President Trump was inaugurated on January 20th, 2025. An indoor inauguration was held inside of the U.S Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. A week before the inauguration, President Trump announced the ceremony would be held inside due to frigid temperatures. Many Trump supporters were angered and disappointed after being given a broken promise of an outdoor inauguration with a closer view of the former president being sworn back into office.
The first row of Trump’s inaugural was a flock of tech billionaires including Jeff Bezos and his wife, Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, and Sundar Pichai. The total estimated net worth of all those billionaires combined comes to about a trillion dollars. Behind all those billionaires, in the second row, was his cabinet.
The idea of the world’s richest and most powerful men seated in the front row at the presidential inauguration gives us a glimpse into the future that holds America. This is an idea that many have spoken out about, saying that the billionaire capitalists of the world will form an oligarchy, overpowering the citizens of America as they clutch their close ties with the government and president that benefit them and their businesses. Fear has risen throughout the country over the risk of our environment, health, prices, the ability to afford college, safety for immigrants, safety for people of color, all of which are now hung by a thread. After years of America building up a modern state where all can be equal, rights are surely and nimbly being taken away by one man. Trump refused to put his hand on the Bible, which many have taken as a sign that Trump does not respect the government, his religion, or his position, only thinking for himself and not his citizens.
If Americans are upset over high grocery prices, unaffordable healthcare, the corrupt government, then we must fight for it. If all Americans aligned and protested against the government, it may one day be possible for a person to survive with one job instead of fighting constantly over political parties and irrelevant arguments. We must shift our focus to the real issues that affect everyday life.
After the inauguration, President Trump has already started enacting many executive orders within the country’s first week under the Trump administration. Those include orders on January 6th pardons, inflation, pausing the “TikTok” ban, restoring the death penalty, “ending the weaponization of the federal government,” the Federal workforce, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, and defining “sex”. Two of the more vastly impactful executive orders that are being put in to place are immigration changes and ending DEI programs.
With these executive orders being put into place, companies Such as Target, Walmart, Amazon, McDonald’s, Meta, and many more have started to remove any policies intended to stop discrimination with a new DEI executive order that was put into action by the Trump administration. In a statement to the public, the White House stated that “billions of dollars are spent annually on DEI, but rather than reducing bias and promoting inclusion, DEI creates and then amplifies prejudicial hostility and exacerbates interpersonal conflict.” Thus, many companies are rolling back their DEI. The Associated Press stated that “corporations — including Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Meta — are retreating from policies intended to counter discrimination, many of which were implemented after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in 2020.”
Philanthropic advisors say the “conservative backlash is also chilling support from some funders who fear that backing race-based nonprofit work could bring legal challenges like the one that successfully shuttered the Fearless Fund’s grant contest for Black women business owners.” This demonstrates how this change in power brought the removal of DEI as quickly as they where implemented. But, on the opposite side of this spectrum, some companies are not removing their DEI and reinforcing them. This includes Apple, Costco, Ben & Jerry’s, E.l.f Beauty, and JP Morgan. Costco has had 98% of its shareholders vote against removing the DEI.
The other vastly impactful executive order that President Trump passed in his first week in office is “SECURING OUR BORDERS” the white house stated that “detaining, to the maximum extent authorized by law, aliens apprehended on suspicion of violating Federal or State law until they are removed from the United States; removing promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of Federal law.” President Trump is using “immigration and customs enforcement”, or ICE, to detain immigrants. BBC stated that “a nationwide immigration crackdown on Sunday resulted in the arrest of 956 people, the most since Donald Trump returned to power, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” ICE has been seen around the country and due to President Trump’s new executive order. ICE has also been allowed to take children out of school.
Many public schools are scrambling to try and protect immigrant students from ICE in schools. These new executive orders show how the Trump administration is already throwing the country into a sort of panic and disarray with the new executive orders that President Trump put in order.
We are living in a repetition of history. The safety of the country can only be determined by time, and we can’t predict the future. For those who worry for themselves and the state of our country, we can only stay hopeful and be aware.
