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18 minute read

Biden's final acts as president.

Plus, what to make of Elon Musk's gesture at the inauguration?

President Joe Biden in the Oval Office in 2021. Photo Credit: Adam Schultz
President Joe Biden in the Oval Office in 2021. Photo Credit: Adam Schultz

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

✍️
The implications of Joe Biden's final executive orders, commutations, and pardons. Plus, we tackle the Elon Musk inauguration controversy.

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Quick hits.

  1. Attorneys general from 18 states filed a lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s executive action ending birthright citizenship, arguing the order violates the 14th Amendment. Four additional states also filed a separate lawsuit challenging the action. (The suits)
  2. Israeli security forces launched a major raid — described as a counter-terrorism operation — in the West Bank, killing at least nine Palestinians, according to Palestinian health services. (The operation) Separately, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and the head of the IDF Southern Command Yaron Finkelman announced their resignations, citing a failure to prevent the October 7 attacks. (The resignations)
  3. President Trump announced that he had granted a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online marketplace Silk Road, who had been sentenced to life in prison for distributing narcotics through the site. (The pardon)
  4. Multiple wildfires broke out in San Diego County, prompting evacuation orders for some residents. The Lilac Fire, the largest of the blazes, grew to 85 acres and was 50% contained as of Tuesday evening. (The fires) Separately, a severe and rare winter storm hit southern U.S. states, prompting the first-ever Blizzard Warning to the Gulf Coast. (The storm)
  5. President Trump announced a joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The companies are expected to commit $500 billion to the project, called Stargate, over the next four years. (The announcement)

Today's topic.

Biden’s last week as president. During the final days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden issued several executive orders on major domestic and international issues. Additionally, he commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 criminal defendants — a single-day record — and granted sweeping pardons to members of his family and other political figures. Biden’s last actions prompted debate over his legacy and the limits of presidential power as President Donald Trump begins his second term. 

Perhaps most notably, Biden issued pardons for his family members and political figures in the final hours of his term (the family pardons were announced with minutes remaining). The former president justified the move as a preemptive measure against “unrelenting attacks and threats” targeting his family, which he said would not end after leaving office. None of the pardoned family members have been charged with any crimes, but President Trump (and some Congressional Republicans) had vowed to “go after” Biden and his family during the presidential campaign. In December, Biden also issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son, Hunter, who had been convicted on felony gun charges and pleaded guilty to felony tax offenses. 

On Monday, Biden also pardoned others he said were likely to be subject to investigations during the Trump administration: Dr. Anthony Fauci; General Mark A. Milley; and members of the House Jan. 6 committee, its staff, and police officers who testified before the committee. “I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Biden wrote in a statement. “But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.” President Trump called the pardons “unfortunate.” 

In addition to these pardons, Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in 1977 for killing two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in South Dakota. Peltier, 80, will spend the remainder of his sentence in home confinement. 

Separately, Biden issued a slew of executive orders in his final weeks:

  • Banning new oil and gas drilling in over 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters
  • Removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism
  • Establishing new rules for how artificial intelligence chips and models can be shared with foreign countries
  • Canceling student loans for more than 150,000 borrowers
  • Extending deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of people from Sudan, Ukraine, El Salvador, and Venezuela

President Trump criticized these moves, suggesting he would reverse many of them once in office. On Monday, Trump rescinded 78 Biden-era executive actions, including some from Biden’s final weeks. 

Finally, Biden delivered a farewell address from the Oval Office last Wednesday, focusing much of the speech on the threat posed by a “tech-industrial complex” and associated risks of a budding oligarchy. “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden said. “We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power.”

Today, we’ll explore arguments about Biden’s final actions as president, with views from the left and right. Then, Managing Editor Ari Weitzman gives his take while Executive Editor Isaac Saul is on paternity leave


Agreed.

  • The left and right both criticize Biden’s final pardons, arguing that they set a poor precedent for the country. 
  • Writers on both sides also worry that the pardons will encourage further presidential abuses of power. 

What the left is saying.

  • The left is skeptical of Biden’s final pardons, but many say we should heed the warning of his farewell address.
  • Some worry that the pardons will neutralize Democrats’ credibility to oppose Trump’s actions. 
  • Others say Trump’s pardons for January 6 defendants are far more egregious. 

