Issue of the Week: Human Rights, Economic Opportunity, War, Environment, Disease, Population, Personal Growth
President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address in the US Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025, CNN, Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Today, Donald Trump was innaugurated president of the United States for the second time, after losing re-election in 2020. The issues that have occurred since his 2020 defeat to his 2024 victory are innumerbale, unprecedented and could not be more consequential for America and the world. We will expand on these issues as always. For today, we refer to a number of related articles:
“Donald Trump’s Second Inaugural Speech, Annotated”
January 20, 2025
[Introduction from The New York Times].
President Trump, in his first remarks after being sworn into office inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, portrayed himself as the only person who could save the United States from decline, and offered early indications of his first actions he would take in office.
Here is an annotated transcript of the speech.
[The annotated comments are at the bottom of the page because of the technical manner in which this copies from the Times. To see it with the comments directly related to the relevant portion of the speech highlighted in the article, go to the article here. The transcript below is from NPR. There are insignificant differences between this and the Times transcript, but the NPR transcript is easier to present in this context]:
President Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural address
Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. (Applause.) Wow. Thank you very, very much.
Vice President Vance, Speaker Johnson, Senator Thune, Chief Justice Roberts, justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and my fellow citizens, the golden age of America begins right now. (Applause.)
From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first. (Applause.)
Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end. (Applause.)
And our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free. (Applause.)
America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before. (Applause.)
I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success. A tide of change is sweeping the country, sunlight is pouring over the entire world, and America has the chance to seize this opportunity like never before.
But first, we must be honest about the challenges we face. While they are plentiful, they will be annihilated by this great momentum that the world is now witnessing in the United States of America.
As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.
We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while, at the same time, stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad.
It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.
We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people.
Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina — who have been treated so badly — (applause) — and other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago or, more recently, Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense. They’re raging through the houses and communities, even affecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country — some of whom are sitting here right now. They don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting. But we can’t let this happen. Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change.
We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world.
And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them. All of this will change starting today, and it will change very quickly. (Applause.)
My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over. (Applause.)
Our liberties and our nation’s glorious destiny will no longer be denied. And we will immediately restore the integrity, competency, and loyalty of America’s government.
Over the past eight years, I have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year history, and I’ve learned a lot along the way.
The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one — that, I can tell you. Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and, indeed, to take my life.
Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
That is why each day under our administration of American patriots, we will be working to meet every crisis with dignity and power and strength. We will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.
For American citizens, January 20th, 2025, is Liberation Day. (Applause.) It is my hope that our recent presidential election will be remembered as the greatest and most consequential election in the history of our country.
As our victory showed, the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society: young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, urban, suburban, rural. And very importantly, we had a powerful win in all seven swing states — (applause) — and the popular vote, we won by millions of people. (Applause.)
To the Black and Hispanic communities, I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote. We set records, and I will not forget it. I’ve heard your voices in the campaign, and I look forward to working with you in the years to come.
Today is Martin Luther King Day. And his honor — this will be a great honor. But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)
National unity is now returning to America, and confidence and pride is soaring like never before. In everything we do, my administration will be inspired by a strong pursuit of excellence and unrelenting success. We will not forget our country, we will not forget our Constitution, and we will not forget our God. Can’t do that. (Applause.)
Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It’s all about common sense. (Applause.)
First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. (Applause.)
All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. We will reinstate my Remain in Mexico policy. (Applause.)
I will end the practice of catch and release. (Applause.)
And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country. (Applause.)
Under the orders I sign today, we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. (Applause.)
And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities. (Applause.)
As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before.
Next, I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices. (Applause.)
The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill. (Applause.)
America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have — the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth — and we are going to use it. We’ll use it. (Applause.)
We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world. (Applause.)
We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.
With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal, and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers. (Applause.)
In other words, you’ll be able to buy the car of your choice.
We will build automobiles in America again at a rate that nobody could have dreamt possible just a few years ago. And thank you to the autoworkers of our nation for your inspiring vote of confidence. We did tremendously with their vote. (Applause.)
I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens. (Applause.)
For this purpose, we are establishing the External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues. It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury, coming from foreign sources.
The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before.
To restore competence and effectiveness to our federal government, my administration will establish the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency. (Applause.)
After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. (Applause.)
Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents — something I know something about. (Laughter.) We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again.
Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law. (Applause.)
And we are going to bring law and order back to our cities. (Applause.)
This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life. (Applause.) We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based. (Applause.)
As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female. (Applause.)
This week, I will reinstate any service members who were unjustly expelled from our military for objecting to the COVID vaccine mandate with full back pay. (Applause.)
And I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty. It’s going to end immediately. (Applause.) Our armed forces will be freed to focus on their sole mission: defeating America’s enemies. (Applause.)
Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. (Applause.)
My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.
I’m pleased to say that as of yesterday, one day before I assumed office, the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families. (Applause.)
Thank you.
America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.
A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — (applause) — and we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. (Applause.)
President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent — he was a natural businessman — and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United Spates — the United States — I mean, think of this — spent more money than ever spent on a project before and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal.
