Unilateral Power

Many posts have discussed presidential power.

Bruce Mehlman:

They say if you want to go fast, go alone. The Trump 2.0 White House has issued more executive orders in its first year than any Administration since FDR’s, recognizing that executive orders take effect instantly while court challenges to their legality take months. Likewise the great “unlock” for Presidential power is declaring emergencies, as Congress created special authorities for moments that demand quick and decisive action, such as 9-11, COVID or the Iranian hostage crisis. Courts usually defer to the Executive Branch on what constitutes an emergency, and T2.0 declared more first-year emergencies than the seven prior Administrations combined

.

Abusing the Pardon Power

 Many posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

Stephen Holmes at the Project Syndicate:

The pardon power is the only authority that the US Constitution places entirely in one person’s hands, immune from legislative override or judicial review. Alexander Hamilton, defending this arrangement in Federalist 74, understood the danger. But he wagered that shame would restrain abuse – that a president, bearing sole blame for corrupt use of the power, would hesitate where a legislature might not. “The sense of responsibility is always strongest,” Hamilton wrote, “in proportion as it is undivided.”

Hamilton was wrong. He did not anticipate a shameless president.

Hamilton’s case for the pardon was political, not moral. He barely mentioned mercy. The power’s core purpose was emergency peace-making: “in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth.”

This was the rationale for Massachusetts’ offer of clemency to participants in Shays’s Rebellion, and for George Washington’s pardon of those who took part in the Whiskey Rebellion during his presidency. The pardon was an ad hoc instrument for ending conflict after rebellion was suppressed – a discretionary tool for restoring peace when peace took priority over justice.

Crucially, Hamilton insisted that clemency must remain unpredictable. “It would generally be impolitic beforehand,” he wrote, “to take any step which might hold out the prospect of impunity.” A standing promise of pardons would encourage rebellion. The power works only if potential lawbreakers cannot count on forgiveness in advance.

Trump has inverted every element of this design. He has transformed the pardon from an instrument for ending conflict into a weapon for stoking it, from an ad hoc exercise of discretion into a standing promise of impunity, from a tool of reconciliation into a system for rewarding loyalty. Hamilton envisioned a president using clemency to heal divisions after insurrection; Trump pardoned the insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, only after returning to the presidency four years later, signaling that loyalty to him guarantees impunity.

The effects are already visible in courtrooms and law offices across the US. “If I were any defendant now,” a former senior Department of Justice official told the Financial Times, and “I had the financial wherewithal or connections, my thought would be, maybe I’ll be convicted, but I very well may get a pardon as well.” Defense attorneys are reportedly advising clients that conviction need not be the end for those who meet the criteria. Hamilton’s nightmare has become litigation strategy.

 

Bogus Pardon

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation. 

Other posts have addressed the president's pardon power.

This one is about both.

Michael Luciano at Mediaite:

President Donald Trump announced he is issuing a “pardon” for a former elections clerk who was convicted of state charges in Colorado last year. But there’s one teensy-weensy hangup.

Tina Peters, a Trump supporter and former clerk of Mesa County, was found guilty of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election. At her trial last year, Peters was convicted of helping a non-public employee gain access to the county’s voting machines. Upon receiving access, the individual took county passwords and proprietary information about the machines, which were made by Dominion Voting Systems. Trump and his allies have alleged that the company helped rig the 2020 election against him.

Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison.

On Thursday night, Trump announced a “pardon” for Peters on Truth Social:

For years, Democrats ignored Violent and Vicious Crime of all shapes, sizes, colors, and types. Violent Criminals who should have been locked up were allowed to attack again. Democrats were also far too happy to let in the worst from the worst countries so they could rip off American Taxpayers. Democrats only think there is one crime – Not voting for them! Instead of protecting Americans and their Tax Dollars, Democrats chose instead to prosecute anyone they can find that wanted Safe and Secure Elections. Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest. Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the “crime” of demanding Honest Elections. Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!

The president only has the power to issue pardons and commutations for federal crimes, as Article II of the Constitution clearly states.

Inflammatory Language: Blaming the Other Side

Many posts have discussed partisan polarization.

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Larger majorities of Americans than in the past believe that both the Democratic and Republican parties and their supporters have gone too far in using inflammatory language to criticize their opponents. Sixty-nine percent now say this about the Republican Party and Republicans, a 16-percentage-point increase from 2011, and 60% currently believe this applies to the Democratic Party and Democrats, which is nine points higher than 14 years ago.

These results are based on an Oct. 1-16 Gallup poll, which updated a question that had been previously asked in 2011 in the wake of a mass shooting that injured former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six. The latest poll was conducted shortly after Republican activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated during an appearance at a Utah college and follows two assassination attempts on Donald Trump in 2024.