In The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson wrote about “Biden’s cautionary farewell.”

“President Biden’s closing act has seen a flurry of administrative rulings, executive orders, pardons, and commutations. He’s canceled more student loan debt, taken federal convicts off death row, subjected Ozempic and Wegovy to price negotiations with Medicare, [and] declared the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified,” Meyerson said. “Few presidential closing acts, however, penetrate the nation’s collective memory… The only two closings that even students of history remember, I suspect, are the farewell addresses of George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower, and only because of some warnings they sounded that occupied just a couple of paragraphs within much longer texts.

“Biden’s farewell address could well join that company… as with the goodbyes of George and Ike, Joe’s farewell will be remembered for its explicit warning about the growth of an American oligarchy,” Meyerson wrote. “Biden’s warnings against the threat posed by great wealth, Eisenhower’s warnings against the military-industrial complex and the rise of a tech elite, and Washington’s warnings against an intolerant factionalism and entanglements with foreign powers can all be literally and justly applied to Elon Musk… The nightmare oligarchy that descends on us today has been foreseen by America’s leaders for a very long time.”

In Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal and Igor Bobic said “Joe Biden makes one last bad decision.”

“In issuing preemptive pardons for members of the Jan. 6 committee, former military leaders and government officials, and family members, now ex-President Joe Biden made one final terrible decision,” Blumenthal and Bobic wrote. “None of these people are under investigation for committing crimes, nor is there any evidence that they committed any crimes. These appear to be purely prophylactic pardons meant to protect these individuals from the threat of investigations launched by President Donald Trump, who had promised vengeance through investigation and prosecution against all of the pardoned individuals.”

“Trump will no doubt use these pardons as justification to issue his own set of pardons to allies and cronies. He considered at the end of his first term issuing preemptive pardons to lawmakers and others who helped in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Now, with the blessing of the Supreme Court with immunity from prosecution for official acts and Biden’s precedent, Trump can order administration officials, staff, border patrol or members of the military to break the law and receive a get out of jail free pardon. Biden left Democrats to face the easy taunt of hypocrisy if they choose to protest.”

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore argued “the Biden and Trump pardons are not all the same.”

“Biden pardoned people who as far as we know haven’t committed crimes (in this last-minute wave, that is; an earlier pardon for convicted felon Hunter Biden is a different matter). Biden’s list was comprised of people Trump targeted by name for investigation and prosecution during his 2024 campaign,” Kilgore wrote. “Meanwhile, Trump opened the prison doors and expunged the record for insurrectionists who (whatever you think of them and their actions) did enjoy due process in facing accountability for the events of January 6.

“The 47th president may understandably rage that the 46th has kept him from embarking on the full vengeance tour he seemed to contemplate in calling for a special prosecutor to ‘go after’ Biden and his family, and in describing members of the January 6 investigative committee as traitors. But the idea that Biden’s pardons were as audacious as Trump’s is itself pretty audacious.”


What the right is saying.

  • The right is critical of Biden’s final acts as president, particularly the last-minute pardons and executive orders.
  • Some say the pardons only make Biden and his family look more guilty.  
  • Others suggest both Biden and Trump have abandoned any pretense of executive restraint. 

The New York Post editorial board wrote “Joe Biden exits stage ultra-left.”

“Joe Biden left office as he governed: in a flurry of self-serving political activity that helps his inner circle and harms the nation he swore to protect and defend… Yes, in the literal last hour of his presidency, Joe let brother Jim, sister-in-law Sara, sister Valerie, brother-in-law John and brother Frank off the hook for any crimes they might have committed while working in the family influence-peddling shop,” the board said. “Those thunderous warnings delivered by national Dems about Trump pardoning his family as he left office? Pure projection.”

“In the weeks before leaving office, Biden executed an 11th-hour student-debt wipeout, a $4.28 billion handout to the affluent paid for by the poor. With an executive order sealing off millions of acres from exploration, he tried to make permanent his chokehold on American energy — a gift to his party’s Green New Deal wing, at the expense of everyday Americans,” the board wrote. “He commuted the prison sentences of killers and sex fiends to score points with the ‘All laws are racist’ crowd — the victims’ families be damned. He let terrorists out of Gitmo, took Cuba off a list of state sponsors of terror, and on and on and on.”

