Weekly Review

On the eve of his inauguration, Donald Trump held a “victory rally” during which the musician Kid Rock performed; “inflation’s up like the minimum wage,” Kid intoned, “but that BS is about to change!”^{1 2 3} On Inauguration Day, Joe Biden announced pardons for his family members in the final twenty minutes of his presidency, and Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 people involved in the January 6 riot in the first hours of his.^{4 5} Marjorie Taylor Greene cut the line of Congresspeople waiting to enter the ceremony, Elon Musk appeared to give two Nazi salutes while addressing the crowd, Carrie Underwood was forced to sing “America The Beautiful” a cappella due to a technical glitch, and Trump threw a collection of pens into the audience after signing a series of executive orders.^{6 7 8 9 10 11} “This is a hell of a day,” said the new president, who declared that the federal government would thenceforth recognize only two genders; officially announced the creation of his advisory group DOGE, which was immediately hit by three different lawsuits for violating federal transparency laws; attempted to end birthright citizenship, a constitutional provision he called “just ridiculous”; canceled the flights of nearly 1,600 Afghan refugees; unauthorized the app that migrants used to schedule appointments with border officials; suspended the ban on TikTok; attended three inaugural balls; wielded a long, gleaming sword; renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America; reinstated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism; described dictator Kim Jong-un as a “tough cookie” with “bad intentions”; misidentified Spain as a BRICS nation; and falsely claimed that Americans split the atom.^{12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28} “That’s the one thing we did,” opined a commentator from New Zealand, the home country of Ernest Rutherford, who accomplished the feat in 1917 and serves as the namesake of the synthetic chemical element rutherfordium.^{29 30 31} Melania Trump launched a cryptocurrency, $MELANIA, which tanked the value of her husband’s own newly launched cryptocurrency, $TRUMP.^{32 33 34 35}

The first phase of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect, with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages and Israel releasing from detention 90 Palestinians, at least a third of whom had not been charged with a crime and 25 of whom were teenagers.^{36 37 38 39 40} After the ceasefire deal was struck, Israeli forces killed eight people in the West Bank, Israeli snipers shot and killed a child in Rafah, and Israel continued to bomb Gaza, killing dozens of Palestinians, including 21 children.^{41 42 43} In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles, and, in his first full day back in the Oval Office, Trump revoked the Biden Administration’s sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of assaulting Palestinians.^{44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52} It was reported that landlords in Los Angeles raised rents by up to 300% as fires continued to blaze through the county; three people were arrested for flying unauthorized drones in the city, including one that collided with a “Super Scooper” aircraft; and an Oregon man, previously incarcerated on charges of arson, was arrested in the Palisades for posing as a firefighter and driving a firetruck emblazoned with the words Roaring River Fire Department, a department that does not exist.^{53 54 55 56 57 58} It was reported that an Orange County fire chief saved two homes from burning by dousing a melting gas meter in beer and milk, and a woman was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment for using a packet of spicy Takis to set a home alight in Springfield, Missouri.^{59 60}

A French judge ruled that Rillette, a wild boar domesticated by a horse breeder, would be allowed to stay with her owner after successful protests by animal-rights campaigners and the actress Brigitte Bardot, who declared in an open letter that France is “governed by assassins.”^{61 62 63} In Afghanistan, the acting deputy foreign minister criticized his own government’s policy of banning girls from attending school, and in Sweden, a guard at the king’s palace slipped on ice and impaled himself with his own bayonet.^{64 65} A Taiwanese plastic surgeon posted a video on Facebook in which he performs a vasectomy on himself, and an Italian soccer club’s falconer, who had previously been suspended from taking care of the team’s mascot, an eagle called Olympia, after praising Benito Mussolini and performing a fascist salute, was fired for sharing photos to social media of his new penile implant.^{66 67} In Greece, a man who failed a drunk-driving test was released by police and proceeded to crash into another car later that night, and in an English laundromat, an 84-year-old man fought off a mugger with a pair of jeans.^{68 69} “It was either me or him,” said the man, “and I won.”⁷⁰  —Megan Evershed