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Supporters of newly sworn-in U.S. President Donald Trump march near the U.S. Capitol in Washington as his inauguration ceremonies get under way on Jan. 20, 2025.
World leaders react to Trump
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
“President Trump is always decisive, and the peace through strength policy he announced provides an opportunity to strengthen American leadership and achieve a long-term and just peace, which is the top priority.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
“On behalf of the people of Israel, I also want to thank you for your efforts in helping free Israeli hostages … I look forward to working with you to return the remaining hostages, to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities and end its political rule in Gaza, and to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.”
Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
“Canada and the US have the world’s most successful economic partnership. We have the chance to work together again — to create more jobs and prosperity for both our nations.”
Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany
“The US is our closest ally and the aim of our policy is always a good transatlantic relationship.”
Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General
“With President Trump back in office, we will turbo-charge defense spending & production …. Together we can achieve peace through strength – through @NATO.”
Jose Raul Mulino, President of Panama
“The canal is and will remain Panama’s.”
Washington, DC, USA; President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, outgoing United States President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden participate in the departure ceremony for the Bidens on the East Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC after the swearing-in of Donald Trump as President on January 20, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Biden’s preemptive pardons, Trumpcoin, Billionaires blow up, India convicts hospital rapist
5: With just minutes left in his term, President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to five members of his family, explaining that he feared people associated with him could be prosecuted under the Trump administration. Hours earlier, he pardoned Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as the members and staff of the Congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and police officers who testified before that committee. Biden also commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous activist who was controversially convicted of killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.
5.5 billion: A cryptocurrency token launched by President Donald Trump, known as $Trump, reached a value of nearly $5.5 billion within hours of its launch on Saturday. A Delaware company called CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC owns 80% of the coins, but it is unclear how much money Trump will make from this launch.
3: Oxfam, the UK-based anti-poverty charity, reported that the wealth of billionaires grew three times as fast in 2024 than in 2023, accelerating wealth inequality while the global rate of poverty has barely changed. The report comes as the World Economic Forum, the marquee gathering of the world’s political and financial bigwigs, gets underway in Davos, Switzerland.
1: A court in India has convicted one person, Sanjay Roy, of the brutal rape of a trainee doctor in Kolkata last year that launched nationwide protests — but the parents of the victim maintain that the crime was committed by a group, not a single man. Despite Indian police claiming before the court that the rape was “rarest of rare” incidents, the most recent data available in India shows 31,516 reports of rape in 2022, a fraction of the true number of assaults as many are not reported.
Graphic Truth: Trump’s inauguration shatters records
Corporate America is showing unprecedented support for Donald Trump’s inauguration, donating record-breaking amounts. Many companies from the tech, fossil fuel, financial services, and automotive industries have doubled their donations since Trump’s first term in 2017.
Not only are companies giving larger amounts than they did for Trump’s first inauguration, but they are also announcing their contributions months before required federal reporting – a contrast from 2017, when many companies tried to distance themselves from the president-elect, or in 2021, when many companies publicly cut ties with Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Top donating companies include the world's five biggest tech firms like OpenAI and Uber, major auto manufacturers like Toyota, Ford, and GM, healthcare companies like Pfizer, and financial services like Robinhood and Intuit – all of which have each donated at least $1 million. Microsoft doubled its usual contribution to $1 million, while Google more than tripled its previous donations to $1 million as well.
Government watchdogs question how this money will be spent. While the inaugural committee must disclose donors who give more than $200 within 90 days of taking office, there are no restrictions on contribution amounts or requirements to disclose how the money is spent. Trump also has an allied super PAC and a 501(c)4 group accepting donations which do not need to be disclosed. Between the private donations to the inaugural fund and the PACs, Trump is expected to rake in $250 million before taking office.
The logic: Companies don’t give unless they expect to get something in return, and the writing on the wall right now – from the inauguration’s overflowing coffers to dinners costing $250 thousand a plate – is that companies believe they can, or need to, pay up if they want to influence or enjoy favorable policies under the incoming administration.President-elect Donald Trump’s silhouette is seen against a United States flag at a campaign rally in October 2024.
Inauguration Day: Donald Trump Returns
At noon on Monday, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. The moment will cap an astounding political comeback, and start the clock on what promises to be one of the most contentious and transformative presidential terms in modern American history.
What to expect: Trump and his Vice President J.D. Vance will be sworn in at noon, in the Capitol Rotunda, by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. After that, Trump will deliver his inaugural address.
The decision to move the event indoors, a break with the modern tradition of holding it on the Capitol steps, was taken on Friday in anticipation of bitterly cold weather on Inauguration Day. This is the first time the inauguration has been held indoors since Ronald Reagan did the same, in 1985, also due to cold weather.
To accommodate some of the 200,000 people who had planned to attend, Trump announced that the Capital One Arena would host a live viewing event. But many who traveled long distances for the event were disappointed by the decision. Most ticketholders have been told they are now unable to attend.
Thousands also marched in DC this weekend, advocating for causes they believe are threatened by the incoming administration, such as women’s reproductive rights.
High-profile guests will likely include former President Barack Obama (but not his wife Michelle), former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush, as well as tech billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and, notably, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, whose company will be officially banned in the US starting on Sunday.
Monday's inauguration will also be the first to be attended by foreign leaders, including Vice President Han Zheng, Argentine President Javier Milei, and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.
Opera tenor Christopher Macchio is set to sign the national anthem at the inauguration. Country stars Carrie Underwood and Lee Greenwood are also set to perform.
The speech: The last time Trump stepped up to that podium, in January 2017, he delivered one of the darkest presidential addresses in US history, describing a landscape of “American Carnage.” This time, he is expected to sound lighter and more unifying themes, although Trump enjoys an adlib as much as anyone, so anything is possible.
