Letters From An American

January 26, 2025 by Heather Cox Richardson Read on Substack

On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln rose before the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, to make a speech. Just 28 years old, Lincoln had begun to practice law and had political ambitions. But he was worried that his generation might not preserve the republic that the founders had handed to it for transmission to yet another generation. He took as his topic for that January evening, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”

Lincoln saw trouble coming, but not from a foreign power, as other countries feared. The destruction of the United States, he warned, could come only from within. “If destruction be our lot,” he said, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

The trouble Lincoln perceived stemmed from the growing lawlessness in the country as men ignored the rule of law and acted on their passions, imposing their will on their neighbors through violence. He pointed specifically to two recent events: the 1836 lynching of free Black man Francis McIntosh in St. Louis, Missouri, and the 1837 murder of white abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois.

But the problem of lawlessness was not limited to individual instances, he said. A public practice of ignoring the law eventually broke down all the guardrails designed to protect individuals, while lawbreakers, going unpunished, became convinced they were entitled to act without restraint. “Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane,” Lincoln said, “they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.”

The only way to guard against such destruction, Lincoln said, was to protect the rule of law on which the country was founded. “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor…. Let reverence for the laws…become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”

Lincoln was quick to clarify that he was not saying all laws were good. Indeed, he said, bad laws should be challenged and repealed. But the underlying structure of the rule of law, based in the Constitution, could not be abandoned without losing democracy.

Lincoln didn’t stop there. He warned that the very success of the American republic threatened its continuation. “[M]en of ambition and talents” could no longer make their name by building the nation—that glory had already been won. Their ambition could not be served simply by preserving what those before them had created, so they would achieve distinction through destruction.

For such a man, Lincoln said, “Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.” With no dangerous foreign power to turn people’s passions against, people would turn from the project of “establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty” and would instead turn against each other.

Lincoln reminded his audience that the torch of American democracy had been passed to them. The Founders had used their passions to create a system of laws, but the time for passion had passed, lest it tear the nation apart. The next generation must support democracy through “sober reason,” he said. He called for Americans to exercise “general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.”

“Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’”

What became known as the Lyceum Address is one of the earliest speeches of Lincoln’s to have been preserved, and at the time it established him as a rising politician and political thinker. But his recognition, in a time of religious fervor and moral crusades, that the law must prevail over individual passions reverberates far beyond the specific crises of the 1830s.

—

Notes:

https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm

I Know, As To All Of Us Here. From Ben Werdmuller:

In the face of this, who do you want to be?

I was out buying eggs when I saw a video of Elon Musk giving a Hitler salute at the inauguration.

In the movies, this stuff is highlighted and separated: punctuation in itself instead of an event that you see in the background of your everyday life. Hannah Arendt talked about “the banality of evil” in the context of Eichmann, one of the core organizers of the Holocaust, telling prosecutors that he was just doing his job. But banality pervades. Sometimes, you need to buy eggs. And sometimes, when you get back in the car and pick up your phone, you get a notification about the richest man in the world signaling his intentions on the world stage.

There has subsequently been much discussion about whether it really was a Nazi salute. It’s insultingly stupid. Even if he truly didn’t intend to throw three successive Sieg Heils, he certainly knows what one is, and most of us have enough self awareness not to accidentally look like a Nazi on national television. He had to know what he was doing. It was a deliberate Nazi salute. The act itself, and the subsequent denials, serve to normalize fascism; just another banal event for you to scroll past on your phone.

Still, these conversations serve a purpose. It’s worth noticing who wants to downplay the Nazism, which, after all, is not “just” manifested in the world’s richest man doing a Hitler salute on national TV. Make no mistake, Musk’s salute was a clear signal, but it’s far from the only one. It’s part of a broader pattern of normalization, visible in policies and actions designed to dismantle rights and embolden oppression.

Will they also downplay executive orders that repeal important civil rights gains from sixty years ago (as an appellate court simultaneously reinstates a Jim Crow era voter suppression law, with doubtless more to follow), or encouraging employees to inform on their colleagues?