In The Hill, Jonathan Turley called the pardons “the final corruption of Joe Biden.”

“With record-low polling and widely viewed as a ‘failed’ president, Biden completed his one-man race to the bottom of ethics by issuing preemptive pardons to members of his own family,” Turley said. “The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.”

“Once he was forced out of the presidential race, Biden was freed up to sign a pardon for any and all crimes committed over a ten-year period by his son. He insisted that he really hadn’t been lying. He claimed that no ordinary person would have been tried for his son’s crimes,” Turley wrote. “However, the latest family pardon shatters even that rationalization. These Bidens are not even charged with any crimes, but Biden wanted to give them cover from any possible prosecution for anything. It was the ultimate sign of contempt for the intelligence of the American public and the integrity of his office.”

In The Washington Post, Jason Willick said “the Biden-Trump pardons show collapsing executive restraint.”

“The rationale for these all-encompassing pardons is the fear that Trump’s administration will seek retribution against political adversaries. That’s a possibility, of course: Law enforcement ‘independence’ from politics has always been a comforting myth because federal law enforcement is part of the executive branch that the elected president controls. And Trump seems less interested than most presidents in maintaining that myth,” Willick wrote. “The specter that Trump would use executive power in an aggressively partisan way was thus a license for Biden to do the same.”

“One possibility is that the abuse of the pardon power will lead to efforts to circumvent it. At the end of Trump’s first term, reports circulated that he was considering preemptive pardons of the kind Biden just issued,” Willick said. “But the root of the problem isn’t the scope of the pardon power; it’s the collapse of restraint on the exercise of executive power in general. And as with all norm spirals, it’s hard to predict what the next turn will bring.”


My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

  • Biden’s final executive actions won’t have much impact, but his last-minute pardons are a different story.
  • Even taking Biden’s rationale at face value, the pardons were a mistake. 
  • Biden has now opened the door to further — and more serious — abuses of executive power. 
Today's "Our take" was written by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman.

Let’s clear the air by acknowledging the obvious context: Joe Biden is not president any longer, Donald Trump is. On his first day in office, Donald Trump issued a slew of executive orders that give us important clues about what we can expect from federal law enforcement and the Republican-led Congress in the coming weeks — we will give those actions their due coverage in a full newsletter tomorrow. We’re also not reviewing Biden’s full presidency today (that’s coming Friday). Today, we’re focusing on what the outgoing president did in his last days in office, since it can be easy to overlook these big moves in the wake of a changing administration.

Let’s start with the executive orders — loan forgiveness first. Biden may not have achieved the large-scale loan forgiveness he sought while in office, but forgiving the loans for 150,000 borrowers — many of whom had been defrauded — was another step in that direction for him. Personally, I think this more targeted approach is a much better strategy — it’s less expensive, less regressive of a benefit, and focuses the relief on people who need it most. I wish he’d pursued this approach from the beginning. 

The rest of these actions were mostly toothless proclamations that Trump started to undo moments after settling into the Oval Office, like spilling a glass of milk in front of a Zamboni. The immigration protections are imperiled by a tidal wave of executive actions, the Cuba reclassification has already been reversed, and the drilling protections have also been undone (though that order will head to court and could prove much stickier). Meanwhile, declaring the Equal Rights Amendment to be law is a purely symbolic move made meaningless by the fact that he did it on his way out the door instead of anytime over the last four years. As The Sacramento Bee’s Robin Epley put it, “Biden should have declared it National Ice Cream Day while he was at it.”

As for the blanket pardons, I think there are two ways to look at them — and neither is pretty. First, you can look at the list of names and assume collusion. At a surface level it’s pretty easy to see: General Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, the nine members of the January 6 committee, those who testified before it, and five members of Biden’s family are all pardoned for any nonviolent offense going back to 2014. What could Biden possibly be pardoning those people for doing while he was vice president during the Obama administration? Republicans have been wanting to investigate that whole list of people for years, and a sweeping pardon implies that they could have been on to something.

