So far, at least nine (now ~40) (now ~160) judges, including Trump appointees, have called a halt to Trump executive actions

[eclipsenow]

This is a little off topic - but how is this legal?
How is this honourable?
What is this 'Administration' (or is that 'regime') actually on about!!??

The Arlington National Cemetery website removed links to webpages about Black, Hispanic and female veterans buried at the site.

Arlington National Cemetery removed links to webpages about Black, Hispanic and female veterans

Arlington National Cemetery removed the links after the officials ordered a "digital content refresh" of the Department of Defense's websites.

www.snopes.com

 

[JSRG]

Why does he have to trawl through old records to prove what he is telling you now?
Why are you being so pedantic about this - and not answering the same questions I'm putting to you?
Do you really think Hunter would have got justice under the current regime of the DOJ and FBI's Big Lie adherents?

So the argument here is that it was necessary to pardon Hunter (and the other people that Biden gave those preemptive pardons to) because otherwise the Trump administration would try to come up with manufactured charges to harass them with. While I am dubious about the constitutionality of these preemptive pardons, they do serve a deterrent effect because it would mean someone would need to want to engage in prosecution so much they'd be willing to go to court and spend a lot of time arguing about their constitutionality just to get someone.

The problem is, while this might make sense for the preemptive pardons, it doesn't justify the pardon of the actual crime Hunter committed. His father wants to give a preemptive pardon for other crimes to dissuade Trump's administration from doing anything to him? Fine. But he also gave it to him for the crime he by all appearances actually committed and was convicted for. What is Trump going to do in regards to that? He's already been tried and found guilty, Trump can't exactly go after him more for the crime as far as I can tell. A preemptive pardon protects Hunter from Trump while also not letting him off the hook for a crime he committed just because he happens to be related to the President.

If it was really just about guarding Hunter and the others from Trump seeking vengeance, Biden would have granted him a blanket preemptive pardon for everything except the crime he was convicted of. So in the end, yes, it's blatant nepotism on Biden's part, and abuse of the pardon power in a new way too I think (for as much abuse as the pardon power has gotten, both before and after Biden, I don't think anyone did it to get a family member off the hook before).

 

[A2SG]

I don't think anyone did it to get a family member off the hook before).

Actually, President Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger, and Trump pardoned his son-in-law's father Charles Kushner.

What other family members received presidential pardons

Hunter Biden is the latest relative in history to receive a full pardon from a sitting U.S. president

www.newsnationnow.com

-- A2SG, so, agree with the pardon or not, it isn't unprecedented....

 

[JSRG]

Actually, President Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger, and Trump pardoned his son-in-law's father Charles Kushner.

What other family members received presidential pardons

Hunter Biden is the latest relative in history to receive a full pardon from a sitting U.S. president

www.newsnationnow.com

-- A2SG, so, agree with the pardon or not, it isn't unprecedented....

Well, I stand partially corrected on that point, then.

I say partially because Biden still did go farther with the family member pardon than the two you cite. There is something notable about the Clinton and Trump pardons: These were done only after the people in question had already served their sentences (over a decade after in both cases, inf act). Bill Clinton issued the pardon to Roger Clinton in 2001, but Roger Clinton's conviction was back in 1985 (he served more than a year in prison). So this didn't remove any prison time from him; it just removed it from his record. The same is true for Trump's pardoning of Charles Kushner; Trump's pardon of him was in 2020, 14 years after Kushner had been released from prison in 2006.

The pardons removing it from their legal record is still notable and useful to them, of course. For example, Roger Clinton actually got arrested for driving under the influence a month after his pardon, and it is possible that he might have gotten a stiffer sentence (he ended up with a 2-year probation and a $1,350 fine) if that prior conviction was still on his record.

Nevertheless, these examples stop short of Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter, because there he didn't merely remove it from Hunter's record after Hunter had served the sentence; he prevented Hunter from receiving any penalty for it. So if by "off the hook" we mean nullifying the sentence given for a crime, then yes, Joe Biden was the first President to use the pardon power to get a relative off the hook, as the prior pardons were for relatives who had already served their sentences.

 

[A2SG]

Well, I stand partially corrected on that point, then.

I say partially because Biden still did go farther with the family member pardon than the two you cite. There is something notable about the Clinton and Trump pardons: These were done only after the people in question had already served their sentences (over a decade after in both cases, inf act). Bill Clinton issued the pardon to Roger Clinton in 2001, but Roger Clinton's conviction was back in 1985 (he served more than a year in prison). So this didn't remove any prison time from him; it just removed it from his record. The same is true for Trump's pardoning of Charles Kushner; Trump's pardon of him was in 2020, 14 years after Kushner had been released from prison in 2006.

