Biden preemptively pardons Fauci, Cheney, Milley on way out

From The Center Square

President Joe Biden issued a series of high-profile pardons Monday, citing a commitment to protecting public servants from politically motivated threats and prosecutions.

The decision extends clemency to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, former Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, members and staff of the House January 6 Select Committee and law enforcement officers who testified before the panel.

“These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions,” Biden said in a statement.

The recipients have all faced criticism, mostly from Republican leadership, for their actions over the past four years.

Dr. Fauci, who served under both President Trump and Biden, became a central figure in the fight against COVID-19, welcomed the pardon, calling the allegations against him “politically motivated” and “baseless.” He noted that such threats had caused significant distress to him and his family. When testifying before a House subcommittee in June, Fauci said he regularly received death threats.

Fauci has been questioned by critics over his handling of the pandemic and has been accused of covering up the true origins of the virus, recklessly shutting down U.S. schools and businesses, inadequately addressing vaccine hesitancy or the concerns surrounding rapid vaccine development.

The pardon also shields those involved with the January 6 Select Committee, which investigated the Capitol attack in 2021. The committee has faced criticism from Republican lawmakers, including a detailed report from Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who has accused it of bias and mismanagement. In the report, Loudermilk called for investigations into the committee’s work, singling out former Vice Chair Liz Cheney.

General Milley, who retired in 2023, faced criticism from political opponents, including former President Donald Trump. Milley accused Trump of treason over calls to a Chinese general during the transition period following the 2020 election. Milley has denied any wrongdoing and framed his actions as efforts to ensure stability.

The president defended the pardons as necessary to prevent the erosion of democratic norms.

“Baseless investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families,” Biden said. “Even when individuals have done nothing wrong … the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., condemned the decision and labeled Biden “one of the worst presidents in American history” and accused him of undermining constitutional norms.

The pardons also come as former President Donald Trump has pledged to pardon those convicted for their roles in the January 6 attack if he returns to the White House.

Trump plans to issue a slate of pardons on his first day in office for those he believes were unjustly prosecuted, including “most” convicted Jan. 6 protesters during his first minutes in the White House.

Trump pledged throughout his campaign that he would pardon some people convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“It’s going to start in the first hour,” Trump previously said. “Maybe the first nine minutes.”

Nolan McKendry

Related Topics:#TheCenterSquare BidenPardonsCheney BidenPardonsFauci BidenPardonsMilley BidenPreemptivePardons feature NolanMcKendry

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Trump promises new era of government efficiency with DOGE

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Trump to declare national emergency on border, issue executive orders

Business

Trump promises new era of government efficiency with DOGE

Published on January 20, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

Group files suit over DOGE secrecy on Trump’s first day

President Donald Trump promised Americans that their federal government would operate more efficiently with the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency.

“My administration will establish the brand new Department of Government Efficiency,” the 47th president said to applause from Republicans.

Trump’s remarks on DOGE came the same day as a nonprofit group joined a union to file suit over the outside agency, alleging its secret meetings violate federal law.

The complaint, filed by Public Citizen and the American Federation of Government Employees, alleges DOGE violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act because “members do not have a fair balance of viewpoints, meetings are held in secret and without public notice and records and work product are not available to the public.”

“AFGE will not stand idly by as a secretive group of ultra-wealthy individuals with major conflicts of interest attempt to deregulate themselves and give their own companies sweetheart government contracts while firing civil servants and dismantling the institutions designed to serve the American people,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “This fight is about fairness, accountability, and the integrity of our government.”

Trump spoke about DOGE during his inauguration after making bold promises for the department after winning the 2024 election.

Trump picked Tesla CEO Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE. Trump said the new group will pave the way for his administration to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulation, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”

Both Musk and Ramaswamy attended Trump’s inauguration Monday. The two men previously outlined their plans for DOGE, which includes reducing regulations that would lead to mass layoffs of federal employees.

“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in November. “DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.”

AFGE, which represents more than 800,000 workers in nearly every federal agency, had previously denounced DOGE. Kelley said it will hollow out the federal government and its workforce.

“By their very nature, cuts of this size also would require slashing spending on our military, homeland security, federal law enforcement, and virtually every aspect of our government operations,” he said. “This kind of financial pressure would lead to painful, widespread reductions in services that will affect Americans from every walk of life.”

