The pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company.
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By scrlk 2025-10-2315:45 Coffeezilla video about this is up already
By NaomiLehman 2025-10-2321:452 reply I can't believe the dominant country is running this timeline.
By tb_technical 2025-10-2417:483 reply Depends on your metrics of "dominant country" tbh. In terms of GDP the US is leading. In terms of purchasing power parity China is leading.
In terms of military prowess the US is superior, if you believe their advertised weapons capabilities. That being said, if we believed what countries said about their own weapons, then Russia has a number of world ending superweapons - clearly they're the leader here /s.
If you believe total number of naval vessels determines might, the Chinese Navy's numbers make them superior. If you believe damage control and logistics determine naval might, the USA has one of the most sophisticated support fleets in the world with world class damage control (combat survivability - but this is a meme).
If you believe technological development makes a nation superior, the USA maintains it's edge with trade allies South Korea and Taiwan.
If you believe total production is what makes a nation superior... China.
Look, you get what I'm saying. The dollar is still the primary reserve currency (for now) and the US still ensures safety in international waters while projecting power regularly.
By jazzyjackson 2025-10-250:083 reply > The dollar is still the primary reserve currency (for now)
It really worries me that the US president is heavily invested in crypto schemes, since he and his family would benefit with the crash of the dollar. It is the conflict of interest to end all conflicts of interest
By nickserv 2025-10-2510:32 The idea I believe is to make a USD-pegged crypto the new reserve currency.
By replwoacause 2025-10-267:34 It worries me that the president is a malignant narcissist conman who lies pathologically and has replaced morality with loyalty in the US government.
By tb_technical 2025-10-254:07 This is a very real concern, and often understated.
By courseofaction 2025-10-2419:493 reply America has very little manufacturing capacity, has lost its edge in batteries and power generation, and is soon to be behind on computing. They're politically fractured, losing all their allies, and no longer have a sustainable military advantage. If they decide to flex their aging muscles against China, they will be outproduced, and can't win in a single decisive blow unless they want to initiate a surprise full nuclear war. They're done. Corruption ate the golden goose, and the people cheered.
By tb_technical 2025-10-254:151 reply You really have to ask the question "does all industrial production aid itself to war?" when making this determination.
Additionally, most people don't consider the Mexico factor. Presently some of the most talented machinists in the world live in Mexico manufacturing parts for American automotive (and other industries).
But, really, this comparison can only be proven in conflict - something both the USA and the CCP want to desperately avoid right now due to his economically coupled they are.
Just in time logistics has been a disaster for the American war machine.
By courseofaction 2025-10-2522:32 Yes, productive capacity can be repurposed to support military goals - with organizations and technicians already in place.
Mexico has about 1/17th of the manufacturing capacity of the US - adds around 5.8%. America has a labor shortage in manufacturing, which is unlikely to be filled with foreign workers given the current crackdown on brown people. They're also annihilating their intellectual capacity by again cracking down on brown people, and defunding universities.
China is already leading the world in manufacturing and expanding rapidly, their universities are world class, and they have almost caught up in technology. Given their investments in education and strong culture of academic achievement, it's unreasonable to think they won't overtake the US in every domain in the next 3-5 years.
By AtlasBarfed 2025-10-2514:481 reply China doesn't have the resources to win a war.
The Malacca straits are to easily blockaded. China needs food imports and energy imports no matter how much alternative energy they build.
No, you can't truck or train it in over land.
They are still facing a massive demographic bomb. They're becoming increasingly authoritarian, which will begin to restrict their production efficiency. They may have a financial bomb as well.
Don't make the mistake that you think that India and Russia are going to be close allies of China.
Russia has extensive territories that China considers theirs historically. Likewise, India and China dispute many territorial issues.
By courseofaction 2025-10-2523:162 reply The Malacca straits will certainly be important, but the US will have to reach past China and Chinese allies to the south to blockade it, and will be sitting ducks for drone and missile attacks (see the black sea fleet for a demonstration). China has heavily invested in submarines to avoid exactly this situation.
Authoritarianism in China has a significantly different flavor to US authoritarianism. The US is serving the goals of their dominant elite industries - finance and tech. China has an engineering culture amongst the elite, and is inclined to solve problems with productivity and megaprojects rather than handing money to purely extractive industries.
For an example of the difference between their flavors of authoritarianism and the outcomes they bring, compare their health care systems - the USA has one of the most expensive in the world at ~$14,500 per capita, and poor outcomes due to privatized corruption, while China's 14th 5-year plan has brought universal health care for approx ~$650 per person. China's average life expectancy is higher than the US's.
The US is, objectively, extremely corrupt, and is transitioning to authoritarianism to protect that corruption. China's authoritarianism achieves measurable goals, and has broad (though not universal) public support.
The USA will get curb stomped in a war. They just don't have anything but a massive military buildup from decades of pork barrelling unnecessary military contracts. Their population is sick and stupid. They have alienated their allies. They will lose.
By AnimalMuppet 2025-10-2523:301 reply > The US is, objectively, extremely corrupt, and is transitioning to authoritarianism to protect that corruption.
You have no idea what extreme corruption looks like if you think the US is it. (I will admit that it is becoming more corrupt, and that the corruption is tied to the authoritarianism.)
> Their population is sick and stupid.
Yeah... you're just ranting.
By courseofaction 2025-10-2619:49 Not as corrupt as other countries is true. My rhetoric gets a little passionate, but is rooted in fact. Relative to their extreme wealth and political messaging, will 'very' corrupt do? 'Increasingly' corrupt, certainly. It's not tied to the authoritarianism, the health care system has been an international punchline for decades. The everyday systemic corruption (plus the 2008 bailouts) is in my opinion the cause of authoritarianism, the people were pushed to a populist.
Getting sicker: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6221922/
Getting stupider: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9
Obamacare is straight up porkbarrelling: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/apr/01/barack-oba...
The DoE's policy is to stop educating people unless it's profitable: https://www.propublica.org/article/education-department-publ...
I think we're going to see a substantial continual decline in both health and education outcomes as the system continues to be sabotaged, for money.
The most shocking part is qualitative though. As a non-American, having a conversation with an American about their politics is often stepping into a minefield of cognitive dissonance, patriotism, and blindness, from people who are otherwise wealthy and well-intentioned. Truly the most propagandized people. Such is the course of empire.
By AtlasBarfed 2025-10-2715:011 reply China's submersible fleet is probably going to be at the bottom of the ocean within an hour of shooting wars. They do not have a deep ocean Navy.
And which Chinese allies are you referring to, and you really think that they are going to host Chinese attacks on the US Navy?
By courseofaction 2025-10-286:45 There's been a lot of noise about China increasing their influence in the pacific, but now that I follow it up it's more limited than I thought.
China has approximately 250 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US. This infrastructure is integrated with military production. US-allied shipbuilding capacity in Japan and South Korea is within striking range of mainland China. I do not think it is reasonable to think that the US can win a sustained naval war against China, and how else would the US defend Taiwan?
https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-dominates-shipbuilding-i...
By hollerith 2025-10-2419:58 The US is no 2 in manufacturing output and way ahead of no 3.
>America . . . has lost its edge in . . . power generation
Energy costs are much lower in the US than in Europe or China. China is the world's largest importer of petroleum and of natural gas. In contrast, the US is self-sufficient in petroleum and natural gas.
China's petroleum comes by ship from the Persian Gulf and from Russia's European ports (since there is no easy way for Russia to get its oil to its Asian ports). Beijing's worry that something might happen to interrupt its long supply lines of petroleum and natural gas is why it has made a large risky bet on solar electricity. The US, which has more land with high solar potential than China, can sit back and wait to see how China's bet on solar will turn out before it makes big bets on solar.
It might be that the cost of electricity specifically is lower in China than the US. If so, that is because Beijing has prioritized building a lot of electricity-generating capacity. It engages in many such infrastructure project to keep its young men employed -- something Washington does not need to do because the US economy provides enough jobs without without Washington's spending on infrastructure projects (so Washington tends to spending on infrastructure only when the project clearly makes economic sense).
Beijing imposes tight restrictions on its citizens' ability to invest outside China, so Chinese individual investors, pension funds, etc, put most of their money into deposits into Chinese banks and into Chinese real estate. Most of the funding for infrastructure projects comes from these bank deposits and from borrowing. Governmental debt (including debt owed by state and provincial governments) is a higher percentage of GDP in China than in the US.
By herbst 2025-10-257:37 The dollar is going down and down, even if it is a reserve currency it's not used like that anymore right now. Change your POV the situation is horrible
Give it a few years. The US ceding its dominance by trying to re-follow its 1970s/80s playbook (now with less Volcker!) in a 2024+ world will go down as one of the biggest geopolitical own-goals of all time.
By preisschild 2025-10-2416:171 reply Unfortunately its "peers" are not much better. The PROC is still authoritarian and wants to invade Taiwan and some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration so that the EU could become a "real" player.
By integralid 2025-10-2416:22 >some EU countries are still fighting more EU integration
At least this I understand. Foreign powers, especially you-know-which-one have a strong interest in preventing EU from becoming too strong, and unfortunately this is easy to do because:
* it plays on primal human tribal instincts (they want to assimilate us, they will force or enable more immigration, etc)
* the way EU works, you only need to convince some of the countries
By Der_Einzige 2025-10-2413:331 reply If trump were willing to call for extended high interest rates, we’d be in a far better spot. Trump trying to bring them down rapidly is perk of mt stupid especially during rampant speculation in GenAI.
By tb_technical 2025-10-2418:49 I don't understand, can you explain why high interest rates will help economic development in the USA in light of its staggering held debt?
I'm not an economist, I don't understand how this works.
By actionfromafar 2025-10-2322:46 [flagged]
What do you think of this counterpoint from Balaji?
"CZ deserves his pardon.
His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian.
Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binance users.
Indeed, if the bureaucrats who went after CZ were similarly held accountable for every violent crime committed in their home states, they'd be in prison for eternity! But there was an insane double standard. In the physical world, the Biden admin gleefully abolished the police. Meanwhile, in the digital world they demanded that CEOs achieve impossible levels of probity.
The ethnic dimension to CZ's persecution was similarly execrable. In reality, he helped many millions of Chinese people get into Bitcoin and thereby get to freedom. And also helped millions of poor people from around the globe get out of failed currencies, and into cryptocurrency.
So he did more for practical human rights and civil liberties than most. CZ did nothing wrong, and did so many things right.
Of course, my friends at Coinbase and I were competitors of Binance. But I always respected CZ, and I congratulate him on his accomplishments, and I congratulate him on his pardon today. Well deserved."
By joyeuse6701 2025-10-243:131 reply Comparing gov’t officials to civilians is a stupid comparison.
Biden abolishing police is hyperbole.
CZ enabled a lot of dark shit. He is somehow simultaneously so powerful as to help millions of Chinese, but powerless to do anything about a few thousand of criminals and pedophiles?
This is not a serious take.
By UncleMeat 2025-10-2412:28 It isn't just hyperbole it is completely divorced from reality. Biden said "fund the police" at a state of the union address. Federal law enforcement didn't see cuts. Funding for state police (the bulk of police around the country) increased, with very few localities actually shifting funds from police to other things.
By hackyhacky 2025-10-243:082 reply Changpeng Zhao broke the law and got caught. Everyone agrees on that. What you present above is revisionist history about "political persecution," which is the favorite justification of the current administration for pardoning convicted felons, even in the total absence of any evidence supporting a conclusion of political persecution. See also George Santos, J6 rioters, etc.
I don't think it's really necessary to pretend that this pardon was deserved. The pardon happened because (a) Trump wants the support of crypto billionaires and (b) Trump received a large bribe. It's really not complicated.
Painting Trump as sympathetic to ethnic discrimination is really ridiculous. No one believes that, even people who cynically use that justification to support his lawlessness.
By jonnygoodwin 2025-10-2419:402 reply You sound biased. If you believe this narrative, I got a few questions for you… - How was Binance any different than any other crypto exchange? - Should Coinbase and every other crypto platform be charged for the same crimes?
By arevno 2025-10-2422:34 Coinbase had the "right" kind of people on their board, and reacted much more rapidly to KYC requirements. For good or for ill, that's the reality.
The real question is about Kraken. How they've managed to remain untouched is a mystery.
By hackyhacky 2025-10-251:39 > Should Coinbase and every other crypto platform be charged for the same crimes?
Absolutely.
Is there a place for a logical counter-point in there not having been charges against people responsible for the 2008 financial crisis? It seems like a selective enforcement of rules or consequences in both situations to me.
