Playbook: “The moment of the evening … came when Trump was asked if outgoing President Joe Biden had left the traditional letter of advice for his successor in the Resolute Desk. Trump opened a drawer and pulled the historic letter out, apparently for the first time, the number “47” visible in Biden’s handwriting upon the envelope. The president suggested he might even open and read the letter right there, before the cameras. In the end, he smiled and put it back in the drawer … Even Trump has his limits.”

Politico: “It’s not yet known which of Trump’s exhaustive list of executive actions will have immediate impact, which are purely symbolic, and whether Congress or the courts can limit their impact. As of 9 p.m., Trump had signed dozens of executive actions, with the possibility he could sign more later Monday night.”

“It was immediately clear, however, that several Day One orders appeared to fall short of the ‘days of thunder’ the incoming president’s allies promised in the lead up to Inauguration Day.”

“An executive order President Donald Trump signed Monday night vows to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., despite broad legal consensus that the Constitution guarantees American citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil,” Politico reports.

“Trump’s order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize U.S. citizenship for children born in the U.S. to mothers who are in the country illegally or here legally on visas, if the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.”

“The order would deny U.S. citizenship, including passports, to those children born in the U.S. starting 30 days from now, if at least one parent isn’t an American citizen or green card holder.”

“President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday night that repeals a provision allowing transgender troops to serve in the military, part of a wide-ranging effort to end Biden-era policies his first day in office,” Politico reports.

“Moments after he was sworn in as the 47th US president, Donald Trump gave a staid inaugural address in the Capitol rotunda filled with policy pronouncements on inflation, immigration and energy, along with a call for common sense in politics,” Bloomberg reports.

“Barely an hour later, he was in entirely different form. From Emancipation Hall in a lower level of the building, he delivered an animated rant in which he decried a ‘rigged’ 2020 election, called former US Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘guilty as hell’ and railed against former congresswoman Liz Cheney. He said his advisers had told him not to talk in his first address about the pardons Joe Biden had issued or the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.”

“President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was issuing roughly 1,500 pardons and commuting the sentences of six of his supporters in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him,” NBC News reports.

New York Times: “With that six-word vow, President Trump described how he planned to make his second term in office differ from his first. Now, after a four-year interregnum that began with political exile and ended with his improbable resurrection, the great disrupter made clear that he does not intend to be thwarted this time in making America far more conservative at home and more imperial abroad.”

“In his 29-minute inaugural address, Mr. Trump wasted no time on lofty appeals to American ideals. Instead, he spoke with a tone of aggression intended to be heard by domestic and foreign audiences as a warning that America under a more experienced Donald Trump will not take no for an answer.”

“Elon Musk has already achieved his first cut at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency: his co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy,” Politico reports.

“Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days… An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise.”

“Just 69 days after Trump announced the team, Ramaswamy is now leaving DOGE and planning to announce a run for Ohio governor next week. Musk’s ability to ice out Ramaswamy, who for a variety of reasons had irked some Republicans in Trump’s circle, is the latest sign of his influence in the incoming administration. And it presages an encore of all of the infighting that marked Trump’s first term.”

“President Trump’s redecorated Oval Office includes a portrait of Benjamin Franklin and a fresh Andrew Jackson painting, part of an Inauguration Day overhaul of the most exclusive office space in America,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“President Donald Trump’s pledge to rename the highest mountain in North America put Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation in varying states of dismay after he reiterated plans to change Denali back to Mount McKinley in his inaugural address Monday,” Politico reports.