What Went Down During Joe Biden’s Inauguration

President-elect and Vice president-elect no more. Biden and Harris are officially sworn in today as commander-in-chief and second in command. And as we said at the outset, today was an unusual Inauguration Day in many different respects: Trump refused to attend, attendance was severely restricted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and thousands of National Guard troops were on hand to protect the peace.

Biden’s inaugural address centered on unity and bringing the country together as one, but as my colleagues discussed on the live blog, that will be a hard task for Biden to undertake, given how divided America is. It’s something we’ll be covering in the years ahead, too.

Here’s the crew’s headlines of today’s event, followed by their final thoughts.

Micah: Biden Inaugurated As 46th President; Harris Sworn In As First Woman Vice President

Amelia: Biden Takes Office At A Moment of National Crisis

Julia: Historic Inauguration Presents Democracy As A Work in Progress

Nathaniel: President Calls For Unity, Vice President Makes History

Kaleigh: Unity The Theme Of The Day At A Pandemic Inauguration

Seth: Biden Calls For Disagreement To Not Become Disunity, Vows To Be Everyone’s President

Geoffrey: Biden Calls For Unity And Strength In A Time Of Cascading Crises

Meredith: President Biden Commits to Unifying A Divided Nation

Galen: Do Words And Traditions Have The Power To Unite In The Midst Of An ‘Uncivil War?’ We’ll Find Out.

Meena: Extraordinary Times Require The Most Ordinary Inauguration

Shom: A Normal Inauguration In Abnormal Times Is The Coda Into An Uncertain Future

Somehow, summing up the transition from the Trump presidency to the Biden administration feels impossible. I keep coming back to the idea of Trump as both a symptom and accelerant, and thus Trumpism (and its white supremacy and antidemocratic values) predated Trump and will outlive him.

Biden and Harris are inheriting so many crises. IDK, maybe my main takeaway today is both a big deal and a pretty low bar: It’s something to be confident again that the executive branch will be focused on trying to address those crises.

Biden enters office at a time of deep national division. It will be difficult to govern without making at least a little bipartisan progress, barring substantial institutional changes such as the end of the filibuster, which seems unlikely. He took steps today to lay out a welcoming approach, but it remains to be seen whether or not we have hit the valley’s floor, or if there are further depths for our country to slide to because of its many struggles and divides.

This was in so many ways an unusual Inauguration Day because of the pandemic, and yet it was also refreshingly usual in its familiarity. It is also of course a historic moment as the first Black, first Asian and first woman vice president was sworn into office. In these ways it was a very apt beginning to 2021: uncertain, a bit different, a bit hopeful, with lots of work ahead.

Not to be missed, Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, currently delivering a powerhouse of a poem.

Well, with the caveat that I had streaming problems and missed some of the speech, I will go back to the question I posed earlier about the use of history to establish continuity today, since many of the usual traditions were interrupted by the pandemic and the exceptional nature of the outgoing administration and the last four years (see: Trump not attending). I think this is what we saw — lots of references to Lincoln and the Civil War, to the founders and to the other living former presidents.

This inauguration was odd in so many ways — an empty crowd, masks, no outgoing president at the event to mark a peaceful transfer of power. But at the same time, it was also a forceful reminder of how Biden wants things to change with his administration. A big emphasis on unity, a shoutout to the first female (and first woman of color) vice president, and a moment of silence for the victims of COVID-19. Biden pitched himself as the man for this difficult moment — now we get to see how he approaches the extraordinary tests he’s facing as president.

That was an inauguration that was extraordinary for its ordinariness, given the turmoil of the past few weeks, months and years. Now, the question is whether Biden can marshal public support for his presidency. Two things are at stake there: Uniting (to the extent it’s possible) a deeply divided nation and whether Biden can be an effective president and pass meaningful legislation (easier to do when you’re popular).

Biden unsurprisingly spoke of unity, of being president for those who voted against him as well as those who voted for him. This is very consistent with how he campaigned in the general election and in the primaries, and indeed how he’s campaigned most of his career. But he also balanced that message with calling out the “uncivil war” and pushing back on lies. He didn’t specifically mention Trump or QAnon, but his direction on that was clear. It was a difficult needle to thread, but it seemed like the right combination.

