The day has come: Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. The ceremony will be different from the traditional ones due to the pandemic, but many characteristic elements will remain.
It all starts at around 11am Washington local time (5pm Italian time). Unlike the other Inauguration Days, this time the accredited audience will be reduced, around 1000 people, when generally around 200,000 invitations are made available. Participants must keep a safe distance and must wear masks throughout the event as an anti-Covid measure.
The security alert is on its way, following the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6 and the threat of possible riots. Some 25,000 members of the National Guard will guard the area and the city of Washington will be largely closed.
When everyone is in his place, Jesuit priest Leo J. O’Donovan, former dean of Georgetown University and longtime friend of Biden, will begin the ceremony with an invocation. The traditional pledge of loyalty, on the other hand, will be led by Andrea Hall, a Georgia firefighter in the South Fulton department (and the first African-American woman in history to be a fire captain).
Tonight, in Washington, DC and across the nation, we came together to honor the over 400,000 Americans we’ve lost to…
Posted by Joe Biden on Tuesday January 19, 2021
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will take the oath of Vice President Kamala Harris. She was using two Bibles, one of which belonged to Thurgood Marshall, the first black person to serve on the court, as reported by an extensive NBC News report.
Biden instead swears before John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and will use the family Bible, a copy handed down from 1893. There will be the blessing of Reverend Silvester Beaman, pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware, friend of Biden and his missing son, Beau.
Who will be there (and who will not)
In the audience will be former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, accompanied by their wives, Michelle, Laura and Hillary. For the first time since 1977, this time there will be no Jimmy Carter, the oldest living former president in the country (96 years old). However, he and former first lady Rosalynn sent their best wishes to the new president. Also in the audience will be singers Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, John Legend, Demi Lovato, and actresses Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington.
The big absentee will be Donald Trump, who refused to attend the ceremony and organized an event of his own, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. The last outgoing president not to attend the inauguration ceremony of his successor was Andrew Johnson, back in 1868.
The interpretation of the anthem of the United States will be the task of singer Lady Gaga, who was very active during the election campaign of the Democratic Party and had already collaborated with the former vice president on issues of domestic violence. The activist and young writer Amanda Gorman will follow with a poem written for the occasion entitled “The Hill We Climb”. Jennifer Lopez will also sing in front of the new president.
Biden’s first speech will be on “America United” and the US need to heal from wounds; a topic in line with the theme of her election campaign. Helping in drafting the speech was senior councilor Mike Donilon.
Biden and Harris will take a stroll to the East Front of the Capitol, where military power will be transferred and Biden will be officially the new commander-in-chief of the military. Then, he will go to Arlington National Cemetery to pay his respects to the 400,000 military veterans who are buried there.
On Biden’s Inauguration Day there will be no parade to greet the crowd, but a “virtual parade across America”, which will be broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. He will forgo the evening dance, but in its place will be the show “Celebrating America” hosted by Tom Hanks with “shows that represent the rich diversity and vast talent that America offers,” according to the program presented by the organizers.
But not everything is party. As underlined in the analysis of the Institute for International Political Studies on “Weekly Focus USA2020: The Biden Era Begins”, “the path of the president who promises to ‘heal America’ from its deepest wounds promises to be uphill since the first day”.
Photo: Joe Biden official profile – Facebook
