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How technology has changed inauguration coverage

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How technology has changed inauguration coverage

Millions of people across the country are expected to tune in to President-elect Trump’s second inauguration ceremony. Television networks, online publications and social media outlets are preparing for the big event. The way inaugurations have been presented to the public has changed drastically over the years.

“We must think big and dream even bigger,” Trump said during his first inaugural address in 2017.

Tens of millions of people watched his first address in real time – both on television and through online streaming. But inaugural addresses and analysis of the speeches were not always available immediately. In 1789, when George Washington was sworn in for the first time, his speech was not available to the public until several days later.

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Thomas Jefferson became the first president to have his inauguration speech printed in a newspaper the same day he gave his address in 1801. The National Intelligencer printed the speech on the morning of Jefferson’s inauguration.

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James Polk was the first president to have his address reported by telegraph. It was also the first time a speech was shown in a newspaper illustration, by the Illustrated London News.

James Polk takes the presidential oath in this illustration of his inauguration. Polk’s inauguration was the first to be published as an illustration in newspapers. (Library of Congress)

Drawings were the main visual for inaugurations for another 12 years, until photography became more frequently used. James Buchanan was the first president to have a photograph taken at his swearing-in. Another 40 years later, video was used to record inaugurations for the public.

William McKinley was the first president to appear on a movie camera during his inaugural address in 1901. Only silent films were available then, but that would change over the years as inaugural addresses began to incorporate audio.

James Buchanan was the first president to have a photograph taken when he was sworn into office. (Library of Congress)

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In 1921, Warren Harding was the first to use loudspeakers to address the crowd attending his inauguration in person. Four years later, Calvin Coolidge was the first to have his inaugural broadcast nationally by radio. The White House Historical Association estimates his 1925 address reached more than 23 million radio listeners. Herbert Hoover gave the first multimedia inaugural. His 1929 address was the first recorded on a talking newsreel.

“It is a dedication and consecration under God to the highest office in service of our people,” Hoover said during his address.

After World War II, an increasing number of Americans bought television sets for their homes. By 1949, almost all major cities had at least one local television station, and 4.2 million American homes had TV sets. Harry Truman became the first president to have his inauguration broadcast live that year. More than a decade later, John F. Kennedy had his address broadcast in color for the estimated 500,000 Americans who had color television sets.

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” Kennedy famously said during his inauguration speech.

Ronald Reagan sought to bring the pageantry of inauguration events to Americans across the country. His inaugural committee hosted around 100 satellite inaugural balls that were broadcast in 32 cities.

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Americans used to have to wait days to read a president’s inaugural address in the newspaper. Today, the event can be livestreamed in real time all over the world. (Associated Press)

“Almost 200 years ago, at the first inaugural, people came by stagecoach. This time, people all over America, millions of people, are attending this one by satellite,” Reagan said during a ball at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

More than a decade later, Bill Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997 was available on the internet via livestream. Clinton had signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 just a year before at the Library of Congress.

“Ten years ago, the internet was the mystical province of physicists; today, it is a commonplace encyclopedia for millions of schoolchildren,” Clinton said during his inaugural address. “As we look back at this remarkable century, we may ask, ‘Can we hope not just to follow, but even to surpass the achievements of the 20th century in America?’”

With the growth of the internet, social media use also expanded.

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“We have always understood that when times change, so must we,” Barack Obama said at his second inaugural address in 2013.

Obama was the first president to join Twitter. His 2013 address generated more than 1 million tweets. According to Pew Research, around 51% of Americans owned a smartphone at the time. When Trump was sworn into office in 2017, that percentage rose to 77%. Cellphone carriers installed extracellular antennas ahead of the address for the massive crowd that would be sharing photos and videos from the day’s events on social media.

When Joe Biden gave his address in 2021, his inaugural committee relied on technology for nearly every aspect of the event. The coronavirus pandemic forced much of Biden’s festivities to move online.

“The world is watching all of us today. So, here is my message to those beyond our borders: America has been tested, and we have come out stronger for it,” Biden said during his address.

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Former UK ambassador to US released on bail after arrest in Epstein misconduct investigation

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Former UK ambassador to US released on bail after arrest in Epstein misconduct investigation

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Peter Mandelson, the former U.K. ambassador to the United States, has been released on bail pending additional investigation after he was arrested in a misconduct probe stemming from his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

“A 72-year-old man arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office has been released on bail pending further investigation. He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and was taken to a London police station for interview. This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas,” a Metropolitan Police spokesperson noted.