Or decimating rights and protections for transgender people, preparing for mass deportations including by removing protections for schools and churches from raids, pardoning January 6 extremists who vow revenge on their perceived enemies, or deploying the military as internal law enforcement in border states?

Or freezing scientific research at the NIH and thereby putting universities and research organizations at risk, or attempting to end Constitutionally-protected birthright citizenship?

“Optimistic and celebrating,” Mark Zuckerberg said, on the same night that Musk Sieg Heiled the room three times. “I’m not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways,” Sam Altman said. Microsoft put out a statement saying that “the country has a unique opportunity to pursue […] the foundational ideas set for AI policy during President Trump’s first term”.

And those are public figures in technology. My Facebook feed, and likely yours, is loaded with acquaintances and extended family members who welcome the change; one on mine welcomed “the return to logic and reason”. My LinkedIn feed is worse, with many business leaders echoing Zuckerberg’s “optimistic” language, and some calling the Nazi salute into question.

We’ve tumbled into a deep, dark hole, and, as it turns out, many of us are glad to be there.

It’s just not always clear who.

Though dated in some ways, this 1941 Harper’s Magazine article still resonates. The question then was, “Who goes Nazi?” Who is going to be a sympathizer or even a collaborator with a regime that seeks to subjugate, deport, and, as it turned out in the 1940s, kill so many people?

And to be clear, collaboration doesn’t require slapping on an armband and goose-stepping behind a demagogue. Nice people made the best Nazis, as Naomi Shulman wrote eight years ago:

My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.

The question now is not a million miles away. Who will support? Who will collaborate? Who will decide that they are “not political” and look away as millions of people are harmed? Who will make excuses for it all? Who secretly welcomes the push for theocracy, for in-groups and out-groups, for “traditional” values that prioritize rigid gender roles, segregation, and oligarchy? Who, in other words, is safe?

Are you “optimistic” about the new regime? Will you be complicit?

When someone needs help — when ICE comes after them, or worse — will you look away, or worse, cheer them on? Or will you be a point of safety for someone who needs it?

And what about when it gets worse? Because, left unchecked, it will.

In the face of rising fascism, what kind of person are you? What kind of person do you want to be?

I’m writing about the intersection of the internet, media, and society. Sign up to my newsletter to receive every post and a weekly digest of the most important stories from around the web.

Peace & Justice History for 1/26

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january26

Trump gives Ice power to deport immigrants who came legally under Biden

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/24/legal-immigrant-deportation-trump-ice

Ice given unprecedented authority to expedite deportations as US cities face raids and troops arrive at US-Mexico border

A person sits inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractor building in Chicago, Illinois, on Thursday. Photograph: Erin Hooley/AP

Trump gives Ice power to deport immigrants who came legally under Biden

Ice given unprecedented authority to expedite deportations as US cities face raids and troops arrive at US-Mexico border

Joseph Gedeon in Washington and agency

Fri 24 Jan 2025 13.35 EST

The Trump administration is issuing a new round of heavy-handed measures that could rapidly deport immigrants who entered the United States through recently established legal pathways, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained the New York Times.

The directive, signed by the acting homeland security secretary, Benjamine Huffman, grants Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials unprecedented authority to expedite deportations for immigrants who entered the country with government authorization through two key Biden-era programs.

These programs, which have allowed more than a million immigrants to enter the country since 2023, had provided scheduling for migrants or asylum seekers through the government-run app CBP One or temporary legal status for up to two years through a parole program for certain countries.

US asylum seekers in despair after Trump cancels CBP One app: ‘Start from zero again’

Read more

The newly reported memo instructs Ice officials to identify and potentially rapidly deport immigrants who have been in the country for over a year and have not yet applied for asylum, in effect sidestepping traditional immigration court proceedings.

In no waste of time, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, posted on X on Friday: “Deportation flights have begun,” accompanied by official pictures of people boarding a military-style aircraft.

