Trump Sworn in as 47th President

Happy Tuesday! Our hearts go out to the C-SPAN caller who used his airtime during the inauguration coverage to voice his disappointment with Alabama’s absence from the College Football Playoff. He’s not alone in perhaps being preoccupied with it yesterday.

And on that note, congratulations to the Ohio State Buckeyes (and our colleague Rachael Larimore) on their national championship last night over Notre Dame!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Former President Joe Biden—ahead of President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday—preemptively pardoned five members of his family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, the members and staff of the House committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol riot, and the police officers who testified before the committee. Biden said in a statement that he was protecting those pardoned from “baseless and politically motivated investigations,” but that the pardons should not be “misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.” 
• Trump issued an array of executive orders on Monday, many of which dealt with immigration. The moves included an order declaring a national emergency at the southern border, an order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and an order suspending the U.S. refugee resettlement program. He also signed an order trying to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, but the measure already drew a legal challenge, as will many of the others.
• Trump signed an executive order Monday to halt the ban on TikTok and give the company 75 days to come up with a buyer. But it’s unclear whether Trump’s actions can pause the legal consequences of the ban that took effect Sunday. The app is still live, but Apple and Google have continued to keep TikTok off their U.S. app stores. 
• The president issued sweeping pardons and commutations for all of the nearly 1,600 people charged and or convicted for crimes committed during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The clemency included the hundreds of individuals convicted of assaulting police officers—including figures such as Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who were serving some of the harshest sentences for their role in planning the attacks that day. Trump also directed the Justice Department to end all pending prosecutions of January 6 cases. 
• The Senate confirmed the first of Trump’s Cabinet nominees when it unanimously approved Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Pete Hegseth and John Ratcliffe—Trump’s picks for defense secretary and head of the Central Intelligence Agency, respectively—cleared the relevant Senate committees and will now move forward to a confirmation vote by the whole body likely later this week. 
• Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is facing multiple lawsuits, including from the American Federation of Government Employees union, accusing the recently formed organization of not following government transparency rules. The filings state that because DOGE is not an official government department, it violates the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act by not making its records available to the public. President Trump will reportedly issue an executive order formalizing the organization as a government entity, possibly complicating the lawsuits.
• The Ohio State Buckeyes defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Monday night 34-23 to claim the Buckeyes’ ninth football national title and their first since 2014. That was the first year of the College Football Playoff, a four-team tournament to determine the national champion. This year was the first to feature a new 12-team format.

An ‘American Carnage’ Redux

In his first inaugural address, President Donald Trump vowed to end the “American carnage” plaguing the nation. Eight years later—after two assassination attempts, multiple criminal indictments, one criminal conviction, and four years with Joe Biden in the White House—Trump struck the same, ominous tone in his first speech as the United States’ 47^th president.

“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,” he said on Monday from the Capitol Rotunda, the site of his supporters’ attempts to subvert the peaceful transfer of power four years ago. “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.”

In a ceremony bookended by celebrations across Washington, D.C., Trump took the oath of office before a patchwork crowd of family members, social media influencers, UFC fighters, and tech CEOs. During his subsequent speech—which at times felt more appropriate for a campaign rally than an inauguration—the new president oscillated between …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our 1,089-word item Donald Trump’s first day back in office in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• Coffee prices are about to skyrocket, Javier Blas wrote for Bloomberg. As bad weather in Brazil and Vietnam—the world’s two largest coffee producers—spikes wholesale costs, retail prices are sure to follow suit. “If anything, the only question is why retail coffee prices aren’t much higher already. In nominal terms, wholesale green coffee beans are changing hands in the New York and London markets at the highest level ever, having surpassed the peak set in 1977,” he wrote. “Currently, the lag is lasting longer than usual for a variety of reasons, including supermarket chains pushing back against any higher prices due to the cost-of-living crisis. But the difference is growing so large that coffee merchants say elevated retail prices are a question of when, not if. More precisely, the question is whether the hikes will come in late January or early February.”
• Will the Middle East see better days ahead? In his Substack, Noahpinion, Noah Smith argued that the answer is yes, as the region grows increasingly war-weary and technological innovation flourishes. “Just a few years ago, there were few regions of the world that seemed as dysfunctional as the Middle East. Some Middle Eastern countries had oil wealth, but overall living standards were mediocre and pretty stagnant, and there was little domestic technology or competitive industry to speak of. Authoritarianism was everywhere, and strict religious values had produced persistent social inequalities. And most importantly, the whole region was mired in a seemingly intractable morass of wars,” he wrote. “And yet when I look at the Middle East today, I’m strangely hopeful. … Half a century from now, the desert may bloom, and the region may be a powerhouse of green energy, industry, and software, rather than the playground of oil sheikhs, warlords, and hyper-religious madmen. I know it’s a bold prediction, but stranger things have happened.”

Presented Without Comment 

The Hill: Byron Donalds on Trump inauguration: ‘Daddy’s back’

Also Presented Without Comment

Wall Street Journal: American TikTokers Get a Taste of Chinese Censorship as They Rush to RedNote

In the Zeitgeist 

With his hit Apple TV+ show Shrinking wrapping up its latest season and a Captain America movie on the way, 82-year-old Harrison Ford is certainly a busy man. But it looks like he’s not busy enough—we’re getting a second season of 1923, a Yellowstone spinoff. It’ll have to tide us over until he takes one last crack at making a good Indiana Jones movie in the 21^st century. Sigh. 

Toeing the Company Line

• Mike Warren hosted a special inauguration Dispatch Live (🔒) with Sarah Isgur, Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David Drucker yesterday afternoon to unpack Trump’s second inaugural address. Members who missed the conversation can catch a rerun—either video or audio-only—by clicking here.
• In the newsletters: Kevin Williamson argued (🔒) that DOGE will fail to make a dent in spending if entitlements and defense are off the table and Nick Catoggio outlined (🔒) why he’s now even more pessimistic about the next four years. 
• On the podcasts: Williamson was joined by Grover Norquist on The Dispatch Podcast to explain the second Trump administration’s tax policy. Plus: Sarah Isgur and David French return to Catholic University to discuss Constitutional law with Joel Alicea and Trevor McFadden in a live Advisory Opinions. 
• On the site: Warren compares Trump’s second inaugural address to Grover Cleveland’s and Williamson makes the case that Biden’s preemptive pardons are a gift to Trump.