We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made, and Panama’s promise to us has been broken.
The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape, or form. And that includes the United States Navy.
And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back. (Applause.)
Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization.
So, as we liberate our nation, we will lead it to new heights of victory and success. We will not be deterred. Together, we will end the chronic disease epidemic and keep our children safe, healthy, and disease-free.
The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.
And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars. (Applause.)
Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation, and, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation.
Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls.
Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth. No one comes close.
Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens, and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.
Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback. But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken. (Applause.)
I stand before you now as proof that you should never believe that something is impossible to do. In America, the impossible is what we do best. (Applause.)
From New York to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Phoenix, from Chicago to Miami, from Houston to right here in Washington, D.C., our country was forged and built by the generations of patriots who gave everything they had for our rights and for our freedom.
They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steelworkers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward, and let no obstacle defeat their spirit or their pride.
Together, they laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced.
After all we have been through together, we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history. With your help, we will restore America promise and we will rebuild the nation that we love — and we love it so much.
We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God. So, to every parent who dreams for their child and every child who dreams for their future, I am with you, I will fight for you, and I will win for you. We’re going to win like never before. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)
In recent years, our nation has suffered greatly. But we are going to bring it back and make it great again, greater than ever before.
We will be a nation like no other, full of compassion, courage, and exceptionalism. Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable.
America will be respected again and admired again, including by people of religion, faith, and goodwill. We will be prosperous, we will be proud, we will be strong, and we will win like never before.
We will not be conquered, we will not be intimidated, we will not be broken, and we will not fail. From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign, and independent nation.
We will stand bravely, we will live proudly, we will dream boldly, and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun.
Thank you. God bless America. Thank you all. Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. (Applause.)
. . .
Annotations The New York Times:
Trump promised an “America First” vision in his first term, and he made a similar promise in his first inaugural address. This idea has been one of the animating ideas behind his political movement.
— Michael Gold
Trump has frequently accused his political rivals of “weaponizing” the government against him, but he has also promised retribution against his enemies. In one of his last acts in the White House, Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., pardoned government officials, members of Congress and members of his own family over fears that a Trump-led Justice Department might investigate and punish them.
— Michael Gold
This might look and sound like a different ceremony than the one held eight years ago. The angry tone from the new president and the crowd was palpable. But Trump’s sedate delivery, as he speaks of annihilating challenges and disparages the Biden administration, is not largely different in content.
— Katie Rogers
Trump repeated his claim, made countless times during the 2024 campaign, that “many from prisons and mental institutions” had illegally entered the country through the southern border. He has offered no evidence for this.
— Linda Qiu
Trump’s aides had billed this as an optimistic and hopeful address. But it’s really a redux of his 2017 “American Carnage” address: He describes the current America as a catastrophic mess of crime and chaos.
— Jonathan Swan
Though he later detailed actions he planned to take as president, Trump’s language on this issue was less specific than his campaign trail promises to shutter the Department of Education, end the teaching of critical race theory and keep schools from recognizing transgender identities.
— Michael Gold
Trump, who united religious conservatives behind him, has for months suggested divine intervention was behind his surviving an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa., in July.
— Michael Gold
On the campaign trail, Trump generally used this phrase as he discussed ending what he portrayed in violent terms as a rampant migrant invasion of the United States.
Trump and his allies have talked about his victory as something akin to a landslide that gives them a mandate to govern, but he prevailed with one of the smallest margins of victory in the popular vote for a president in decades.
— Michael Gold
President Trump did gain among both Hispanic and Black men from 2020. Worth noting: Earlier today, an incoming official announced that the administration would be doing away with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
— Erica L. Green
This policy forced migrants to wait in Mexico until the date of their immigration case in court. The United States, however, would need Mexico’s cooperation to bring back the policy. And the details of deploying military assets to the border remain unclear.
— Zolan Kanno-Youngs
This centuries-old law allows for the quick deportation of people from countries with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.” It is unclear whether it can be used to encompass drug cartels.
— Michael Gold
Energy analysts have said that gas prices are difficult for a president to affect. Trump doesn’t directly control oil companies, and oil production in the United States reached record highs under the Biden administration.
— Michael Gold
This ignores that the United States is already the world’s richest nation by almost every measure.
— David E. Sanger
There is no federal electric vehicle mandate. But the Biden administration issued environmental regulations on emissions meant to push car companies to speed up electric vehicle production, which Trump has called an electric vehicle mandate.
— Michael Gold
Trump in recent days has talked repeatedly about creating an “External Revenue Service” to collect on new tariffs. It’s a promise that makes a number of congressional Republicans uncomfortable, but that others are pushing.
— Catie Edmondson
Led by the billionaire Elon Musk, this department — which is not a cabinet department but an advisory group of ambiguous structure— is supposed to target what Trump frames as wasteful government spending and burdensome regulation.
— Michael Gold
Trump has filed a number of lawsuits against news outlets recently. This action would also likely include social media companies; he has complained that companies such as Facebook and YouTube censored him and his allies over health misinformation and the election results of 2020.