The pardons removing it from their legal record is still notable and useful to them, of course. For example, Roger Clinton actually got arrested for driving under the influence a month after his pardon, and it is possible that he might have gotten a stiffer sentence (he ended up with a 2-year probation and a $1,350 fine) if that prior conviction was still on his record.

Nevertheless, these examples stop short of Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter, because there he didn't merely remove it from Hunter's record after Hunter had served the sentence; he prevented Hunter from receiving any penalty for it. So if by "off the hook" we mean nullifying the sentence given for a crime, then yes, Joe Biden was the first President to use the pardon power to get a relative off the hook, as the prior pardons were for relatives who had already served their sentences.

Granted. I do agree that President Biden shouldn't have pardoned his son for his crimes, although, as a father, I can understand the desire to do so. Still, I don't believe that any president should have unlimited pardon powers. I think they should be limited and subject to independent review.

-- A2SG, and that would have included President Ford's preemptive pardon of President Nixon....

 

[essentialsaltes]

The cards have a $1 limit on them now. Wait to see who screams

JROTC

DOGE audits affecting JROTC competitions for schools on the First Coast​

A number of JROTC tournaments were cancelled or changed to virtual because of a freeze on federal credit cards used to book travel for many schools.

Dozens of schools in our area compete in national JROTC meets across the various military branches that hold those competitions. Nease High School is considered a power in Navy JROTC competitions, but due to a pause on federal funding and uncertainty surrounding the Continuing Resolution in Congress, some national competitions have been converted to virtual and some state competitions have been cancelled completely.

"It can be maddening, what's happening can be maddening," said Justin Gates, the Competition Director for Sports Network International, which is the organization that runs the national championships for JROTC branches, "we provide the spotlight, the kids are the show."
But that show can't go on as planned because on Tuesday DOGE tweeted that more than 200,000 government credit cards across the country have been deactivated and many more are currently frozen

 

[Bradskii]

DOGE now breaking into independent agencies. From here: Judge incredulous in Trump deportation case as administration lawyers argue verbal court order isn’t binding – live

Employees of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” have entered the US Institute of Peace despite protests from the non-profit that it is not part of the executive branch and is instead an independent agency, the Associated Press reports.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Musk’s employees entered the nonprofit “with the help of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department”, citing a phone call with Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute.

Per the New York Times: “Lin said that the U.S. Institute for Peace called the D.C. police on the Musk team members in an effort to stop them from trespassing because the institute has control of its own building and the land it sits on. But instead, the D.C. police allowed them to enter and kicked out the institute’s officials.”

 

[eclipsenow]

So the argument here is that it was necessary to pardon Hunter (and the other people that Biden gave those preemptive pardons to) because otherwise the Trump administration would try to come up with manufactured charges to harass them with. While I am dubious about the constitutionality of these preemptive pardons, they do serve a deterrent effect because it would mean someone would need to want to engage in prosecution so much they'd be willing to go to court and spend a lot of time arguing about their constitutionality just to get someone.

The problem is, while this might make sense for the preemptive pardons, it doesn't justify the pardon of the actual crime Hunter committed. His father wants to give a preemptive pardon for other crimes to dissuade Trump's administration from doing anything to him? Fine. But he also gave it to him for the crime he by all appearances actually committed and was convicted for. What is Trump going to do in regards to that?

How bad was he again?

Oh yeah - all those police officers he assaulted, all that public property he damaged, the sheer insult of his insurrection launched on the nation's capitol building, the Congressmen and women he threaten to execute with signs and a noose hanging outside ready to go! The prayer meeting he ran thanking God that he could do all this - what an evil, evil man! My heart BLEEDS for you that he was pardoned! Oh... wait... that was these other guys... Soz - my bad!

Do you think it’s OK to attack a police officer by plunging a stun gun multiple times into his neck?​

​

How about using a riot shield to smash a police officer into a metal door frame, leaving him bruised and bloodied?​

​

Any problem with someone who spends more than an hour assaulting law enforcement officers with pepper spray, a metal crutch and wooden and metal poles?​

​

President Trump seems just fine with the above, a tiny fraction of the crime spree committed when a swarm of rioters overran the Capitol in a violent bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The above-mentioned perpetrators — and many more like them — were among the roughly 1,500 criminal defendants whom Trump pardoned just hours after taking office.​

​

How’s that for Making America Safe Again, as was promised throughout his White House bid?​

​

Going forth, any candidate who campaigns under the banner of Trump’s Republican Party — which has long styled itself as the party of law and order and “backing the blue” — should be made to reconcile that asserted stance with the president’s unholy act.

