DAY TWO: Hundreds of January 6^th rioting convicts were getting out of prison yesterday following President Trump’s blanket pardon. The President who in his inauguration speech promised to return the country to “law and order” released the people who broke the law to illegally keep him in the White House.

  Among those released were Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy, and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers militia, who was serving 18 years on similar charges. Also out is  Richard “Bigo” Barnett from Arkansas, who was famously photographed with his feet up on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk.

  As many as 150 capitol and DC police were injured in the attack. Although many of the January 6^thdefendants were found guilty at trial, and others pleaded guilty, the Trump pardon order says, “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.”

  Only a handful of Republican leaders criticized the pardons. They are more afraid of Trump than the Proud Boys. A NY Times editorial says the pardoning the January 6^th insurrectionists “loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.”

THE HEGSETH FILES: During his confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth dismissed accusations of drunkenness, infidelity, and financial mismanagement as “anonymous smears.”

  Now Hegseth’s former sister-in-law says in an affidavit that he was so “abusive” of his second wife that she once hid in a closet and had a safe word to call for help if she needed to get away. Danielle Hegseth, the ex-wife of Pete’s brother, said in that she “did not personally witness physical or sexual abuse by Hegseth,” but described “erratic and aggressive behavior” by him over many years.

  Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for the nominee, said in a statement  that Danielle Hegseth is “an anti-Trump far-left Democrat” who “had an ax to grind against the entire Hegseth family.”

  Republican leaders are moving ahead with the confirmation vote.

DIVERSITY AND EXCLUSION:  Trump administration moved quickly to remove Adm. Linda Fagan from her position as commandant of the US Coast Guard citing “failure to address border security threats” and “excessive focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.”

  DEI programs are a prime target of the new regime. Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has said publicly that “any General, Admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go.”

Then Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Eli Crane sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security in August “demanding answers” over the Coast Guard’s “prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives, pointing in particular to the agency’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity inclusivity training and calling it “indoctrination.”

JUST TWO: The new President on Monday night also defined gender in an executive order with the Orwellian title of, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” 

  The order commands that in the eyes of the federal government there are only two sexes, male and female. It charges that, “Ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.”

  The order treats the real phenomenon of gender dysphoria as a matter of political ideology. The order says that, “‘Gender identity’ reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex.”

  In short, he’s saying that transgender women are still men and nonbinary people must identify themselves on documents with an M or F. 

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS: President Trump Pulled the US out of the World Health Organization — Trump said he intends to impose a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports starting February 1. — As many as a thousand political appointees of the Biden administration have been immediately fired.  — Eighteen states have sued to block Trump’s order to suspend birthright citizenship. — At a prayer service attended by the occasionally sleepy President, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington gently lectured Trump saying, “I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” because, “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.” In a plea for undocumented immigrants, she said, “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

  Departing the National cathedral Trump said, “I didn’t think it was a good service, no.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Jules Feiffer, the acerbic cartoonist whose strip ran in The Village Voice for 40 years starting in 1956, died at home in Richfield Springs, NY, west of Albany at age 95. He wasn’t even paid until 1965, but ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize.

THE SPIN RACK:  A snowball fight broke out on Bourbon Street in New Orleans following an unusual snowstorm that coated everything from white sand beaches to palm trees from Louisiana to Florida. Sixty-five miles of interstate 10 were closed because of hazardous driving conditions. — At least 66 people died in a fire in a wood frame ski lodge in Turkey.    

BELOW THE FOLD: Donald Trump said in a speech on inauguration day that he doesn’t like electrical power generated by wind because if the wind stops blowing your television will go off.

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