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An inauguration of the president in the United States is usually a celebration of democracy.

Hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington to see a newly elected president take the oath of office. An outgoing president signals his respect for the country by celebrating the new one, even if that outgoing president is disappointed with the election result – as was the case with Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and others.

“I grew up in the Washington area and initiations have always been a time of hope and new beginnings, regardless of party,” said Peter Baker, Times chief correspondent at the White House.

But when American democracy is under siege, inauguration can feel very different. That was the case in 1945 when the United States was fighting fascism in World War II and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration was a spartan affair. It was true in 1861 when the country was on the brink of war and Abraham Lincoln was the target of an assassination attempt. Four years later, when the smallpox raged and the civil war neared its end, it was true again.

And it will be true today – when mismanagement took the US to the worst Covid-19 number in the world and when law enforcement agencies warn of potential violence by President Trump’s supporters.

The day will still be a triumph of democracy in most important respects: a defeated president’s attempt to overthrow a fair election has failed, as has a violent attack on Congress by his supporters. Election winner Joe Biden will be sworn in as president around noon Eastern, shortly after the new vice president, Kamala Harris.

Yet American democracy is under siege. Washington is like an armed camp with visitors banned from many locations, fences surrounding the National Mall, and troops lining the streets. Trump will not be attending the event and many of his supporters believe his false claims.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Peter, who has covered every White House since Clinton’s coverage and first covered an inauguration as a junior reporter in 1985, the start of Ronald Reagan’s second term. “It’s surreal to see our city becoming such an armed camp. It reminds me of Baghdad or Kabul when I covered these wars, but I never thought we would see it that way in Washington. “

This is how you see today’s inauguration. The reporting begins around 10 a.m. east.

In the following, we briefly look back at the three initiations that are most similar to today’s – from 1945, 1865 and 1861.

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln, several southern states split, and a newspaper described fears that “armed bands” would try to thwart his inauguration. A conspiracy to kill Lincoln forced him to sneak into Washington early that morning.

On inauguration day, cavalrymen flanked Lincoln’s procession, soldiers blocked roads, and rooftop snipers eyed the crowd. The first sentence on the cover of the New York Times the next day: “The day everyone looked at with so much fear and interest has come and gone. ABRAHAM LINCOLN has been inaugurated and ‘all is well’. “

Washington was a grim war city for Lincoln’s second inauguration after weathering recent waves of smallpox and heavy rainfall. The crowd that day was “almost knee-deep” in the mud. Lincoln rode in an open carriage with a military escort of black and white troops.

A Times report – by the poet Walt Whitman – noted that when the President spoke, “a strange little white cloud, the only one in this part of the sky, appeared like a hovering bird directly overhead”.

The actor John Wilkes Booth, soon to become Lincoln’s assassin, was in the crowd that day.

Safety concerns and austerity measures during the war made Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration “the easiest inauguration ever,” with “the smallest crowd ever,” wrote The Times.

The public parts of the event only lasted 15 minutes, also because Roosevelt was sick. He shivered as he stood on the south portico of the White House to give a brief address. Less than three months later, he would die of a brain haemorrhage. By the end of that summer, the US had won the wars in both Europe and Asia.

  • Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, blamed Trump for the Capitol uprising, saying the mob was “provoked by the President and other powerful people.”

  • Trump granted 143 pardons and commutations in his final terms, including Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, and Elliott Broidy, one of his top fundraisers in 2016. For more notable pardons, see here.

  • During his four years in office, Trump used Twitter to praise, lobby, establish his version of events – and heighten his disdain. Here are all of his insults.

  • Americans look back: “Has there been a day in the past four years when Trump wasn’t somewhere in your orbit?” (This six-minute video shows unforgettable moments from his presidency.)

  • The Senate began confirmatory negotiations for five of Biden’s cabinet candidates. Due to delays, he is likely to be the first president in decades to take office without his national security team.

  • Kamala Harris will swear by three new Democratic Senators – Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff from Georgia and Alex Padilla from California – after becoming Vice President, which gives Democrats tight control over the Senate.

  • Biden is set to propose an immigration law today that will provide undocumented immigrants a route to citizenship and allow “dreamers” to apply for permanent residence.

  • The National Guard removed two troops from the inauguration service because of possible links to right-wing extremist movements.

  • These photos show Biden’s long journey to the presidency.

  • Can Biden take his peloton into the White House? Yes, say cybersecurity experts, but the bike may need adjustments.

A morning reading: In one of the great victories in Indian cricket history, a young squad without its big stars – and coping with injuries and racial abuse – defeated a confident Australia on its own turf.

From the opinion: Senate Democrats should get rid of the filibuster in order to make progress on climate change, civil rights and more, argues Adam Jentleson.

Lived life: As the only child of anthropologist Margaret Mead, Mary Catherine Bateson was once one of the most famous babies in America. She grew up to be a polymathic scholar and her 1989 book on the stop-and-start nature of women’s lives became a classic. Bateson died at the age of 81.

Some famous paintings are stolen more than once. For example, since 1988 thieves have stolen a painting by Frans Hals worth more than 10 million US dollars from a small Dutch museum three times, the last time in August.

Selling these images on the open market is impossible. Why do thieves want them? Having previously been stolen, the works have a track record showing that people are still willing to pay big bucks for them – either on the black market or through ransom.

Thieves sometimes sell stolen masterpieces to criminals who, in turn, could use them as leverage to reduce penalties for other crimes, reports The Art Newspaper. And in the case of the neck painting, an insurance company and the Dutch authorities once paid a ransom fee of more than USD 250,000. Recently, however, authorities and insurers have been reluctant to make payments because they believe they will encourage future thefts.

Learn about the fascinating history of the paintings that thieves keep stealing.

Chickpeas and noodles come together in this vegan main course.

Amanda Gorman, 22, the youngest inaugural poet, will read a work she completed after the Capitol uprising. She has discussed the writing process here.

The late night hosts reflected Trump’s last full day as president.

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was refilled. Today’s puzzle is up – or you can play online if you have a game subscription.

Here’s today’s mini crossword and clue: Smile (five letters).

Thank you for spending part of your morning with The Times. Until tomorrow. – David

PS The Times website was launched 25 years ago this week. “With its entry on the web,” it says in an article, “the Times hopes to become a primary information provider in the computer age.”

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