— Maggie Haberman
The speech felt like a State of the Union in its laundry list of policy prescriptions. Inaugural Addresses traditionally aspire to lofty and unifying themes and shy away from details on policies, leaving those for a later day.
— Peter Baker
Here, Trump took credit for the release of the Israeli hostages, something done jointly with the Biden administration.
— David E. Sanger
Trump could press for these changes as these geographical names are used in the United States, but whether other countries might honor them is up to them.
— Michael Gold
Though Trump discussed tariffs often and extensively during his campaign, he only mentioned them twice in his inaugural address. In his view, tariffs will revitalize the American economy and bring in significant revenue for he federal government.
— Michael Gold
The claim that China is operating the Panama Canal is false – Panama operates the Panama Canal, though the ownership of ports at either side of the canal by a Hong Kong-based company has raised some security concerns.
— David E. Sanger
Trump pledges to “end the chronic disease epidemic” while also assailing the nation’s public health system as one that “does not deliver in times of disaster,” while failing to mention that many of its stumbles during the coronavirus pandemic occurred while he was president.
— Sheryl Stolberg
Elon Musk’s dream has long been to help humans colonize Mars; he beamed as Trump promised to plant the U.S. flag there. And one of Trump’s proudest accomplishments in his first term was the creation of the Space Force, a reminder of how much he and Musk align in certain ways.
—Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
Trump’s evocation of Manifest Destiny and American expansion stands out given his recent refusal to rule out using military force or economic pressure to take control of the Panama Canal and Greenland.
— Michael Gold
This portion of his speech sounds similar to Trump at one of his rallies: listing American achievements, putting himself at the top.
— Katie Rogers
One subject was notably absent from Trump’s address: the Jan. 6 criminal defendants. Trump has promised to pardon many, maybe even most, of them today. The rioters and their families are expectantly watching events today — some at watch parties — and waiting for word of how Trump intends to proceed.
— Alan Feuer
. . .
THE EDITORIAL BOARD, The New York Times
“Trump’s Opening Act of Contempt”
Jan. 20, 2025
Listen to this article · 9:28 min Learn more
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Philip Sean Grillo, a former Republican district leader in Queens, jumped through a broken window at the U.S. Capitol with a megaphone. He pushed his way past a line of Capitol Police officers and opened the exterior doors of the Rotunda to allow other rioters to enter the building and trash it. “We stormed the Capitol!” he exulted on video, and was seen smoking marijuana and high-fiving other Donald Trump supporters who were fighting the police. “We shut it down! We did it!”
Nearly three years later, a federal jury convicted Mr. Grillo of multiple offenses. But he did not lose heart: Last month, when he was sentenced to a year in prison, he had a special taunt for the federal district judge who sentenced him, Royce Lamberth.
“Trump’s going to pardon me anyways,” he yelled at the judge, just before he was handcuffed and led away.
He was right. On Monday evening, several hours after President Trump was inaugurated, he fulfilled a promise he had repeatedly made to pardon nearly all the rioters who attacked and desecrated the Capitol in 2021 to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified. Mr. Grillo and about 1,500 other rioters received full pardons from Mr. Trump, while 14 others received commuted sentences.
A presidential pardon for Mr. Grillo not only makes a mockery of his jury’s verdict and of Judge Lamberth’s sentence. Mr. Trump’s mass pardon effectively makes a mockery of a justice system that has labored for four years to charge nearly 1,600 people who tried to stop the Constitution in its tracks, a system that convicted 1,100 of them and that sentenced more than 600 of them to prison.
Most important, the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisers. It loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.
The presidential pardon system is usually abused in modern times by departing presidents giving a final gift to cronies, donors or relatives, and those breaches of trust were bad enough. Mr. Biden issued dubious pardons to his son and, as he walked out the door, several other family members, as well as pre-emptive pardons to an array of current and former government officials for noncriminal actions, all to protect them from potential Republican retribution — an expansive use of pardon power that further warps its purpose.
But what Mr. Trump did Monday is of an entirely different scope. He used a mass pardon at the beginning of his term to write a false chapter of American history, to try to erase a crime committed against the foundations of American democracy.
To open his term with such an act of contempt toward the legal system is audacious, even for Mr. Trump, and should send an alarming signal to Democrats and Republicans alike. Members of both parties had to protect themselves that day from the mob, which made little distinction in political affiliation or ideology as they called for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. In this pardon, Mr. Trump forgave and thus provided encouragement for domestic terrorists who put members of Congress in danger of their lives; the long-term cost will be paid by the entire political system, not just his critics.
For four years, he has tried to stage-manage the erasure of his role in inspiring the assault. It was only hours after the attack that his allies in the House and on Fox News began sowing doubt about the motivation for the rioters, claiming it was organized by leftistsmasquerading as Trump supporters. By 2022, when he was under investigation by the House Jan. 6 committee, he began referring to the rioters as “political prisoners” persecuted by Democrats and openly suggesting that the F.B.I. had helped stage the attack. By the time his presidential campaign was in full swing last year, he had completely transformed the day’s monstrous bloody fury into what he called a “day of love” and insisted falsely that none of his supporters had brought guns to the Capitol.
