WASH­ING­TON (AP)—Don­ald Trump was sworn in as the 47th pres­i­dent yes­ter­day, re­turn­ing to pow­er with a promise to end the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca’s de­cline and to “com­plete­ly and to­tal­ly re­verse” the ac­tions of the man who drove him from of­fice four years ago.

Trump over­came im­peach­ments, crim­i­nal in­dict­ments and a pair of as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempts to win an­oth­er term in the White House, and he planned to act swift­ly af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny. Dozens of ex­ec­u­tive or­ders were pre­pared for his sig­na­ture to clamp down on bor­der cross­ings, in­crease fos­sil fu­el de­vel­op­ment and end di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion pro­grams across the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

The or­ders from the in­com­ing Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent will be­gin the process of un­rav­el­ling the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic agen­da of Joe Biden, whose term end­ed at noon, mo­ments be­fore Trump took the oath of of­fice.

De­clar­ing that gov­ern­ment faces a “cri­sis of trust,” Trump said in his in­au­gur­al ad­dress that un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion, “our sov­er­eign­ty will be re­claimed. Our safe­ty will be re­stored. The scales of jus­tice will be re­bal­anced.”

Trump claimed “a man­date to com­plete­ly and to­tal­ly re­verse a hor­ri­ble be­tray­al,” promis­ing to “give the peo­ple back their faith, their wealth, their democ­ra­cy and in­deed their free­dom.”

“From this mo­ment on,” he added as Biden watched from the front row, “Amer­i­ca’s de­cline is over.”

The ex­ec­u­tive or­ders are the first step in what Trump calls “the com­plete restora­tion of Amer­i­ca and the rev­o­lu­tion of com­mon sense.”

Frigid weath­er rewrote the pageantry of the day. Trump’s swear­ing-in was moved in­doors to the Capi­tol Ro­tun­da—the first time that has hap­pened in 40 years—and the in­au­gur­al pa­rade was re­placed by an event at a down­town are­na. Trump sup­port­ers who de­scend­ed on the city to watch the cer­e­mo­ny out­side the Capi­tol from the Na­tion­al Mall were left to find oth­er places to view the fes­tiv­i­ties.

At the Capi­tol, Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance was sworn in first, tak­ing the oath read by Supreme Court Jus­tice Brett Ka­vanaugh on a Bible giv­en to him by his great-grand­moth­er. Trump fol­lowed, us­ing both a fam­i­ly Bible and the one used by Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln at his 1861 in­au­gu­ra­tion. Chief Jus­tice John Roberts ad­min­is­tered his oath.

A cadre of bil­lion­aires and tech ti­tans—in­clud­ing Mark Zucker­berg, Jeff Be­zos, Tim Cook and Sun­dar Pichai—were giv­en promi­nent po­si­tions in the Ro­tun­da. Al­so there was Elon Musk, the world’s rich­est man, who is ex­pect­ed to lead an ef­fort to slash spend­ing and fed­er­al em­ploy­ees.

Stop­ping at the White House on their way to the Capi­tol, Trump and his wife, Mela­nia, were greet­ed by Biden and first la­dy Jill Biden for the cus­tom­ary tea and cof­fee re­cep­tion.

“Wel­come home,” Biden said to Trump af­ter the pres­i­dent-elect stepped out of the car. The two pres­i­dents, who have spent years bit­ter­ly crit­i­cis­ing each oth­er, shared a limo to the Capi­tol. Af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Trump walked with Biden to the build­ing’s east side, where Biden de­part­ed via he­li­copter to be­gin his post-pres­i­den­tial life.

Trump fol­lowed Biden’s de­par­ture with free­wheel­ing re­marks to sup­port­ers, re­vis­it­ing a litany of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about vot­er fraud and griev­ances against per­ceived en­e­mies such as for­mer Re­pub­li­can Rep. Liz Ch­eney, whom he called “a cry­ing lu­natic.”

He spoke for even longer than in his in­au­gur­al ad­dress, say­ing, “I think this is a bet­ter speech than the one I gave up­stairs.”

Trump used his in­au­gur­al ad­dress to re­peat his claims that he was tar­get­ed by po­lit­i­cal pros­e­cu­tions, and he promised to be­gin “fair, equal and im­par­tial jus­tice.” He al­so ac­knowl­edged that he was tak­ing of­fice on Mar­tin Luther King Jr Day, which ho­n­ours the slain civ­il rights hero. “We will strive to­geth­er to make his dream a re­al­i­ty,” he said.

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