Sarah, Biden has really stressed unity as the overarching theme in his speech, but achieving unity is tough when Democrats and Republicans have fundamentally different perceptions around bread and butter issues like the economy. To me the big question is as follows: What electoral interest to Republicans have to work across the aisle? While many of the policies Biden has run on seem to be fairly popular even in swing states, there is a fairly substantial disconnect between where voters are and where legislators think voters are. When public opinion doesn’t necessarily translate into policy, it’s tough to see how even unity among voters is enough to generate unity among politicians in a way that addresses policy priorities for Biden that Perry discussed earlier.

I’m monitoring the reaction from the QAnon crowd online. It’s a mix of confusion, sadness, fear, and determined faith that something will still happen that will make Trump president again. Lots of “I feel sick” and “I’m crying and praying” messages. Many are now saying they feel duped and are questioning whether the QAnon conspiracy is real.

Just two blocks south of Black Lives Matter Plaza — a section of 16th Street Northwest in Washington, D.C., renamed by Mayor Muriel Bowser last June after President Trump used tear gas on people protesting the police killing of George Floyd on the way to a photo-op — sits the White House where President-elect Biden will soon enter as President Biden. And he’ll have Black Americans to thank for helping him get there.

In his victory speech after he was projected as the winner, Biden noted that, “Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”

But what will Biden do to return the favor? Black voters kept Biden in the top of the polls through much of the primaries and helped him win the Democratic nomination. They also helped Biden carry Georgia, a red state that hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than 20 years. Biden should probably also thank Abrams, as her playbook and organizing power helped deliver a trifecta in Washington with the election of Warnock and Ossoff to the U.S. Senate (they’ll also be sworn in later today).

We’ll know soon enough what Biden will do. But the stakes are incredibly high. Black Americans have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic on every level — from the death toll to access to testing sites to receiving COVID-19 vaccinations.

The Black establishment in the Democratic Party wields a lot of influence, which could prove to be a sizable force in keeping Biden accountable for the promises he made to Black Americans on the campaign trail. For instance, in the Democratic primary, many prominent Black Democrats called for Biden to pick a Black woman as his pick for vice president, including high-ranking Rep. James Clyburn, who told NPR last March, “I really believe that we’ve reached a point in this country where African American women need to be rewarded for the loyalty that they’ve given to this party.”

Harris, of course, will be the first Black woman and first Indian American woman to be vice president. Biden’s Cabinet picks also include six Black people, including retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, who would be the first Black defense secretary. The question remains whether Biden will take actions that affect not only party elites but also Black voters, who have time and again turned out for him.

Biden is slated to issue a lot of executive orders in the next few days. But there is no indication that he will unilaterally forgive the student loan debt of millions of Americans, as more liberal Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and even some more centrist figures like Sen. Chuck Schumer spent much of the transition period lobbying for.

Warren, Schumer and others have argued that a president can forgive student debt and had urged Biden to forgive up to at least $50,000 of Americans’ debt using his executive power. But Biden had questioned if he had the legal authority to take this step.

It’s telling that Biden opted not to simply enact this policy and then try to defend it in the courts. It is likely that Biden is wary of using his executive power in ways that moderate Democrats and Republicans will view as unusual and unprecedented. It also perhaps underscores that he and some of his advisers don’t think forgiving student loan debt in such a broad way is an ideal policy (as opposed to more targeted aid or aid for people who did not attend college.)

But Biden’s resistance to this policy is telling, as it’s part of a dynamic that we are likely to see a lot of in his administration: Biden disappointing his party’s left wing. It’s likely, for instance, a President Sanders or Warren would have tried to implement a massive debt forgiveness via executive order had they won the Democratic primary and been elected president. But, of course, neither of them did.

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration in 2017, there was a question of how swiftly Trump would move to overturn executive actions implemented by Obama, given that Trump had campaigned on undoing much of his predecessor’s legacy. And while Trump did end up revoking a number of consequential Obama actions, like withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change and withdrawing the U.S. from a nuclear agreement with Iran, undoing an outgoing president’s executive actions is not a given — even when the incoming president is from the other party.

