Over just eight hours on Inauguration Day, Presidents Trump and Biden forever stretched the immense public and private power of the presidency to once-unimaginable dimensions, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column:

• Presidents can preemptively pardon family and friends in case of any accusation of grift or crimes.
• Presidents can pardon violent criminals convicted of sedition and violence in defense of their politics.
• Presidents and their families can start businesses — or even currencies — and profit without restriction or outcry.
• Oh, and they can do this with the presumption of presidential immunity.

👑 Why it matters: America doesn't have a king. But we're dancing close to king-like power. So much of modern political and presidential power flows from precedent and imagination: doing unto others what the predecessors did — or did to them. And then stretching the hell out of it.

📝 Biden, under the guise of protecting his family from unfair political and legal persecution, preemptively pardoned his brothers James and Frank Biden, his sister Valerie Biden Owens, and John Owens and Sara Biden, the spouses of Valerie and James. This is unprecedented.

• "It's disgusting," Bill Daley — a longtime Biden friend who was White House chief of staff under President Obama — told us. It "confirms that there are serious concerns about culpability." Daley said the Bidens will never wipe this "stain" from the former president's legacy.
• Trump blasted the pardons, moments before offering his own to approximately 1,500 people convicted or charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — including violent criminals who attacked police officers.

✍️ Trump pardoned Enrique Tarrio, the fascist Proud Boy leader convicted of seditious conspiracy — and serving a 22-year sentence in federal prison — for coordinating the attack on the Capitol from outside Washington.

• Trump also commuted the sentences of 14 extremist members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convicted for plotting to violently overthrow the U.S. government and keep Trump in office.

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💰 Trump tested new limits by launching a surprise meme coin, $TRUMP, that vaulted him to crypto billionaire status two days before being inaugurated.

• Crypto insiders fear that $TRUMP — as well as the hastily launched $MELANIA meme coin — could destroy credibility that the scam-plagued industry has spent years trying to build.
• Remember, Trump once was a crypto skeptic and converted only during the 2024 campaign. He then became a beneficiary, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, of the industry's open wallet. What an ROI!

🧧 Most Americans don't realize there are basically no limitations on presidents profiting off their reins of power through new businesses or business deals.

• Thanks to the Supreme Court, presidents also enjoy the presumption of immunity for "official acts" if they're ever accused of crossing any legal lines.

⚡️ So Trump and his family conceivably could make billions through deals worldwide, new businesses and new currencies, funding the family — or even a political movement — for a generation. Their only limitation is imagination.

• America has drifted into uncharted waters in the rule of law. Trump and future presidents can test the limits with a presumption of success. And Biden's final act of pardons show Democrats have lost a lot of ability to cry foul.
• Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday when asked about Trump's blanket Jan. 6 pardons: "We said all along that Biden opened the door on this."

⚠️ We'll leave you with this: Now that presidential power is so broad, so deep, so uncontainable, why forfeit it? Well, here's an apparent loophole in the constitutional limit on two presidential terms:

• Trump or future presidents could simply run for a de facto third term — as the vice presidential nominee, with the understanding they will take power back once elected. That's but one of the once-unthinkable scenarios that seem more thinkable than ever.

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President Trump's sweeping pardons for 1,500 Jan. 6 criminals and defendants were a last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision to try to move past the issue quickly, White House advisers tell Axios' Marc Caputo.

• As Trump's team wrestled with the issue, "Trump just said: 'F -k it! Release 'em all,'" an adviser familiar with the discussions told Axios' Marc Caputo.

Why it matters: Just a few days before Inauguration Day, Trump aides and even Vice President-elect JD Vance didn't expect Trump to pardon every Jan. 6 defendant.

🔎 Behind the scenes: As his own legal problems mounted during his campaign, Trump came to embrace the cause of those charged in the riot. Trump vacillated during an internal debate over targeted clemency vs. a blanket decision according to two insiders.

• Early in the internal discussions, Vance actually had advocated for a blanket pardon — but figured Trump wouldn't want to take the hit for releasing the most notorious convicts.
• The case-by-case review was onerous. With time running out heading into Inauguration Day. Trump wanted to pardon as many people as possible and get it over with, so he landed on clemency for everyone.

