Today’s Big Story

Trump 2.0

He returns to the White House after surviving two impeachment trials, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts and an indictment

Donald Trump has returned as president of the United States. He was sworn in as the 47th president and delivered an inaugural address inside the U.S. Capitol after icy weather in D.C. prompted him to change the standard plan of an outdoor ceremony and parade.

In what NPR has called “the most unusual inauguration in American history,”President Donald Trump pledged a “golden age” for the country, saying “from this day forward, our country will flourish,” adding that “We will be the envy of every nation and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.”

The country got a better idea of what Trump plans to focus on. He promised to quickly sign executive orders related to deportations, energy, tariffs and more. He said he would declare a “national emergency at our southern border,” halting immigration and deporting “criminal immigrants.” And the splashy tech bros were all in attendance. Elon Musk apparently made it to the White House before the new president. And he was joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg—they all appeared alongside Trump at a pre-inauguration service and took up prominent positions at the inauguration.

Democrats tried to show respect for the office and the peaceful transfer of power, but they couldn't all hold back their reactions at some more eye-opening moments. Despite Trump falsely claiming to have won the 2020 election, despite Jan. 6 and despite Biden repeatedly calling him a threat to democracy, Biden and Democratic officials participated in the inauguration ceremonies as an endorsement of the peaceful transfer of power. Biden, earlier in the day, even invited the Trumps to the White House for tea—a tradition that Trump did not extend to Biden four years ago.

CNN reports that in a freewheeling news conference back in the Oval Office, Trump demonstrated a capacity to drive his own message and move geopolitical chess pieces in public in a way that Biden lost when age caught up with him. “The imagery was of a well-briefed new president eyeing big goals, confident that his first term gives him a heads-up on how to wield the levers of power and determined to make the most of a second chance.”

Trump Signed a Slew of Executive Orders

President pledges immigration crackdown, rolls back climate rules and pardons 1,500 January 6th rioters

Trump and his allies had long promised a “shock and awe” approach. And they did not hold back: The newly sworn-in president broke out the Sharpie and signed a barrage of executive orders reaching into broad swathes of American life—from pardoning hundreds of supporters who attacked Congress on January 6th (including rightwing extremists convicted of seditious conspiracy), to rolling back LGBTQ+ rights and environmental rules while declaring an immigration emergency on the southern border.

The first round of orders were signed on stage at the Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, where the inaugural parade was moved to avoid freezing temperatures outside. Many more orders were signed in the Oval Office. Among measures signed on stage to cheers from a raucous crowd was an order for the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a step Trump took in his first term before Joe Biden recommitted America to that attempt to tackle the climate crisis.

As he promised repeatedly during the 2024 campaign, the president issued pardons late Monday for about 1,500 people convicted or criminally charged in the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Of course, some of the orders themselves are sure to be challenged in court, particularly one that seeks to undercut citizenship for all people born in the United States. “As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” Trump said in his inaugural address. But Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Hill that Trump had scrapped a number of policies that eventually brought border crossings lower than they were under the first Trump administration.

A Serious Problem With Sleeping Pills

The pills stop the brain’s system for cleaning out waste

Imagine taking a sleeping pill in hopes of getting quality sleep, but the effects of the pill actually make the rest less impactful and even worse, blocks the brain's critical cleaning cycle overnight. You see, each night, our brains execute a "wash and rinse" routine that clears away harmful protein waste linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Now, new research shows that a common prescription sleep aid can disrupt this essential process.

According to New Atlas, leading sleep scientists have discovered that the common sleep aid Ambien stopped this vital process in mice. “When we looked at the mice after giving them zolpidem, we saw they all fell asleep very quickly. That was expected—we take zolpidem because it makes it easier for us to sleep,” Natalie Hauglund tells Ars Technica. “But then we saw those slow fluctuations in norepinephrine, blood volume, and cerebrospinal fluid almost completely stopped.” No fluctuations meant the glymphatic system didn’t remove any waste.

Another drug commonly prescribed for insomnia was found to stop the same functions—this time in human test subjects. Though only short and involving a small group of healthy adults, the study is an interesting demonstration of the link between sleep and the molecular markers of Alzheimer’s disease. Going forward, the researchers plan to investigate if sleeping pills have any other long-term impacts on the brain's overnight cleaning ritual.

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