But Mr. Trump’s dense fog of misinformation can’t change what really happened on that terrible day, which, as the Times editorial board wrote at the time, “touched the darkest memories and fears of democracies the world over.” It was a sentiment in the early aftermath of the attack echoed even by senior Republicans, some of whom would go on to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in instigating it.
At least 20 people who joined the attack did carry firearms onto the Capitol grounds, including Christopher Alberts, who wore body armor containing metal plates and carried a 9-millimeter pistol loaded with 12 rounds of ammunition, along with a separate 12-round holster that included hollow-point bullets. He was sentenced to 84 months in prison after a jury convicted him of nine charges, including assaulting law enforcement officers, but received a full pardon on Monday. More than 140 police officers were assaulted that day; Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, was killed, and other officers were smashed in the head with weapons; they were bruised, burned and lacerated; four later died by suicide.
“My concern is that people are going to believe that if they attack me or members of my family physically that Donald Trump will absolve them of their acts,” Michael Fanone, a former police officer attacked by the crowd on Jan. 6, told The Times. “And who is to say he wouldn’t?”
For many of the officers who were pepper-sprayed or hit with two-by-fours or beaten that day, the thought that the nation’s chief executive would forgive such actions is despicable. “Releasing those who assaulted us from blame would be a desecration of justice,” Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant who suffered lasting injuries in the riot, wrote in a Times Opinion guest essay this month. “If Mr. Trump wants to heal our divided nation, he’ll let their convictions stand.”
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, which helped organize the assault, was sentenced to 18 years in prisonafter being convicted of seditious conspiracy for assembling $20,000 worth of assault weaponry intended to be used at the Capitol. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced Mr. Rhodes, called him “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.” Judge Mehta later said he was appalled by the idea that Mr. Rhodes could receive a pardon.
“The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country,” the judge said last month.
Mr. Rhodes was not pardoned, but his sentence was commuted, and he was scheduled to be immediately released.
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys militia, was described by a federal judge as the “ultimate leader” of the rebellion, though he was arrested and barred from Washington as soon as he arrived there and didn’t enter the Capitol. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison after the Justice Department said that by “inflaming the group with rage against law enforcement and then turning it loose on the Capitol, Tarrio did far more harm than he could have as an individual rioter.” Two weeks ago, on Jan. 6, his lawyer wrote to Mr. Trump asking for a pardon, describing his client as “nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values,” and his request was granted on Monday.
Judge Lamberth, a senior federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the D.C. District Court, has been on the bench since 1987 and has seen it all, having served with the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Vietnam and as a federal prosecutor in Washington during the 1970s. But in pronouncing one sentence against a rioter last January, he said he had never seen such a level of “meritless justifications of criminal activity” in the political mainstream.
“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness,” he wrote. “I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion’ like ordinary tourists or martyrizing convicted Jan. 6 defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or even, incredibly, ‘hostages.’ That is all preposterous. But the court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”
On his first day back in public office, Mr. Trump provoked the danger that the judge dreads, setting loose hundreds of people found guilty of participating in a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol — not because they committed no crimes but because they committed their crimes in his name. In doing so, he invites such crimes to happen again.
. . .
“Fact check: Trump made more than 20 false claims in his Inauguration Day remarks”
By Daniel Dale, CNN, January 20, 2025
President Donald Trump made only a smattering of false claims in his inaugural address on Monday, mostly sticking to vague rhetoric, subjective assertions and uncheckable promises of action.
But then he embarked on a lying spree.
In an unscripted second speech on Monday, to supporters who had gathered in the US Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall, Trump made false claims about elections, immigration and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, among other subjects. He then made additional false claims in a freewheeling third speech at Washington’s Capital One Arena and again while speaking to reporters as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office.
Here is a fact check of some of his Monday claims.
Economy
Trump’s tariffs on China: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claim that the US has “taken in hundreds of billions of dollars from China” through the tariffs he imposed during his first presidency. US importers make the tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China; it’s easy to find specific examples of companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.
Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying that “until I came along, China never paid 10 cents to this country.” Aside from the fact that US importers pay the tariffs, the US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
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Tariffs: In his inaugural address, Trump said, “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” But this description of tariffs is false. Tariffs imposed by the US government are paid by US importers, not foreign countries.
Inflation rates: Trump falsely claimed during his inaugural address that the US experienced “record inflation” during the Biden administration. Trump could fairly say the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. (And the rate has since plummeted. The most recent available inflation rate at the time Trump spoke here was 2.9% in December.)
Trade with the European Union: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claims that the European Union doesn’t “take” farm products, cars or “almost anything” from the US.
While the EU certainly has some trade barriers that make it harder for US companies to export products there, it’s a massive exaggeration to categorically declare it doesn’t accept “almost anything.” The US exported more than $639 billion worth of goods and services to the EU in 2023.
The US government says the EU bought $12.3 billion worth of US agricultural exports in the 2023 fiscal year, making it the fourth-largest export market for US agricultural and related products behind China, Mexico and Canada.
And while US automakers have often struggled to succeed in Europe, according to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports — importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.)
