By David Morgan, Gabriella Borter, Bo Erickson and Joseph Ax
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An emboldened Donald Trump declared that “America’s decline is over” as he reclaimed the presidency on Monday, promising a crackdown on illegal immigration and portraying himself as a savior chosen by God to rescue a faltering nation.
“For American citizens, January 20, 2025, is Liberation Day,” Trump, 78, said inside the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, the symbol of U.S. democracy that was invaded on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters intent on reversing his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.
The inauguration completes a triumphant return for a political disruptor who was twice impeached, survived two assassination attempts, was convicted in a criminal trial and faced charges for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss. He is the first president in more than a century to win a second term after losing the White House and the first felon to occupy the White House.
“I was saved by God to make America great again,” Trump said on Monday, referring to the assassin’s bullet that grazed his ear in July.
Trump outlined a series of sweeping executive orders he plans to sign immediately to curb immigration, boost fossil fuel production and roll back environmental regulations, the first steps in enacting a far-reaching agenda that would reshape the government while testing the limits of presidential authority.
He said he would declare a national emergency at the southern border with Mexico, dispatch troops there and resume a policy forcing asylum-seeking migrants to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court hearings – all a prelude to what he described as an unprecedented operation to deport millions of immigrants.
“All illegal entry will be immediately halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” he said, as Republican colleagues applauded and Democrats sat stone-faced.
Shortly after the inauguration, U.S. border authorities said they had shut down a Biden program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling an appointment on an app. Existing appointments were canceled.
The half-hour speech echoed some of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017, when he spoke of the “American carnage” he said had ravaged the country.
While Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier, his speech was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into America and voiced familiar and unfounded grievances over his criminal prosecutions.
With Biden seated nearby, affecting a polite smile, Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor’s policies from immigration to foreign affairs.
“We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders, or more importantly, its own people,” Trump said.
Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration – including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump’s family.
Trump said he would send astronauts to Mars, prompting Musk – who has long talked about colonizing the planet – to raise his fists excitedly on stage.
Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among U.S. allies.
RETURN TO POWER
Following his address, Trump stopped by the Capitol’s visitor center and delivered an even longer, informal speech to supporters, reminiscent of his freewheeling campaign rallies.
In the later remarks, Trump struck a sharply different tone, voicing suspicion about election processes, calling people charged with taking part in the Capitol attack “hostages” and suggesting the congressional probe into his actions around that day was illegal.
“I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump said.
Trump took the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution at 12:01 p.m. ET (1701 GMT), administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.
Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, was seated next to Biden in a section with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, arrived with her husband Bill, but Obama’s wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.
The ceremony was moved indoors due to the extreme cold gripping much of the country.
Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.
Biden, in one of his last official acts, pardoned several people whom Trump has threatened with retaliation, including former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, former Republican U.S. Representative Liz Cheney and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. He also pardoned five family members minutes before leaving office, citing fears that Trump would target them.
Trump acknowledged he was taking office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and said he would work to honor the civil rights leader’s legacy. At the same time, he said he would issue orders to scrap federal diversity programs and require the government to recognize only genders assigned at birth.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said, as Democratic U.S. Representative Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to serve in Congress, quietly smiled in the audience.
Trump will not immediately impose new tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico as he has pledged to do, a Trump official said, an unexpected development that unleashed a broad slide in the U.S. dollar and a rally in global stock markets on a day when U.S. financial markets were closed.
Some of the executive orders are likely to face legal challenges.
In a sign of the deep divisions that attended Trump’s election victory, police separated a group of 40 Proud Boys, a militant far-right group that backs Trump and whose former leader was among those imprisoned for Jan. 6, and a dozen counter-protesters in downtown Washington, D.C.
“Whose streets? Our streets,” the Proud Boys chanted as several protesters aimed loudspeakers playing sirens at them. Each side shouted expletives at the other.
DISRUPTIVE FORCE
As in 2017, Trump enters office as a disruptive force, vowing to upend Washington and expressing deep skepticism about the U.S.-led alliances that have shaped post-World War Two global politics.
He returns to the White House more unconstrained than ever after narrowly winning the national popular vote over Harris thanks to a groundswell of voter frustration over persistent inflation, though he still fell just short of a 50% majority.
Trump, who surpassed Biden as the oldest president ever to be sworn in, is backed by Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress. His advisers have outlined plans to replace nonpartisan bureaucrats with hand-picked loyalists.
Trump’s influence was already felt in the Israel-Hamas announcement last week of a ceasefire deal. Trump, whose envoy joined the negotiations in Qatar, had warned of “hell to pay” if Hamas did not release its hostages before the inauguration.
Unlike in 2017, when he filled many top jobs with institutionalists, Trump has prioritized fealty over experience in nominating a bevy of controversial cabinet picks, some of whom are outspoken critics of the agencies they have been tapped to lead.
Even as he prepared to retake office, Trump continued to expand his business ventures, raising billions in market value by launching a “meme coin” crypto token that prompted ethical and regulatory questions.
The inauguration took place amid heavy security after a campaign marked by political violence.
The traditional parade down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House was moved indoors to the Capital One Arena, where Trump also held a victory rally on Sunday.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason, Nandita Bose, Doina Chiacu, Stephanie Kelly, Rami Ayyub and Gram Slattery; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)