Mandelson and former Prince Andrew are suspected of supplying U.K. government information to Epstein, according to The Associated Press.

Lord Peter Mandelson leaving his home in Wiltshire. (Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images)

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Mandelson served in senior government roles under previous Labour governments and was U.K. ambassador to Washington until Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired him in September after emails were published showing that he maintained a friendship with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses involving a minor.

Messages indicate that Mandelson provided Epstein with government information in 2009 while serving as a senior British government minister, according to the outlet.

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European External Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson welcomes Prince Andrew, Duke of York, prior to their bilateral meeting June 7, 2007, at the EU Commission’s Headquarters in Brussels. (JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images)

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested last week on suspicion of misconduct in public office. 

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“I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and suspicion of misconduct in public office. What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and co-operation,” Mountbatten-Windsor’s brother, King Charles III, said in a statement after the arrest last week.

FORMER PRINCE ANDREW CHARGED TAXPAYERS FOR MASSAGES WHILE SPLURGING ON LAVISH TRIPS AS TRADE ENVOY: REPORT

Prince Andrew attends the traditional Easter Sunday Mattins Service at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on April 20, 2025, in Windsor, England. (Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)

Thames Valley Police later revealed Mountbatten-Windsor had been released but the investigation remains ongoing.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Commentary: The anti-Latino agenda behind Trump wanting Americans to have more kids

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Commentary: The anti-Latino agenda behind Trump wanting Americans to have more kids

This is the Year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese zodiac — but for the White House, it’s more like the Year of Babies.

No, not the ones in the Trump administration. Actual babies.

Parents can take advantage of a larger child tax credit. July 5 will see the launch of $1,000 stock investments funded by the Treasury Department for children born in this country during President Trump’s reign. He has mulled offering $5,000 “baby bonuses” and creating a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women who have six or more children.

All this is happening even as birthrates have plummeted in this country for decades, reaching their lowest point ever in 2024. A reduced population tends to relegate countries to economic and demographic doom — look at Japan and Russia. That’s why one of Trump’s big campaign promises was to Make America Fertile Again.

“I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s OK,” he boasted last spring during a women’s history event at the White House.

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But even as this administration urges families to grow and single people to marry and welcome little ones into their lives, it’s persecuting children in the name of Trump’s deportation deluge.

While the president told a crowd last October, “We want more babies, to put it nicely” while announcing cheaper in vitro fertilization drugs, the New York Times found his administration was keeping an average of 175 children a day in immigration detention — a 700% increase from the end of the Biden administration.

As Vice President JD Vance bragged during a March for Life rally in January that he “practices what he preaches” by expecting a fourth child this year, 5-year-old U.S. citizen Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos was adjusting to life in Honduras along with her deported mother.

On the same day last month that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media, “My greatest job is being a dad to my nine kids and family will always come first,” a federal judge ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, an Ecuadorean preschooler grabbed outside his Minneapolis home along with his father in what the jurist described as a “perfidious lust for unbridled power.”

Just last week, Alaska resident Sonia Espinoza Arriaga and her sons, ages 5 and 16, were dumped in Tijuana by la migra even though the family had an active case to determine whether they qualified for asylum. And Trump’s campaign against undocumented children is just beginning on multiple fronts.

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Ayaan Moledina protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they march toward the South Texas Family Residential Center on Jan. 28 in Dilley, Texas.

(Joel Angel Juarez / Getty Images)

The Supreme Court has scheduled hearings in April for Trump’s lawsuit seeking to end birthright citizenship for people born to parents who aren’t citizens or permanent residents. U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is suing to end policies that protect immigrant children in custody.

Thousands more agents are expected to storm our streets in the coming weeks while the Department of Homeland Security spends billions of dollars to build or retrofit warehouses to stuff with the people they grab. Reports are already emerging from the South Texas Family Residential Center an hour south of San Antonio, which ICE uses to house children slated for removal from this country, of rancid food and overcrowded cells.

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Trump’s apologists will claim there’s nothing racist or heartless about removing youngsters in this country illegally — or if their parents are in the U.S. without documentation — while asking citizens to have bigger families, even as the main proponents of the so-called pronatalist movement are white conservatives while nearly all of the kids la migra are booting are Latinos.

But an administration that can’t treat these children humanely shouldn’t be trusted with taking care of even American-born children. And one can’t separate Trump’s supposed pro-baby policies from what this country has historically inflicted on Latino families.

American authorities forced U.S.-born children to leave for Mexico with their parents during the Great Depression, arguing they would become a welfare burden at the expense of white children. Doctors were sterilizing Latinas without their consent in the name of population control as recently as the 1970s. Popular culture ridiculed large Latino families as backward and destined for poverty.

