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Biden White House is discussing preemptive pardons for those in Trump’s crosshairs

Biden White House is discussing preemptive pardons for those in Trump’s crosshairs

Jonathan Martin writes: President Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions. Biden’s aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments, a sense of alarm which has only accelerated…

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The operators behind four major neo-Nazi X accounts

The operators behind four major neo-Nazi X accounts

Texas Observer reports: Under owner Elon Musk, the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, has become a hotbed of white supremacist and neo-Nazi content. A recent headline in the Atlantic doesn’t mince words: “X is a white supremacist site.” Musk has allowed formerly banned far-right and neo-Nazi accounts back on the platform, and, in some instances, he’s directly responded to accounts that traffic in white supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric. Meanwhile, anonymous accounts that regularly promote racial hate on…

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Pete Hegseth’s mother begged him to ‘get some help’ — instead, he joined a misogynist church

Pete Hegseth’s mother begged him to ‘get some help’ — instead, he joined a misogynist church

Amanda Marcotte writes: Even by the reality-TV chaos standards of our political moment, this one was a doozy: Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, called out as an “abuser of women” by his own mother in the pages of the New York Times. To be fair, Penelope Hegseth’s 2018 email excoriating her son, who was then a Fox News contributor, was not intended for public consumption. But the email, which seems to have been passed…

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What Kash Patel could do to the FBI

What Kash Patel could do to the FBI

Garrett M. Graff writes: It goes almost without saying that Kash Patel, whom Donald Trump picked over the weekend to lead the F.B.I., is supremely unqualified to direct the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. That’s what even those who know Mr. Patel well are saying. “He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy,” his supervisor in the first Trump administration, Charles Kupperman, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual…

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The Hunter Biden pardon gives Donald Trump powerful new political cover

The Hunter Biden pardon gives Donald Trump powerful new political cover

Politico reports: In his sweeping pardon of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden did not just protect his son. He also handed President-elect Donald Trump a template to shield his own allies and stretch the pardon power even further. Legal experts say Trump now has fresh precedent — and political cover — to issue expansive pardons absolving his allies not only of specific offenses, but even any undetermined crimes they may have committed. With the singular exception of Gerald Ford’s pardon…

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Behind Supreme Court unanimity on ethics code, division remains on enforcement

Behind Supreme Court unanimity on ethics code, division remains on enforcement

The New York Times reports: As the summer of 2023 ended, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court began trading even-more-confidential-than-usual memos, avoiding their standard email list and instead passing paper documents in envelopes to each chambers. Faced with ethics controversies and a plunge in public trust, they were debating rules for their own conduct, according to people familiar with the process. Weeks later, as a united front, they announced the results: the court’s first-ever ethics code. “It’s remarkable that…

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Joe Biden starts reading Rashid Khalidi ‘four years too late’

Joe Biden starts reading Rashid Khalidi ‘four years too late’

After Joe Biden stepped out of Nantucket Bookworks on Friday, he and his son Hunter looked like they’d just been caught shoplifting: Maybe it was because Biden was clutching a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s book The Hundred Years War on Palestine. During his Thanksgiving visit to Nantucket, Biden said: I’m thankful for a peaceful transition of the presidency. And I’m thankful for the fact that, I think, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors and a…

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Seizure of Aleppo threatens Moscow’s foothold in Syria – and the wider region

Seizure of Aleppo threatens Moscow’s foothold in Syria – and the wider region

Pjotr Sauer writes: The walls of the military office in Aleppo were adorned with pictures of the Kremlin, flanked by Russian and Syrian flags hanging side by side. On the desks, documents detailing the cooperation between the two nations lay abandoned – telltale signs of Bashar al-Assad’s forces’ hasty retreat as rebels closed in on Syria’s second-biggest city over the weekend. The short clip circulating online was recorded in the office of Russian advisers at Aleppo’s military academy after it…

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Pete Hegseth alleged to have been repeatedly intoxicated on the job

Pete Hegseth alleged to have been repeatedly intoxicated on the job

Jane Mayer writes: After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, issued a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration,”…

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In pardoning his son, Biden echoes some of Trump’s complaints

In pardoning his son, Biden echoes some of Trump’s complaints

Politico reports: Hunter Biden’s pardon looks a lot like Richard Nixon’s. President Joe Biden’s grant of clemency on Sunday night — an extraordinary political act with extraordinary legal breadth — insulates his son from ever facing federal charges over any crimes he possibly could have committed over the past decade. Experts on pardons said they could think of only one other person who has received a presidential pardon so sweeping in generations: Nixon, who was given a blanket pardon by Gerald Ford in…

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How Aleppo fell

How Aleppo fell

Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss write: Aleppo was never meant to fall. A stunning offensive waged by two Turkish-backed forces over the space of the last five days has resulted in the conquering of Syria’s second-largest city and industrial hub, doing in under a week what more numerous and well-resourced anti-Assad rebels never managed. Yet Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) found themselves the beneficiaries of neighboring conflicts, an opportunistic patron in Ankara, the recent election…

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Bernie Sanders agrees with Elon Musk on slashing the Pentagon’s $886 billion budget

Bernie Sanders agrees with Elon Musk on slashing the Pentagon’s $886 billion budget

Rolling Stone reports: They may not agree on much, but when it comes to Pentagon spending, Sen. Bernie Sanders and billionaire Elon Musk are aligned. Sanders, who usually makes enemies of billionaires like Musk, posted on X Sunday, “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of…

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Trump is targeting protections for almost a million legal immigrants

Trump is targeting protections for almost a million legal immigrants

Vox reports: President-elect Donald Trump has long sought to end deportation protections for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that has significantly expanded under the Biden administration to cover over 860,000 people. He has shown no sign of relenting in a second term — and may try to either revoke those protections or let them expire soon after being sworn in. TPS allows people to temporarily live and work in the US and is currently granted to citizens…

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Dinesh D’Souza finally admits that 2,000 Mules is based on junk information

Dinesh D’Souza finally admits that 2,000 Mules is based on junk information

The New Republic reports: Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative filmmaker behind the election denialist fable 2,000 Mules, revealed that the data that underpinned his supposedly incontrovertible claims of fraudulent voting was actually a complete sham. In the 2022 film, a Texas-based “election integrity” organization called True the Vote claimed to have reviewed cell phone geotracking data from five 2020 battleground states that traced the movements of ballot “mules” who had been paid by liberal nonprofits to stuff ballot boxes. D’Souza’s film…

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John Dean: With a stroke of his pen, Biden could thwart Trump’s revenge plans

John Dean: With a stroke of his pen, Biden could thwart Trump’s revenge plans

HuffPost reports: John Dean, the former White House counsel who helped bring down President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, urged President Joe Biden to go further with his pardons. Biden on Sunday pardoned son Hunter Biden, who was found guilty in June in a firearms case and pleaded guilty in September in a tax case. The president, who had previously vowed not to pardon his son, is facing criticism from both the left and right over the move. But…

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Kash Patel as FBI director would lead to a constitutional crisis greater than Watergate

Kash Patel as FBI director would lead to a constitutional crisis greater than Watergate

The New York Times reports: Several Republican lawmakers fell in line on Sunday behind President-elect Donald J. Trump’s plan to choose Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I., defending the incoming president’s right to install a loyalist who has vowed to use the position to exact revenge on Mr. Trump’s adversaries. Mr. Trump’s announcement on Saturday that he intends to replace Christopher A. Wray, the current F.B.I. director, who still has three years left on his 10-year term, with Mr. Patel…

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