Dem
47
GOP
53
The ghost of William Henry Harrison strikes back. As readers probably know, Harrison had the shortest presidency, running from March 4, 1841, to April 4, 1841. Schoolchildren are taught that Harrison died from pneumonia brought on by a 2-hour inaugural speech given outdoors in freezing weather and heavy wind. Modern historians believe that Harrison died of enteric fever, due to infected drinking water from a sewage dump just seven blocks upstream from the White House. See? Even then, D.C. was a swamp. Donald Trump, no student of history, isn't taking any chances. With freezing weather and heavy winds expected in D.C. today, he moved his inauguration indoors to the Rotunda of the Capitol.
This sudden change is causing massive problems, as the 220,000 people with inauguration tickets will not fit in the Rotunda. Ronald Reagan's second inauguration was held there. The Rotunda can hold 700 people—if they are squished together like herring in a barrel, as they were for Reagan's second inauguration:
This means that if the 535 members of Congress, the Supreme Court Justices, the new cabinet(-level) nominees, half a dozen tech billionaires, and the Republican megadonors are allowed in, maybe 100 other people will be invited, at most. Congressional spouses probably won't make the cut, except for the (Republican) leadership. If Melania wants to come (probably not), she can probably make the guest list. About 20,000 ticket holders will be allowed into the (indoor) Capital One Arena (used for hockey and basketball) to watch the inauguration live on the giant video screens, but that still leaves 200,000 ticket holders out in the cold. Literally. Just the logistics of picking the lucky 20,000 and telling them they have a golden ticket and where to go could be daunting. Or maybe it will be first-come, first-served, and the first 20,000 people willing to spend the night standing in line in freezing weather will get in. That would be a good way to separate the sheeple from the goats. The Inauguration Committee urged all the others to watch at "indoor venues of their choice" (English translation: Go find a bar somewhere and watch it on TV there). Tough luck. For a middle-sized Trump donor or the honored guest of a Republican senator, that is kind of a bummer.
The Washington Post interviewed Trump supporters who had tickets and who had come from as far away as Colorado to be there when their hero was inaugurated again. All of them were sad that they wouldn't get to see it live, but for the most part, they understood that Trump's health came first. One plus for Trump about the inauguration is that he won't have to deal with reports that the crowd was much smaller than last time. No one knows for sure how big the crowd would have been, but D.C. hotels are at only 70% of capacity vs. 95% in 2017, so probably fewer people came to watch than last time. And far fewer than Obama 2008 or 2012, of course.
In any event, at noon today, Donald Trump will once again become president and he is expected to waste no time getting going on his main issue: deporting undocumented immigrants. He is expected to sign a slew of executive orders this afternoon and then launch raids in "sanctuary cities" later this week. He will keep going until his hand gets too tired to sign anymore. Many of these XOs will undo XOs Joe Biden issued. That's the problem with XOs. One president can make a rule with his pen but the next president can erase it with his pen. For example, Trump will end "catch and release," which allows people arrested for immigration violations to remain in the country until their trials. He wants them removed immediately. Trump also said he plans to "take the handcuffs off Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials."
One thing he will do quickly, probably within a few days, is declare a national emergency, which will give him additional powers and resources to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants. That is probably legal since the law gives the president the power to declare emergencies. What is far less likely to be legal is an XO that will deny U.S. citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. The Fourteenth Amendment states that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen, except for the children of certain foreign diplomats and Native Americans living on reservations, which were not considered U.S. soil in 1868. If Trump signs such an XO, eventually the Supreme Court is going to have to decide this, but there is nothing in the Amendment that excludes the children of undocumented immigrants.
Another action Trump might take today is to pardon the 1,500 people convicted of participating in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. If he pardons all of them, that will ignite a firestorm. Pardoning someone who entered the Capitol through a broken window is one thing. Pardoning someone who assaulted a police officer is something else. Police officers might have some reaction to that.
Trump will also likely direct all government officials to remove all DEI programs from their agencies and ban transgender people from serving in the military. He has said that he will sign an XO stating that there are exactly two genders: male and female. He has not said how he will determine which is which, though. If he leaves that to the agencies, different ones may come up with different definitions. Some may go with chromosomes, some with birth certificates, some with current (or previous) genitalia, and some with asking people which they are. It could be chaos if there is no national standard to the question: What is a woman, actually?
Blue-state attorneys general are expecting a blitz of XOs and are prepared to sue the federal government over them. Trump's team knows this and is preparing to respond. Trump doesn't care much about the law and may well hope that the initial deportation cases, which will likely be the first to make their way to court, hit Trump-appointed judges who will not stay deportations until the cases are heard. A much bigger problem is the logistics. First, large-scale deportations are going to cost billions of dollars. Congress hasn't appropriated that money yet. It could be included in the giant budget reconciliation bill Trump wants, but that could take weeks or months to put together and pass (and see below for more).
Second, where will the deportees go? Mexico may take the people who are Mexican citizens, but what about the deportees from Central America, the Caribbean, South America and Africa? Will those countries welcome back their citizens? Many of the undocumented immigrants are indeed undocumented—that is, they have no documents, like passports, showing where they are from. Then what? Where do they go, and what if the country they are supposedly from does not accept them?
One side note is that in addition to being Inauguration Day, today is the day Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is celebrated (even though King was born on Jan. 15, 1929). This coincidence is fairly rare, having occurred only twice before, in 1997 (Bill Clinton's second inauguration) and 2013 (Barack Obama's second inauguration). Both of those presidents greatly respected King. In fact, Obama pointedly used a Bible that once belonged to King to take the oath of office. Today's inauguree (?) certainly does not respect King and has used bigoted language for years.
King's oldest son, Martin Luther King III, said: "The King holiday is a moment to renew and ask ourselves whether we've achieved the dream my parents envisioned. The truth is, we have not. But every January offers a chance to begin again." America is a work in progress, but some people want to go backwards, not forwards. (V)