Order(s) of the day: After that, he’ll head to his new (but old) digs at the White House, where he is expected to sign scores of executive orders that will set the tone for his administration. They will likely include measures to tighten immigration policy drastically, loosen restrictions on energy production, scrap US climate policy commitments, withdraw from the WHO, shrink the federal bureaucracy, and remove what Trump views as “woke” ideas on diversity in hiring at federal agencies and institutions.
Trump is expected, for example, to reverse federal government Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies, and remove some of Biden's gender-related executive orders. At a rally this weekend, Trump said he plans to take action to “keep men out of women's sports.”
Then, it’s party time: In the evening, Trump will attend three big inaugural balls, where musical groups including The Village People and Rascal Flatts, and country stars Jason Aldean and Billy Ray Cyrus, will perform.
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, on Inauguration Day, 1933.
HARD NUMBERS: Term limits, Day fit for a King and a president, Benefits of brevity, Presidential addresses clarified
22: Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only American president to be inaugurated four times, serving from 1933 to 1945. In 1951, the United States Congress ratified the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, limiting future presidents to a maximum of two terms in office.
2: For only the second time in history, Inauguration Day coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. day, a federal holiday that honors the slain civil rights leader on the third Monday of January. Many liberal and progressive groups have pledged to focus on traditional days of service to mark the King holiday rather than inauguration day itself, while some protest marches against Trump are expected as well.
8,445: The longest inaugural address in US history was delivered by William Henry Harrison, whose speech ran to 8,445 words. After speaking for nearly two hours without a coat or hat on a wet and chilly Washington day in January 1841, Harrison fell ill, developed pneumonia, and died a month later. The shortest inaugural was George Washington’s second, which ran to just 135 words, half the length of this Hard Numbers section.
40: Trump is the 47th president, but how many have given inaugural addresses? Only 40, as it turns out. Four US presidents were actually vice presidents who ascended to office due to death or assassination and never won an election of their own, so they didn’t get the chance to give an inaugural address. Two US presidents have been counted twice because they served nonconsecutive terms – Grover Cleveland was the first, and Donald Trump is the second.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters at a protest ahead of the Friday inauguration of President Nicolas Maduro for his third term, in Caracas, Venezuela January 9, 2025.
Venezuela briefly arrests opposition leader just ahead of Maduro inauguration
Regime forces violently detained Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as she left a rally in Caracas on Thursday, just one day before strongman President Nicolás Maduro was set to begin his third term. She was released hours later.
Machado had been in hiding for over 100 days but came out to galvanize protesters risking their lives to demonstrate against the illegitimate, autocratic government. Despite soldiers loyal to the regime manning checkpoints across the capital, thousands of citizens marched in response to the opposition’s calls for resistance. Moments before her motorcycle convoy came under gunfire, Machado led a crowd of supporters chanting, “We are not afraid!”
Her short detention could lead to further protests, but Maduro is determined to retain power for another six-year term and is set to be sworn in today. He has met past unrest with brutal violence, and we are watching for more clashes between authorities and protesters, though the government has detained many activists and opposition politicians in recent days. The government says it will also arrestEdmundo González, the man who independent audits show actually won last year’s election, if he attempts to return from exile in the Dominican Republic — which he has sworn to do today.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump looks on as he delivers remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 16, 2024.
AI companies splash the cash around for Trump’s inauguration fund
Sam Altman is a longtime Democratic donor, but now he’s sending $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, followed Amazon and Meta, which each donated $1 million too. Altman said, “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead,” Altman wrote in a statement.
The AI search engine Perplexity joined in the donation spree, offering $1 million of its own money to the president-elect. Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko said he wants the company to “be a good partner to the administration.” Tech companies have made major donations in the past to presidential inaugural committees, but never in such a unanimous way. Plus, it’s a stark difference from 2021, when Joe Bidenreportedly did not accept donations from tech companies.
With these donations, tech companies are playing nice with Trump, who has been openly hostile to the industry in the past. Altman and Co. want Trump to know that they’re ready to embrace him if he embraces artificial intelligence. Not only are pricey federal contracts up for grabs, but — most importantly — AI companies desperately want to avoid stringent regulation, even if they sometimes say otherwise.President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky participate in the Conference of Ambassadors of Ukraine, in Kyiv President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky participate in the Conference of Ambassadors of Ukraine, in Kyiv on December 23, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Zelensky targeted, Putin inaugurated, Greene satiated, Neom downgraded
2: Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday they had detained two colonels in the State Guard, the unit responsible for protecting Kyiv’s most important officials, who were allegedly plotting to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky and members of his government. The suspects were allegedly working for the Russian Federal Security Service and may have planned to carry out the assassination to coincide with President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration.
5: Speaking of, Putin was inaugurated for his fifth term as president of Russia on Tuesday in a glittering ceremony at the Kremlin. Putin has led Russia since 1999, with a brief stint as prime minister while his puppet Dmitri Medvedev helped change the constitution to make Putin president again. His new term ends in 2030, but his reign likely won’t.
2: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) met with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) two days in a row on Tuesday before announcing she would back off on her threat to unseat him. Johnson has now survived the wrath of the far-right despite needing to cooperate with Democrats to pass bills, a move that doomed his predecessor.
1.5: Saudi Arabia has downscaled the first segment of its Neom project, the “line city” that is envisioned to stretch 105 miles through the Saudi desert, from 10 to just 1.5 miles by 2030 amid delays and cost overruns. With around $100 billion of the original $500 billion cost projection already spent, some experts estimate that Riyadh may end up spending $2 trillion if it wants to complete this megaproject.