By hackyhacky 2025-10-244:161 reply Your argument is a non sequitur. You are saying in essence: "Someone, somewhere, under totally different circumstances was not prosecuted. Therefore, this particular prosecution is selective prosecution, and therefore inappropriate." By that logic, we should just stop prosecuting crimes altogether, on the logic that we are unable to prosecute all crimes consistently.
By opello 2025-10-2521:27 There wasn't an argument per se, but an attempt to point out a possibly, similarly politically-influenced miscarriage of justice.
It may be a non sequitur to suggest that the pardon of one convicted financial criminal is similar to the lack of convictions in another likely financial crime context, but it seemed germane and parallel to me.
By hiddencost 2025-10-244:371 reply They should be charged too. Every conviction for financial crimes is an incredibly hard fought victory, because this country runs on fraud. Your argument is why we should treasure CZs conviction and seek many many many more like it.
By opello 2025-10-2521:22 This was part of my point and a nuance I appreciate as well, and that the pardon resonates for me with the apparent lack of charges for those responsible for the financial crisis.
The right thing to do is to prosecute the responsible for 2008, not to pardon people responsible for other crimes...
By opello 2025-10-2521:23 Yes, exactly, and yet I don't think there has been much in the way of charges brought against those responsible for fraudulently rating the securities.
Those people responsible for the 2008 financial crisis yet not charged, they should be charged with breaking what law?
Some form of fraud for misrepresenting the risk that the mortgages that were bundled together, seems like the obvious answer. But I'm not a forensic accountant or someone with the nuanced legal understanding to define a charge here. Do you think there was no crime in the actions taken by either the banks or the rating agencies? No failure of fiduciary responsibility?
By yihtserns 2025-11-075:54
Those that can, have been charged with fraud. For the rest, typically there's not enough evidence/they covered their tracks well.- Operation Malicious Mortgage: - > 400 arrested - 173 convictions - Operation Stolen Dream: - ~500 arrested - > 300 convictions
By neilk 2025-10-243:32 He's not making an argument.
With these characters, from Trump on down, discourse is not the point.
He is flexing his power by showing he can make an obviously fatuous point and get away with it. Because there are no consequences, for someone like him.
By jazzyjackson 2025-10-243:031 reply The law says he should have prevented those bad apples from moving dirty money around, and he did not follow the law.
Do you have a rebuttal for coffeezillas assertion that 2 billion dollars of Abu Dhabi money was invested in Binance using the Trump family coin in order to buy a pardon?
The president is clearly pro crypto and doesn't think this dude did anything wrong, but he also wasn't gonna give a pardon away for free. It's a disgusting abuse of office he should be impeached over. Selling pardons, what a shit show.
By jonnygoodwin 2025-10-2419:441 reply Would you agree that all crypto exchanges have moved dirty money around? I don’t see anyone else being punished for similar crimes in crypto.
I don’t doubt Trump tried to advantage himself when doing this. But I do feel like the Binance charge wasn’t consistent at all.
By jazzyjackson 2025-10-250:12 I would think any serious actor would know better than to store funds where they could be seized at a moments notice, so while I'm sure every exchange is guilty, Binances crime was getting caught.
Kinda like getting a speeding ticket, the fact that other people were also speeding isn't a defense.
>In the physical world, the Biden admin gleefully abolished the police.
When did this happen?
By eviks 2025-10-245:49 In the imaginary rhetorical timeline
I wonder which police it was, as well, since the only police the Biden administration had control over were federal agencies such as the FBI.
I’m tempted to think “Fox News is a hell of a drug.”
By tmtvl 2025-10-2411:13 I thought he was talking about the band.
How does a seemingly intelligent person reach such an empty conclusion?
By jermaustin1 2025-10-2412:50 Bad faith or possibly seeming intelligent != being intelligent.
The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether.
By actionfromafar 2025-10-2322:497 reply The way this is going, the President won’t need using any pardon powers, because the judges will all ask the President what the judgement should be in advance.
And the prosecutors will ask who to prosecute.
Finally only fair justice!
Your forget to insert the part where the President asks the convicted defendant if they want to finance their pardon with Klarna or Affirm in the Presidential Library's checkout page
By ugh123 2025-10-240:23 Financed through purchases of the President's own crypto coin
By duxup 2025-10-2412:46 Yeah we already have judgments that the executive branch has gone well beyond it's allowed limits and the majority of SCOTUS stance has been:
"Yeah well let the legal process play out ... in the meantime our guy gets to do whatever he wants, and you're still fired / kicked out of the country / funding cut / an so on".
If it is at all inconvenient for the most powerful folks in the country, they get any limits on their actions protected by SCOTUS ... at the cost of the people.
This is by the way literally word for word official statements of the ruzzian officials. The conviction rates in ruzzian courts are above 99% every year and the official explanation is that the prosecutors and police are so amazing and great, that only real criminals make it to the court. :)
By user205738 2025-10-2614:02 in principle, this is true, if the case does not have a reliable basis, then it will not go to court. If we take this into account, then the magic numbers of 99% will disappear.
These are not only criminal cases, but also administrative and civil law relations.
in principle, there was no need to discuss this at all, usually those who do not understand the legal system and who have never been to court, cry about 99%.
By mock-possum 2025-10-2415:311 reply What’s the deal with the ‘zz’?
By greenhearth 2025-10-2416:001 reply This is the letters on Russian tanks in Ukraine. Sign of marauders and thieves.
By rurban 2025-10-2518:45 And it stands for SS, this historic German organization
This is currently how it works in some countries that are supposed to be (and were) democratic. Sadly the US is moving in the same direction.
By nine_zeros 2025-10-243:191 reply *has moved
By blooalien 2025-11-021:15 nine_zeros> "*has moved"
... and is continuing to move further still ...
By bamboozled 2025-10-2411:201 reply Lord Eric ?
By actionfromafar 2025-10-2412:07 That's Lord Eric Frederick Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho Trump to you.
By 1oooqooq 2025-10-2323:27 if they were going to pardon everyone, at least this save costs. i guess doge was really saving us money after all /s
Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion.
The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.
> The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point.
Do you mean the French Revolution? If you actually read the history on that (even basic stuff beyond the "Reign of Terror") I don't think any person would want to experience that for their country. It had tons of indiscriminate violence and took a decade of chaos before they sorted out into a real government, which then resulted in Napolean's coup
I read this as a reference to the Fourth and Fifth Republic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic
(I've read that the French are talking about a Sixth, given that they've gone through several prime ministers in the past few weeks/months and seem unable to maintain a government long enough to pass anything.)
It's more likely a reference to France currently being the Fifth Republic.[1] The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.
[1] https://thegoodlifefrance.com/short-history-of-the-five-repu...
By eqvinox 2025-10-2323:43 Thanks, yes, it was a reference to Fourth to Fifth, and maybe soon Sixth Republic (depending on how things go…)
By CaptainOfCoit 2025-10-2323:411 reply Interestingly, the Fifth has then been running for 67 years so far, which makes the Third Republic still the longest running republic of France! I guess in around three years they'll be having a grand party.
Those 3 years are on shaky grounds, the way they're burning through Prime Ministers ;)
By CaptainOfCoit 2025-10-2416:52 Compared to some other places around the world, looks pretty stable :) Take Peru as an example, they've had 5 different presidents in the last 5 years, shortest one being president for 5 days, and since Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), not a single president has completed their full term.
By taink 2025-10-241:20 > The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth happened in 1958 without much violence.
Quoting from the article:
The article even fails to mention Operation Resurrection. Hopefully we don't need coups every time we want a new constituent assembly.Things came to a head in 1958 as France struggled to decolonize. There was strong opposition within France to Algerian independence and part of the army openly rebelled. Important generals threatened a coup unless de Gaulle was returned to power. They sent paratroopers to capture Corsica in case anyone missed their point.
You never want the French Revolution... except when your country is ruled by an absolute monarch and you are essentially his slave forever. The American Revolution had the advantage of having the king an entire ocean away and no other neighbor kings panicking and declaring war on you immediately.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2415:17 we actually had the help of the french king as well, in a sort of "enemy mine" scenario that has resulted in towns near me with french names pronounced in american accents. We've got North Vur-sales (Versailles) and Shar-luh-roy (Charleroi) and I can't help but think that Lafayette would've gone right back home if he know we were gonna do this to his language.
Prussians, too. A lot of Europe seemed to not really feel one way or another about the plucky little colony but had very strongly defined feelings about damaging Great Britain.
By AceyMan 2025-10-2323:29 I suspect the OP meant their semi-presidential/dual-executive system w/ parliament (although at this point, storming the Bastille is starting to look pretty good...).
By jonathrg 2025-10-240:35 Yeah that's pretty much what happened last time I tried to reinstall my distro
The term "the French Revolution" is kinda misleading because by the normal definition of "revolution" they had a few of those not just one.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2415:181 reply it's misleading without context. luckily nothing humans ever do is without context and the french revolution has referred to the revolution of 1789 since...well, since 1789.
I don't mean it's misleading in that people are wondering "which revolution?". Everybody knows the French Revolution means the one involving The Terror and the death of Louis XVI.
I mean that it implies France didn't have several other revolutions.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2420:19 if the phrasing leads everyone to the correct understanding then it's not misleading. it's leading. it's reductive, but it's not misleading.
By forgotoldacc 2025-10-241:51 Tech corps and ex-PayPal guys would be putting billions into making a new constitution and it would be far, far worse than what we have now. And while the French love using violence and destruction to defend their countrymen and their rights, Americans would gladly be lemmings off a cliff so long as someone told them it pissed someone else off.
For better or worse, the US constitution does not have provisions or a process for dissolving itself and developing a new constitution.
The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/3 of Congress, or by a constitutional convention convened by 2/3 of the state legislatures, and then ratified by 3/4 of all state legislatures.
We couldn't get that sort of agreement to pass something as theoretically uncontroversial as the Equal Rights Amendment. It's laughable to think we could pass a "new constitution" that way.
I expect the only way we could end up with a new constitution is through a bloody civil war, or some sort of coup. Hopefully no one wants something like that, though. I certainly don't.
[0] Technically the entirety of the constitution can't be amended; Article V, Section 5 prohibits an amendment from changing each state's equal representation in the Senate. Though I suppose a "rewrite amendment" might get around that by preserving the Senate as-is as a ceremonial body without any power. That would certainly violate the spirit of that wording in Article V, so I imagine it would be challenged in court.
We don’t need a full rewrite. Despite the divisions in this country, there are a couple things that most people agree on:
- Corporate money should be out of politics
- Gerrymandering should be stopped
If we had amendments for these two things, it could change A LOT. Congress might actually be able to function. Corporate corruption could be prosecuted. We might be possible to put meaningful limits on corporate power.
Of course, the devil’s in the details. How do you write amendments for these two things in a way that actually accomplishes the goals? But though it would be difficult, I don’t think it would be impossible.
By lsaferite 2025-10-2419:27 Can we throw some form of ranked choice voting in there as well? As someone unhappy with either major party, I want the ability to vote what I actually want with a backup vote indicating what I absolutely don't want under any circumstances.
By drysart 2025-10-242:58 It's worth noting that Article V, Section 5 doesn't prohibit itself from being amended away. So you just need the constitutional convention to refer two new amendments: the first one stripping the restriction itself, and the second one to do what the restriction prohibited being done.
By Imustaskforhelp 2025-10-2421:26 So theoretically if any one of the party in american system gets 2/3rd people of the same party and they all agree to one person and try to amend the constitution itself to add whatever they want, can't they theoretically create a purest form of dictatorship (one which lasts forever instead of just 5 years)
I mean given how much is already happening in America, I am just curious from a legal standpoint if there could be done something like that (forgetting the insane backlash but still), what could the president of america do to completely sieze the constitution ?
By ashanoko 2025-10-2416:52 Put it under a the peoples direct majority vote to reset to a past working version control?
Heh, a balkanized USA, or one with different warlords like Afghanistan, would be interesting to see...
"In this region, I'm the ruler, and here we believe in TERF!".
By unethical_ban 2025-10-242:181 reply Yep. We might have been the first PC, but we're running windows 3.11 while the rest of the world runs a new OS.
We need ranked or approval voting, elimination of gerrymandering. Strongly prefer elimination of Citizens United and the Senate.
Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5):
> Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
(Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which expired in 1808, and is otherwise thankfully no longer relevant.)
Better voting systems can be implemented, but since the states run federal elections, each state would have to pass legislation requiring a different voting system. Of course I expect all 50 would not agree on which alternative system is the best, which may or may not matter. And I doubt red states would want to change, as voting systems that better reflect the will of the electorate tend to disadvantage the GOP.