One reason is because executive actions typically expand the scope of executive branch influence, and an incoming president often wants to preserve that influence. After all, he is now the head of that branch. That said, there is little question whether Biden will undo a host of Trump’s executive actions, including the travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries and a recent order that would lift travel restrictions put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.

So the big question this time around is not whether Biden will undo many of Trump’s executive actions, but how easy undoing some of his actions will be. And undoing some of Trump’s executive actions could be quite difficult. For instance, the Trump administration changed the naturalization exam with an executive memo, making the citizenship test longer and more difficult. But the changes to the exam already went into effect last month. Undoing something like this will be far more laborious than simply reversing the action.

All told, undoing some of Trump’s most consequential executive actions will require a lot more work from Biden than just signing his name.

Well, this has all gone off without a hitch so far. And I have to say I’m pleased, because I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who was worried about that after Jan. 6.

In addition to the inauguration of a new president, today is also the day Georgia’s newest senators, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, get sworn in. So today is also the day Democrats officially take control of the Senate.

Biden is extolling “tolerance and humility” and “standing in the other person’s shoes” as a way of ending the county’s “uncivil war.” As political scientists like Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe have documented, this is not going to be easy for some people to do. A significant chunk of Americans (around 15 – 20 percent) think violence against the other party is at least sometimes justified. Dehumanization, too, is an increasingly prevalent feature of American partisanship, as FiveThirtyEight contributor Erin Cassese has found. Grappling with those dark realities is going to be one of the biggest challenges of Biden’s presidency.

Biden said, “We must end this uncivil war.” This speech has made clear that Biden’s administration knows what it is up against, in terms of the growing political polarization in the U.S., or what academics have recently referred to as political sectarianism.

For me, Sarah, he has to go further than reaching across the aisle and getting some bipartisan bills through Congress. This is a much bigger issue than legislation. What kind of efforts will Biden make to reach the citizens who believe the election was stolen? Who believe in a conspiracy theory that there is an evil cabal of child traffickers? I’m not sure if it’s possible, but that needs to be the goal.

Sarah, Biden keeps returning to the idea that disagreement is normal and healthy but must not become disunity. This also seems consistent with his campaign messaging. He consistently ran as a candidate who could speak to different factions within the Democratic Party but could also reach out to independents and some Republicans. And he had, most likely, the most ideologically diverse range of supporters within the Democratic primary.

In case you missed it live, you can watch Harris and Biden get sworn in here.

Biden seems to be walking a fine line, Sarah. He’s calling and hoping for unity, but he’s also throwing in notes that strike directly against both-sidesism. “There is truth and there are lies, lies told for power and for profit,” Biden said.

As Perry wrote, Biden may be hoping for Republican cooperation but also planning to push stuff forward without it.

To me, the bigger question is whether Biden can keep the Democratic caucuses in the Senate and House unified. Democrats can pass a lot of meat-and-potatoes legislation (COVID-19 relief, election reform, strengthening Obamacare) using Democratic votes alone (the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, etc. were never going to happen given Biden’s moderation).

Sarah, I think Biden’s background on Capitol Hill and relationships with people like soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader McConnell could enable some bits of unity and progress. But on big moves, it’s going to be like pulling teeth because of how far apart the parties are. So I don’t expect many big things to happen with bipartisan support.

I think one big initial test for Biden, Sarah, is the sweeping coronavirus relief bill he’s said will be one of his first priorities. Over the past year, Congress has been in a pretty much constant state of deadlock over relief measures that economists and public health experts say are necessary to keep the country afloat in a time of crisis. Biden’s relief package is certainly bold, but he could really struggle to get Republicans on board with the $1.9 trillion price tag. And of course, it looks like the Senate could be juggling a second impeachment trial for Trump at the same time.

Given Trump’s continued refusal to concede the election until the very end of his presidency and the ongoing danger posed by the coronavirus pandemic, it’s safe to say that this inauguration was never going to be normal. But what do people make of Biden’s speech so far. Is he delivering on his promise of unity? What will you be looking for in the first 100 days as a benchmark in assessing whether he meets that goal?

We’ve also finalized our approval rating average for Trump’s term. His final ratings are 38.6 percent approve vs. 57.9 percent disapprove. Biden approval tracker coming soon!

