President Joe Biden's Inauguration Ceremony: The Photos

As Donald Trump cruised toward Mar-a-Lago aboard Air Force One this morning, a historically intimate group of statesmen gathered on the Capitol steps where not two weeks earlier a horde of insurrectionists attempted to disrupt the peaceful transfer of executive power to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The masked crowd included every living former president except for Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter, and they enjoyed performances from a be-brooched Lady Gaga with a gold microphone, the luminous national youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman, an understated J.Lo, and a fun-as-ever Garth Brooks. The crowd radiated hope and well, normalcy, as the first-ever Black and South Asian woman Vice President took office and Biden's swearing-in opened a new chapter after one of the darkest periods of the nation's history.