Eliminating gerrymandering is difficult, because it's hard to objectively define what is and isn't a gerrymandered map. There have been some attempts to do so, and I would say they've even been somewhat successful, but people can reasonably disagree with the methodology and thresholds used.
The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and precedent absolutely needs to be reversed; agreed. Corporations are not people and should not get first amendment protections. Or any kind of protections outside any that are defined in regular law.
Another thing we need to do away with is the Electoral College. Presidents should be elected based on the national popular vote, not by per-state winner-take-all proxies, with vote apportionment that wildly advantages some states over others. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively do away with the EC if states "owning" at least 270 electoral votes were to all sign it, but that's unlikely to ever happen. (Then again, it's more likely that the Compact would achieve that threshold than the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC.)
> Article V, Section 5
We should amend it [0] so that any state may subdivide within its own borders without the consent of the Senate, provided that no subdivision is smaller (less-populous) than the smallest current state.
In other words, small states don't have to give up their disproportionate representation in the Senate... but they cannot use that power to monopolize being small either. Any state above a certain size (>2x the smallest) may decide that its constituents are best-served by fission.
This adheres to Article V, Section 5, since no state is being deprived of "equal suffrage": Each state has 2 senators, just like always.
California would have to split into 68 separate states to have the same representation as Wyoming.
By Terr_ 2025-10-2417:50 Correct, although I can't them every actually going N=67. There are diminishing returns, budgetary costs, difficulty drawing lines, and plenty of residents might simply be against it.
However, that still ought to be California's decision to make, as opposed to minority Wyoming-gang's to veto. Even if a big state doesn't actually do it, having the latent option is itself a subtle influence on interstate politics.
This is all regurgitated speech from a voter in a urban area. 99% chance you live in one of the major metro regions and vote mostly like your neighbors.
For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values. This is why state rights exist and will not be removed (at least in our lifetime).
By unethical_ban 2025-10-2420:20 This is all speech from a voter in a rural area, happy they get to tell the rest of the country how to behave despite being a minority of the vote.
Allow me to be "aggressive" as well:
For the other 60% of the country, we don't want Federal laws held up by people in arbitrarily drawn political districts and don't share our values regarding human rights and dignity. This is why, while states do retain broad rights to administer their internal affairs, spending and education, federal laws should be altered with a majority, excepting certain fundamental laws like the Constitution.
> For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values.
Do you reject majority votes in general or do you merely propose explicit minority protections for non-urban communities?
By belorn 2025-10-2418:22 Looking from a EU perspective, majority votes based on population is quite bad and would result in the european union to not be a union since the low population countries would leave. Germany and France would gain even more power than they have now, so giving smaller countries a small boost in relative power is part of what encourage them to be there.
> Do you reject majority votes in general or do you merely propose explicit minority protections for non-urban communities?
Does your system of voting include anyone who just comes in or is restricted to only citizens with verified ID ? If the latter, then majority voting is completely fine.
What does a verified ID have to do with values?
The context was: "decided by people in other states that don't share the same values."
By lenkite 2025-10-2519:51 And as long as they are verified citizens, I personally don't mind if they don't share the same values. No stuffing of the ballot box with non-citizens.
That is way to general of a question, I'm speaking of the system of government in America, a republic democracy, United States.
If whatever city/state you live in wants to have majority-vote for all issues, please go do it.
By teiferer 2025-10-2416:36 Sure. I was asking about you personally, in your particular situation. Whether you don't agree with majority votes overall, or whether your are fine with them but want a minority protection for this specific case.
By unethical_ban 2025-10-2413:01 Well, your defense of the status quo states that rural voters inherently deserve more voting power than urban voters for all decisions.
By cool_man_bob 2025-10-2413:211 reply > For the other half the country, we really don't want to Federal laws to be decided by people in other states that don't share the same values.
Funny people can look at Arabs or Indians and identify “these people have a diametrically opposed culture and cannot peacefully coexist with me”, but can’t extended that to people that look like them and are also diametrically opposed.
It’s delusional to try and maintain a country that’s developed such opposed cultures. You can try to force peace for a while, but it always bubbles back up.
>It’s delusional to try and maintain a country that’s developed such opposed cultures.
Have the subcultures of the US diverged over time or does it just seem that way because it is easier to publish non-moderate opinions because of the internet?
By unethical_ban 2025-10-2420:15 The Internet and cable probably helped spur this movement of bubbles, where economically and socially insecure people can be told their problems aren't caused by the wealthy or the corrupt, but by non-Christians and immigrants.
I think a lot of people, particularly on the right, cannot define what they actually want this country to look like in 20-30 years or how it needs to get there.
By Imustaskforhelp 2025-10-2421:30 I want to share this comment that some nice gentleman had written on one of my comments in some different thread.
Helped me understand a lot about modern america, but tldr, no it feels like its always been this way
By tguvot 2025-10-243:59 clarifying/limiting presidential power and ending lifetime appointments for federal/supreme court judges could be useful
By ashanoko 2025-10-2416:49 The first Version had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism as a way to eject populists, treasonous agitators and destabilizing personal.
The U.S. is VMS. France is BeOS. The former actually does work regardless of how kludgy it is.
By cool_man_bob 2025-10-2413:17 They’re both obsolete?
By collingreen 2025-10-2321:204 reply If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for this government.
Hopefully we get to try from scratch a third time if that happens but I worry that collapse will be too tempting for Russia or China to not step in.
Maybe we can be lucky and get conquered by Canada first in that case? What a weird thing to think...
By dylan604 2025-10-2322:49 From fiction, we have Clancy's sudden loss of the majority of federal elected officials which allowed for a fresh start. However, that's subject to having governors submitting senators while having elections for congress. Starting from a clean slate would be the only fix. As it is now, it's who is willing to kowtow to the biggest backers to get them over the line and stay in office. On top of the gerrymandering that all but ensures the party in control stays in control, I see no change to the status quo in my life time without an uprising.
By JauntTrooper 2025-10-2322:044 reply Gerrymandering is at the heart of the rot.
By nullocator 2025-10-2322:441 reply The Senate is not subject to garrymandering and if we fixed the issues with the House (literally via any mechanism) the Senate would immediately go back to being the vehicle used to prevent the will of the people (see the Senate under Mitch McConnell any time the House was under Democrat control)
Until the Dem party fixes their brand and wins back some of the Senate seats they used to control in the 90s and early 2000s there will be no positive progress.
By JauntTrooper 2025-10-2323:102 reply The Senate is in a permanent state of gerrymandering.
There were only 13 states when the Constitution was ratified. It was never envisioned to be as disproportionate as it is today, with California's two Senators representing 40 million people vs. Wyoming's 0.6 million.
In 1776, the population of Virgin was about 500K, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were about 270K, and Delaware and Georgia were about 50K each.
The founders knew exactly what they were agreeing to when they gave each State two Senators. It’s supposed to be a separate check on the Federal power to force a wide swathe of consensus.
California currently has of 60x the population of Wyoming, which means that Wyoming voters have over 60x the voting power in the Senate as California voters.
Whether the founders intended that or not it's a shitty, unfair, and undemocratic system that doesn't act as a check, it just enables permanent minority rule.
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-242:082 reply It was semi intentional. It wasn't as extreme but the Senate was still a compromise for smaller states to have leverage in government and get them to sign on.
Meanwhile, the house is about 10 times smaller than what the founders envisioned. Maybe that's overkill but we probably should at least expand the house quite a bit. And Probably expand the supreme court as well.
By Pxtl 2025-10-2414:53 I would argue then that the Senate is extremely overpowered. The disproportionate body should be a brake on the power of the government, not be the literally stronger half of Congress.
The fact that the most democratic part of the US government, the house of reps, is now the weakest part of the US legislature is ridiculous.
If we're dreaming up fixes, I'd say
1) Senate actions should require a strict majority. If anything should require super-majorities, it should be the House of Representatives.
2) The Senate should not be in control of appointments to the exclusion of House of Reps. No idea what the ideal system is there but the disproportionate body should not be more powerful than the proportionate body.
3) The Senate should be able to at most block an action for one term of Congress. That means that every Senate action can be overridden by an election. Which means the disproportionate body is effectively calling a referendum on legislation, instead of being a hard-stop.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2416:13 the problem is that since 1911 the house has also been a compromise for smaller states to have leverage because it's capped at 435 total members regardless of population. we've gone from a system of dynamic tension between popular rule and representation for smaller populaces to a system where both houses are on the side of the "underrepresented" to an extent where they're actually vastly overrepresented. Combine that with the electoral college (which again allows a ruling elite to overrule the populace and advantages smaller states) and the fact that the elitist president and elitist senate pick the supreme court and you can see where the so-called "underrepresented" populations are actually the ones in charge of every branch of government.
This is, of course, exactly what the founding fathers intended. They disliked kings but they feared rule by common people and always intended there to be a privileged class of citizenry that does the actual ruling because people like you and me are just too ignorant to be trusted with that. That's why they excluded the vast majority of people from voting at all and those that were allowed to vote had their power diluted by various mechanistic means like capping the senate, flooring the house (and later capping it as well), using the electoral college to make sure that those precious few who vote at all don't vote incorrectly and having the least representative members of the executive and legislative branch select the judicial branch so that they're not swayed by "politics" (read: what the governed actually want).
And that's how we have a system that claims to be a democracy but where what people want is actually completely disconnected from what happens, and where "The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all" (https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/).
That is the point of the Senate! These are united STATES, and always have been.
There is no way to prove this but who is your Representative without googling the naming, do you know them? Ever talked to them before?
It might be the point, but it's a bad point. It's a bad system that results in minority rule.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2419:23 doubly so because the house has been floored since inception and capped since 1911, the president gets elected by the electoral college (which favors smaller states) and the president and senate pick the supreme court so there is no proportional representation anywhere and there hasn't been for over a hundred years
By Yizahi 2025-10-2414:51 If states are so independent and equal that they demand exact same legislative power as fifty times bigger states, then maybe that equality should be full? Like for example equal federal monetary transhes to every equal state? And equal taxes collected from each state? No?
By teiferer 2025-10-2411:38 And now ask the 3.2 million Puertoricans how they feel about that.
By jalapenos 2025-10-249:43 Could just as soon argue it's shitty and unfair that populous states like Russia get to impose their will in less populous ones like Ukraine.
Something being more democratic doesn't make it better by default. Hence why there's a bill of rights.
I doubt the founders considered the possibility that political realignment would result in nearly all low population states being on one side of the spectrum.
By cherrycherry98 2025-10-244:411 reply Counting the two Independents as Democrats, who they caucus with:
Top 25 states: 2 Democrats - 52% 2 Republicans - 40% Split - 8%
Bottom 25 states: 2 Democrats - 36% 2 Republicans - 60% Split - 4%
Top quintile: 2 Democrats - 50% 2 Republicans - 40% Split - 10%
2nd quintile: 2 Democrats - 60% 2 Republicans - 30% Split - 10%
Middle quintile: 2 Democrats - 40% 2 Republicans - 60%
4th quintile: 2 Democrats - 30% 2 Republicans - 70%
Bottom quintile: 2 Democrats - 40% 2 Republicans - 50% Split - 10%
The very top and very bottom are a 55% to 45% split in either direction. It's not a heavy skew, a single party flip in the quintile from the majority to the minority would make it 50/50 even. Those quintiles cancel each other out when voting on party/caucus lines. It's actually the 2nd and 4th quintiles that have the biggest skews. Democrats take the 2nd quintile while Republicans take the 3rd and 4th.
I definitely appreciate your measurements, but I think your analysis is off.
The top & bottom quintiles don't cancel out, but rather support the same trend, which is that Republicans have more voting power per capita.
That said, I am surprised that the top & bottom quintiles are nearly balanced. I'll have to look up which bottom quintile states have Democratic senators.
By cherrycherry98 2025-10-251:54 Thank you for that.
I agree, the data does indeed show that Republicans have more voting power per capita, as they have advantages in the bottom 3 quintiles. However, I don't think the correlation of population to party (at the state level) is as extreme as some try to portray it. There are high population Republican states as well as low population Democratic ones. Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Hampshire are Democratic states in the bottom quintile.
The top has 11 Democratic votes and 9 Republican votes. The bottom has 9 Democratic votes and 11 Republican votes. If they all vote on party lines it's a tie. So it's really the middle population states that give Republicans their current edge.
It's a frequent criticism that smaller states have outsized representation relative to their population. The US is not alone in this, the EU also has the same characteristic. Germany, the most populous, has over 150 times the population of Malta, the least populous, but only 16 times the amount of representation in parliament (96 MEP vs 6 MEP). By comparison, the largest state, California, has 37 times the population of the smallest, Wyoming, but 18 times the representation in Congress and the electoral college (54 vs 3). Granted, it's not an apples to apples comparison as the votes are divided between houses and the relative power of the EU vs the US federal government but it's a comparison nonetheless.