Trump has promised to cut “hundreds of billions” in federal spending in 2025 through the reconciliation process. DOGE co-leader Musk initially suggested DOGE could cut $2 trillion in spending. Musk more recently said the group will aim for $2 trillion, but likely come up with half that amount.

Congress controls the purse strings for discretionary spending, which totaled about $1.7 trillion in 2023. Congress generally allocates about half of its discretionary spending to the U.S. Department of Defense.

“The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote. “Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.”

Congress has run a deficit every year since 2001. In the past 50 years, the federal government has ended with a fiscal year-end budget surplus four times, most recently in 2001.

Last week, the federal government reported net costs of $7.4 trillion in fiscal year 2024, but it couldn’t fully account for its spending. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which is Congress’s research arm, said that the federal government must address “serious deficiencies” in federal financial management and correct course on its “unsustainable” long-term fiscal path.

Brett Rowland

Investigative Reporter

illegal immigration

Trump to declare national emergency on border, issue executive orders

Published on January 20, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

After being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, President Donald Trump said he will sign “a series of historic executive orders … to begin the complete restoration of America and the ‘Revolution of Common Sense.’”

The first action he will take will be to declare a national emergency at the U.S. southern border, he said. Trump did not mention the northern border, which saw an unprecedented number of illegal crossings, record number of terrorists entering the U.S., and increased national security threats under the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.

“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said. “We will reinstate my ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. I will end the practice of catch and release. I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”

Trump said he will designate Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The designation will also apply to violent transnational criminal organizations including the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, which is now operating in at least 22 states, The Center Square reported.

By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Trump will direct the federal government “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities,” he said.

The act will be used to remove all cartel and gang members in the country illegally.

“As Commander in Chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” he said.

Trump is expected to issue 10 executive orders Monday to implement border security measures. They include ending the Obama-era catch-and-release policy Trump ended in his first term, which former President Joe Biden reinstated. The policy led to more than 14 million foreign nationals illegally entering the country, including more than two million who evaded capture known as gotaways under the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported.

Trump will reinstate a policy he created in his first term, Remain in Mexico, or “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP). It requires asylum seekers to wait outside the U.S. while their claims are processed. After the Biden administration sought to end it, Texas and Missouri sued. A federal judge ruled that ending the MPP was unlawful, The Center Square reported.

Trump will also direct federal agencies to finish building the border wall along the southwest border, completing a project he began in his first term. Biden halted border wall construction on his first day in office. Texas and Missouri again sued and won that lawsuit as well, The Center Square reported.policy

Another executive order will end parole programs for illegal border crossers created by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached in part for creating them. Multiple attorneys general sued to stop them, arguing they were illegal.

The parole programs, including using a phone app, facilitated illegal entry into the U.S. for millions, including those with criminal records. Many released through the parole programs were later found to commit violent crimes against Americans, The Center Square reported.

Another will direct federal efforts to “crack down on criminal sanctuaries,” referring to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. More than 200 were identified and already given notice to comply with federal law or face prosecution. Sanctuary cities expected to be targeted first include Boston, Chicago, Miami and New York.

Trump’s massive deportation efforts will be led by his Border Czar Tom Homan, who has said the priority is to find and locate the most violent criminals to process for removal.

Another executive order will suspend the federal so-called refugee resettlement program through which local communities nationwide “were forced to house large and unsustainable populations of migrants, straining community safety and resources,” Trump’s transition team said.

Trump will also direct members of the U.S. military, including the National Guard, to engage in border security operations, deploying them to the border to assist existing law enforcement personnel. According to a poll ahead of the election last year, the majority of Americans support U.S. troops being sent to the border, The Center Squarereported.

Another order will direct the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty for illegal border crossers who kill U.S. citizens, including law enforcement officers.

Last year, criminal illegal border crossers made international headlines after brutally assaulting and murdering American women and girls, The Center Square reported. Their mothers and family members endorsed Trump for president.

Another order will direct the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to enhance vetting and screening processes after national security concerns were raised about the Biden administration flying illegal border crossers into the country who weren’t vetted, The Center Square reported.