This is crazy and embarrassing to say, but the @POTUS Twitter handle looks to have been transferred to Biden, and that somehow feels like a big deal?

Biden addresses those who didn’t vote for him in the classic expression of, “I will be a president for all Americans.” He says to them, “Hear me out as we move forward, take a measure of me and my heart.”

A quick search suggests that no inaugural address has made reference to the Emancipation Proclamation before. The Emancipation Proclamation is a fascinating reference because it was a use of presidential war power, in a fairly narrow and technical sense, to attain a much larger goal — to make the Civil War, unquestionably, a war to end slavery. It was criticized at the time for applying to enslaved people in the Confederacy but not to those in states that had remained loyal to the Union. It speaks to different aspects of presidential power, and how presidents can follow the Constitution closely, not overstepping the bounds of their power, and still make incredible change.

And … Joe Biden is officially president now!

Biden is echoing some of his campaign messages that acknowledged, in detail, moments of “crisis and challenge” in American history, but claimed that the country had overcome them.

Perry wrote about this earlier, but so far in this speech we’re seeing the same four priorities new White House chief of staff Ron Klain laid out in a memo released over the weekend: “the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis and a racial equity crisis.”

We’re already hearing a huge contrast with Trump’s 2017 inaugural address, where he painted a dark picture of “American carnage.” Ironically, that was a moment of of stability and economic prosperity — now, of course, we’re in a global pandemic, an economic crisis and a moment of intense political turbulence and division. But Biden’s tone so far is optimistic while still acknowledging the challenges of the moment. “Uniting to fight the foes we face, anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness,” he said. “With unity, we can do great things, important things.”

Biden is clearly describing domestic terrorism as one of the primary threats to the nation, alongside the pandemic and joblessness.

Biden quotes Lincoln, saying, “My whole soul is in it.” “It” being uniting America.

Biden doesn’t wait long to reference the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, saying that despite that, “we come together as one nation under God” to carry out the peaceful transfer of power. And as we’ve already discussed on this live blog, it’s not actually clear whether today really qualifies as a peaceful transfer of power, considering thousands of National Guard troops have to stand guard at the Capitol to carry out this change in administration.

As Biden begins his inaugural address, he notes that “the will of the people has been heard” and situates the election in the struggle that ensued afterward. These addresses are sometimes more ceremonial and avoid references to elections or mandates. But not always — Clinton talked about the 1992 election and said the electorate had “raised their voices in an unmistakable chorus.”

In his inaugural address, Biden begins by saying how precious and fragile democracy is, referencing the violent insurrection at the Capitol two weeks ago, saying that in this hour, democracy has prevailed.

Chief Justice Roberts, who just administered the oath of office to Biden, has got to be pretty relieved about this moment. He took a couple of very unpopular stands against Trump in narrow Supreme Court rulings and got a lot of flak as a result. The Supreme Court isn’t likely to recede into the background under Biden, of course — we’re likely to see some contentious cases involving Biden executive orders and regulations, for one thing. But with a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, Roberts likely won’t be personally in the spotlight in the same way he was under Trump.

Chief Justice John Roberts gets the first “Mr. President” in of the Biden administration. (Though, yeah, as Nate points out, it’s not official until 12 p.m.)

I’ll be That Guy who points out that Biden, even after having been sworn in, is not technically president until noon. So we’ve got about nine more minutes of President Trump to go here.

If you all recall, in 2009 Obama had to re-recite the oath of office later in the day because Roberts fumbled his words, and so did Obama.

As I note in my recent book, Democrats picked Biden for one key trait: electability. And he managed to deliver on that. But since becoming the nominee, he’s demonstrated another key trait: empathy. This didn’t come up much in the primary debates in 2019 and 2020, but his ability to speak to those experiencing loss and relate his own losses proved to be a very useful skill on the campaign trail, and perhaps even more so since the November election.

Biden is sworn in on his family’s 5-inch-thick, 127-year-old bible.

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.

Harris is from Oakland, and the Golden State Warriors gifted Harris her own “VP Harris” jersey, which Harris said she will hang in her White House office. The Warriors promotional video also features a young girl, “Stella” from Oakland, who says, “I like that Kamala looks like me, and I can do anything.”

This is quite a moment.