It's a compromise when trying to form a union of political entities that differ so greatly in size. The smaller entities obviously give up some sovereignty to their larger counterparts. The larger ones seem to have to have to reciprocate in a meaningful way to keep a voluntary union.
By codenaught 2025-10-246:451 reply The existence of the Virginia Plan (the Large State Plan) and the New Jersey Plan (the Small State Plan) indicates that balancing the differing interests of high- and low- population states was a prominent concern of the founders. I think they would expect states to often align by population size since that very thing occurring at the convention led to the compromise written into the Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan
I have a hard time conceiving of matters that states would separate themselves on by population size other then proportional representation in Congress back then.
I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.
By nobody9999 2025-10-253:38 >I suppose, however, that the majority of low-population states were also frontier states, seems like a fairly compelling distinction.
Not so much, unless you consider Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont to be "frontier" states in 1787. Actual frontier states like Georgia were in favor of the Virginia Plan as they figured their population would grow soon enough and they could take advantage of their eventual large population (with slaves being counted as 3/5 of a person) in a "Virginia Plan" world.
The Connecticut Compromise[0][3] ended up in the Constitution as a reconciliation of the Virginia Plan[1][4] and the New Jersey Plan[2][5], with the larger states supporting the Virginia Plan and smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan.
The above is incredibly abridged and ignores much context. As such, I strongly recommend you read Article I, Sections 2 and 3 of the US Constitution[7] (the result of the Connecticut Compromise) as well as the original Virginia and New Jersey plans, or at least the wikipedia pages I linked for a much better discourse on the topic.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Plan
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_Plan
[3] The current system. Which differs from the original only in direct election of Senators, rather than them being appointed by state legislatures[6].
[4] Proposed a bicameral legislature with both houses apportioned by population.
[5] Proposed a unicameral legislature with one vote per state.
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...
[7] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
Edit: Added the missing link.
No, I like the way the Senate runs in theory. Equal representation for the states regardless of size. Only if it's alongside the house with proportionate representation.
That seems like a good theory that would keep itself in check.
In execution it's an absolute shit show, I'll give you. But I do believe the theory is sound. With the house and the Senate we get the best of both worlds.
In theory.
By lotsofpulp 2025-10-240:453 reply Why is the theory sound? It’s an arbitrary number of regions delineated by arbitrary lines given a disproportionate amount of power that run completely counter to the goal of a democracy.
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-242:135 reply >Why is the theory sound?
Because tyranny of the majority is still a thing. Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes. So the house is there as a large power and senate can check it.
Of course, in practice the house is way under represented so its almost like we have a senate and a mini-senate. That's where things fall apart.
By kelnos 2025-10-243:12 > Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.
I don't see why that would be the case. To win an election you don't need to win states at all; you need to win lots of voters, and those voters could come from anywhere.
You could lose every single voter in both CA and TX and still win the election, given different political demographics across states.
As an aside, I also think abolishing the Electoral College and going strictly by the national popular vote would increase voter turnout for presidential elections. I live in a solidly blue state, and if I didn't care about down-ballot races, I probably wouldn't bother to vote in presidential elections, since my vote doesn't really matter here. Only votes in swing states matter under the current system.
By Pxtl 2025-10-2414:55 Tyranny of the minority is not better.
By lotsofpulp 2025-10-242:432 reply > tyranny of the majority
Aka democracy.
> Elections would just switch from swing states to appealing to California and Texas if we did everything with purely popular votes.
No, it wouldn’t. It would switch to appealing to the most voters, who may or may not happen to live in California and Texas, but that is irrelevant to a democracy.
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-245:031 reply >Aka democracy.
Yes. I hope I don't need to explain the many times that the majority sentiment was in fact not the correct one. A pure democracy under the basis the US was founded under would end up much more conservative than what we have today.
> It would switch to appealing to the most voters.
So it'd switch to appealing to urban cities and ignore the rural areas. Iirc the top 10 cities today make up some 40+% of voters. Why bother going to Omaha when you can focus instead of LA and NYC?
By twixfel 2025-10-248:33 Tyranny of the majority may be undesirable but tyranny of the minority is even worse. At least the majority, are, you know, the majority.
You are taking a very narrow one sided view. We live in a Republic of states, not a Federal Democracy. I know you would like this to happen, but it won't here for good reasons.
By lotsofpulp 2025-10-2412:03 There is no “good” reason. It just so happens to be the way the power dynamics of the past have played out, and there has not yet been sufficient motivation for the population to go to war.
By culi 2025-11-010:28 the senate was not originally meant to be elected. It was a way for the elites to maintain order if populism got out of hand. People often forget that the entire US Constitution is a response to the crisis of Shays Rebellion where the poor starting rebelling and even getting their members elected under the articles of confederation. The whole point of the senate is to limit democracy's threat to elites
By nullocator 2025-10-243:121 reply ya so instead we get multiple lifetimes of minority rule and stagnation.
By johnnyanmac 2025-10-245:04 Minority forces of change also happen for the good as well. There aren't too many landmark cases where the majority suddenly voted to give more representation, more power to workers, nor simply cede powers previously enjoyed by government.
Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things. They set their own laws.
Having 1 chamber that allows equal representation
And
Having 1 chamber that allows proportionate
Is a good system in theory. Otherwise, States (which are again separate entities) with high populations just steamroll those that have low populations.
The system now allows states with high populations to be appropriately represented in the house, which sends bills to the Senate.
I feel like it's a good system, in theory. You get your population representation and checks and balances for rural areas as well.
By nullocator 2025-10-242:36 The barrier of entry to becoming a state is currently too high, and the barrier to stopping to be a state is even higher.
You keep saying "in theory". If the practice -- as you seem to admit -- doesn't actually work, then what's the point defending the theory? It doesn't work in practice, so it's a bad idea.
> Arbitrary or not, States are sovereign things.
In practice that's not really true. The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.
By mlrtime 2025-10-2411:58 >The federal government has many, many levers it can use to get states to fall in line.
This is a separate problem that should be fixed.
By lotsofpulp 2025-10-242:39 > (which are again separate entities)
In theory, but in practice, most states are highly dependent on a few very populous and productive ones, for economic and military protection.
Not to mention that the Feds control the purchasing power of the currency and international trade, so the states aren’t sovereign to do anything of consequence.
Hence in practice, this whole theory of states being sovereign goes out the window.
States are sovereign entities with their own laws. They can even, in theory, secede from the union.
The Senate is a good system, it's just that most states are Republican.
Some of the larger states might consider splitting themselves into separate states to better represent their populations. Though that may not be constitutionally possible.
If we ever add additional states to the Union (Puerto Rico, D.C., etc.), they'll want to enjoy having an equal say with every other state in the Union. It's a compelling feature of our system.
The House, as a proportional system, actually needs to be re-normalized. There are not enough representatives to have an actually proportional vote.
By nullocator 2025-10-243:111 reply Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why? The system as it's designed seems to want to incentivize having many low population states as a way to spread and gain power, and as such the current 100 power holders are incentivized to to protect their power by preventing the dilution of their power that would come with more states.
Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control this is frequently mentioned and brought up several times in this post alone. Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?
By echelon 2025-10-245:13 > Is it a good system? I'm not sure I understand why?
States have sovereignty and rights.
The point is that all states have equal representation.
> Not sure what aspects make it a good system, some type of beleaguered point about preventing tyranny of the majority? At what cost? tyranny of the minority, political stagnation?
Because states are political test tubes and need autonomy.
> Additionally, because the population of the country is not evenly distributed across all the states, senators from some states have disproportionate power and control
In my lifetime, the Senate has been majority Democratic party controlled [1].
If you go back to the second Bush term, it's been 60% Democrat.
The current party makeup is only temporary. Things are constantly in flux.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
States can not "in theory" secede from the United States. See Texas v. White: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White
From the point of view of the U.S. legal system, the Confederacy's secession was "absolutely null".
By echelon 2025-10-245:01 It's more complicated than that single case [1], and the chief justice admitted there were other routes:
> Chase, however, "recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union 'through revolution, or through consent of the States'".
Secession does not have to be done legally. Who knows what, if any, conflict that might bring about.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States
By Yizahi 2025-10-2414:55 Most states are Republican only because of first past the post system. If states internally did democratic majority elections, then most of them would turn progressive very fast. Including Texas, which is already democratic, but is suppressed by a blatant corruption via gerrymandering.
The Senate is a terrible system. There's no logical reason why citizens in one state should have orders of magnitude more say in the federal government than citizens in another.
The founders aren't infallible gods, and they really fucked up here.
Unlike in many other countries, where provinces or regions are merely administrative divisions created to decentralize or streamline administration, the US emerged when states voluntarily came together and decided to create a country. The states were willing to outsource part of their autonomy to a federal level, on condition that guardrails were put in place to limit the power of that federal level. Those guardrails were: bicameralism, equal representation of states in the Senate, and the electoral college. The House is the voice of the people, the Senate is the voice of the states.
The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively prevents a majority of voters from large urban centers from imposing their will onto rural populations, at least at the federal level. It was designed that way.
I've seen comments here claiming that countries like Canada or France deliver better outcomes than the US. They are stronger welfare states, yes, but they also have become overly paternalistic nanny states, with heavy-handed regulations, and high taxes stifling individual initiative.
The practical consequence of this system is that it effectively allows a minority of voters from rural areas to impose their will onto large urban centers
What?
We absolutely do have minority rule. In both the Senate and the House, the Republican majorities represent a minority of the population.
Trump easily won the popular vote. What makes you say that they represent a minority of the population?
The fact that both the House and Senate are nearly 50% by party again points to the fact that we have a good balance.
Did I mention Trump?
The fact that we have minority rule in the Senate, House, and Supreme Court is exactly why we don't have any checks and balances any more and Trump gets to act like an emperor.
Again, you're saying "minority rule". But Trump (Republican) won the popular vote. So which party is the minority? Do you have another way of determining which party is the majority/minority besides votes for the President?
It seems clear that the majority in the 2024 election preferred Republican governance, and so they gained control over President/House/Senate.
Yes, minority rule. You keep bringing up the presidency, but I'm talking about the Senate.
Republicans have a majority in the Senate when their senators received a minority of votes, by about 24 million votes.
Is this a joke? You think Democrat Senators got 24 million more votes? Where are you getting these nonsense numbers?
Update
Here are some rough numbers I found quickly (because your numbers are obvious nonsense):
Looks like the system is working to me. The Senate vote not withstanding of course because of some smaller states, but it's not some extreme miscarriage of justice as you imply. The majority party won and is currently enacting policies that voters wanted. I'm sorry that your beliefs aren't as popular as you thought.President R - 77.3m - 49.8% D - 75.0m - 48.3% Others - 2.9m - 1.9% Senate D - 55.9m - 49.1% R - 54.4m - 47.7% Others - 3.7m - 3.2% House R - 74.4m - 49.8% D - 70.6m - 47.2% Others - 4.6m - 3.1%Sorry, I copy and pasted wrong, the Democratic senators represent 24M more people, and had about 2.8M more votes, yet have 6 fewer seats counting the independents that caucus with the Dems.
So fewer voters and constituents for a pretty significant majority in senators.
So you've abandoned the "majority" vote argument, and now you're saying the individual vote tallies in that state don't matter.
So if 49% of California voted Republican, but both Senators are Democrats, then the entire population they represent should be counted as Democrats.
A flawed argument.
It also completely ignores the entire reason the Senate exists in the first place, to represent the States.
No, the _minority_ vote argument still holds. The Republican senators represent a minority of the vote and population, yet have a strong majority in the Senate. It's minority rule.
By newfriend 2025-11-0520:29 Again, you're mistaking a Senator representing a state vs the people in a state. The Senator represents the state, no matter if they got 51% or 100%.
What makes you say that Republican senators represent a minority of the population?
There is no real way to determine the population in each state represented by a party other than votes. The presidential vote tallies (the only truly national vote) are the closest we have to this. Numbers in the Senate are fairly close to the popular vote (not a coincidence).
Trump got 49% of the votes cast, which is roughly a quarter of the US population.
Do you have a better way of determining which party is the "majority" in Congress? That is what we are discussing here. Whether the current makeup of Congress accurately represents the votes of the people or not.
Obviously I understand that not every person voted in the election (many are not even eligible). It is simply not relevant to this conversation, and is an often trotted out diversion meant to diminish the mandate given by the actual voters.