Immigration and the border
Prisons and mental institutions: Trump spoke in all three speeches of migrants having come from foreign prisons and mental institutions into the US under President Joe Biden, a frequent refrain during his 2024 campaign. In the first speech, he said “many” Biden-era migrants have come from such facilities; in the second speech, he said, “We don’t want the jails of every country in the world virtually being deposited into the United States”; in the third, he said, “All over the world they’re emptying their prisons into our country; they’re emptying their mental institutions into our country.”
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All of this is uncorroborated. Trump and his presidential campaign have never corroborated the claim that “many” Biden-era migrants have come from prisons or mental institutions, though it’s of course possible that some migrants spent time in such facilities. And Trump’s campaign could not substantiate his stories about numerous foreign countries supposedly opening up such facilities to somehow bring the people in them into the US.
The president has sometimes tried to support his narrative by asserting the global prison population is down. But that’s incorrect. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.
“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June.
Venezuela and migration: Trump spoke in the arena speech about gang members being “taken off the streets of Venezuela and deposited into our country,” claiming crime in Venezuela has plummeted “because they took their criminals and gave them to us through an open border policy of the previous administration.”
Trump has never corroborated his claims about Venezuela’s supposed practice of somehow intentionally bringing its unwanted criminals into the US under Biden, and experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no evidence for them.
Border wall construction: Trump repeated his false claim in his post-inaugural speech that he had “571 miles of wall” built on the southern border during his first administration. That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
Birthright citizenship: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claim that the US is “the only country in the world” with birthright citizenship. CNN and various other outletsdebunked the claim when Trump made it during his presidential campaign in 2015, during his first presidency in 2018 and during his presidential transition in 2024. About three dozen countries provide automatic citizenship to people born on their soil, including US neighbors Canada and Mexico and the majority of South American countries.
Elections and January 6, 2021
Pelosi and January 6, 2021: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump repeated his false claims that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and that Pelosi “admitted it on tape, that her daughter made.” He reprised the claim later in the Oval Office.
There is no evidence Pelosi turned down such an offer — and it is the president, not the speaker, who is in charge of the District of Columbia National Guard, so Pelosi wouldn’t have had the power to reject the offer even if it had been made to her, which Pelosi says it wasn’t. In addition, Pelosi is not on tape admitting that Trump’s story is correct.
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In a video recorded by her filmmaker daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, who posted a 42-second snippet on social media in June, Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But that general statement is clearly not a specific admission that she had rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops.
In fact, another part of the video appears to undermine Trump’s frequent claims that Pelosi was the person who turned down a National Guard presence in advance of January 6. She said, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”
After Trump began referencing this video in June, Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th. Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”
The Capitol rioters: Trump said in the Oval Office that he believes that “in many cases” January 6 rioters were “outside agitators,” suggesting they weren’t actual Trump supporters. (He added a note of humility, saying, “What do I know, right?” but then reiterated, “But I think they were.”)
Trump’s belief is baseless. While one man convicted for his role in the riot admitted that his goal was to rile up Trump supporters, there is no evidence there were “many” such people in the crowd, nor for the Trump-promoted conspiracy theory that left-wing Antifa members were responsible for the attack. Almost all of the more than 1,500 people charged over the riot were fervent Trump devotees.
The January 6 committee and documents: In his post-inaugural speech, Trump spoke of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol, whose members Biden pardoned in one of his last acts as president. Trump falsely claimed that “they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings, practically not a thing left.” He returned to the subject later in the Oval Office, falsely claiming that “they destroyed all of the documents, they deleted all of the information, there’s no information.”
There has been a long-running dispute between Republicans and Democrats over the status of certain committee records that Republicans said should have been archived and that Democratic committee chair Bennie Thompson argued did not have to be archived, such as because they were not useful to the committee’s investigation. But there’s no basis for Trump’s claim that “all” information and documents were discarded.
As FactCheck.org reported on Monday, the January 6 committee released not only a final report that more than 800 pages long, but also transcripts of interviews with more than 140 witnesses – and, according to Thompson, the committee’s staff worked with the National Archives and Records Administration and other government bodies “in preparing the Select Committee’s more than 1 million records for publication and archiving.”
The legitimacy of the 2020 election: In his post-inaugural speech to supporters, Trump returned to his lie that the 2020 election “was totally rigged”; he made the “rigged” claim again in the arena speech. Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Biden.
Democrats and the 2024 election: Trump falsely claimed in his post-inaugural speech that unspecified opponents “tried” to rig the 2024 election but were unable to do so. This is nonsense, too; Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in a free and fair election.
California and the 2024 election: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump said, “I think we would’ve won the state of California” if the state had stronger voter identification laws. There is simply no basis for the claim; there is no sign of mass fraud in California, and Trump lost to Harris thereby more than 3 million votes.
Trump’s margin of victory in Alabama: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump falsely claimed, “We won Alabama by 48 points.” Trump did win the conservative state by a large margin, but not as large as he claimed; he beat Harris there by about 30.5 percentage points.