Despite such flights being routine under successive administrations, the White House is promoting such images strongly and also deployed troops to the border late on Thursday, including US marines arriving in Boeing Osprey aircraft in California.

The developments come as so-called sanctuary cities like Chicago, Newark and Denver are experiencing direct impacts of the administration’s hardline immigration stance. In Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka condemned a small-scale local Ice raid on Thursday that he claimed resulted in the detention of both undocumented residents and citizens – including a US military veteran.

And Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, told CNN the city would cooperate with Ice to deport “violent criminals”, but pushed back against arrests in schools and churches.

A DHS spokesperson defended the new policies, writing in a statement that “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” and that the administration “trusts law enforcement to use common sense”.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has already challenged the policy in federal court, with the senior staff attorney Anand Balakrishnan characterizing the approach as a “mass deportation agenda” that circumvents constitutional due process.

Stephen Miller, a key architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies, has been vocal in his opposition to the immigration programs of the last administration, previously criticizing the admission of immigrants from what he termed “failed states”.

Thousands who had received or were waiting for CBP One appointments south of the border were left devastated this week after the app was abruptly shut down moments after Trump was sworn in, while those already in the country using the app and who were preparing to apply for asylum may now be in the line of fire.

Later on Friday, the Trump administration followed up, announcing that it was expanding a fast-track deportation authority nationwide, allowing immigration officers to deport people without appearing before a judge.

The administration said it was expanding the use of “expedited removal” authority so it can be used across the country, in a notice in the Federal Register outlining the new rules.

“Expedited removal” gives enforcement agencies broad authority to deport people without requiring them to appear before an immigration judge. There are limited exceptions, including if they express fear of returning home and pass an initial screening interview for asylum.

Critics have said there is too much risk that people who have the right to be in the country will be mistakenly swept up by agents and officers and that not enough is done to protect immigrants who have genuine reason to fear being sent home.

The powers were created under a 1996 law. But these powers were not widely used until 2004, when homeland security said it would use expedited removal authority for people arrested within two weeks of entering the US by land and caught within 100 miles of the border. That meant it was used mostly against immigrants recently arrived in the country.

In the notice on Friday the administration said the authority could be used across the country and would go into effect immediately.

The notice said the person put into expedited removal “bears the affirmative burden to show to the satisfaction of an immigration officer” that they have the right to be in the US.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Tennessee GOP Women’s Group Cites Hitler As Their Example Of “Intelligent Leaders” On Kids Reading List

Tennessee GOP Women’s Group Cites Hitler As Their Example Of “Intelligent Leaders” On Kids Reading List

I want to thank Ten Bears who also had this in his post. I am not sure if I can find it again but I will put a link below to his main channel if I can find the specific post. I also had it in my list to post but as he got it done first I wanted to give him credit along with Joe My God.

When people tell / prove to you who they are believe them the first time. Republicans are totally in to gaslighting, changing reality from what is real and happened to what will help keep them in power, and they feel keeping the power of their seats in congress / their job is worth more than the people of this country or protecting the country. They are out for themselves and what they can milk from the job for their family wealth. For the republicans and some democrats it has long stopped being about leading the country to a better place, to securing the needs of the people, providing for the good of the people as the constitution requires of them. They see being elected as a golden ticket to wealth and power. So if being a Nazi is the way to that they will do it, if agreeing with the demented mentally deficient convicted felon in all his absurd whims is how they need to keep that golden ticket they will do it no matter who it hurts or the consequences. Hugs.

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January 24, 2025 Republicans, Trump cultists

The Chattanooga Free Press reports:

The Tennessee Federation of Republican Women is coming under fire for providing parents a reading list for children that cites Adolf Hitler as an example of leadership. “Hitler and all intelligent leaders throughout history have understood that the way to change a country was through the training of its youth, to get them while they are young,” the group’s reading list says.