By acdha 2025-10-2515:44 In this case it’s much simpler: the question was minority rule and you can see that power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches is held by Republican politicians representing less than a majority—Trump is arguably the best claim they have on plurality since he is come very close to winning the popular vote since so many Democrats stayed home—and enacting policies which are very unpopular, in most cases policies which are unpopular even among registered Republicans.
> There's no logical reason
If you study the U.S. history in detail the you see the reasons and the main ones are quite "logical".
You might not agree with them (I don't necessarily), but that doesn't make them illogical.
By NoGravitas 2025-10-2416:36 They were logical at the time they were implemented. Most of those reasons have been invalid since the Civil War, and should have been fixed during Reconstruction, except the winners didn't have the foresight or political will to do what needed to be done.
By moron4hire 2025-10-241:01 Gerrymandering is particular powerful because Congress has refused to reapportion representatives for over a century. They just decided to stop following that part of the Constitution back in 1929. We still have the same number of representatives as we did when we were less than a third our current population. Each representative now covers 20 times more people than when the Constitution was ratified.
By specialist 2025-10-2413:21 Yes and: our first-past-the-post form of elections begets gerrymandering.
My future perfect world:
Friendly amendments to my wishlist cheerfully accepted.proportional representation for assemblies (eg US House), some arbitrarily low number of reps per citizens (200k - 400k?), no upper assembly (eg US Senate), approval voting for executive positions (eg Mayor, Sheriff, President), only public financing of campaigns, limit campaign season to maybe 6 weeks.There's so many reasonable, impactful reforms which could be done. And my wishlist is based on my (imperfect) understanding of best available (political) science. And I'm all ears about SCOTUS reforms. And I doubt any reforms will stick, so long as our gini coefficient is so out of whack (wealth vs democracy, the timeless struggle).
By SaltyBackendGuy 2025-10-240:081 reply This is my take as well. Nothing will improve until we roll back Citizens United.
By spankalee 2025-10-241:48 Citizens United is impossible to roll back with the structural problem of the Senate.
Approval ratings for Congress, barring a post-9/11 spike, have been under 30% for most of my life. By this standard I'd say we're in the middle of the end.
By amanaplanacanal 2025-10-242:02 For the most part, folks like their own Congress people though. They just don't like the others.
By dragonwriter 2025-10-2322:09 > If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for this government.
We know, from comparative study of existing representative democracies, how to do that better (have an electoral system for the legislative branch that provides results that are substnantially more proportional than under the current system); what we don’t have is a practical way to get from where we are to where we need to be given the construction of the electoral systems in the states and nationally and the politicians and interests that has entrenched and the Constitutional amendment process.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2415:13 I feel like we'd have a better idea of what congress is qualified to do if they ever actually tried to do something but they seem to have broadened their role from "prevent executive overreach and govern" to "prevent govern". Congress is where you send something if you want to be sure it doesn't happen.
That being said, there's always the option of just getting rid of the president's ability to overrule the people on criminal matters. We could probably go after state governors as well, that's just as rife with abuse.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-10-2322:10 > Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion
States can reject dumb amendments. Congress proposes amendments, the states ratify them [1].
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-5/
It has. But the breadth and depth of how they're being used by this one in particular is really far, far worse than other recent ones of both parties.
By davidguetta 2025-10-249:261 reply Wide pardoning with autopen was both heavy and illegal
By hypeatei 2025-10-2410:48 Trump has his executive orders explained to him right before he signs them.
Yesterday he was asked about this pardon and barely knew what was going on:
The Biden autopen-shadow-government conspiracies are hilarious, though. Every accusation is a confession with MAGAs.“I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people. I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people,” Trump said.[0]0: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3861521/...
> these past few administrations
I remain amazed at how, again and again, no matter how specific and unique an abuse by the Trump administration is, it is always, invariably, Really Joe Biden's Fault. Like, the frame has been adopted by the MAGA base, but also the cranky left. The media does it too. Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".
But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.
No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
This comment is a perfect explanation of my observations on here too. Thanks.
By lobsterthief 2025-10-2416:58 Yeah, a lot of people on HN can’t seem to cope with the truth. I guess they’ll finally understand over the next 12 mos
>But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.
Amen. Preach it, brother!
>No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?
I don't know what the poster was referring to, but I AM mad at Biden for pardoning his family. It's a molehill of an issue compared to the current administration though.
By zeven7 2025-10-2415:53 I would be very mad at Biden pardoning his family if the next president was going to be Bush. With all of Trump's calls for retribution, and actions in that direction since the election, it is hard to blame Biden for trying to shield his son from unjust exercises of the law, while Trump was publicly touting him as one of his biggest enemies.
By HaZeust 2025-10-2418:17 I was less mad that Biden pardoned his family, when Trump did it first for Kushner in Dec. 2020. The precedent was already there.
> Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".
HN users don't necessarily do that because they want to. They might do it as a pre-emptive defense mechanism against the brigades of de-facto censors that roam the site.
Moderation via populism is an anti-feature on its face, but Hacker News has the worst possible version of that sort of feature by making downvoted/flagged comments completely hidden unless you are logged in and showdead.
It's a pretty horrendous system if you're interested in good faith and honest debate.
By ImPostingOnHN 2025-10-245:392 reply I have showdead enabled, and in my experience, the only dead comments are ones which violate the site guidelines or are otherwise Bad Posts regardless of the political affiliation of the poster. Stuff like this:
By NoGravitas 2025-10-2416:44 I have showdead enabled, and ime it's a pretty fair split between truly bad comments and merely unpopular ones. I use the vouch button pretty often.
I also have showdead enabled and in any remotely controversial thread, among the uncontroversial Bad Posts you will find a reasonable number of posts that are well argued and have effort put into them, but get downvoted anyway.
There are a number of reasonable posts in this very thread that are either already dead or on their way out - and I don't even agree with some of their positions.
By ImPostingOnHN 2025-10-246:151 reply Maybe some examples from this thread of the actually dead ones?
By Karrot_Kream 2025-10-2414:081 reply Any post bringing up any context behind CZ's behavior that makes crypto or CZ not sound bad is getting downvoted.
By ImPostingOnHN 2025-10-2415:30 Maybe some examples from this thread of the actually dead ones?
The fact that this arguable, but clearly reasoned and expressed comment is now deep gray kinda puts an exclamation point on the argument, I'd say.
(Honestly I think the moderation paradigm at HN has some bad externalities too, but really this isn't a solvable problem in the general case and nowhere does it well. The showdead mechanism at least makes the censorship visible to those who know where to look.)
By LexiMax 2025-10-2414:06 It does. And it's completely understandable why, from a game theory point of view.
The censors want Hacker News to keep its reputation as a place where you can have debates in good faith, while allowing their censorship powers to shape the conversation.
Pointing this behavior out upsets the calculus by warning their potential marks. So of course they want to strategically hide it.
By Karrot_Kream 2025-10-242:591 reply When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." Now we're seeing unpopular, not sane pardons.
When democratic norms erode like pardons becoming more acceptable, it's like laying tinder and kindling for a fire. You still need a fire; a bad actor who is willing to light the material on fire. That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him. Now we need to survive him.
When we look back at Roman Senators and Emperors, it's often hard as modern people to point to one, single bad figure because we don't have a lot of contemporary thought or reading from the time. But when we look back we can see the seeds of "decline" in eras rather than single figures.
I don't buy it. A president that will literally direct his AG in public to prosecute his political enemies is simply not bound by norms, period. To pretend that he'd never have pardoned Zhao but for Obama's "increased number of pardons" is, to be blunt, ridiculous on its face.
And in context, you're doing exactly what I mocked above, tut tutting about civil behavior and norms and The Discourse while the system burns down around you.
But don't worry! You can always take solace in the fact that it was Really Barack Hussein Obama's Fault.
By aaronbrethorst 2025-10-245:22 Obama did once wear a tan suit, and on another occasion put his feet up on the Resolute Desk.
By Karrot_Kream 2025-10-2414:032 reply > And in context, you're doing exactly what I mocked above, tut tutting about civil behavior and norms and The Discourse while the system burns down around you.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do then. I agree Trump is bad. Am I supposed to just say that 3 times and click my heels and then he'll go away?
These are observations designed around trying to make sure, once Trump is gone, that we don't get another Trump. I can't change the current President and this constant purity testing about hating Trump changes nothing.
The reason Trump will have to blatantly violate the Constitution if he tries to run again is because the country was so spooked after FDR's third term that it limited Presidential terms. One could have made the same argument then, the only reason FDR ran a 3rd term is because he's FDR and a different person wouldn't do that. But that amendment is why there's a bright line around a 3rd term now.
By Karrot_Kream 2025-10-2416:371 reply Why are you reading equivocation there? You're being way too defensive. Just because Trump is the worst doesn't mean other things aren't also bad, just less bad. Are you implying that I'm not supposed to talk about anything other than how Trump is bad? Again what's the point of this purity testing?
If I caveat my statements a million ways to convince you that I'm not equivocating then will Trump stop being President?
By ajross 2025-10-2416:53 You're pretending that Trump's pardon is not a singular act but the result of some kind of imagined erosion of norms for which you blamed Obama specifically. That's textbook equivocation. A vote for Romney wouldn't have fixed this.
You're also simply incorrect, which is why I'm spending the bytes to try to correct you.
By ModernMech 2025-10-2417:461 reply > I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do then.
Refocus you're attention. The problem is not with the pardon power. You said:
> That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations
But that's the thing, the pardon power is not supposed to be limited. How would you limit it? Who would actually tell the President "No" and on what authority? The obvious choices are Congress and the Courts but they already checks to balance the the President. That's why they can't check it -- the pardon power is the President's check on them (along with the veto power).
Hamilton said:
That's what it's for. After all the process, if justice is not done, and there's no way to undo it, then justice will not survive and there will be no confidence in the system. But with great power comes great responsibility, so you need someone very responsible in that position or else it doesn't work."Without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel."So then how do we fix it if not by adding laws and rules? We don't elect people like Trump, who think they are above the law. That's it. I know it seems kind of glib but it's not a high bar to just avoid malignant narcissists.
The reason Trump is abusing the pardon power is because he does not consider what he's doing an abuse. He sees that he has the "right" to do it under the Constitution, and to him, anything he has the right to do, he can do. And you know what, despite him being abusive he does have the right. But that's the thing, we gave him that right, and we can take it away and give it to someone else who won't abuse it.
That is the actual check on the pardon power, but that's on us. It's on us because Trump abused the pardon power in his first term by dangling pardons in front of Paul Manafort when he was being investigated by the DOJ, so none of this should be a surprise to anyone. Obama's "abuses" and Bidens "abuses" are on everyone's lips here, but not a single word for Trump's 1st term abuses (mine is the first mention of the Manafort pardon in over 1000 comments). So if you really want the root cause of his power abuse beyond his psychopathology, it's that -- because not only did we not care he did that, we actually reelected him as he promised to abuse his power during the campaign, so why wouldn't he actually do it?
By Karrot_Kream 2025-10-2418:441 reply > So then how do we fix it if not by adding laws and rules? We don't elect people like Trump, who think they are above the law. That's it. I know it seems kind of glib but it's not a high bar to just avoid malignant narcissists.
Right but he is the President. I didn't vote for him. I donated and canvassed for the Harris campaign. But Trump won. So what are we getting by making 1000 internet comments of which 800 are about how bad Trump is?
This whole exchange reminded me why I don't participate in politics on HN. It's all just venting. I'll stick to doing things like canvasing and not reading the anxieties of HN commenters.
By ModernMech 2025-10-2418:591 reply > Right but he is the President.
Yeah, and that he specifically is President should tell you something -- maybe the fight isn't at the pardon power.
> So what are we getting by making 1000 internet comments of which 800 are about how bad Trump is?
We might come to understand the root of the problem is the psychology of a specific individual and the cult that surrounds him, rather than what Obama did a decade ago. It's not that Obama's use of the pardon power caused a slippery slope of executive overreach that has resulted in today's corrupt pardons. We are not dealing with "overreach" here, what's happening today is categorically different.
> This whole exchange reminded me why I don't participate in politics on HN. It's all just venting.
I dunno, hopefully in this exchange you've learned that the pardon power is not supposed to be limited under the Constitution and why, so now you can stop making arguments that we should limit the pardon power. When you take that off the table, viable solutions become easier to spot. Limiting the pardon power is not viable because there is no Constitutional mechanism to do so. Under the Constitution, any limits put in place can just be ignored by the next POTUS who decides he wants to ignore them.
