What Went Down During Joe Biden’s Inauguration

Jennifer Lopez sings a medley of “This Land Is Your Land” and “America The Beautiful” — two songs that sometimes get mentioned as possible alternatives to “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a national anthem.

A significant “second” this morning — Biden will be the country’s second Roman Catholic president. (The other, of course, was President John F. Kennedy.) His Catholicism is a big part of his personal identity and his political worldview, and he attends mass every Sunday. He also attended a pre-inauguration mass this morning. It’s worth noting, though, that he’s not exactly popular with some conservative Catholic leaders because of his stance on issues like abortion. And he could end up on the other side of legal battles from the Catholic Church during his presidency on issues like religious exemptions in health care and hiring (where he’ll also be up against a solidly conservative, majority-Catholic Supreme Court).

It’s been just over 100 years since women won the right to vote. But it’s worth remembering that for a lot of that time, as I think Kaleigh mentioned earlier, women of color were effectively disenfranchised. The first woman of color wasn’t elected to Congress until the mid-1960s. Meredith, Anna and I explored the historic breakthroughs for women of color in national politics — and how we got here — in a story earlier this week. The big takeaway we heard from experts was that parties and voters overall shouldn’t really get the credit for this historic moment. Women of color — as candidates, organizers, and voters — made this happen.