The list is titled “Growing American Patriots Through Literacy” and posted on the group’s website. “How do we make the changes necessary?” the reading list says, just before the Hitler quote. “Proverbs 22:6 teaches us that if ‘we train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.’” The books suggested include “Camilla Can Vote” by Sen. Marsha Blackburn and “A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing Americans” by Lynne Cheney.

Read the full article. The group’s president, Sharon Boreing [photo above], is not returning calls from reporters.

https://twitter.com/VoteGloriaJ/status/1882618453590434053

The Tennessee Federation of Republican Women is coming under fire for providing parents a reading list for children that cites Adolf Hitler as an example of leadership. https://t.co/QsRL8NCZ0k
— Times Free Press (@TimesFreePress) January 24, 2025

CRT, DEI, ABC, And Initialled Villains!

Oklahoma GOP Bills Would Criminalize Viewing Porn, Criminalize Drag Story Hour, And Ban No-Fault Divorce

Oklahoma GOP Bills Would Criminalize Viewing Porn, Criminalize Drag Story Hour, And Ban No-Fault Divorce

Has Oklahoma already become a theocracy? Is the will of the people not important, or only the doctrines of the fundamentalist Christ the majority of these people belong to so their god will be happy is important. The voters don’t matter, the wants and needs of those who elect the lawmakers don’t matter, only pleasing their one version of a god out of 1100 other versions of god. To hell with the rights of the people, to hell with the instruction of the woke hippy Jesus, just push the hates and desires of white males cis straight males to dominate and run everything. As Roger says if they win how long will they start warring with each other for the top positions of speaking for their god? Hugs

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January 22, 2025 Christianists, Republicans

From Oklahoma GOP state Rep. Dusty Deevers:

Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, announced on Tuesday a bold slate of eight legislative measures aimed at restoring moral sanity in Oklahoma. Together, these bills set a course for pushing back against the moral decay foisted upon Oklahoma by the far-left’s march through our institutions to destroy the moral foundations upon which the United States and Christian Civilization had long rested.

“Sadly, the left’s century-long assault on morality and decency has been so successful that some have come to accept as normal a society that is drowning in hardcore pornography, prenatal homicide, and sexual performances for children. None of this is normal. Each one of these evils is a result of a policy choice to not stand for what we know is right. Opposing these evils does not mean we are extremists. It means we are sane,” Deevers said.

“Contrary to what the left would have us believe, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can and should imagine and move toward a society that celebrates virtue in the public square rather than vice. We can restore normalcy, decency, and morality; we can protect the most vulnerable, restore a high view of marriage, and shield children from explicit material that can warp their innocent minds. We simply must have the courage to stand against the most radical and degenerate elements of the far-left.”

A sampling from Deever’s bills:

SB456 – The Abolition of Abortion Act

SB456 seeks to protect the lives of all preborn children in Oklahoma by closing the self-managed abortion loophole. While clinics may be prohibited from performing abortions, pro-life laws currently being enforced allow mothers to order abortion pills online and administer them herself. Recent research from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion shows that an estimated 3,274 self-managed abortions are taking place annually in Oklahoma.

SB593 – Prohibiting Pornography in Oklahoma

The bill prohibits pornography in general, providing for criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for production, distribution, or possession. It also provides heightened 10-to-30-year criminal penalties for organized pornography trafficking. “Pornography is both degenerate material and a highly addictive drug,” Deevers said. “It ruins marriages, ruins lives, destroys innocence, warps young people’s perception of the opposite sex, turns women into objects, turns men into objects, degrades human dignity, and corrodes the moral fabric of society. Any decent society will stand against this plague with the full weight of the law.”

SB550 – Prohibiting Drag Performances for Children

SB550 would ensure that Oklahoma kids are not subjected to adult cabaret performances including Drag Queen Story Hour. Under the provisions of the bill, the performer would be subject to a prison sentence of one-to-five years, while the organizer of the event would face up to one year behind bars.

SB228 – The Covenant Marriage Act

The Covenant Marriage Act would allow for couples in Oklahoma to opt into a covenant marriage, based on the traditional understanding of marriage as a binding legal contract with meaningful vows to one another. Covenant marriages would only be able to be dissolved in cases of abuse, adultery, or abandonment. Couples who opt into a covenant marriage would be eligible for a $2,500 tax credit.

