some fun clothes – before we again had to grapple with the many, many struggles and challenges that still lay ahead.
Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who transfixed the inauguration crowd this morning, has given an interview to a visibly smitten Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Anderson Cooper to Amanda Gorman is all of us: "Wow. You're awesome."
It’s been an inauguration day like no other. The photographer Jordan Gale recorded the preparations for the day for the Guardian US, with the results gathered in this remarkable essay.
Here’s more from the Guardian’s arts writer Adrian Horton:
Hello again from the couch in front of Celebrating America, which has played so far as a technically competent, mostly seamless Zoom compilation of good, if bland and sometimes cringeworthy, intentions.
The special is organized around a celebration of American people – those who feed us (food pantry workers, farmers), care for us (nurses and medical professionals), teach us (teachers), supply us (delivery workers) – represented by private citizens from around the country.
But the main TV draw is, of course, the musical performances by an array of stars, noted more for their broad fanbases than any particular genre or tie to American democracy – Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, Justin Timberlake. Some of the performances have drawn praise amid the quick-shifting parade of this special’s desktop aesthetics: John Legend’s stirring rendition of I’m Feeling Good made the special’s trademark optimism momentarily arresting, while Yolanda Adams’s Hallelujah soundtracked a moving recap of nationwide tributes to the 400,000 Americans lost to the pandemic.
Other performances, such as Bon Jovi’s treacly Here Comes the Sun were, uh, less well-received. “This Tim McGraw and FGL colorblind song is the absolute worst of country,” tweeted sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom of the duet between country artists McGraw and Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard.
The former presidents hammered on the message of “unity” Biden chose as a theme for the day.
“It was a reminder that we can have fierce disagreements and recognize each other’s common humanity and that as Americans we have more in common than what separates us,” Obama said.
It’s a dissonant message, so soon after a deadly attack on the US Capitol, amid a growing threat of rightwing extremism.
Barack Obama, George W Bush, and Bill Clinton deliver a message
“Obviously there was a personal element to see my former vice-president become the 46th president. To see Kamala Harris as our first woman vice president,” Obama said. “But more broadly, I think inaugurations signal a tradition of a peaceful transfer of power that is more than two centuries old.”
“I think if Americans would love their neighbor like they like to be loved themselves, a lot of the division in our society would end,” Bush said.
“Everybody needs to get off their high horse and reach out to their friends and neighbors,” Clinton added.
After a tribute to healthcare workers, Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse in new York who was the first person in the US to get the FDA-approved Covid-19 vaccine.
“Our nurses care for thousands of Covid patients daily. We are often the last people to hold their hands,” she said. “It has taken a toll.”
Nurse Sandra Lindsay receives the second dose of a Pfizer coronavirus disease vaccine, at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the Queens borough of New York City. Photograph: Getty Images
“Some days, I don’t know how I got through it,” she had told the New York Times in December. “Some days I didn’t know how I got home, but I knew I had to rest and get ready to come back and do it again. Because I did not want to leave my team to do it alone.”
Here’s a video from when she received her vaccination:
‘Huge sense of relief’: nurse one of first in US to get Covid vaccine – video
Kamala Harris: 'Believe in what we can do together'
“This is what President Joe Biden has called upon us to summon now: the courage to see beyond crisis,” she said. “To do what is hard, to do what is good, to unite, to believe in ourselves, believe in our country, believe in what we can do together.”
Harris, having been sworn in as the first Black and South Asian American vice president, said: “Even in dark times, we not only dream, we do.”
The program turned to memorializing those who have died of Covid-19.
Reminders that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died were present throughout the day, as we saw Biden, Harris and other leaders in face masks, maintaining physical distance, as Biden signed executive actions mandating masks on federal property, as we watch a virtual celebration in lieu of an Inaugural Ball.
But in the middle of the program, the Celebration of America took a moment to mourn and remember, with a performance of Hallelujah by Yolanda Adams.
We’re now into the capstone of a secure (thanks to nearly 25,000 national guardsmen), surprisingly smooth inauguration day in Washington: the 90-minute celebrity extravaganza known as Celebrating America, a collection of music performances, tributes to America’s essential workers, and nods to better days ahead.
And there’s no more perfect star to host such an event than Tom Hanks, the beloved everyman actor and one of the few cultural figures on whom most Americans can agree (for a full feel-good summary of Hanks’s legendary, evergreen niceness, please see Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s profile in the NY Times from 2019).