Then, there’s the opposite viewpoint: Republicans have been wanting to investigate that whole list of people for years, yes, but for purely political reasons, and a sweeping pardon is the only way to prevent an inevitable witch hunt. Why even wait to see what Trump’s Justice Department might attempt? We heard what Trump promised to do on the campaign trail. If you look past the surface level, it’s easy to see that all of the names on Biden’s pardon list are just the top names on the Republican list of “enemies from within.”

Let’s assume the best and say that it was just a protective move, which for the record I think it was: Joe Biden probably did not treasonously collude with China or Ukraine to enrich his family through his son Hunter, Dr. Fauci probably didn’t commit crimes in recommending strict federal vaccination policies or covering up the origins of Covid-19, and General Milley probably did not treasonously collude with Chinese officials. That’s a far cry from saying any of those parties is above reproach, it’s just to say that if there had been federal trials, I would bet money on all of them being exonerated.

Even ceding all of that, these pardons are still a terrible last move for Biden’s administration. Not just because they close off a major pathway to determining whether wrongdoing occurred, but because they escalated the use of a new major weapon in the partisan arms race: blanket pardons, for everyone I know, for as far back as I can justify. 

These pardons add another link in the chain that’s dragging our politics downward: Biden issues blanket pardons, because Trump says he’ll get retribution for being unfairly persecuted, because Democrats opened investigations into him for trying to subvert an election, which came after years of Trump feeling aggrieved by claims of Russian collusion that did not hold up in court, after Trump campaigned to “lock up” Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server…

You can blame any one of those people for their links in the chain, and you should — but none of the actions that preceded Biden’s decision excuses it.

In fact, it’s a sterling illustration of unintended consequences, on both sides of this action. On the front side, Trump winning an election and then investigating Biden was always going to be in play with Biden breaking precedent to look into Trump’s alleged misconduct. We’ve been pretty on board with both the investigation into Trump and the investigation into Hunter Biden, with Isaac supporting an “investigate the powerful” ethic for our government officials. However, Biden seems totally willing to make Trump and his associates prove their innocence in court, but unwilling to subject his to the same standard.

Much more worrisome are the consequences on the back side. What’s to stop Trump from issuing mass pardons for everyone in his administration before he leaves office? Why wouldn’t high-ranking Trump officials now feel emboldened to act with impunity, secure in the belief that Trump will cover their backs on his way out? For all the talk of Trump as a norm-breaker, it’s Biden who has opened the door to sweeping pardons for friends, family, and allies — now, Trump just has to walk through it.

No one summed this up better than Jason Willick (under “What the right is saying”), who compared the new precedent of last-minute pardons to the one Biden’s Justice Department was arguing against in Trump’s immunity case: “Biden’s Department of Justice warned in the presidential immunity case — with reason — that a Supreme Court ruling creating presidential immunity would make presidents more willing to push the boundaries of the law. Biden’s pardons will have the same effect, but on a larger scale,” Willick wrote. “Now the president’s political friends, from the highest reaches of the Pentagon to congressional staff, will know that they are eligible to be immunized for whatever they did in office before power changes hands.”

When Biden issued his first blanket ten-year pardon, for his son Hunter in December, we called it “an astonishing and sweeping protection.” Now, Biden has issued about a dozen such pardons. 

As much as I nodded along when Jason Willick wrote that power is mostly curbed by personal restraint, I just don’t think a president should be able to wield this kind of clemency power. Pardons have their place, and Biden’s commutations for 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses is a far more defensible use of clemency — much like Isaac, I’m very sympathetic to the idea that holding a person, especially a nonviolent offender, in prison for decades is counterproductive both for them and society at large. But blanket pardons are something else altogether.

For Biden, it’s an irresponsible end to his term, adding a new tool to the chief executive’s toolbox for Trump (and future presidents) that’s too ripe for abuse to serve any value apart from self interest. And when you zoom out, the picture of our national politics in general isn’t pretty: retribution and protections, all the way down, with no end in sight.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Any chance you could tackle Musk's (overt?/inadvertent?) “sieg heil” salute wave at the inauguration? I hope it is an enthusiastic but awkward guy celebrating? But does it matter if it was inadvertent if people who want to believe it was a special message to them believe it was on purpose? (Also, how could it really be inadvertent?)

