Washington DC preps for historic inauguration of Joe Biden
White House correspondent Kevin Corke breaks down how the nation's capital is getting ready for Inauguration Day.
Multiple speakers are set to deliver remarks, readings or oaths during the 59th presidential inauguration swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday.
The celebration, scaled down this year due to the oronavirus pandemic and tightly guarded amid security threats, will take place Wednesday at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.
The special attendees of the star-studded Washington, D.C., event include a former 2020 presidential candidate, two reverends, two members of the U.S. Supreme Court, and America's first-ever national youth poet laureate.
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Vocal powerhouses Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez will perform the national anthem and an Americana musical selection, respectively, before Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is sworn in and President-elect Joe Biden delivers his inaugural address. Country star Garth Brooks will then perform a song with the Marine Band.
Here are the individuals who have been chosen to participate:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar is set to deliver welcome remarks and introduce Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies Chairman Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the Supreme Court justices and Biden.
Klobuchar was first elected to the Senate in 2006, and has been twice re-elected. Her current term ends on Jan. 3, 2025.
Klobuchar participated in the 2020 presidential race, gathering a loyal group of supporters before she dropped out last March ahead of the Super Tuesday contests and backed Biden.
The moderate was the first woman elected to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate and previously interned for former Vice President Walter Montale.
Prior to her career in politics, Klobuchar led the largest prosecutor's office in the state for eight years.
She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School.
Democratic presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., waves as she arrives to speak to the Scott County Iowa Democrats Saturday, Jan. 25, 2020, in Bettendorf, Iowa. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
JCCIC Chairman Roy Blunt
Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt is the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC).
Blunt grew up on a dairy farm and was the first person in his family to graduate from college at Southwest Baptist University, where he later served as the school's president.
Blunt earned his master's degree from Missouri State University.
The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees member was a history teacher before serving in Congress.
In 1984, he became the first Republican elected as Missouri’s Secretary of State in more than 50 years.
The public servant was elected seven times to the U.S. House of Representatives and was elected House Majority Whip earlier in his career than any Member of Congress in eight decades.
Blunt was elected to the Senate in 2010 and was appointed to the Senate leadership during his first year in the Senate.
"The great American tradition of an inaugural ceremony has occurred in times of peace, in times of turmoil, in times of prosperity, and in times of adversity," Blunt and Klobuchar wrote in a joint statement released on the day after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. "We will be swearing in President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2021."
Father Leo J. O'Donovan III
Father Leo J. O'Donovan III, introduced by Blunt, will deliver the invocation.
O'Donovan, a Jesuit priest and the former president of his alma mater, Georgetown University, until 2001, is a longtime family friend of the Bidens.
In 2015, O'Donovan led the funeral mass for the president-elect's son Beau, who died of brain cancer at age 46.
Three years later, Biden would write the foreward to O'Donovan's book "Blessed Are the Refugees: Beatitudes of Immigrant Children."
The Queens, N.Y., native received a Fulbright Scholarship before entering the Society of Jesus in 1957.
O'Donovan -- who wrote a letter opposing the Trump administration's immigration policies in 2016 -- is the director of mission for Jesuit Refugee Service USA and has returned to teaching as a visiting professor.
O'Donovan also previously served on The Walt Disney Company's Board of Directors at the direction of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Eisner's son attended Georgetown.
Andrea Hall
Andrea Hall, a Georgia fire captain, will lead the nation in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The 47-year-old is from the city of South Fulton and the first Black female firefighter to serve as captain of South Fulton's Fire Rescue Department.
Starting her career in fire services in 1993, Hall was promoted to her current rank in 2004 by Fulton County and is the local chapter president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 3920.
The trailblazer said she was asked by the International Association of Fire Fighters and Biden's inauguration committee to deliver the pledge.
"I am thrilled and humbled to represent firefighters and other frontline workers in the state of Georgia and the City of South Fulton," Hall said in a statement. "It is a privilege and an honor to help usher in a new chapter of leadership for our country."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor participates in an annual Women's History Month reception hosted by Pelosi in the U.S. capitol building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images) (2015 Getty Images)
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor will administer the vice presidential oath of office, swearing in Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris.
Another New York City native, Sotomayor was born in the Bronx. She received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University -- awarded the Pyne Prize, the highest academic award given to undergraduate students -- and attended Yale Law School to earn her Juris Doctor degree in 1979.
Sotomayor served as assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney's Office until 1984 when she joined business law firm Pavia & Harcourt.
Eventually making partner at the firm, Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush and then served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1998 till 2009.
Former President Barack Obama then nominated her as an associate justice of the Supreme Court -- a position she took up in August of that year.
Sotomayor became the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice in the history of the United States.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will administer the presidential oath of office, swearing in President-elect Joe Biden.
Roberts was born upstate from Sotomayor in Buffalo, N.Y., and traveled to the similarly-snowy Harvard College where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in 1976 and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1979.
Roberts served as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for a year after his graduation and then clerked for former Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist in1980.
Roberts was special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith from 1981 to 1982, an aide to White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan Fred Fielding from 1982 to 1986, and appointed Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 1989 until 1993.
Roberts practiced law in the private sector intermittently until 2003 when he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated him as chief justice of the United States.
President Joe Biden
After taking the oath of office, Biden is expected to speak between 20-30 minutes, a source told Fox News. His inaugural address is expected to focus heavily on the need for unity amid significant national challenges, and he is expected to reach out to all Americans to pull together behind his vision for the country.
Amanda Gorman
Amanda Gorman, 22, is set to become the sixth poet to perform at a presidential inauguration, as well as the youngest in history.
The Los Angeles native who also studied at Harvard became the nation's first national youth poet laureate in 2017 under the recommendation of Dr. Jill Biden.
Much like the president-elect, Gorman has struggled with a speech impediment since her childhood.
Her poem, titled "The Hill We Climb," will reportedly allude to the riots at the Capitol two weeks ago.
She told the Associated Press last week that while she had not been told what to write by inauguration organizers, she had received guidance to "emphasize unity" -- a hallmark of Biden's campaign.
Gorman, who has a children's book coming out later this year, reportedly plans to run for president in 2036.
Reverend Doctor Silvester S. Beaman
Lastly, Reverend Doctor Silvester S. Beaman will deliver the benediction.
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Beaman, who hails from New York's Niagara Falls, is the pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington, De., and a longtime friend of Biden.
The Wilberforce University graduate met Biden in 1993 and was known to travel with Biden during his previous presidential campaigns.
Beaman, also a close friend to Beau Biden, participated in his 2015 funeral service.
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