Column: Trump pardoned a lot of bad apples. Now he and Republicans own the barrelful

Republicans have long styled themselves as the party of law and order and 'backing the blue,' but Trump freed people who attacked police. How does that make the country safer?

www.latimes.com

​

 

[essentialsaltes]

'We're not stopping': Trump officials raise the stakes in showdowns with judges​

President Donald Trump and his allies have launched a multipronged attack on the judiciary, punctuated over the weekend by his decision not to comply with a federal judge’s order to halt the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador.

It was not the first time the two-month-old Trump administration had not complied with a federal court. Judges have said Trump has brushed aside their orders to unfreeze spending on a variety of foreign and domestic programs.

The first instance was on Feb. 10, when a federal judge in Rhode Island blasted the government for having violated his order halting a sweeping federal funding freeze.

A judge presiding over a case directing the government to lift a freeze on funding for grants from USAID had to issue three orders to get the government to begin complying. The government had argued it was reviewing the grants during that period, which it said it was allowed to do.

In a separate case, nonprofit groups accused the administration of working around a court order on a suspension of grants on refugee admissions by simply terminating the grants.

[ACLU:] "Our country is based on the assumption that there are three equal branches and that the federal court will say what the law is and that the other two branches will adhere to those rulings. Once that ends, we’re in a very different situation in this country; we’re no longer a country based on the rule of law.”

Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School ... “If the executive can defy court orders whenever they feel like it, they are essentially not constrained by the Constitution and the laws anymore,” he added. “If they defy court orders and get away with it, they can basically do things that are illegal and there would be no easy way of stopping them.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Chief Justice John Roberts hits back after Trump calls for impeaching judge who ruled against him​

Chief Justice John Roberts has hit back against in a rare public statement after President Donald Trump on Monday claimed a federal judge lacks the authority to review his administration’s attempts to bypass due process rights when deporting migrants who are alleged to be gang members — and called for the judge to be impeached.

In a statement issued by the court, Roberts said that impeachment isn’t an appropriate response to disagreements with judges’ rulings.

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said.

 

[Pommer]

Chief Justice John Roberts hits back after Trump calls for impeaching judge who ruled against him​

Chief Justice John Roberts has hit back against in a rare public statement after President Donald Trump on Monday claimed a federal judge lacks the authority to review his administration’s attempts to bypass due process rights when deporting migrants who are alleged to be gang members — and called for the judge to be impeached.

In a statement issued by the court, Roberts said that impeachment isn’t an appropriate response to disagreements with judges’ rulings.

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said.

TLTL

 

[Bradskii]

It's difficult keeping up with all this. But...https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/mar/18/donald-trump-venezuela-deportations-white-house-immigration-us-politics-live

'A federal judge has ordered Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to stop their dismantling of USAid, saying their move to rapidly shut down the agency tasked with managing foreign assistance was likely illegal.'

“The court finds that defendants actions taken to shut down USAid on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAid headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAid Officer, likely violated the United States constitution in multiple ways...'

 

[JSRG]

How bad was he again?

Oh yeah - all those police officers he assaulted, all that public property he damaged, the sheer insult of his insurrection launched on the nation's capitol building, the Congressmen and women he threaten to execute with signs and a noose hanging outside ready to go! The prayer meeting he ran thanking God that he could do all this - what an evil, evil man! My heart BLEEDS for you that he was pardoned! Oh... wait... that was these other guys... Soz - my bad!

Do you think it’s OK to attack a police officer by plunging a stun gun multiple times into his neck?​

​

How about using a riot shield to smash a police officer into a metal door frame, leaving him bruised and bloodied?​

​

Any problem with someone who spends more than an hour assaulting law enforcement officers with pepper spray, a metal crutch and wooden and metal poles?​

​

President Trump seems just fine with the above, a tiny fraction of the crime spree committed when a swarm of rioters overran the Capitol in a violent bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The above-mentioned perpetrators — and many more like them — were among the roughly 1,500 criminal defendants whom Trump pardoned just hours after taking office.​

​

How’s that for Making America Safe Again, as was promised throughout his White House bid?​

​

Going forth, any candidate who campaigns under the banner of Trump’s Republican Party — which has long styled itself as the party of law and order and “backing the blue” — should be made to reconcile that asserted stance with the president’s unholy act.​

Column: Trump pardoned a lot of bad apples. Now he and Republicans own the barrelful

Republicans have long styled themselves as the party of law and order and 'backing the blue,' but Trump freed people who attacked police. How does that make the country safer?

www.latimes.com

​

​

What in the world does any of this have to do with my post?

