Sex, Drugs, And Religious Liberty

“Mayor Eric Adams left New York City in the middle of the night to head to the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has the power to pardon the indicted Democrat,” Politico reports. “Adams received an invitation from someone on Trump’s team between midnight and 1 a.m. — an unusually late hour for a dignitary to be invited to a presidential inauguration, particularly since Trump and Adams dined together in Florida days earlier.”

“It ain’t gonna be that cold. Just because the oligarchs are there. They’re too tender, coming from Silicon Valley. Are they too soft?” — Steve Bannon, in an interview with NPR, protesting moving Donald Trump’s inauguration indoors.

Pope Francis has criticized President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport immigrants as a “disgrace,” CNN reports. Said Francis: “If it is true, it will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the unpaid bill. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things.”

“Scores of senior career diplomats are resigning from the State Department effective at noon on Monday after receiving instructions to do so from President-elect Donald Trump’s aides,” the Washington Post reports. “The forced departures, aimed at establishing a decisive break from the Biden administration, will result in an exodus of decorated veterans of the Foreign Service.”

Shortly after being sworn in at high noon today, President-elect Trump plans to revoke security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 saying emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop carried “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” Axios reports.

Peter Baker: “The last time President-elect Donald Trump took the oath of office, eight years ago, Washington and beyond bristled with tension and angry defiance. But the Resistance of 2017 has faded into the Resignation of 2025.” “The mood leading up to the second Trump inauguration reflects how much has changed since the first Trump inauguration.