To the delight of the MAGA crowd, today’s inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States is a dream achieved. In ensuring a peaceful transition, the streets have been flooded with police from across the country, accompanied by road closures and blockades along with security fencing to create a wide perimeter around the Capitol and the White House. The net effect, oddly, is not too dissimilar to that which existed in the aftermath of the J6 insurrection.
Due to exceptionally cold Arctic weather that forced the cancellation of the swearing-in ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol above National Mall, many of his adherents, unable to get a seat at the indoor hockey arena were out walking on the streets outside the Capitol and the White House.
With time on their hands, they engaged in that all American pastime of shopping by buying Trump-related souvenirs and posing for photos outside of St. John’s Episcopal Church where Trump attended the earlier traditional pre-inauguration morning service.
To the consternation of non-Trumpers, this day has once again exposed the massive divide that the country remains suffering through as he retakes office. Especially so in his announcing a laundry list of rapid-fire changes which he disclosed during his post-inauguration speech to forward his MAGA agenda.
Pronouncing himself as the great uniter, Trump wasted no time in renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. He lamented the transfer of the Panama Canal claiming it is now being run by the Chinese, announced that the United States will now recognize “only two genders” and revealed his immediate plans to resolve the immigration crisis. He also projected himself as uniquely qualified to be America’s savior moving forward.
Not everyone is onboard, however, with his agenda and activists took to the streets across the city and around the nation, in expressing their concerns and solidarity in resisting the sweeping changes that Trump has embarked upon. For activists, this new era of rapid-fire presidential executive orders will present many challenges but at every rally here in Washington speakers noted they are up to resisting his plans. One concern is the takeover of government by billionaires in engaging or influencing the direction of both domestic and foreign relations.
In response, a solidarity rally was held at Dupont Circle accompanied by a massive police presence where speakers called for an end to US involvement in countries across the globe along with fighting Fascism as Trump begins to implement many of the policy plans contained in the Heritage Foundations Project 2025 presidential administration.
On a more positive note today was the announcement that as his last act before leaving office, President Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, a Chippewa convicted in1977 of killing two FBI Agents in a shoot-out at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Peltier, who has maintained his innocence over the years, claimed that he did not fire the shots that killed the two agents. He has filed numerous appeals seeking a new trial and in a 2021 article in The Huff Post reported that “His trial was riddled with misconduct that would never hold up in a U.S. court today. Prosecutors hid key evidence. The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. A juror admitted she was biased against Peltier’s race on the second day of the trial but was allowed to stay on anyway.”
In announcing the commutation, for one of the longest-held political prisoners in the United States, Biden in his statement said that Peltier would be transitioning to “home confinement” after his release from the high-security United States Penitentiary Coleman in Florida.
Report and photo by Phil Pasquini
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