As best as I can tell, you are trying to do a "whataboutism" by complaining about Trump's pardons of the rioters. Which does not actually address my point (me noting that the argument Biden had to pardon Hunter to protect him from Trump would only be an explanation for Biden's preemptive pardon of other crimes Hunter may have committed, not the pardon for one he was actually convicted of), and in any event I disliked Trump's pardoning also.

 

[eclipsenow]

What in the world does any of this have to do with my post?

As best as I can tell, you are trying to do a "whataboutism" by complaining about Trump's pardons of the rioters. Which does not actually address my point (me noting that the argument Biden had to pardon Hunter to protect him from Trump would only be an explanation for Biden's preemptive pardon of other crimes Hunter may have committed, not the pardon for one he was actually convicted of), and in any event I disliked Trump's pardoning also.

Apologies! It was late - and I actually thought you were someone else I have been discussing this with at length - and was repeatedly ignoring everything else I had said in the conversation to that point.
You did not deserve the attitude in that post.


But I'll repeat that given the political climate in America if I were Biden I would have pardoned my son! Some of the head Republicans just do not know when to quit - even after all the investigations found the whole Ukrainian laptop malarkey was just that.

Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, blasted the president’s pardon, saying that the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.”​

​

“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.
AP​

​

Does that sound like a law-respecting, reality respecting Republican? Or someone on the verge of falling down the Hunter-laptop conspiracy theory (investigated and disproved) or worse - something smelling of QANON?

With tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist's in charge of the DOJ and FBI - it was the right call! Trump's malignant narcissism would not have allowed his former foe's family any peace.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Trump administration live updates: Judge blocks Trump's military transgender ban​

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday evening that blocks the Department of Defense from barring transgender people from military service, finding the policy violates the constitutional rights of transgender service members.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Chief Justice John Roberts hits back after Trump calls for impeaching judge who ruled against him​

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said.

Possibly "normal appellate review process" was too dense a sandwich of words to penetrate.

Trump Issues Firm Directive to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts​

The president then addressed Roberts, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, and the Supreme Court: "STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!"

 

[essentialsaltes]

Trump administration live updates: Judge blocks Trump's military transgender ban​

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday evening that blocks the Department of Defense from barring transgender people from military service, finding the policy violates the constitutional rights of transgender service members.

Judge REYES on a tear, telling DOJ she won't be "gaslit" by effort to say their ban on transgender people in the military isn't actually a "ban." She notes SecDef Hegseth literally called it a ban on X. "You're saying one thing in public. You're saying a different thing in court," Reyes said.

 

[Bradskii]

Judge REYES on a tear, telling DOJ she won't be "gaslit" by effort to say their ban on transgender people in the military isn't actually a "ban." She notes SecDef Hegseth literally called it a ban on X. "You're saying one thing in public. You're saying a different thing in court," Reyes said.

I think the legal term for that is 'lying'. Someone with more knowledge of the law than I have might be able to confirm that.

 

[eclipsenow]

I think America need to nationalised its jails - as this ICE corruption is DISGUSTING and I've just had a meeting with some of my church business mates who (unlike myself right now) are highly placed in various software and in investment firms. They are VERY reluctant to holiday in America after this article below!

There is something VERY wrong with America at the moment!

This poor Canadian lady... I mean - what about little things like legal due process, human rights, warm blankets... But when you're a profit driven Corporation - gotta buy the CEOs next boat hey?

I thought this sort of thing only happened in John Grisham novels.

Disgusting!!

I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky

www.theguardian.com

 

[eclipsenow]

I just love the way Trump threatened Zuckerberg with jail for 'fact checking' and now Facebook is going as crazy alt-right as X.

Don't you just love Trump's respect for reality.

The respect for free speech - even if it's (gasp!) fact checking for (gasp!) climate science and (gasp!) vaccines.

Yeah - smell the freedom people!
Get some while you can!

As even old Facebook gets as frenzied as X - I wonder how long before the whole powder keg of American societal tension explodes into something really nasty - like civil unrest, states seceding, or even civil war!

Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?

The social media giant enters a more partisan political era as its CEO pursues Donald Trump’s approval

www.theguardian.com