I grew up in a California where politicians railed against Mexican American kids like myself for supposedly overwhelming schools, parks, medical clinics and streets with our numbers. We were supposedly the ground troops in a nefarious conspiracy called Reconquista that sought to return the American Southwest to Mexico.

By the time I reached high school in the 1990s, voters began to pass laws that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants like my father and other relatives, with a special punitive focus on their progeny. The infamous Prop. 187, which passed in 1994, would’ve banned undocumented children from attending California public schools from kindergarten to higher education. Five years later, the Anaheim Union High School District, whose schools I attended, passed a resolution seeking to sue Mexico for $50 million for educating the children of undocumented immigrants.

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Board president Harald Martin — who migrated to this country from Austria as a 2-year-old — appeared on NPR to justify his actions by comparing the students he was in charge of to Tribbles, furry little aliens that starred in a famous “Star Trek” episode when they bred in such numbers that the Starship Enterprise was overwhelmed.

“They were so cute and fluffy, nice little things when there were four or five of them,” Martin said. “Then it got to the point down the road when it wasn’t so nice. They were getting in the way because there now were thousands of them on the ship.”

Martin’s example was not only wildly racist, it ignored the reality that Latinos were on the same road to assimilation as other previous immigrant groups ridiculed for their large families. While a March of Dimes study released last year shows Latinas had more children than any other ethnic group in this country as of 2023, the Latina birthrate declined by a third since 2003 — by far the largest drop of those groups.

I’ve seen this play out in my own family. I have 16 aunts and uncles who lived to adulthood and am the oldest of four children born to my parents — but my dad has just one grandchild and probably isn’t getting any more. I agree with Trump, Vance and the rest of them that children bring magic and vitality to communities — but what Latino family would want to raise a family where everything is far more expensive and the threat of deportation is never far away?

Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos

In this photo released by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, are seen in San Antonio on Jan. 31 after being released from the Dilley detention center.

(U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro)

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Fatherhood wasn’t in the cards for me, but I love being Tío Guti to my nephew and the children of my friends. That’s why my heart breaks when I hear them say that their classmates left the United States and my blood boils when I hear Vance, Trump and others urge Americans to have more kids. Trumpworld isn’t looking to increase the number of people who look like my loved ones — and that’s something that should frighten us all.

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House Dem compares Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown to ‘terrorism,’ vows to abolish ICE

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House Dem compares Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown to ‘terrorism,’ vows to abolish ICE

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Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., compared U.S. enforcement of immigration law to “terrorism” during a Saturday town hall and promised to dismantle the chief U.S. immigration enforcement agency if Democrats regained power.

“The frank terrorism that is being invoked – when we call that out and stand together, I think people will continue to not want to do that work,” Dexter told an audience at Wy’east Middle School in Oregon.

“I’m not supposed to get political, but if there’s a change in political will, then we can absolutely dismantle and abolish ICE altogether,” Dexter said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Dexter, a freshman progressive lawmaker, is one of many Democrats who have called for reforms to the agency in the wake of public unrest in Minnesota over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

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Maxine Dexter, left, pictured alongside a group of ICE agents, right. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images; John Moore/Getty Images)

When two civilians in Minneapolis were shot and killed in separate confrontations with immigration officials in January, Dexter was among the first lawmakers who promised to vote against any spending legislation for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that didn’t also include major reforms to ICE, which operates under DHS.

Although the vast majority of Democrats eventually adopted Dexter’s stance over DHS funding, the idea first began as a position held by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and was championed by members like Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Democratic US Congresswoman Maxine Dexter speaks during a press conference on April 21, 2025. (Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty Images)

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Gridlock over DHS funding has led to a partial government shutdown which began on Feb. 14, when Democrats in the Senate also refused to advance DHS funding over a set of 10 reforms to ICE.

Among those demands, Democrats want to impose new operational limits to the agency, such as an end to roaming patrols, a ban on masks, a requirement for visible identification and stiffer warrant requirements for detaining illegal aliens in public.

Protesters, using whistles to alert neighborhoods to ICE activity, face off with Minneapolis police officers in Minneapolis, Minn., on Jan. 24, 2026.  (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Those changes would represent the most direct intervention into the agency’s operation since its creation in 2003.

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Republicans have rebuffed those demands, arguing they would severely limit the administration’s immigration goals.

Dexter’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday about the nature of her comments — including whether she had made a campaign promise at a town hall or who had funded the event.

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