From Forrest Gump to the heroic pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, Saving Private to Mr Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Hanks has built a career on playing ordinary Americans rising to extraordinary occasions, men whose unremarkable decency, resilience and kindness evince extraordinary heroism. (Hanks was also the celebrity whose coronavirus diagnosis on 11 March, 2020 was for many the moment the direness of the pandemic really sank in.)
On screen and off, Hanks tends to immediately impart a sense of security — the future in good hands — through the basic principle of caring for those around you under higher ideals. In a year during which much-lauded but deeply under-supported essential workers have kept the country functioning, for a program designed to impart the Biden administration’s intent to work for all Americans (Trump voters included), there are few cultural figures who could hold the center like Hanks.
“I’ve never been more optimistic about America than I am this very day,” Biden said.
“Because of you, democracy has prevailed. That’s why Jill and I, Kamala and Doug, wanted to make sure that our inauguration was not about us, but about you, the American people,” he said.
Looking forward, he added, “America’s story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us – on we, the people. That’s the task before us, the only way we’ll get through the darkness around us.”
“It’s humbling” to stand by the statue of Lincoln, Biden began. Once again, he is emphasizing “unity” tonight.
The president is speaking overlooking the reflecting pool, where yesterday, the inauguration committee lit 400 lamps in remembrance of 400,000 people who have died of Covid-19 in the US.
Jesus why why why. This is what JBJ played the night before the election 2016 at Independence Hall with HRC and the Obamas and now I'm plunged into fury and fucking despair. Cool concert guys.
It starts with a performance with Bruce Springsteen.
Springsteen is performing Land of Hope and Dreams.
The Inauguration is done and now it's time to celebrate! Tune in now for our "Celebrating America" Primetime Special hosted by Tom Hanks. https://t.co/1raIOdMi6F
QAnon's 'Great Awakening' failed to materialize. What's next could be worse
Julia Carrie Wong
Shortly before Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, Dave Hayes – a longtime QAnon influencer who goes by the name Praying Medic – posted a photo of dark storm clouds gathering over the US Capitol on the rightwing social media platform Gab. “What a beautiful black sky,” he wrote to his 92,000 followers, appending a thunderclap emoji.
The message was clear to those well-versed in QAnon lore: “the Storm” – the day of reckoning when Donald Trump and his faithful allies in the military would declare martial law, round up all their many political enemies, and send them to Guantánamo Bay for execution by hanging – was finally here. 20 January 2021 wouldn’t mark the end of Trump’s presidency, but the beginning of “the Great Awakening”
Instead, Trump slunk off to Florida and Biden took the oath of office under a clear blue sky. Now QAnon adherents are left to figure out how to move forward in a world that, time and time again, has proven impervious to their fevered fantasies and fascistic predictions. And while some seem to be waking up to reality, others are doubling down, raising concerns among experts that the movement is ripe for even more extreme radicalization.
“My primary concern about this moment is the Q to JQ move,” said Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, referring to “the Jewish question”, a phrase that white nationalists and neo-Nazis use to discuss their antisemitic belief that Jews control the world. Friedberg said that he had seen clear signs that white nationalists and alt-right figures, who have long disliked QAnon because it focused the Maga movement’s energies away from the “white identity movement”, were preparing to take advantage.
“They view this as a great opportunity to do a mass red-pilling,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security says it will “cease adding individuals into” the Remain in Mexico program.
The Trump administration policy, called the Migrant Protection Protocols, requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while awaiting their day in US immigration court.
Some 60,000 people were sent across the border due to the policy, and many remain there in limbo, facing dangerous, unstable conditions. “Current COVID-19 non-essential travel restrictions, both at the border and in the region, remain in place at this time. All current MPP participants should remain where they are, pending further official information from US government officials,” the DHS said in a statement.
The pandemic has caused immigration courts to pause the processing of migrants caught up in the Remain in Mexico policy, so those who are stuck across the border have faced an extra layer of uncertainty.
Read more on the Biden administration’s immigration plans:
Asked what it was like for Biden to head into the White House today, Psaki said Biden felt “an incredible sense of calm, some joy, and he felt like he was coming home”.
Joe Biden hugs First Lady Jill Biden as they arrive at the White House in Washington, DC. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