Republicans and Democrats are now nearly unanimous in believing the other party has gone too far with its rhetoric and are much more likely to think this than in 2011. Ninety-four percent of Democrats, compared with 74% in 2011, now say Republicans and their supporters have gone too far, and 93% of Republicans (vs. 63% in 2011) say the same about Democrats and their supporters.

No Religious Revival

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.

Gregory A. Smith at Pew:

So, what is happening with religion among young adults today? Some media reports have suggested there may be a religious revival taking place among young adults, especially young men, in the U.S. But our recent polls, along with other high-quality surveys we have analyzed, show no clear evidence that this kind of nationwide religious resurgence is underway.

On average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans. Today’s young adults also are less religious than young people were a decade ago. And there is no indication that young men are converting to Christianity in large numbers.

 

Distrust, Frustration, and Anger

Many posts have discussed public trust in institutions and political leaders.

From Pew:

Just 17% of Americans now say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (15%).

While trust in government has been low for decades, the current measure is one of the lowest in the nearly seven decades since the question was first asked by the National Election Study, and it is lower than it was last year (22%).

 

Shanay Gracia at Pew:

We regularly ask Americans whether the federal government makes them feel basically content, frustrated or angry. Today, 49% say they feel frustrated. Another 26% say they are angry, and 23% say they are basically content, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 3,445 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 22-28 (just before the 43-day government shutdown)

Frustration is common across the political spectrum regardless of which party holds the presidency. But the shares of Republicans and Democrats feeling anger and contentment shift dramatically depending on who’s in the White House.

Still, the partisan gaps in these views are wider now than at any point since we first asked this question in 1997. The share of Democrats who are angry toward the federal government has hit a new high:

 

The News About the News is Still Bad

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Zach Metzger at Medill Northwestern:

Our first State of Local News report, published in 2016, examined the local news landscape across America over the previous 10 years, taking data from 2005 as its starting point. Now, in the project’s 10th year, we are able to look back through the past two decades and see dramatic transformations in the ecosystem of local news. Almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news. This trend continues to impact the media industry and audiences nationwide. Newspapers are disappearing at the same rate as in 2024; more than 130 papers shut down in the past year alone. Newspaper employment is sliding steadily downward. And although there has been some growth in stand-alone and network digital sites, these startups remain heavily centralized in urban areas, and they have not been appearing fast enough to offset the losses elsewhere. As a result, news deserts – areas with extremely limited access to local news – continue to grow. In 2005, just over 150 counties lacked a source of local news; today, there are more than 210. Meanwhile, the journalism industry faces new and intensified challenges including: shrinking circulation and steep losses of revenue from changes to search and the adoption of AI technologies, while political attacks against public broadcasters threaten to leave large swaths of rural America without local news.

 From the press release:

Key findings from the Medill study: 

• The number of news desert counties rose to 213 in 2025, a jump from 206 in last year’s report. In another 1,524 counties, there’s only one remaining news source. Taken together, some 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news. Twenty years ago, there were about 150 news desert counties, with about 37 million Americans at the time living in news deserts.

• The rise in news deserts was accompanied by an increase in newspaper closures, which ticked up to 136 this past year, a rate of more than two per week. Medill tracked 130 in last year’s report.

• In a marked departure, most of this year’s closures came at smaller, independently owned newspapers — not those controlled by large chains — signaling that an increasing number of long-time family publishers are surrendering to economic pressures.

• Total jobs at newspapers slumped 7% in the past year. The industry has now lost more than three-quarters of its jobs since 2005.

• More than 200 newspapers changed hands in the past year, down from the number of transactions last year but still a torrid pace by historical standards.

• Nearly 300 public radio stations and more than 100 public television stations are producing local reporting. In nine counties, public radio is the sole news source, making those areas especially vulnerable to becoming news deserts in coming months.

• Utilizing predictive modeling created by the school’s Spiegel Research Center, the Medill team found 250 counties at high risk of becoming news deserts over the next decade.

• Web traffic to 100 of the largest newspapers has plummeted more than 45% in the past four years, according to a Medill analysis of data tracked by the media analytics company Comscore.

• The report counted more than 300 local news startups in the past five years across virtually every state, demonstrating a surge of entrepreneurship that has come along with a wave of philanthropic support. The vast majority of those startups, however, are in metro areas, leaving rural and less affluent areas further behind.

• The number of local news sites that are part of larger national networks is continuing to multiply. This year, there are 849 sites across 54 separate networks, up 14% from the 742 individual sites across 23 networks. This growth illustrates the increasingly prominent role of digital network sites on the local news landscape.