Today President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 Americans and issued pardons for 39 persons convicted of non-violent crimes. For the remainder of Biden’s term, any use of the pardon power will be shadowed or seen through the prism of his pardon of his son, Hunter Biden. But I wanted to take this opportunity to say something broader about the pardon power. And I want to be clear that this isn’t an opinion that is downstream of or related to the Hunter Biden pardon. I’ve made similar arguments a number of times going back probably 20 years.
Put simply, we don’t have anywhere near enough pardons: both at the federal and the state level.
In fact, much of what passes for pardons or clemency today aren’t really pardons at all. They’re basically fake clemency. Set aside the controversial pardons of recent years. Most presidents at the end of their terms issue pardons to a range of meritorious individuals. They each come with a backstory of bad choices later redeemed by selfless altruism, service or other exemplary conduct. Or they simply turned around their life against the odds. But in almost every one of these cases the recipients have already done their time! They took responsibility; did their time; expressed remorse and then went on to live an exemplary life. What they get is an almost entirely symbolic record wiped clean. That’s not nothing. It’s a nice recognition. It’s also entirely different from an innocent person having a wrongful conviction overturned — a vindication of factual innocence. That remains a big deal even for someone who has already served a lengthy sentence. But it doesn’t free any one from jail.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss Republicans’ perma-desire to cut social insurance, the limp response to Trump’s birthright citizenship claims and Pete Hegseth’s potential resurrection.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
As I’ve argued in a few different posts, “DOGE” — the grandiosely and absurdly titled “Department of Government Efficiency” — is merely an advisory panel which is probably best understood as a kind of memelord performance art. But there’s one part of this spectacle worth adding to — one separate conversation that is worth having off to the side of this effort while we’re in the midst of rightly trashing it.
Here goes.
Things take far too long to do. Things take too long to build. I saw a statistic recently that New York City used to open multiple new subway stops every year. We’ve opened like two in this century. This wasn’t new to me. It’s something I’ve been wondering about for years. And there are countless examples in your part of the country as well. Some of this is tied to the fact that today we’re more concerned with workers not getting killed on the job or dumping oceans of harmful chemicals into the ground. But it’s not all that. Not even most. There are people who have this as their hobbyhorse and they at least have broad theories of the problem — not so much over-regulation, though there’s that too, but regulatory regimes that give opponents too much power to slow things down, industry regulatory capture, etc. This is adjacent to the broader topic of housing shortages and YIMBY politics. Not the same but related.
I want to share with you this note from TPM Reader PP. But context is important. I received it on November 7th — two days after the election. So you need to understand it in that moment. But it’s been rattling around my head ever since. I’d actually intended to publish it at the time. I just didn’t find the right moment. What he says doesn’t mean the conversations about new ecosystems are wrong. They’re not at all. That’s not my takeaway. But if you’re serious about building up alternative media that isn’t dominated by right-wing voices and politics-adjacent channels dominated by right-wing ideas, I don’t think you can succeed or even have a plan to succeed without starting with the premises PP is articulating.
I have read TPM for just more than half my life, and the entirety of a 20-year career in political campaigns and consulting that I decided to wind down earlier this year to pursue a very different and unrelated career.
I’m writing now somewhat in response to the broader conversation about Democrats/men/algorithms/media and somewhat in direct response to TPM’s recent article about Democrats adapting to the “new media landscape.”
A handful of Democrats on Capitol Hill criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday for announcing he would resign from his position before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, caving to pressure after Trump announced his nomination of extremist Kash Patel to lead the FBI.
Kate and Josh discuss Republicans’ perma-desire to cut social insurance, the limp response to Trump’s birthright citizenship claims and Pete Hegseth’s potential resurrection.
Member Newsletter