Trump and “the youth vote”: As he did the day before the inauguration, Trump falsely claimed in his arena speech Monday that “we won the youth vote by 36 points” in the 2024 election. He didn’t say how he was defining “the youth vote” — his transition team didn’t respond to CNN’s Sunday request for clarification — but there’s no basis for his claim by any reasonable definition.
While young voters, particularly young men, did shift toward Trump compared with the 2020 election, exit poll data published by CNN found that Harris beat Trump 54% to 43% among voters ages 18-24, 53% to 45% among voters ages 25-29, and 51% to 45% among voters ages 30-39. Even if Harris’ actual margins were smaller — exit poll data is often flawed — there is simply no sign that Trump dominated Harris with young voters.
Foreign affairs
China and the Panama Canal: Trump vowed in his inaugural address that the US will take back the Panama Canal — and falsely claimed that “above all, China is operating the Panama Canal.” He added in the Oval Office that “China controls the Panama Canal.”
There are valid questions about Chinese influence over infrastructure on and around the Panama Canal. Most notably, a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company operates a port at each end of the waterway, having first won the bidding competition for the contract in the 1990s. But Panama has run the canal itself since the US handed it over to the country in 1999. Specifically, the canal is operated by the Panama Canal Authority, whose administrator, deputy administrator and 11-member board are Panamanians selected by Panama’s government.
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The vast majority of its employees are Panamanian. It is Panama that decides which companies get awarded the contracts to run the ports on the canal. And other canal ports are operated by companies that are not Chinese — including one run by an American-Panamanian joint venture.
“The Canal is and will continue to be Panama’s and its administration will continue to be under Panamanian control with respect to its permanent neutrality,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said in a statement Monday. Without mentioning China directly, Mulino also appeared to reject Trump’s claim that China is operating the canal, saying, “There is no presence of any nation in the world that interferes with our administration.”
China’s oil purchases from Iran: In the arena speech, Trump repeated his false story about how he supposedly pressured China into stopping its purchases of oil from Iran during his first presidency. China’s oil imports from Iran did briefly plummet under Trump in 2019, the year the Trump administration made a concerted effort to deter such purchases, but they never stopped — and then they rose sharply again while Trump was still president. “The claim is untrue because Chinese crude imports from Iran haven’t stopped at all,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at Kpler, a market intelligence firm, told CNN in 2023.
China’s official statistics recorded no purchases of Iranian crude in Trump’s last partial month in office, January 2021, and also none in most of Biden’s first year as president. But that doesn’t mean China’s imports actually ceased; industry experts say it is widely known that China has used a variety of tactics to mask its continued imports from Iran.
Kpler found that China imported about 511,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude in December 2020, Trump’s last full month in office. The low point under Trump was March 2020, when global oil demand crashed because of Covid-19. Even then, China imported about 87,000 barrels per day, Kpler found. (Since data on Iranian oil exports is based on cargo tracking by various companies and groups, other entities may have different data.)
Iran and terror groups: In the arena speech, Trump repeated his inaccurate boast that Iran “didn’t have money for Hamas” and “didn’t have money for Hezbollah” during his presidency. He emphasized in the Oval Office that Iran had “no money” for the two groups. Iran’s funding for these groups did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions on Iran had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN in 2024. In fact, Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. You can read a longer fact check here.
Spain and BRICS: Trump falsely claimed in the Oval Office that Spain is a member of the international organization known as BRICS, telling a reporter, “They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. You know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out.” Spain is not a member of BRICS; the “S” is for South Africa, which joined the group previously known as BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — in 2010.
This story and headline have been updated to include additional information.
CNN’s Bryan Mena, Alicia Wallace, Phil Mattingly, Michael Rios and Elizabeth González contributed to this report.
. . .
“The Gilded Age of Trump Begins Now”
His second inaugural address promised a “golden age,” but the ideas in it evoked the late 1800s more than any recent presidency.
By David A. Graham, The Atlantic
JANUARY 20, 2025
Eight years ago, with his “American carnage” speech, Donald Trump delivered what was likely the darkest inaugural address in U.S. history. During his second inaugural, he tried for a slightly more uplifting message.
“I return to the presidency confident and optimistic that we are at the start of a thrilling new era of national success,” Trump said. And although he listed many challenges, he assured the nation that they would be “annihilated” by American momentum. (Yes, the word choice was strange.) “The golden age of America,” he declared, “begins right now.”
Perhaps it would be more aptly called a Gilded Age. Trump was joined in the Capitol Rotunda by many of the nation’s richest and most powerful men, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg. The attendance of the business titans was rendered conspicuous by the small space. (Other major donors to the inauguration were forced to watch on a livestream after the ceremony was moved inside because of frigid temperatures. Don’t shed a tear for them; they made the donations to curry favor and influence, not for the view.) Their presence also added a strange dimension to Trump’s complaint that “for many years, the radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens.”
James Fallows: ‘American carnage’: The Trump era begins
This was the first time since Grover Cleveland’s second inauguration, in 1893—during America’s first Gilded Age—that a president was sworn in for a nonconsecutive second term. And many of the policies and ideas in the speech evoked the late 1800s more than any recent presidency.
