Trump’s inauguration promises celebration and major executive orders that could shake up Pa.
Donald Trump will take the oath for his second presidential term Monday. He faces less resistance than he did eight years ago as he prepares for sweeping Day 1 actions.
President-elect Donald J. Trump, one of the most polarizing figures in modern political history, will deliver his second presidential inaugural address inside the Capitol Monday on a brutally frigid day, but one that is expected to strike a warmer tone than eight years ago.
The last time Trump was sworn in, protesters filled the streets of Washington and Democratic-controlled cities around the country. Democratic House members boycotted and the national mood was part jubilation, part shell-shocked.
This time, he’ll take the oath not as an accidental outsider but a political force and the popular vote winner, following resounding wins in Pennsylvania and every other swing state. Trump’s promises for what he’ll do on Day 1 are bolder but the resistance to him, tampered by the reality of a national rightward shift, is much more subdued — at least so far.
“It was really an election about hope,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R., Pa.), a Trump ally from Northeast Pennsylvania, whose office has fielded more than 2,000 requests for tickets, many from Pennsylvanians who worked on the campaign in the state. “They chose change and now they get to see that change.”
At 78, Trump will be the same age Joe Biden was when he started his term in 2021 as the oldest president to take office. His ascent to the Oval Office follows his unprecedented felony conviction in a New York hush-money trial and his survival of an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. Trump, the only president to face two impeachments, will return to office just four years after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.
Thousands of Pennsylvania residents are flocking to Washington to see it. Some hold VIP seats and tickets to balls, others are commuting down in buses with plans to attend a rally at the Capital One Arena on Sunday and the parade that has been moved there due to cold weather on Monday. Butler EMTs who responded to the assassination attempt against Trump are slated to march in the parade along with a horse named Trump from Tunkhannock.
Many of the same Pennsylvania Trump supporters who were at the Butler rally in July will gather at the Capitol. So, too, will some Jan. 6 defendants who were granted permission to watch Trump take the oath inside the same building they breached in January 2021.
And across Pennsylvania, the state that consumed the nation’s political attention for more than a year, Trump supporters will gather at an athletic club in Bucks County, an Irish pub in Grays Ferry, and on couches and on cell phones across the commonwealth to see the culmination of a four-year battle to get Trump back to the White House.
“Personally, I just think this election was kind of monumental,” said Logan Dubil, a 23-year-old Republican from Lansdowne who got tickets to attend the inauguration through his congresswoman, U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D., Montgomery). The former volunteer for Trump’s campaign is going down with college friends to attend the Sunday rally and the inauguration.
“I’m hopeful knowing that a lot more people are optimistic going into these next four years,” he said. “I’d hope he’s not getting as much backlash because we really do need him to succeed. We should all be rooting for that.”
Trump enters the White House with his highest favorability rating since just after his 2016 win, according to CNN. But Americans are still split on the incoming president, with 46% holding a favorable view, compared to 48% who view Trump unfavorably, according to a CNN’s survey released Thursday.
And Democrats, though somewhat muted in their opposition, are bracing for a day that will launch a series of battles in Washington.
“Obviously, there’s some trepidation as his allies have talked about how many executive orders they’re going to execute and radical policy changes they want to implement,” said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat whose district includes parts of South Philadelphia and suburban Delaware County. Scanlon will be volunteering in Philadelphia on Monday, which is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, rather than attending inauguration.
‘What happens to them?’
Thousands of Pennsylvania residents’ lives could be impacted by the orders Trump has pledged to sign on Monday. He’s promised sweeping Day 1 actions, including pardons for Jan 6. defendants, restrictions against transgender Americans, and sweeping immigration enforcement orders.
“We have a lot of families in this region where you have citizens and noncitizens living under the same roof and some of the noncitizens may be in the pipeline for relief but haven’t gotten it yet,” Scanlon said. “So what happens to them?”
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.) joined 47 other Democrats last week to vote in favor of a GOP-led immigration bill that would target undocumented immigrants arrested for crimes, including theft or shoplifting, for deportation.
Boyle, who did not attend Trump’s swearing-in in 2017, was unsure if he’d attend this time due to confusion over the ceremony being moved inside to the much smaller rotunda. Boyle said in a statement he’s “always willing to work with people, regardless of party, if we can find common ground … but at the same time, I won’t hesitate to fight against this administration whenever it attempts to do things that are destructive.”
Activists have taken a slightly different tack than in 2017 when Trump first took office. While protests are planned in Philadelphia on Monday, driving people to the streets is less of the focus for some advocacy groups this time around.
“No amount of protesting is going to change who Trump is,” said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group.
“I’d rather give him less time and attention and free press,” she said. “ … My focus is, ‘What are our local elected leaders doing to protect their residents?’ And, ‘What are local immigrant leaders saying, so we can follow their leadership?’”
A noon oath
Trump will take the oath at noon and follow it with an inaugural address. In 2016, he delivered his “American carnage” speech, a relatively brief, 16-minute address in which he described a moment of American decay, with “rusted-out factories” where “the wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes,” jobs had gone away and crime and drugs had devastated communities.
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he pledged then.
The president-elect, who captured the support of more working-class Americans than any other modern Republican in history, will be flanked by more billionaires this time around. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is now part of Trump’s inner circle, will attend along with other billionaire tech executives Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, according to reports.
Trump’s transition team has teased a hopeful and unifying message, though the president-elect has been known to hit on unity and then pivot to more doomsday rhetoric.
The day begins with Trump attending services at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square, followed by tea at the White House. Remarks and performances will begin inside the Capitol around 9:30 a.m.
Performers will reflect the unique musical stylings Trump made a part of his campaign rallies — including one in Oaks, where he abandoned the formal politicking to dance on stage to his playlist. The Village People, country singer Lee Greenwood, and opera singer Christopher Macchio will all perform.
After his inaugural address, Trump will attend a lunch hosted by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. That’s slated to be followed by the parade and a string of executive orders.
Trump is expected to attend and speak at three balls later in the evening.
Local and federal law enforcement expect upward of 200,000 people. Members of Congress, President Joe Biden, and former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton are also expected to be at the ceremony (though the former presidents will reportedly skip Trump’s inaugural lunch).
For Biden, Monday culminates half a century of public service and the end of a term that went out with a whimper. He’s tried to cement his legacy and recast the public’s negative views on his term with little success. In a farewell address on Wednesday, he again called Trump a threat to democracy and warned Americans to be on guard for their freedoms.
In a letter to the nation, he called it “the privilege of my life,” to serve as president.
“Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as President of the United States,” Biden wrote in the letter. “I have given my heart and my soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people.”
Staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.