President Joe Biden commuted the sentence of a woman who was sentenced to 15 years in prison over conspiring to manufacture and distribute an altered and more potent version of fentanyl.
The post Biden Commutes Sentence of Woman Who Conspired to Manufacture, Distribute Fentanyl appeared first on Breitbart .
Among the roughly 1,500 people whose sentences were commuted or who were pardoned by President Joe Biden are a nonprofit leader who supports at-risk youth, a social worker who fosters animals and a postdoctoral researcher One woman who received a pardo…
BBC (“Trump vows to end birthright citizenship and pardon US Capitol rioters“):
President-elect Donald Trump has said he will look at pardons for those involved in the 2021 US Capitol riot on his first day back in office next month.
“These people are living in hell,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press in his first broadcast network interview since winning November’s election.
The Republican also vowed to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in the country, but offered to work with Democrats to help some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children.
In the wide-ranging sit-down, which was recorded on Friday, Trump promised to issue “a lot” of executive orders, including on immigration, energy and the economy, after he is inaugurated on 20 January.
While he suggested he would not seek a justice department investigation into Joe Biden, he said that some of his political adversaries, including lawmakers who investigated the Capitol riot, should be jailed.
Trump was asked whether he would seek to pardon the hundreds of people convicted of involvement in that riot, when supporters of his stormed Congress three months after his defeat in the 2020 election.
“We’re going to look at independent cases,” he said. “Yeah, but I’m going to be acting very quickly.”
“First day,” he added.
Trump continued: “You know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
If the focus here weren’t on those who took part in the pro-Trump Capitol riots, I would actually applaud his instincts here. While I have little insight as to where the people convicted of related crimes are incarcerated—although I suspect most of them are in minimum security facilities—our prison system writ large is a national disgrace. Alas, I strongly suspect his sympathies are limited to his cronies.
The rest of the interview was not a lot better:
The president-elect made other news in the NBC interview aired on Sunday:
- He offered a caveat on whether he would keep the US in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato): “If they’re paying their bills, and if I think they’re doing a fair – they’re treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely, I’d stay with Nato”
- Trump said he would not seek to impose restrictions on abortion pills, though when asked to make a guarantee, he added: “Well, I commit. I mean… things change”
- The Republican said Ukraine should “probably” expect less aid when he returns to the White House
- Trump said he thinks “somebody has to find out” if there is a link between autism and childhood vaccines – an idea that has been ruled out by multiple studies around the world. Trump suggested his nominee for health secretary, vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, would look into the matter
- The president-elect repeated his promise that he will not seek to cut Social Security, nor raise its eligibility age, though he said he would make it “more efficient”, without offering further details
- Pressed on whether his plan to impose tariffs on imports from major US trading partners would raise consumer prices for Americans, he said: “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow”
On the subject of immigration, Trump told NBC he would seek through executive action to end so-called birthright citizenship, which entitles anyone born in the US to an American passport, even if their parents were born elsewhere.
Birthright citizenship stems from the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States”.
“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Trump said. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.”
Trump also said he would follow through on his campaign pledge to deport undocumented immigrants, including those with family members who are US citizens.
“I don’t want to be breaking up families,” he said, “so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”
In fairness, most of this is consistent with both his most recent re-election campaign and his previous statements as both candidate and President.
Still, he rather clearly still doesn’t understand how NATO functions. It’s an alliance of countries provide for their own defense and agree to come to the aid of the others if attacked, not a dues-paying club. It’s true that they have pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense and that some have consistently fallen short of that target. As of this year, though, almost all of them meet or exceed that goal .
Similarly, while I’m persuadable that we’re spending too much on Ukraine’s defense, I get the strong sense that Trump’s view on the matter isn’t based on concern over interest payments on our national debt overwhelming our national budget or that it’s taking away resources from the competition with China that has ostensibly been our top security priority since 2011. Rather, it seems to reflect his comfort with authoritarian leaders in general and Vladimir Putin in particular.
As to birthright citizenship, I’m amenable to reforms. It was part of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment and was mostly aimed at overturning the Dred Scott decision and the 3/5 Compromise and making it crystal clear that the former slaves were full citizens of the country. We had an entirely different conception of immigration in 1868 and there was no such thing as an “illegal” immigrant. (That would change by the end of the century.)
But the text of Section 1 and the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against Congress’ power to take away citizenship. (They did, however, allow extending birthright citizenship to American Indians.) While I suppose this court, which has recently become willing to revisit long-settled precedents, would allow Trump to do this by Executive Order, it would almost surely require a Constitutional Amendment. They are nearly impossible pass absent overwhelming national consensus. It does not exist on this issue.
Further, there’s no way an Amendment would be retroactive. And the notion that we would deport children born as American citizens as part of a package to deport their parents just boggles the mind.
The vaccination-autism link has long since been debunked and it’s frustrating to have a President stoking the nonsense. Childhood vaccinations have virtually eradicated scores of once deadly or debilitating diseases. It would be insane to reverse course on that.
NBC News (“Trump will ‘most likely’ pardon Capitol rioters on day one and says Jan. 6 committee members should be jailed“) highlights other alarming statements.
With regard to pardoning the rioters:
Trump said there “may be some exceptions” to his pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy,” and pointed to some debunked claims that anti-Trump elements and law enforcement operatives infiltrated the crowd.
[…]Trump didn’t rule out pardoning people who had pleaded guilty, even when Welker asked him about those who had admitted assaulting police officers.
“Because they had no choice,” Trump said.
Asked about the more than 900 other people who had pleaded guilty in connection to the attack but weren’t accused of assaulting officers, Trump suggested that they had been pressured unfairly into taking guilty pleas.
“I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system,” Trump said. “They say to a guy, ‘You’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years, they’ve been destroyed. But the system is a very nasty system.”
Like many Republicans at the time, I was quite critical of Maxine Waters and other fringe Democrats for excusing the violence surrounding the Los Angeles riots in the wake of the exoneration of the officers charged in the Rodney King beating. That a former and future Republican President is saying that people had “no choice” but to assault sworn officers protecting Members of Congress from an angry mob boggles the mind.
Trump said he wouldn’t direct Pam Bondi, whom he has said he will nominate for attorney general, to investigate special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two separate federal cases against Trump that were ultimately dropped after the election. Trump called Smith “deranged” and said he thinks he is “very corrupt.” Ultimately, he said, he’d leave those decisions to Bondi, and he said he wouldn’t direct her to prosecute Smith.
“I want her to do what she wants to do,” Trump said. “I’m not going to instruct her to do it.”
Trump claimed that members of the House Jan. 6 committee had “lied” and “destroyed a whole year and a half worth of testimony.”
He singled out Republican Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, a vocal Trump critic who left Congress, and Democrat Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, who chaired the committee, saying that they had destroyed the evidence collected in their investigation and that “those people committed a major crime.”
[…]“Honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said about the committee members, insisting he wouldn’t direct his appointees to arrest them.
This is, frankly, deranged.
“Flight”
April 25, 2023
Santa Barbara, CA
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