SB829 – Prohibiting No-Fault Divorce

This bill would end no-fault divorce in Oklahoma by removing “incompatibility” as a justification for divorce, leaving abandonment, gross neglect, extreme cruelty, habitual drunkenness, insanity for a period of five years, adultery, unknown pregnancy, and fraudulent contract as the available justifications. It also establishes that the at-fault parent must pay restitution to the victims of divorce–that is, the children–in the form of a trust fund that they get access to when they turn 18.

Deever’s appeared here in January 2024 when he first tried to make viewing porn and sexting a consenting person a felony.

In March 2024, he declared during a Oklahoma House floor speech that all federal regulations are “against God’s law.”

In September 2024, he declared that people who vote for Kamala Harris are “possessed by demons.”

As you’ve probably already guessed, Deever’s is a pastor.

Fact check: Trump made more than 20 false claims in his Inauguration Day remarks

https://www.cnn.com/politics/fact-check-trump-inauguration/index.html

By Daniel Dale, CNN

13 minute read

Updated 11:14 PM EST, Mon January 20, 2025

President Donald Trump made only a smattering of false claims in his inaugural address on Monday, mostly sticking to vague rhetoric, subjective assertions and uncheckable promises of action.

But then he embarked on a lying spree.

In an unscripted second speech on Monday, to supporters who had gathered in the US Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall, Trump made false claims about elections, immigration and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, among other subjects. He then made additional false claims in a freewheeling third speech at Washington’s Capital One Arena and again while speaking to reporters as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office.

Here is a fact check of some of his Monday claims.

Economy

Trump’s tariffs on China: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claim that the US has “taken in hundreds of billions of dollars from China” through the tariffs he imposed during his first presidency. US importers make the tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China; it’s easy to find specific examples of companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.

Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying that “until I came along, China never paid 10 cents to this country.” Aside from the fact that US importers pay the tariffs, the US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.

Tariffs: In his inaugural address, Trump said, “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” But this description of tariffs is false. Tariffs imposed by the US government are paid by US importers, not foreign countries.

Inflation rates: Trump falsely claimed during his inaugural address that the US experienced “record inflation” during the Biden administration. Trump could fairly say the US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. (And the rate has since plummeted. The most recent available inflation rate at the time Trump spoke here was 2.9% in December.)

Trade with the European Union: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claims that the European Union doesn’t “take” farm products, cars or “almost anything” from the US.

While the EU certainly has some trade barriers that make it harder for US companies to export products there, it’s a massive exaggeration to categorically declare it doesn’t accept “almost anything.” The US exported more than $639 billion worth of goods and services to the EU in 2023.

The US government says the EU bought $12.3 billion worth of US agricultural exports in the 2023 fiscal year, making it the fourth-largest export market for US agricultural and related products behind China, Mexico and Canada.

And while US automakers have often struggled to succeed in Europe, according to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports — importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.)

Immigration and the border

Prisons and mental institutions: Trump spoke in all three speeches of migrants having come from foreign prisons and mental institutions into the US under President Joe Biden, a frequent refrain during his 2024 campaign. In the first speech, he said “many” Biden-era migrants have come from such facilities; in the second speech, he said, “We don’t want the jails of every country in the world virtually being deposited into the United States”; in the third, he said, “All over the world they’re emptying their prisons into our country; they’re emptying their mental institutions into our country.”

Related articleTrump’s inaugural address, annotated and fact-checked

All of this is uncorroborated. Trump and his presidential campaign have never corroborated the claim that “many” Biden-era migrants have come from prisons or mental institutions, though it’s of course possible that some migrants spent time in such facilities. And Trump’s campaign could not substantiate his stories about numerous foreign countries supposedly opening up such facilities to somehow bring the people in them into the US.

The president has sometimes tried to support his narrative by asserting the global prison population is down. But that’s incorrect. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.