By Karrot_Kream 2025-10-2419:151 reply I never said we should limit the pardon power. I just said Obama increased the number of pardons and contemporary commenters criticized that, fearing a regression of norms.
I made no policy prescriptions whatsoever.
> When you take that off the table, viable solutions become easier to spot.
So do you have a viable solution here?
By ModernMech 2025-10-2420:36 You had said:
> When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." ... the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him.
I take this to mean that Obama had abused his power past his authority, and you used the word "limitations" here to mean that there are some sort of institutional or structural limits which he was exceeding, thus paving the way for the current abuses.
The implication is that if Obama had stayed within the bounds (which bounds?) then the condition would not have been laid for Trump to do what he's doing.
My point is the conditions were there whether or not Obama did what he did, because the power never had limits, never was intended to have limits, because the limiting factor was not electing a bad guy. If any conditions were laid, they were by the Founders in how they structured the Constitution and the pardon power. They just didn't think that with elections, the electoral college, impeachment, and the insurrection clause we would be dumb enough to actually elect an insurrectionist.
> So do you have a viable solution here?
Nope! I mean, as far as the Trump administration goes they are going to burn themselves out, the only question is how much damage they are going to do on the way down and what the blast radius is. The important question now is what to do with America after that happens and I don't know what that looks like. Maybe balkanization, I dunno depends how bad it gets. If some key Republicans come to their senses this can be solved relatively quickly and painlessly, then we can talk about revising the Constitution. Otherwise who knows.
>I don't buy it. A president that will literally direct his AG in public to prosecute his political enemies.
This is what happened to Trump though, the established politicians do not like him and did everything they could to stop him from running.
> the established politicians do not like him and did everything they could to stop him from running
Again, this is a excuse-making whopper. The republican aisle in the senate refused to convict him twice, which would have prevented him from running. I won't argue "do not like him" in the abstract, but in practice established politicians in his party are 100% behind the guy.
By maxerickson 2025-10-2412:21 The federal efforts at prosecution were also hesitant more than "everything".
By aaronbrethorst 2025-10-243:282 reply "boooooth siiiiiiides" screamed the reactionary centrist.
By davidguetta 2025-10-249:26 Yes.
By sojournerc 2025-10-2412:412 reply Biden pardoned his son for clear crimes, yes!
By aaronbrethorst 2025-10-2415:261 reply That’s a relief, I would’ve been worried about his mental capacity if he had pardoned Hunter for not committing a crime.
By sojournerc 2025-10-2415:53 Usually a pardon is for a conviction with some level of ambiguity or prosecutorial misconduct. Hunter himself admits to the privilege of being pardoned.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5568271-hunter-b...
By HaZeust 2025-10-2418:13 Trump did it first with Kushner.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-don...
By alfiedotwtf 2025-10-247:17 While you’re changing the constitution, include:
- double dissolution to sack the government - make the election a public holidayBy IAmGraydon 2025-10-2321:453 reply The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice. How anyone ever thought this should be a thing, I have no idea.
I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto. It being such a casual presidential power has made it ripe for corruption for a long time but I would weigh that with civil rights era pardons for sham trials - I think we do still need a national sanity check relief valve for local injustices.
And the dysfunction of congress probably works in our favor here since pardons should be exceptional - not routine. A routine pardon is just a demonstration of the justice department failing at a systemic level.
> I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto.
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. For the branch of government in charge of making and changing laws.
It sounds more fit for the branch of government in charge of enforcing the laws. Specifically, with laws that are made by the branches responsible for making/changing them, which would be ridiculous on their face.
If the branch responsible for making and changing laws was also responsible for the reversion of enforcing those laws - effectively what a pardon is - then there's absolutely no check on gratuitous law being passed.
> If the branch responsible for making and changing laws was also responsible for the reversion of enforcing those laws - effectively what a pardon is - then there's absolutely no check on gratuitous law being passed.
I mean, it is a normal thing for a legislature to remove and amend old laws. That's not "a check," but it's a normal part of what it means to be a legislature. You're not just appending new laws, you're maintaining the entire set of laws.
And as for checks, judicial review is the obvious one.
Neither are steadfast. If we relied on either the Legislative or Judicial branch to take action granting cohesive resolve for Confederates post-Civil War - in lieu of Lincoln's 12/8/63 amnesties as a power vested to him through executive pardons, the Union would have collapsed. Outside of amnesty from Lincoln, it took the next acting branch - the Legislative - 7 years after Robert E. Lee's 1865 surrender for their actions regarding the Civil War to be seen (1872 Amnesty Act).
And, in the systematic event that a law is passed that is grotesque - from the legislative, or in the individual event that a miscarriage of law is applied to an individual case - from the judicial; we need a quick check and balance for either scenario - and the Executive branch is (typically, and on average) the fastest-acting branch of the 3. Lest, one bad-faith branch can reliably depend on its complementary power to be too slow to act (which is happening now, in many ways).
As a result, the executive needs to add tension for either event, and just "Legislative <-> Judicial" having checks against one another in relation to laws, and the judicial proceedings concerning the laws, is not enough.
It’s easy to focus on the exceptional cases and say we need “one more level” to be able to override all the other levels. But it’s not clear to me that this is a useful way to frame things. After all, what do you do if you’re “one more level” is the one that commits a miscarriage of justice? What if an executive pardons political or business friends simply for being friends?
Fair point. I am not asking for "one more level". The design already assumes parity. Each branch has a lever to counter the others - some faster than others, and none sits above the rest. Congress has laws, the purse (TBD), oversight, and impeachment. Courts can halt and review. The executive has veto, charging choices, and pardons that reach only federal crimes and never impeachment or civil liability. The whole point of this is when one of three branches misfire, the others answer through state cases, impeachment, elections, or new statutes.
The threat is lateral, not vertical. The system works by equal tension, not hierarchy.
Can impeachment be used to invalidate a federal pardon? My understanding is the President could certainly commit a crime by granting certain pardons, and could be removed by impeachment for that, but the pardon would still take effect over any actions of any branch of government and (arguably more importantly) a jury (which is one of few genuinely democratic institutions).
By HaZeust 2025-10-2716:51 Short answer is no. Impeachment can remove a president for abusing the pardon power and deter future use, but it does not undo what would otherwise be a valid federal pardon. Once issued and accepted, a pardon binds federal courts and prosecutors. A jury cannot convict on a pardoned federal charge because the case is dismissed or the conviction is vacated.
The "check" to this power itself is also the reach: A pardon does not reach state crimes or civil liability. And the "check" to the person with the power of a federal pardon (the President) is political removal and later criminal charges like bribery - subject to Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7 of the Constitution [1]:
"Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law."
1 - https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-3...
By FridayoLeary 2025-10-2323:271 reply I heard the intention was that sometimes it's against the public good to prosecute some people even though they have comitted crimes. Good examples of it being used as intended was pardoning the perpetrators of the whiskey rebellion, the confederate army, vietnam draft dodgers and more controversially, Nixon. I guess it's also intended in cases where obvious miscarriages of justice have been committed. It made sense in 1785 or whenever but along with lots of the rest of the constitution it's long obsolete and has been twisted, stretched and mangled into a hideous caricature of itself over the centuries.
By YouAreWRONGtoo 2025-10-2323:333 reply [flagged]
By neilv 2025-10-241:14 I think you're onto something, for a kind of second-chance review function, but instead of "with an Ivy League education", perhaps you most want people knowledgeable about both judicial process and society.
"Ivy League education" isn't a totally bad predictor, but it's going to be very biased towards people with privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, who therefore may have blind spots of aspects of society that apply to the situation. (No matter how many books they've read, classes they've taken, years of volunteering with the less-advantaged they've done, and hours of NPR they've listened to.)
The US Constitution wasn't written with the wellbeing of random ordinary citizens in mind. You could argue it was the exact opposite in fact.
By estearum 2025-10-242:44 More importantly it was written under the assumption that political elites would understand and act against the risk of electing a broken demagogue.
But alas, the modern GOP’s cravenness beggars belief.
By dragonwriter 2025-10-2322:111 reply > The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice.
The Department of Justice is subordinate to the President as part of the executive branch with or without the pardon power; if you want something other than "the President overrides the Department of Justice" as a matter of Constitutional law rather than an intermittently-observed convention of restraint (which Trump absolutely has not observed outside of the pardon power), you need a fundamental reformation of the Constitutional structure of government, far beyond the elimination of the pardon power.
By IAmGraydon 2025-10-2322:571 reply While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance. The President does not have unlimited authority over the DOJ. The DOJ’s powers are exercised pursuant to laws enacted by Congress, and its officials - especially the Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys - swear oaths to uphold the Constitution, not to serve as personal agents of the President’s will.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates. The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law. This is not a “convention of restraint” but an operational necessity derived from the Take Care Clause (“he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”). That clause doesn’t mean “whatever the President says is law”; it means the President must ensure that the law itself is enforced faithfully, even when doing so constrains his own interests.
Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ. Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences. Our system is not designed for a monarch with “absolute control” over prosecutions. It’s designed for a chief executive bound by law and accountable through oversight, impeachment, and ultimately, the electorate.
By dragonwriter 2025-10-2323:501 reply > While it’s true that the Department of Justice sits within the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply “subordinate” to the President - functioning as his personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses both the design and evolution of constitutional governance.
The idea of the republic as opposed to a monarchy is that no part of the government is anyone's personal...well, anything...but that doesn't really negate the degree of control the President exercises, both in theory and in practice barring highly variable personal restraint, over the DoJ.
> The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional, obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates.
That doesn't mean the President doesn't override the DoJ, it means the President doesn't override the law.
> The constitutional structure also relies on normative independence - a separation within the executive branch that maintains rule of law.
Yes, that it relies on this but does not actually provide any mechanism by which it can effectively be assured is the fundamental design issue I am referring to being necessary to address if one wants "the President overrides the DoJ" not to be a simple fact independently of whether or not the pardon power exists and is vested in the President's discretion.
> Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it’s not the linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ.
I literally said that the pardon power is irrelevant to that, which is the exact opposite of describing it as the lynchpin.
> Removing or limiting that power wouldn’t change the fact that the DOJ’s prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not simply the President’s personal preferences.
To the extent that is true, that is only a negative constraint on prosecution applied by the courts, it can never compel a prosecution that the executive has declined. (Congress, of course, could punish the President for preventing prosecutions, via the impeachment power, but that’s hardly a substitute for real independence from the President of all or part of the prosecutorial power if that is what is desired. Or, for that matter, much of a remedy at all if more than 1/3 of the Senate is on board with the President's conduct.
The de facto absolute Presidential authority over DoJ stems from two powers:
1. The ability to dismiss the Attorney General at will (alternative: Congress)
2. The ability to pardon at will (alternative: Congress)
Remove those two Presidential powers, and the DoJ becomes much more independent.
Imho, the DoJ side of the judiciary branch is important enough to the separation of powers that this should have been done a long time ago.
By technothrasher 2025-10-2411:511 reply The Attorney General should be elected, like most of the state AGs are. An elected AG with the DoJ underneath them would be much more independent.
By dragonwriter 2025-10-2419:03 A fragmented executive power, like most states have, does solve problems stemming from the unitary executive, but also increases the difficulty of ascribing responsibility for bad outcomes whose source isn't exclsuviely in one bailiwick, complicating effective democratic accountability.
You could probably make a good case that doing this for just the AG is still a good thing.
(Of course, federally, that becomes both a major Constitutional change and raises the question of how they would be elected? The same Electoral College that elects the President? A separate electoral college? Direct election unlike the President? Of course, the first problem is one with any means of making the DoJ independent of Presidential control.)
By president_zippy 2025-10-252:24 Despite abuses of it, there are still too many reasons to need it, like when President Franklin Pierce pardoned an abolitionist for harboring fugitive slaves, or when George Washington pardoned Revolutionary War vets involved in the Whiskey Rebellion.
Better yet, there are a ton of cases since the 1980s prosecutors exploiting technicalities and mandatory minimum sentencing laws to get nonviolent drug offenders imprisoned for 10+ years on simple possession (not to to sell drugs, not PWID, just possession).
> The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations
Past few?
How about Ford pardoning Nixon? Or George H.W. Bush pardoning a bunch of Iran-Contra conspirators, thus covering his own ass?
Both of those were very bad, but nothing compared to the raw corruption in Trump's pardons.
The word "nothing" is completely inappropriate in describing Watergate and Iran-Contra, among the worst political scandals in American history, both involving gross abuse of executive power.
I certainly don't see how the pardon of Changpeng Zhao is worse than the pardon of President Richard Nixon or Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Crimes committed in office by the highest officials in the US government are a whole different level than crimes committed by some corporate CEO.
