Donald Trump will be sworn in as US president on Monday, ushering in another turbulent four-year term with promises to push the limits of executive power, deport millions of immigrants, secure retribution against his political enemies and transform the role of the US on the world stage.
Trump’s inauguration completes a triumphant comeback for a political disrupter who survived two impeachment trials, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts and an indictment for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss.
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The ceremony will take place at noon (1700GMT) inside the Rotunda of the US Capitol, four years after a mob of Trump supporters breached the symbol of American democracy in an unsuccessful effort to forestall the Republican Trump’s 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The swearing-in was moved indoors for the first time in 40 years due to the extreme cold.
Donald Trump, the first U.S. president since the 19th century to secure a second term after losing the White House, has pledged to grant pardons to many of the over 1,500 individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, with a promise to do so “on Day One” of his return to office.
This commitment is part of a series of executive actions Trump plans to sign immediately after taking the oath of office, covering areas such as immigration, energy, and tariffs. During a campaign-style rally in Washington on Sunday, he also vowed to implement strict immigration restrictions on his first day back.
Trump returns to the White House as a force of disruption, just as he did in 2017, promising to overhaul the federal government while remaining deeply skeptical of U.S.-led alliances that have shaped global politics since World War II.
His return is strengthened by his victory in the national popular vote over Vice President Kamala Harris, with a margin of more than 2 million votes, fueled by widespread voter frustration over ongoing inflation. However, he fell short of a 50% majority. In 2016, Trump won the presidency by capturing the Electoral College despite receiving nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.
Jeremi Suri, a presidential historian at the University of Texas at Austin, compared the present era to the late 19th century, when Grover Cleveland became the only other president to win non-consecutive terms. Like now, he said, that was a time of upheaval, as industrial advances transformed the economy, wealth inequality exploded and the proportion of immigrant Americans reached a historical peak.
“What we’re really talking about is a fundamentally different economy, a fundamentally different country in terms of its racial and gender and social makeup, and we are as a country struggling to figure out what that means,” he said. “It’s an existential moment.”
Trump will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress that have been almost entirely purged of any intra-party dissenters. His advisers have outlined plans to replace nonpartisan bureaucrats with hand-picked loyalists.
Even before taking office, Trump established a rival power centre in the weeks after his election victory, meeting world leaders and causing consternation by musing aloud about seizing the Panama Canal, taking control of Nato ally Denmark’s territory of Greenland and imposing tariffs on the biggest US trading partners.