“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June.

Venezuela and migration: Trump spoke in the arena speech about gang members being “taken off the streets of Venezuela and deposited into our country,” claiming crime in Venezuela has plummeted “because they took their criminals and gave them to us through an open border policy of the previous administration.”

Trump has never corroborated his claims about Venezuela’s supposed practice of somehow intentionally bringing its unwanted criminals into the US under Biden, and experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no evidence for them.

Border wall construction: Trump repeated his false claim in his post-inaugural speech that he had “571 miles of wall” built on the southern border during his first administration. That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.

Birthright citizenship: In the Oval Office, Trump repeated his false claim that the US is “the only country in the world” with birthright citizenship. CNN and various other outlets debunked the claim when Trump made it during his presidential campaign in 2015, during his first presidency in 2018 and during his presidential transition in 2024. About three dozen countries provide automatic citizenship to people born on their soil, including US neighbors Canada and Mexico and the majority of South American countries.

Elections and January 6, 2021

Pelosi and January 6, 2021: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump repeated his false claims that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and that Pelosi “admitted it on tape, that her daughter made.” He reprised the claim later in the Oval Office.

There is no evidence Pelosi turned down such an offer — and it is the president, not the speaker, who is in charge of the District of Columbia National Guard, so Pelosi wouldn’t have had the power to reject the offer even if it had been made to her, which Pelosi says it wasn’t. In addition, Pelosi is not on tape admitting that Trump’s story is correct.

In a video recorded by her filmmaker daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, who posted a 42-second snippet on social media in June, Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But that general statement is clearly not a specific admission that she had rejected a Trump offer of 10,000 troops.

In fact, another part of the video appears to undermine Trump’s frequent claims that Pelosi was the person who turned down a National Guard presence in advance of January 6. She said, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

After Trump began referencing this video in June, Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th. Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”

The Capitol rioters: Trump said in the Oval Office that he believes that “in many cases” January 6 rioters were “outside agitators,” suggesting they weren’t actual Trump supporters. (He added a note of humility, saying, “What do I know, right?” but then reiterated, “But I think they were.”)

Trump’s belief is baseless. While one man convicted for his role in the riot admitted that his goal was to rile up Trump supporters, there is no evidence there were “many” such people in the crowd, nor for the Trump-promoted conspiracy theory that left-wing Antifa members were responsible for the attack. Almost all of the more than 1,500 people charged over the riot were fervent Trump devotees.

The January 6 committee and documents: In his post-inaugural speech, Trump spoke of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol, whose members Biden pardoned in one of his last acts as president. Trump falsely claimed that “they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings, practically not a thing left.” He returned to the subject later in the Oval Office, falsely claiming that “they destroyed all of the documents, they deleted all of the information, there’s no information.”

There has been a long-running dispute between Republicans and Democrats over the status of certain committee records that Republicans said should have been archived and that Democratic committee chair Bennie Thompson argued did not have to be archived, such as because they were not useful to the committee’s investigation. But there’s no basis for Trump’s claim that “all” information and documents were discarded.

As FactCheck.org reported on Monday, the January 6 committee released not only a final report that more than 800 pages long, but also transcripts of interviews with more than 140 witnesses – and, according to Thompson, the committee’s staff worked with the National Archives and Records Administration and other government bodies “in preparing the Select Committee’s more than 1 million records for publication and archiving.”

The legitimacy of the 2020 election: In his post-inaugural speech to supporters, Trump returned to his lie that the 2020 election “was totally rigged”; he made the “rigged” claim again in the arena speech. Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Biden.

Democrats and the 2024 election: Trump falsely claimed in his post-inaugural speech that unspecified opponents “tried” to rig the 2024 election but were unable to do so. This is nonsense, too; Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in a free and fair election.

California and the 2024 election: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump said, “I think we would’ve won the state of California” if the state had stronger voter identification laws. There is simply no basis for the claim; there is no sign of mass fraud in California, and Trump lost to Harris thereby more than 3 million votes.

