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The First Fifteen Days After the Inauguration of the New POTUS


Inauguration Day marks the end of one president’s term and the handover of responsibilities to the next. The Inauguration of 2025 saw several never-seen-before instances wherein Joe Biden handed over his duties to Donald J Trump as the 47th President of the United States. Right before the end of his term, Biden issued pardons for individuals he feared would face attack under the Trump Administration. These included his siblings and their respective spouses, his son, Hunter Biden, one month before leaving office, immunologist Anthony Fauci and former Congress member Liz Cheney, among several other members of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Due to the Arctic blast outside, Trump requested to change the Inauguration from outside to inside the Capitol Rotunda. His Inauguration was the first to invite foreign dignitaries, especially several far-right leaders like Giorgia Meloni from Italy and Javier Milei from Argentina.

In his speech, Trump made several claims reflecting his intentions after completely assuming office. His primary aim through all the actions and executive orders he was set to undertake was to “begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.” He promised to expand the borders of the United States whilst warning Panama to take back the US-built canal there. Through his speech, he painted the previous administration as corrupt. He wanted to end the ‘weaponisation’ of the justice undertaken throughout the previous term of presidency in the US. At the beginning of the speech, it was noted that “The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent and unfair weaponisation of the Justice Department and our government will end.”

In his attempts to become a peacemaker and a unifier – a sort of saviour that he believes he is to the people of the United States and someone that the country is in serious need of, he claims to bring in a new age of prosperity and that the spirit of unification and peacemaking will be extended beyond state borders. The policies that he intends to implement and the orders he will soon sign aim to create a society that is “colour-blind and merit-based.” He also declared that the United States government will acknowledge only the gender binary – Male and Female. With such orders, which section of the American society is this intended for when a large section of individual’s rights are being tampered with and eroded?



Another instance that stirred not only discourse and conversations but also chaos from the inauguration was the gesture made by technocrat Elon Musk that was the same as the gesture used to signify the Nazi project led by Hitler, leading to the killing of millions of Jews in the world’s most horrific genocide, during World War II. In an attempt to thank the audience for voting for Donald Trump, Musk tapped the left side of his chest with his right hand, extended his arm with his palm open, and repeated the same for the audience behind him. Social media users were split into two sides on the gesture. While one believed that it did not signify anything profound and was just his way of showing his happiness and excitement, the other side has said that this is ‘unambiguously’ the nazi salute. There shouldn’t be two sides to this discussion. Musk’s support for the far-right is evident. His adoption of fascist ideologies isn’t just undertones in his policies and his actions. His interference in the upcoming German elections and his endorsement of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland is disconcerting to several people. 



US President Donald Trump has signed a total of 61 Executive Orders since he assumed office on the 20th of January, 2025. Executive Orders are directives issued by the US President that manage the federal government operations. The number of Executive Orders signed by Trump has crossed those signed by any recent President in the first hundred days of them being in office. Trump’s executive orders have varied in nature. On the day he assumed office, he signed some ranging from one that mandates the construction of a wall on the southern US border and the removal of individuals that flout federal and/or state laws, declaring a national energy emergency, rolling back restrictions that disallow drilling in Alaska and resuming gas exports, to, exiting from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the next 12 months and stopping funding to it. As of 10th February, Trump has added some more to this list, including the sanctioning of the International Criminal Court over its investigations of Israel – these may include restrictions on property and assets, implementation of the Department of Government Efficiency’s Work Optimisation Measures that has a list of justifications to be used to fire employees and an order to end the procurement and ‘forced’ use of paper straws and go back to using plastic straws since the former is not easy to use, is expensive in terms of production and are dysfunctional. These executive orders by the new POTUS reflect a drastic shift in policy and ideologies compared to previous presidents. They are decisions that are supported by only ideology fuelled by hate - Make America Great Again.



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