President Trump takes the oath of office, calling Monday ‘liberation day’ and vowing swift immigration restrictions

WASHINGTON – Donald J. Trump took the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States Monday, promising to reverse what he referred to as the nation’s decline and vowing that he would usher in a new “golden age of America.”

Inside the gilded atrium of the Capitol Rotunda, Trump called Monday “liberation day,” outlining a flurry of immediate policy changes he said will remake the country.

“Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced,” he said.

On a frigidly cold day that pushed the swearing-in ceremony indoors for the first time since 1985, Trump stood before VIPs in the coveted few seats inside: his family, business executives, and members of Congress, including Sens. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) and Dave McCormick (R., Pa.).

Former presidents and vice presidents looked on, including outgoing President Joe Biden, who just hours earlier issued a slew of pardons meant to protect government officials, members of Congress, and his own family from feared politically motivated prosecutions by his successor.

Thousands of others watched on livestreams on screens and from spaces set up around D.C., including in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall and at the Capital One Arena. Many more who had their tickets canceled due to space limitations huddled in hotel bars or opted to stay home.

The moment capped an unprecedented return to power for Trump, a Republican who was impeached twice during his first term and became the first president to begin a nonconsecutive second term since Grover Cleveland in 1893. Trump took the oath Monday in the same building where a mob of his supporters, spurred by his false claims that he won the 2020 election, attacked just four years ago on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the course of the campaign, Trump was convicted of a felony, and he survived a July assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.

“Just a few months ago in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear,” Trump said during his remarks. “But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

» READ MORE: Live updates: Donald Trump takes office, marking the start of his second term

Trump prevailed in the November election over outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, winning Pennsylvania and every swing state on a vow to upend a system that many working-class Americans felt had left them behind. That message resonated with an expanded Republican base that now includes a larger number of Black, Latino, and noncollege-educated voters than ever before.

Hours after taking the oath, Trump signed several executive orders from a desk set up on the stage of the Capital One Arena. The actions included requiring that executive branch federal employees return to five-day in-person work, rescinding 78 Biden executive actions, implementing a federal hiring freeze for most positions, and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. With a signature Trumpian flourish, he flung the Sharpies he used to sign the orders into the cheering crowd.

The president was expected to sign as many as 100 day-one actions that address his hefty pledges of lowering prices, boosting energy production, and improving border security. Those executive orders would reportedly include a nationwide suspension of refugee resettlement, an emergency declaration that could allow him to deploy the military to the Southern border, and an effort to end the constitutionally protected right to citizenship for all people born in the country.

Trump also said he’ll work to keep the social media giant TikTok accessible, despite a deadline to ban the Chinese-owned app in the U.S. that has passed. And he has vowed to dismantle Biden-era efforts to improve diversity across the federal government and protect transgender Americans.

» READ MORE: Immigration advocates brace for Trump’s Day 1 deportation orders that could target 47,000 in Philadelphia

In its initial days, the administration will also reportedly carry out immigration raids in major cities to fulfill a campaign promise of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. And hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants — including some who planned to travel to D.C. for the inauguration — could receive pardons or commutations for their actions in the Capitol riot.

In the ornate Capitol Rotunda, Trump delivered his 30-minute address under the neoclassic dome often called “the physical heart of the Capitol” and said he returns to the presidency “confident and optimistic.”

While he promised to be a “peacemaker and a unifier,” Trump spent much of his speech describing a grim version of the nation, echoing his first inaugural address in 2017 when he said he would put an end to “this American carnage.”

Trump castigated the outgoing Biden administration — saying it “cannot manage even a simple crisis” — and described the Washington he enters as suffering from a “crisis of trust” with the American people.

”For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens,” he said, “while the pillars of our society lie broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.”

He also promised to expand America’s footprint literally and figuratively, saying his administration would seek to regain control of the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” and pursue a new version of “manifest destiny” by planting an American flag on Mars.

The president ended his remarks with a hopeful note that echoed his campaign, saying “we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.”

“With your help, we will restore America’s promise, and we will rebuild the nation that we love,” Trump said. “We are one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God. So, to every parent who dreams for their child and every child who dreams for their future, I am with you, I will fight for you, and I will win for you.”

The president delivered two speeches later in the day that struck markedly different tones compared to his inaugural address.

Moments after leaving the Rotunda, Trump stepped into the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall for unscripted remarks in his signature freewheeling style, telling the overflow crowd gathered there that he’d cut some controversial topics from his earlier speech.

He referenced “Jan. 6 hostages,” falsely claimed his 2020 loss was the result of a “rigged election,” and at one point suggested he could have won deep-blue California last year. He added another jab at Biden, saying: “I was going to talk about things Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty.”

“I think this is a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump said.

While top campaign donors and billionaire tech CEOs had dotted the crowd at his inaugural address, the attendees at his second speech of the day were mayors, spouses of members of Congress, and other invited guests like YouTube stars and podcasters.

They also included Trump campaign staff and volunteers, like Greg Sulc, a commercial inspector from Washington County.

“People are ready for change, but we’ve been through a lot,” Sulc said. “We’ve been through a lot of lies, a lot of deception, and we deserve better.”

As night fell on Washington Monday, Trump’s inaugural parade snaked through the Capital One Arena, where some 20,000 supporters had gathered all day.

Among the participants were first responders from Butler who led off the indoor parade. The arena crowd paid tribute to firefighter Corey Comperatore, who was fatally shot during the assassination attempt last year in the Western Pennsylvania town, with a moment of silence.

Before signing the orders at the arena, Trump called Biden’s administration “the worst” in history, and again blasted the former president for issuing pardons before teasing pardons for Jan. 6 defendants.

“We’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people,” Trump told the arena crowd.

Later that evening, he issued commuted sentences for 14 people convicted of crimes related to the Capitol riot, including Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, and issued an “unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” which Trump told reporters would be a pardon for roughly 1,500 people.

Trump assumes the presidency in a moment when divisions run deep, but resistance is less vocal than when he took office eight years ago. Republicans have united around Trump, and an increasing number of Democrats are striking a bipartisan tone.

“Donald Trump will take the oath today because the status quo simply isn’t working for most people,” New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat sworn in last year, said in a statement. “The mandate for change isn’t just his, but everyone who swears an oath to public service.”

In Philadelphia, protesters held a day of action outside City Hall on Saturday to preemptively denounce Trump’s expected actions on immigration. In Washington, D.C. — which was blanketed with anti-Trump activists in 2017 — most of the onlookers who traveled to the Capitol in 20-degree weather were supportive.

At 78, Trump is the oldest American president to start a term — he is a few months older than Biden was when he took office in 2021.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Trump — a New York City developer who made his name building luxury hotels and casinos — became a working-class hero and over the last decade accelerated a rightward shift in rural, Rust Belt, and even some urban areas around the country.

Voters, many of whom cited his no-holds-barred rhetoric, said they wanted a change amid post-pandemic inflation that hit grocery bills and housing prices, despite a drop in unemployment and massive infrastructure programs ushered in by Biden.

At an inauguration watch party at the Newtown Athletic Club in Bucks County, Sarah Lipsius, 64, of Yardley, sported a “Trump chick” button on one side of her red vest and a “women for Trump” button on the other. She said there’s “hope” now that Trump is president, contending he will secure the border, support Israel, and reduce crime.

”Trump stands for just about everything that I would like to see happen in the future,” Lipsius said, “and we’re so lucky that he has won given all the obstacles that he encountered.”

Staff writers Aliya Schneider, Fallon Roth, and Rob Tornoe contributed to this article.