Trump’s margin of victory in Alabama: In the post-inaugural speech, Trump falsely claimed, “We won Alabama by 48 points.” Trump did win the conservative state by a large margin, but not as large as he claimed; he beat Harris there by about 30.5 percentage points.

Trump and “the youth vote”: As he did the day before the inauguration, Trump falsely claimed in his arena speech Monday that “we won the youth vote by 36 points” in the 2024 election. He didn’t say how he was defining “the youth vote” — his transition team didn’t respond to CNN’s Sunday request for clarification — but there’s no basis for his claim by any reasonable definition.

While young voters, particularly young men, did shift toward Trump compared with the 2020 election, exit poll data published by CNN found that Harris beat Trump 54% to 43% among voters ages 18-24, 53% to 45% among voters ages 25-29, and 51% to 45% among voters ages 30-39. Even if Harris’ actual margins were smaller — exit poll data is often flawed — there is simply no sign that Trump dominated Harris with young voters.

Foreign affairs

China and the Panama Canal: Trump vowed in his inaugural address that the US will take back the Panama Canal — and falsely claimed that “above all, China is operating the Panama Canal.” He added in the Oval Office that “China controls the Panama Canal.”

There are valid questions about Chinese influence over infrastructure on and around the Panama Canal. Most notably, a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company operates a port at each end of the waterway, having first won the bidding competition for the contract in the 1990s. But Panama has run the canal itself since the US handed it over to the country in 1999. Specifically, the canal is operated by the Panama Canal Authority, whose administrator, deputy administrator and 11-member board are Panamanians selected by Panama’s government.

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The vast majority of its employees are Panamanian. It is Panama that decides which companies get awarded the contracts to run the ports on the canal. And other canal ports are operated by companies that are not Chinese — including one run by an American-Panamanian joint venture.

“The Canal is and will continue to be Panama’s and its administration will continue to be under Panamanian control with respect to its permanent neutrality,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said in a statement Monday. Without mentioning China directly, Mulino also appeared to reject Trump’s claim that China is operating the canal, saying, “There is no presence of any nation in the world that interferes with our administration.”

China’s oil purchases from Iran: In the arena speech, Trump repeated his false story about how he supposedly pressured China into stopping its purchases of oil from Iran during his first presidency. China’s oil imports from Iran did briefly plummet under Trump in 2019, the year the Trump administration made a concerted effort to deter such purchases, but they never stopped — and then they rose sharply again while Trump was still president. “The claim is untrue because Chinese crude imports from Iran haven’t stopped at all,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at Kpler, a market intelligence firm, told CNN in 2023.

China’s official statistics recorded no purchases of Iranian crude in Trump’s last partial month in office, January 2021, and also none in most of Biden’s first year as president. But that doesn’t mean China’s imports actually ceased; industry experts say it is widely known that China has used a variety of tactics to mask its continued imports from Iran.

Kpler found that China imported about 511,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude in December 2020, Trump’s last full month in office. The low point under Trump was March 2020, when global oil demand crashed because of Covid-19. Even then, China imported about 87,000 barrels per day, Kpler found. (Since data on Iranian oil exports is based on cargo tracking by various companies and groups, other entities may have different data.)

Iran and terror groups: In the arena speech, Trump repeated his inaccurate boast that Iran “didn’t have money for Hamas” and “didn’t have money for Hezbollah” during his presidency. He emphasized in the Oval Office that Iran had “no money” for the two groups. Iran’s funding for these groups did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions on Iran had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN in 2024. In fact, Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. You can read a longer fact check here.

Spain and BRICS: Trump falsely claimed in the Oval Office that Spain is a member of the international organization known as BRICS, telling a reporter, “They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. You know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out.” Spain is not a member of BRICS; the “S” is for South Africa, which joined the group previously known as BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — in 2010.

This story and headline have been updated to include additional information.

CNN’s Bryan Mena, Alicia Wallace, Phil Mattingly, Michael Rios and Elizabeth González contributed to this report.