— Carrie from Minneapolis, MN

Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor: I file it under “Elon Musk is awkward,” and I think that the Nazism of the salute was inadvertent. Importantly, I don’t just think Musk is awkward; I think he’s consistently awkward to the point where it’s almost hard to fathom — to the point where he decides on the spur of the moment to mime taking his heart and throwing it to the crowd (twice!) without reflecting on how the movement looked. And since we have so much footage of Musk being a cringingly self-conscious performer, I can’t envision him planning to make a Nazi salute without giving off a tell of some kind while he was speaking —  some knowing smile or strange tic — then executing a gesture perfectly in the gray zone between intentional and deniable. To be reductive: It’s far likelier to me that Musk continued to be awkward than that he became amazingly adroit for one moment.

Yes, I know people will say “But he’s been a Nazi this whole time, too.” No, he hasn’t. He has not been an actual neo-Nazi this whole time. 

Some quick background about me: My cousin was killed by an actual neo-Nazi in the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2017. I’ve read deep into modern antisemitism and neo-Nazism since then, and I’ve gotten pretty good at separating the wink-nudge dog whistles from the awkward waves. So has the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who came out with a statement right after the Musk incident saying the same thing. I hope those opinions carry some weight.

Does it matter if it was inadvertent? Absolutely, intent 100% matters. And neo-Nazis are innately primed to interpret anything as a secret salute to their cause, so I don’t really care what they think. For anyone else who interpreted the gesture as deliberate, I can totally understand where you’re coming from; I’m just not convinced.

It’s always possible I’m wrong about this, and if Musk continues to make the gesture or expresses support for neo-Nazi/white nationalist movements, I’ll change my stance. But I think it’s just more likely he did something clumsy than something deeply malicious.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.


Under the radar.

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of “Spravato,” a nasal spray for adults who have a major depressive disorder that is resistant to standard treatments. The spray, developed by Johnson & Johnson, was previously cleared for use alongside an oral antidepressant, but it now becomes the first-ever stand-alone therapy for “treatment-resistant” depression. An estimated one-third of U.S. adults with major depression have symptoms that don’t respond to standard treatments, and some doctors say the nasal spray’s approval will allow for greater flexibility in treating severe cases of depression. The active ingredient in the nasal spray is esketamine, which is derived from the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine, and the treatment is only approved for applications in medically controlled settings. CNBC has the story.


Numbers.

  • 25 and 132. The number of pardons and commutations, respectively, granted by former President Joe Biden between fiscal years 2021 and 2024.
  • 39 and 1,499. The number of pardons and commutations, respectively, granted by Biden on December 12, 2024, then a single-day record for commutations. 
  • 2,490. The number of commutations granted by Biden on January 17, 2025, a single-day record.
  • 144 and 94. The number of pardons and commutations, respectively, granted by President Donald Trump during his first term.
  • 1,500 and 14. The approximate number of pardons and commutations, respectively, granted by Trump on the first day of his second term. 
  • 51%. The percentage of Americans who say they strongly support presidential pardon power, according to a December 2024 GZERO poll. 
  • 38%. The percentage of Americans who say they somewhat support presidential pardon power.

The extras.

  • One year ago today we wrote about Ron DeSantis dropping out of the presidential race.
  • The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the video of President Trump finding the letter from President Biden in his desk.
  • Nothing to do with politics: We’re still glowing about the birth of Executive Editor Isaac Saul’s first child — and all the warm messages from you!
  • Yesterday’s survey: 3,096 readers responded to our survey about President Trump’s inaugural address with 46% disapproving or strongly disapproving. “His rhetoric has already shown that he is more interested in ‘dividing and conquering’ instead of unifying our country's citizens. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Hurricane Helene wrecked homes, businesses, and other structures across the South. In the wake of the devastation, North Carolina resident Jake Jarvis used his skills and resources to serve his community. Jarvis runs Precision Grading, a construction and demolition company. Since the hurricane, he’s been performing much of his work pro bono, flattening formerly impassable roads, demolishing wrecked homes, and building bridges. Jarvis's efforts have been funded by donations and his personal savings. Steve Freeman, the fire department chief in Bat Cave, NC, described Jarvis as a “godsend.” Good News Network has the story.  


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