Ford at least had the misguided excuse of wanting to put the scandal behind and focus on the future.
Trump's pardons include hundreds of literal insurrectionists, promises to pardon in exchange for not testifying against him (witness tampering), and other blatant corruption. He fired the head of the OPA and installed a political hack to speedrun awful pardon choices and made a mockery of the process in a far more corrupt and damaging manner than anyone before him, and it's not even close.
> Ford at least had the misguided excuse of wanting to put the scandal behind and focus on the future.
I'm more concerned with the effects of the pardons on the country and on democracy than I am with judging the rectitude of the pardoner. Allowing the President to escape the law set a terrible precedent with obvious repercussions into the present.
I'm not trying to defend Trump. My point is that the stage was set for Trump. Abuses of executive power, of which I've given two egregious examples—Watergate and Iran-Contra—have been swept under the rug for far too long. To always "put the scandal behind and focus on the future" is to encourage future misbehavior. I would note that in stark contrast, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has just gone to prison.
I'm more concerned about the effects of this constant "both sides" legitimization of fascism and the constant shift of the Overton window than I am about the effect of pardons.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Where is "both sides" coming from when Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Trump are all Republicans? And where in the world do you get "legitimization" from my comments, other than how Presidential pardons have practically legitimized crimes in office?
The response to every new overreach by Trump is "this is just more of what's been going on" when it absolutely is not, it's dramatically different. Today's Republicans are a very different beast from Gerald Ford's. It's absolutely "both sides"ing the issue.
By lapcat 2025-10-2418:42 > The response to every new overreach by Trump is "this is just more of what's been going on"
This is a strange take on my comments. To be absolutely clear: I object in the strongest possible terms to the crimes of the Nixon and Reagan administrations and to the subsequent pardons of Nixon and Reagan administration officials. I have no desire to legitimize those pardons, and indeed I think the pardon power should have been eliminated or at least strictly limited a long time ago. Moreover, I objected to your attempt to minimize those past scandals, which you described as "nothing".
Thus, my comments are in no way a defense or legimitimization of Trump. They become a defense of Trump only in your own mind when you insist on discounting the past, which I do not. And when I suggested that previous pardons set the stage for Trump, I meant that shielding the executive branch from the legal consequences of their crimes only emboldens someone like Trump to act without any fear of legal consequences for his own crimes in office. The terrible precedents set in the past have come back to haunt us in the present. Again, that's not "legitimization" in any sense.
Trump is the kind of actor who will explore the entire space of pardons; the history of this does not matter. He does not know the path-dependency of what will be tolerated.
I'm afraid that you've missed the point. The crimes were Watergate and Iran-Contra. The pardons, which came later, indeed from different Presidents in subsequent administrations, allowed previous administrations to escape legal consequences of their crimes.
Granting pardons is not by itself a crime. Should pardons be eliminated or strictly limited? Sure. But pardons are not really the main issue with the Trump administration. Rather, the main issue is general lawlessness and abuse of power. When I mentioned setting the stage, I didn't mean setting the stage for granting pardons specifically but rather setting the stage for abusing executive power generally.
By sigwinch 2025-10-2419:44 If you asked Donald Trump about the “beautiful” Watergate office complex, what would he say? If you asked him which commentator on Fox News might be most familiar with Iran-Contra, would he know? His reaction to being given power is to test it. Gerald Ford is not goading him into this.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-10-2322:10 > pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether
Strip it. I also started on the line of Congressional review (or pardons only activating on the consent of the Senate). But I concluded the entire power is out of place.
If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. Congress can annul sentences through law, no special pardon power needed. If a law is unfair or being applied unfairly, moreover, it should be fixed comprehensively.
There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.
Biden abused pardon power. So has Trump. Both parties have good reason for passing an amendment through the Congress. This is probably in my top 3 Constitutional amendment we need in our time. (Multi-member Congressional seats, popular election of the President and changing “the executive Power shall be vested in a President” to “the President shall execute the laws of the United States.”)
By Steven420 2025-10-2416:31 I'm waiting to see if he pardons the diddler
Genuinely curious: what were the abuses by the Biden and Obama administrations?
By TiredOfLife 2025-10-248:052 reply Biden promised not to pardon his son and then pardoned his son. And not simply pardoned. Pardoned also for crimes not yet discovered
Wasn't that because there was a high chance of trump going after biden's son when he was in power, making up whatever charges he needed just as a power play?
By davidguetta 2025-10-249:262 reply no one should be above the law.
Also it's not like the democrat did not weaponize the justice to put trump in jail for 4 consecutive years.
By hypeatei 2025-10-2410:54 No one at the top faced consequences for January 6th because Merrick Garland slow-rolled everything. How was the DOJ weaponized by Biden?
By ethbr1 2025-10-2410:27 > Also it's not like the democrat did not weaponize the justice to put trump in jail for 4 consecutive years.
Trump went to jail? News to me.
By Pxtl 2025-10-2414:59 He only pardoned his son after Trump was elected, because Trump made it clear that he was going radicalize the DOJ to do extremely punitive things to his enemies. And that's exactly what has happened.
Up until the election he seemed very willing to let Hunter face the music.
Every decent father would've done the same thing.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-10-2415:11 honestly? I think between this and hunter biden you could probably drum up some bipartisan support as long as you don't let either side find out that they accidentally agree with the other. I'm of a mind that the power of the pardon is one of many (many, many, many) ways that the so-called "egalitarian" founding fathers made sure to preserve the power of the aristocracy over that of the people. After all, a conviction has to come from a jury, and that means that a pardon is by definition the powerful elite overruling the people.
By AniseAbyss 2025-10-2322:37 [dead]
By napierzaza 2025-10-2322:07 [dead]
By adgjlsfhk1 2025-10-2321:007 reply [flagged]
By intermerda 2025-10-242:19 That's it? Using autopen is abuse of power?
By Guid_NewGuid 2025-10-240:22 The cheerleaders for the current authoritarian coup that swarm around here are all too happy to conflate the Hunter Biden pardon and what's currently going on. As if we can't currently open a god-damned news website and read about the Comey, James and Bolton prosecutions and deduce that, yeah, Biden pretty much had no choice even though it was a shitty thing to do.
This is because these dipshits are eagerly carrying water for a vindictive dictator. They are not operating in good faith but due to the alignment of the owners of this site with those self-same fascists you are meant to act as if they're not trolls.
By returningfory2 2025-10-2321:048 reply Nope, Biden pardoning his son was also widely condemned across the political spectrum as an abuse of the pardon power.
I was of two minds about that pardon. On the one hand it seemed like an abuse of pardon power. On the other hand, it was also reasonable at the time to expect abuse of presidential power to prosecute political enemies. So on balance I was OK with it. I think the compromise I'd like to see is to curtail both powers.
By whatsupdog 2025-10-240:402 reply [flagged]
Literally at no time did the Biden administration ever direct the Department of Justice to investigate a political enemy.
Exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration had been doing.
By estearum 2025-10-242:46 But what about if we just imagine the evidence of Biden interference in DOJ decisions?
Then they’re basically the same!
/s
By whatsupdog 2025-10-246:221 reply He sicced Letitia James on Trump.
By SamBam 2025-10-2415:35 What evidence do you have that the administration requested the DOJ to initiate that investigation?
By tasty_freeze 2025-10-243:06 Have you ever heard of Whitewater?
Because he was prosecuted for doing drugs and owning a gun? There's literal video of Joe Rogan smoking pot and he talks about his concealed weapons permit. It would be a slam dump case, some how i don't think he's getting prosecuted because its selective law open to abuse. Seems perfectly good use of pardon.
>would be a slam dump
You are watching a very different game from me.
By apstls 2025-10-246:39 Well, slam _dump_ does sound like a potentially apt description.
The Hunter Biden issue was not about smoking marijuana... that would have been the very least of his multitude of legal problems. Biden's own DoJ was prosecuting the cases - which is important context to consider here.
> Since 2018, Weiss had been investigating Hunter Biden as U.S. attorney. In 2023, Republicans asked Garland to appoint a special counsel, some specifically demanding Weiss, a Republican appointed to his role by President Donald Trump. Garland ultimately appointed Weiss, giving him additional authority. However, congressional Republicans then expressed criticism, some stating Weiss was untrustworthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Weiss
6 years of investigation and all they could find was that Hunter did drugs and owned a gun. I am sure if we drug tested congress, we could prosecute a bunch of congressmen for the same crime. Maybe thats why supreme court is looking at the constitutionality of the law and its all been ruled unconstitutional in one of the courts districts but hey lets prosecute Hunter Biden for it.
That was not all of Hunter's legal problems - he had serious tax evasion charges[1], along with other Biden family members (all of which were pardoned, unprecedentedly by President Biden).
Trying to minimize Hunter's significant legal problems to "he did [many hard, highly regulated] drugs and [illegally] owned a gun [which was thrown into a dumpster]" is disingenuous and factually incorrect.
Hunter's (and other Biden family member's) legal issues were so plainly severe, with a near-guarantee of prison time, President Biden was forced to issue an unprecedented, unconditional pardon for "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." A decade-long period during-which any crimes Hunter committed were erased and forgiven.
Nobody is above the law? This was Biden's own DoJ.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco-weiss/pr/grand-jury-ret...
By adrr 2025-10-241:13 Six years of investigation and all they could find is that he put false information on a government form and paid his taxes late. Six years. Mueller investigation was only two years and how many charges did he find? Jack Smith investigation was one year before he has charged people with dozens of charges. This prosecutor had six years and couldn't dig up anything. Either hunter biden is the smart person in world that was so smart that he left no evidence of crimes or it was partisan witch hunt.
Also if the gun charges were so serious, why aren't we prosecuting Joe Rogan, its literally a slam dunk case. He smokes pot(a schedule 1 drug) on his podcasts and brags about his concealed weapons permit. You don't even need to find witnesses, just show the jury of him smoking pot and a copy of his federal form. Or we could just cross reference the ATF background database with states' Medical Marijuana Registries. Could prosecute tens of millions of people including Joe Rogan.
At the time that did reek of corruption and misuse of power, but given current state of things, it was the right move.
It protected one individual - there have been a rash of politically motivated moves by the justice department that have targeted plenty of others. I can understand the pardon but the fact that so many other people were left out to dry just reinforces our multi-tiered justice system.
By SamBam 2025-10-241:56 That's why it was not just one individual -- he also pardoned Fauci, members of Congress who served on the J6 investigations, and Gen. Milley for the same reason.
It's clear that he was correct that Trump was going to target his political enemies, but it sounds like he can't win here -- if he pardons everyone including Comey, people would say he's abusing the power by pardoning everyone. If he only pardons a few then he's accused of leaving others "high and dry."
Yeah, that's a very fair point. The persecution of Fauci and anyone associated with bringing the charges against Trump would've also been very predictable targets for pardons.
By jayd16 2025-10-2322:18 If you just argue both sides are the same, you get to excuse yourself from self reflection.
By CobrastanJorji 2025-10-2321:35 Just as a judge should not be ruling on a case where the defendant is throwing suitcases full of money at him, a judge should also not be ruling on a case where the defendant is his own son. Both are inappropriate uses of a power intended for the application of mercy and the correction of faults in the justice system. Both are the sorts of things that should lead to recusal.
Biden's use is far more forgivable, as it's a given that his son was being prosecuted politically to punish Biden (though certainly he was guilty) and would likely have been prosecuted more under Trump, like Comey is being prosecuted today. And certainly "saving your children" is a far more forgivable sin than naked bribery, but being better than Trump is a low bar, but it's still not okay to excuse criminals from punishment because they have an important family member.
I will help: people don't like it when the presidential pardon is used for self-serving shit.
How is pardoning people like Fauci, or even Hunter, that Trump was clearly going to target as part of an "enemies" list, more "self-serving" than literally pardoning anyone that makes you/give you millions of dollars?
(Changpenh Zhao - made him billions; Trevor Milton - donated $1.8 million; Walczak - his mom donated millions)
By uh_uh 2025-10-248:56 You don't have to prove it to me that Trump is a lot more self-serving than Biden. This should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.
That said, this shouldn't be a competition of who is "more self-serving". Just because your neighbour murdered two people, doesn't mean that you get to murder one.
By WinstonSmith84 2025-10-2321:483 reply no equivalence indeed, it's way worse. Biden's son has never contributed to anything, CZ has and had a net positive impact on the Blockchain industry.
And I say this as someone who despise Trump. A broken clock can be right twice a day.
> CZ has and had a net positive impact on the Blockchain industry.
So, a net negative impact on society.
By mlrtime 2025-10-2412:13 And HN's bias comes out again.
