By Amarilis Rivas
On January 20th , 2021, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office, but their inauguration was much different from previous presidential inaugurations. In all previous presidential inaugurations, there have been hundreds of thousands of people attending, but this year, due to the pandemic, there was not. Instead of people, the capitol building was filled with American flags. There was strong security at this presidential inauguration, about 25,000 national guard troops were present due to the fear of riots like the ones that happened on January 6th, 2021 at the capitol building. For the past 150 years, the previous president has always attended the new president’s inauguration, but this year, Donald Trump did not attend President Biden’s inauguration. There was also no inauguration ball this year, instead there was a primetime special shown on TV with musicians performing and a firework show. For the first time in American history, this is the first time a female vice president was sworn into office on inauguration day, all previous vice presidents have been men.