The speech was saturated with 19th-century imperialism. Trump announced that he would order the name of America’s highest peak to be changed from Denali back to its old name, Mount McKinley, and he extolled the 25th president’s use of tariffs. (Left unmentioned was the fact that William McKinley was beloved, and bankrolled, by the plutocrats of his era, and twice defeated the populist William Jennings Bryan.) Trump also said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” and he promised to “pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars,” invoking the controversial slogan of expansionism. Picking up an idea he had voiced in recent weeks, he also vowed to seize the Panama Canal from Panama.
And why wouldn’t Trump be feeling triumphant? The ceremony was held inside the Rotunda, where a little more than four years ago, supporters who he’d instigated to storm the building paraded through with a Confederate flag. This time around, Senator Amy Klobuchar, the chair of the Inaugural Ceremony Committee, heralded America’s “peaceful transfer of power” in the same building where it was disrupted on January 6, 2021. A few minutes later, Trump stood face-to-face with Chief Justice John Roberts, who granted him broad immunity in a ruling last summer, and took the same oath of office that he flagrantly broke at the end of his first term. His mood was not only celebratory, but messianic.
“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said, describing the failed assassination attempt against him last summer. “Over the past eight years I have been tested and challenged more than any other president in our 250-year history.” (Perhaps he forgot that McKinley was more than just grazed by an assassin’s bullet.)
In particular, he railed against “the vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department”—a reference to the federal felony charges brought against him for attempting to subvert the 2020 election and for refusing to hand over classified documents he removed from the White House. “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents,” he said, a vow that sits uneasily with promises of retribution from himself and from his nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel.
Historically, presidents have used their inaugural addresses to pivot from the blue-sky promises of the campaign trail to the more sober language of governing. Rather than dwell on campaign vows they may struggle to keep, they reach for gauzy and unifying language. This, however, is not Trump’s forte. In major speeches, when Trump strains for the tone of an inspirational statesman, he usually ends up sounding more like a motivational speaker. (“In America, the impossible is what we do best,” he intoned today.) This afternoon’s often repetitive speech is unlikely to live on as a work of oratory. Nor did Trump make much effort to reach out to or reconcile with the voters who don’t support him, although he promised that “national unity is returning to America.” He boasted about his (very narrow) margin in the popular vote and victories in seven swing states. “My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed their freedom,” he said.
Jonathan Chait: The political logic of Trump’s international threats
Instead, Trump delivered something akin to his stump speech: a meandering laundry list of policy promises of varying degrees of plausibility. He called for a huge expansion of oil and gas extraction. “We will drill, baby, drill,” he said. He promised to impose major tariffs. He said he would deploy U.S. troops to the Mexican border, expand immigration enforcement inside the country, and declare drug cartels foreign terrorist organizations. He also signaled an executive order that will continue the attacks on people who don’t conform to traditional gender norms. “It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” he said.
But much of the speech was devoted to things that are almost certainly never going to happen. He vowed to beat inflation but didn’t say how. He said he’d establish an External Revenue Service to handle the money he claimed tariffs would bring in, but this would require an act of Congress, as would the Department of Government Efficiency he claims he’ll create. (One wonders what the efficiency hawks at DOGE would have to say about the proposed ERS, given that it would represent a superfluous bureaucracy created to perform a function already handled by Customs and Border Protection.) This was all a warm-up for Trump’s most audacious promise. “Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable,” he said.
It was an appealing promise. But the world already knows what four years of a Trump presidency looks like. Serenity, peace, and predictability were not the hallmarks of his first term, and they are unlikely to describe the second any better.
David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
. . .
“How do people in war zones feel as Trump takes office?”
JANUARY 20, 2025, NPR
HEARD ON MORNING EDITION
By Joanna Kakissis, Charles Maynes and Greg Myre
President-elect Trump has promised to end two foreign conflicts. NPR correspondents in Israel, Russia and Ukraine asked people about their hopes and fears as Trump takes office.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump has promised to end two foreign conflicts. On the campaign trail, he repeatedly said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours. Once elected, he said it might take six months. Trump also said last month there’d be all hell to pay if Hamas and Israel did not reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal before he assumed office. A temporary and fragile ceasefire took hold on Sunday. NPR correspondents in Israel, Russia and Ukraine report on those countries’ expectations as Trump takes office.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: I’m Charles Maynes. Here in Moscow, Russian officials have so far taken a cautious approach to Donald Trump’s return to the White House and what it might mean for U.S.-Russian relations and the war in Ukraine. Yet as that conflict heads into its third year, it’s increasingly common to hear ordinary Russians say they want an end to the fighting. The question, does the return of Donald Trump help with that? And if so, on whose terms?
(CROSSTALK)
MAYNES: On the Old Arbat Street, popular with Russian tourists, count Alexander (ph) among those hoping for change.
ALEXANDER: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: “I’ve heard Trump say he could end the war in a matter of days, but it’ll take compromise from all sides,” says the 24-year-old programmer, who tells me he’s from a small town a few hundred miles away. Like everyone in this story, Alexander declined to provide his last name out of fear of wartime censorship laws.