🗂️ Trump's decision was a surprise to some Republicans in Congress, who grimaced at the appearance of the new president condoning violence against police officers.

• But in the Trump team's view, "all the prosecutions are tainted," the adviser familiar with the discussions told Axios. "It's time to move on."
• Trump advisers say they aren't particularly worried about the political fallout. They believe Jan. 6 was essentially litigated in the election Trump won, and that other issues matter more to voters.

The bottom line: The pardons episode provided a lesson for Vance and others in Trump's orbit: Categorical statements forecasting the mercurial president's actions are always a risk.

• "Never get ahead of the boss," a Trump transition source said, "because you just never know."

Go deeper.

The escalating bird flu crisis is ravaging the nation's supply of eggs, leading to higher prices and an immediate challenge for the Trump administration, Axios' Nathan Bomey and Kelly Tyko report.

🐣 Egg prices are climbing to new record highs daily, says Karyn Rispoli, managing editor for eggs in the Americas for price-reporting service Expana.

• A dozen large eggs in the Southeast and South Central "will be north of $7," while Midwest eggs are $6.95, Rispoli said.

🍳 Between the lines: Egg prices became a misplaced shorthand for criticism of the economy under former President Biden. Bird flu, not macroeconomic conditions, is the main culprit.

• With bird flu still raging, egg prices likely will keep flying to new highs in the coming weeks and months.

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Humanity is "on the verge" of having AI agents that can complete tasks in the real world, OpenAI product chief Kevin Weil told Axios' Ina Fried in Davos yesterday.

• "I think 2025 is the year that we go from ChatGPT being this super smart thing that can answer any question you ask to ChatGPT doing things in the real world for you," Weil said.

🤖 AI agents will soon be able to do tasks like filling out forms or making restaurant reservations, he said.

• Keep reading.

On Day 2, President Trump announced billions in private sector investments to grow AI in the U.S. and build massive new data centers for OpenAI.

• Why it matters: The deal gave Trump a quick, big win on Day 2 of his new term. It reflects a tech-friendly, business-friendly administration that's racing to deliver jobs and growth — a "golden age," as Trump put it in his inaugural address.

OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and the UAE's MGX, under a joint venture called the Stargate Project, intend to invest $500 billion over four years, with $100 billion deployed immediately.

• Stargate will open a data center in Texas and expand to other states. The partnership will create more than 100,000 American jobs, Trump said.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison appeared with Trump at the White House for the announcement.

• Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle and OpenAI are the initial technology partners.

📱 The backstory: Trump and Altman have been in frequent touch, including speaking by phone just before the inauguration about this announcement, industry sources tell Axios.

• Trump met in Las Vegas in June with OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap.
• The meeting was set up by then-North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a finalist to be Trump's vice president, and now his pick for secretary of Interior. Brockman knew Burgum because both are from North Dakota.
• AI infrastructure was the focus of much of the meeting. We're told Trump fixated on the need to build more in the U.S. amid the race with China. The takeaway from the meeting: The U.S. must win.

🔎 Between the lines: Studies show AI progress is outracing capacity in data centers and energy generation. Altman and OpenAI have repeatedly pushed for the U.S. to keep and extend its leadership on AI. The two-part argument:

1. Gains by authoritarian countries, especially China, are a threat to U.S. national security and the security of our allies and partners.
2. Building the necessary infrastructure is a massive economic opportunity for the country.

Read the announcement ... Partnership highlights.

The U.S. is facing a "quad-demic" of simultaneous viruses, Axios' Tina Reed reports from new CDC data.

• The flu, COVID and RSV are spreading at "high" or "very high" levels, and norovirus cases are surging at the same time.

😷 What we're watching: Human metapneumovirus, or HMPV — which comes with symptoms of a cough, fever, nasal congestion and shortness of breath — made headlines in China, and has been spreading in the U.S.

• Go deeper.

The World Snow Sculpting Championship in Stillwater, Minn., crowned a new winner this past weekend, Axios Twin Cities' Audrey Kennedy reports.

• 🏆 Team Falcon of Mongolia beat out 11 competitors from across the globe with "Voice." Team Taiwan's "Whispers in the Breeze" nabbed the People's Choice and Artists Choice awards.

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