VICTOR: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Victor (ph), a retired lighthouse keeper from Russia’s south, tells me anything is possible once Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin sit down for talks. A supporter of the war, Victor insists Russians want peace but on their terms. And in Donald Trump, he thinks they might just get it.
VICTOR: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: “Democrats in Congress blocked Trump from pursuing better relations with us last time,” he says. “Republicans are now in control, so there won’t be so much interference.”
NATALIA: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: “I listen to my kids, and they’re celebrating Trump’s victory and hoping he’ll end sanctions,” says Natalia (ph), an artist who moved her family to Russia from neighboring Belarus, which served as a staging ground for the Russian invasion. Natalia adds she’s never gotten over the shock of the war, and neither has Maxim (ph), an IT specialist from Moscow.
MAXIM: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: Several of his friends went off to fight in Ukraine and never came home, he says. Now he’s cautiously hoping a new Trump administration can bring an end to the killing. Yet three years of war have also taught him one thing.
MAXIM: (Speaking Russian).
MAYNES: “Fights are easy to start,” he tells me. “It’s making up that’s hard.”
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: I’m Joanna Kakissis reporting from Lviv and Kyiv, Ukraine. Ukrainians want this war to end, even with concessions. But Yaroslav Bazylevych says he worries Donald Trump’s administration could force Ukraine to concede too much.
YAROSLAV BAZYLEVYCH: (Speaking Ukrainian).
KAKISSIS: “Unless the U.S. gives up on Ukraine,” he says, “I don’t think Russia will agree to end this war.” Bazylevych cannot stomach a Russian victory. Five months ago, a hypersonic Russian missile killed his entire family in the western city of Lviv, hundreds of miles from the front line. As the only survivor, he became the face of Ukraine’s grief.
BAZYLEVYCH: (Speaking Ukrainian).
KAKISSIS: “I feel emptiness,” he says. “They were everything to me.”
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHOIR: (Singing in non-English language).
KAKISSIS: His family’s funeral was televised, and thousands of Ukrainians attended in person. Bazylevych hunched in agony over the coffins of his wife, Yevgenia, and their three daughters. Emilia, who was about to turn 7, 18-year-old Daryna and 21-year-old Yaryna. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers have been killed in this war, including Melaniya Podolyak’s (ph) partner, a legendary fighter pilot. We meet in Kyiv.
MELANIYA PODOLYAK: At this point, you can pick anybody off of the Ukrainian street and ask them if they’ve lost somebody close to them and they will tell you yes. And there’s no indication that Russians want to leave Ukraine alone. So the thing we should do is to present the new administration with options from the point of strength, which is ridiculously difficult in these times.
KAKISSIS: That’s also clear to Bazylevych in Lviv. Russian troops are advancing on Ukrainian land.
BAZYLEVYCH: (Speaking Ukrainian).
KAKISSIS: “Russia will only agree to a ceasefire if they’re on the brink of a financial or military crisis,” he says. “And even then, it will be temporary.” He is set to travel to Washington next month and ask Congress to support justice for Ukraine and his wife and daughters.
BAZYLEVYCH: (Speaking Ukrainian).
KAKISSIS: “I don’t know how to live without them,” he says, his eyes filling with tears. “I am like a tree who cannot grow leaves.”
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: I’m Greg Myre reporting from Tel Aviv. In the Mid East, Trump wanted an end to the Israel-Hamas fighting before taking office, and it seems he got his wish by one day. After 15 months of war, a ceasefire took effect Sunday. Trump is claiming credit for the deal, but now he inherits a precarious truce. And he’s shown no real interest in micromanaging Middle East conflict.
CHUCK FREILICH: He’s certainly not a president who can get into the nitty-gritty.
MYRE: Chuck Freilich is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel who now splits his time between Israel and the U.S. He says Trump’s big picture approach could have its advantages.
FREILICH: Maybe we needed a president who seems to have done what Trump did in the last week, which is just to come with a big stick and beat both sides over the head, so to speak and lead to the final breakthrough.
MYRE: In some sense, Trump faces a reversal from the presidential transition that took place four years ago. Trump made a deal with the Taliban near the end of his first term which called for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan. President Biden inherited that agreement. When he withdrew the troops, it turned into a fiasco. Based on his public remarks, Trump is much more interested in trying to cut a deal that would normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and open up economic opportunities. This would build on Trump’s first term, when he helped broker the so-called Abraham Accords that established relations between Israel and several Arab states. But the war in Gaza has complicated those efforts, says Chuck Freilich. The Saudis are now demanding that Israel take concrete steps toward creating a Palestinian state, and that means Trump is likely to encounter the same challenges previous U.S. presidents have faced.
FREILICH: To achieve a full breakthrough with the Saudis, he may need a breakthrough on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
MYRE: For years now, U.S. presidents have been trying to reduce American involvement in Middle East turmoil, yet they keep getting dragged back in.
FADEL: NPR’s Joanna Kakissis in Kyiv. We also heard from Charles Maynes in Moscow and Greg Myre in Tel Aviv.