I'm glad he pardoned CZ. The previous administration + SEC are responsible for this mess by not passing reasonable laws. Coinbase fared much better fighting them all the way.
Trump did the right thing here.
By mcmcmc 2025-10-2322:08 You mean a net positive for other crypto scammers by showing how easy it is?
By intermerda 2025-10-242:221 reply What did the Jan 6 rioters contribute to?
By WinstonSmith84 2025-10-2411:44 To this useless comment, among others.
Really? What ever positive opinions I had left of Biden went out the window with that decision.
By Capricorn2481 2025-10-2321:15 It would be weird if he didn't? He pardoned his entire family, as Trump made it clear he was aiming to harass Biden's entire family for revenge. And the way he's been acting this presidency has only confirmed that's not beneath him.
The decision is a lot more respectable than "this guy gave me a bribe." They are worlds apart. And some may be theoretically willing to roll the dice on that for their family, but it reads naive.
Doesn’t it affect your opinion in any way that Trump’s DOJ has been used exactly like his harshest critics last year said it would?
It's not binary. I can not respect both decisions. Just because I don't respect Trump does not mean I must respect Biden's decision or vice versa. Current POTUS is absolutely vile. The previous guy was put in a position and a decision was made that I did not agree with, but over all, no he wasn't using the federal money to directly line his pocket as compensation for being investigated for things he actually did.
By ModernMech 2025-10-2322:111 reply So if you were the outgoing president, and the incoming president said out loud in front of the nation he was going to abuse his power to jail your family members out of spite, you would just let that happen on principle?
Again, the threats were not levied just at family members, but only family members received the pardon. So let's not get all sanctimonious on this issue. If he was doing this as anything other than self preservation of his family we could talk, but actions speak louder than words and he chose family over principles.
By cthalupa 2025-10-240:21 Simply untrue. He pardoned hundreds of people, many of them with the same blanket pardon, and commuted the sentence of thousands.
By actionfromafar 2025-10-2322:57 Pardoning Hunter was also because he was technically guilty. They’d rather believe had something to pin on him.
If he’d pardoned a whole team of people he’d also signal to the world that he believe they are guilty too.
By ModernMech 2025-10-240:35 > only family members received the pardon.... If he was doing this as anything other than self preservation of his family we could talk
Seems like you should do some more research about this before forming such strong opinions, because you are not correct -- Biden preemptively pardoned more than just his family. He pardoned Fauci and Miley after Trump accused them of treason; as well as some members of the J6 committee like Liz Cheney (Trump retweeted a post that claimed Cheney was guilty of treason and should face a military tribunal).
I still think you should answer my question though, because it establishes a baseline for acceptability. I believe that you personally would pardon your own family against such threats because I believe most decent people would. So if you're willing to pardon your own family, then there's a conversation to be had about why you would need to, and whether that protection should be extended, for the good of the nation, to other people not related to you.
The problem we see right now with the pardon power was predicted by the founders:
And boy was he right! We are at that future day! So they saw this coming yet decided to include it anyway. Why?"The President of the United States has the unrestrained power of granting pardons for treason; he may pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic... If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection?" - George MasonHamilton argued:
and"In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments when a well-timed offer of pardon to insurgents... may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth." "Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed."
They recognized the system might need a release valve, or would make mistakes, and they included the pardon power to correct them. They made it broad and "unfettered" as Hamilton put it because they expected the person who would exercise the power would be "prudent"."Without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel."And in doing so they ensured that the pardon power reflects the soul of this nation. We get the government we vote for, and the pardon power is used in a way that we the voters tolerate.
The problem isn't the pardon power is broad, it's that we as an electorate are so willing to elect someone who is comfortable abusing those broad powers and other authority for his personal gain.
I will close by just noting that both of the abuses of the pardon power we are talking about were precipitated by Trump. Biden wouldn't have pardoned any of the people you're mad about if Trump hadn't first promised to abuse his power to persecute them. Biden had the good judgement and foresight to take Trump seriously, because he turned out to be 100% right.
I think the point is, Biden said he pardoned his son to prevent political persecution of him by Trump. Biden's fears have been borne out - the Trump administrationg is persecuting Trump's enemies. Does that change your opinion of Biden's pardon?
Where's the preemptive pardons for Comey, James, Schiff? So no, it's not much of a move of the needle since it was only family members.
By cmurf 2025-10-2323:09 It wasn't only family members. Biden granted clemency or pardons to over 4200 people. Notably for the same blanket pardon from 2014 to 2025 for family members, includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, and General Mark Milley.
And all of the members of Congress on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack for anything having to do with their role on that committee.
Schiff was on that committee. He said the pardon was unnecessary and unwise.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-jos...
By whatsupdog 2025-10-240:493 reply At that Biden was the only president who had used DOJ to persecute his predecessor. So basically he started this shit, and when it turned out the other guy won the election, he pardoned his obviously guilty son, and other obviously guilty party members.
You say persecute yet those without an agenda say investigate. It was not persecution to look into the events of January 6. Conflating the investigation as persecution is not a very honest take on the events.
By whatsupdog 2025-10-246:151 reply I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
By spankalee 2025-10-2414:48 You said Biden and DOJ, not NY State. Get your story straight.
By ModernMech 2025-10-242:011 reply Biden did not order his DOJ to prosecute anyone. Unlike Trump with Pam Bondi, Biden did not personally direct Merrick Garland, who promised to run the DOJ independently and did -- to the point Garland even prosecuted the President's own son.
The Trump prosecutions were not only warranted, they were insisted by Republicans; the Republican Senators explicitly declined to convict Trump in his second impeachment because they anticipated he would be prosecuted in a court of law for January 6. From Republican Leader Mitch McConnell when he explained his rationale during the 2nd impeachment trial:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/13/politics/mitch-mcconnell-acqu...
By labeling him as "practically and morally responsible" and then refusing to vote to impeach, explicitly citing our criminal justice system as the appropriate venue for recourse, Mitch McConnell essentially demanded that Biden's DOJ prosecute him for J6.“Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty,” added McConnell. “Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,” he said.In refusing to convict Trump on J6, McConnell set the precedent that it is improper to impeach a President if he commits crimes between the Election and the Inauguration as Trump did. According to McConnell, accountability lies in the Courts. If it's true that the incoming administration also cannot prosecute those crimes, then POTUS is essentially immune from any and all accountability under the Constitution, which cannot be the case; POTUS would be able to commit or attempt to commit any crimes he wants between Nov and January 20 at the end of his term, up to and including high crimes like insurrection against the government.
Republicans shirked their Article I duty by refusing to impeach a man they publicly blamed for provoking events which led to the deaths of multiple people. Specifically it was Republican Senators who punted it to the Biden DOJ, which made them Constitutionally bound to prosecute.
By whatsupdog 2025-10-246:162 reply I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
By ModernMech 2025-10-2412:53 That case was tried and adjudicated before a court of law, and Trump was convicted on the merits. Trump had the opportunity to argue that the prosecution was selective, vindictive, or otherwise unjust, and his arguments failed.
Obviously he's upset by this outcome, but even if you agree with him, his response has been to burn down the rule of law and the entire concept of justice. Even if you feel he was wronged by James, weaponizing the DOJ against James is not justified by "She started it".
Are you trying to claim that it's never valid to investigate a former President? What the fuck?
By whatsupdog 2025-10-246:16 I'm talking about the NY real estate bs. It was bs, everybody does it, including the prosecutor Letitia James, there were no victims, it was a selective enforcement of a law, the statute of limitations had expired and the prosecutor ran on the promise that she will find something to get Trump.
Equivalence may be a strong word, but pardoning your kids is classical Borgia shit straight out of the worst times of Italian Renaissance, and most people would condemn it if it was done by leader of some Central American Ruritania.
Of course, once it is done by a president representing the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the double standards inevitably kick in.
By Capricorn2481 2025-10-2322:001 reply > Of course, once it is done by a president representing the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the double standards inevitably kick in.
Less that, more we're all aware of what Trump campaigned on and what he promised to do to Biden's entire family. And we're disheartened that there's cultists (not you) trying to convince us that we should let our families suffer if dear leader demands it.
I don't know these people, I don't have a strong feeling if any of them go to jail for something they did, because I'm not in a personality cult. But I care a lot more if people are going to jail just because a more corrupt person got the keys to everything. Turns out, those fears were valid, and I'm increasingly alarmed that there's still so much vitriol towards Biden pardoning a checks notes gun charge, than there is for the blatantly corrupt shit we see every day.
By inglor_cz 2025-10-249:02 If your family is threatened by the incoming president, your only reasonable course of action is to move them all abroad to some safe country.
A paper you signed is insufficient protection from truly Erdoganesque leaders who are about to gain an imperial presidency. It is just bad politics from all perspectives: inefficient in its original purpose and controversial at the same time.
Looking at how this administration is now using the DoJ to hunt even people like Comey and Bolton whose crime was being a non-Trump-aligned Republican…
It’s probably good that Biden took away this particular show trial option from them.
By actionfromafar 2025-10-2323:00 Non-Trump-aligned Republicans are now the worst enemies of the state, because they pose a credible threat.
Disloyalty is the worst crime around Trump. You must never stop proving your loyalty. Just look at videos of their meetings.
Each person speaking must first have a little sermon praising and thanking God, oh sorry no, not God, I meant Trump.
By tehnoble 2025-10-240:09 It’s worth clarifying that the investigation into Bolton started in 2022 during Biden’s term. Hard(er) to say whether the ultimately issued indictment was politically motivated, but we need to keep an eye towards accuracy on these topics.
By tdb7893 2025-10-2321:22 I was against the Biden pardons at the time but in hindsight with the current administration pushing poorly done prosecutions for political purposes I have changed my mind on them. Trump will say his pardons are similar but looking at the facts I don't find them comparable (I'm still livid that he pardoned Blagojevich, who was literally caught on tape talking about selling a US Senate seat).
By handsclean 2025-10-242:08 No. Almost everybody hated it out of context, but in context many understood that one man was about to obtain unprecedented power over all three branches of government and use it to vindictively pursue personal vendettas. These people were correct, this then happened.
Personally, I’m reminded of how every dysfunctional country’s deposed regimes flee or are killed. We sheltered Americans find it easy to forget that peaceful transfer of power is an accomplishment of lawful society, and as rule of law weakens we have only more chaotic, ignominious, and probably eventually violent transitions to look forward to.
Reaction to the Biden pardon is a pretty huge thing to be completely unaware of. You should reevaluate whether you’re in a media bubble.
By bananalychee 2025-10-2321:311 reply He didn't just pardon his family members and issue questionable preemptive pardons, he also issued the most pardons of any president ever, and not by a small margin, but by a factor of 20 compared to Trump up to now, in a single term, including pardons for violent criminals and yes, white-collar fraudsters as well. They didn't get much publicity because most of them were committed at the tail end of his term while the media were focused on the election and on the transition of power, because of double standards, and because the actors were low-profile. It really shouldn't be controversial to point out that the abuse of presidential power didn't start nor end with Trump. He most certainly wouldn't have gotten re-elected if that were the case.
it doesn't matter how you count it, what you are saying is bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...
the substance of the pardons matters a great deal, as well.
By bananalychee 2025-10-2321:511 reply Maybe my source was outdated, at least it should be accurate when comparing first terms. Quite the editorial spin on this Wikipedia article, it proves my point about double standards. I'd share some articles listing some murderers and embezzlers pardoned by Biden, but I don't like linking to politically biased sources regardless of their substance since it usually ends up with people nitpicking about the source. It's very easy to find evidence that these weren't 4,000 pardons for innocent marijuana users on Google anyway.
By ianburrell 2025-10-2322:08 Carter pardoned 200,000 draft dodgers. Biden pardoned 256 people, the rest were mass commutations.
By abbycurtis33 2025-10-2321:522 reply [flagged]
By mcmcmc 2025-10-2321:58 > I'm concerned about the diversity of your media consumption
… says the conspiracy theorist spouting Breitbart nonsense
By whattheheckheck 2025-10-2322:023 reply Do you have a complete list because thats literally what trump is doing. In no way shape or form is any past president comparable to the depravity and recklessness of trump its not even close. If you say its close you are so misinformed or ignorant or willfully evil. Seriously crypto scams, open bribery from kushner and the saudis, the Qatar jet, the gold card visas for the cartel family... the list of insane actions goes on and on and its so depressing to see anyone fall for it or not be seething in rage because this country will not make it if this family and the people driving project 2025 are not brought to justice
> Do you have a complete list because thats literally what trump is doing.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/07/biden-gra...
By whattheheckheck 2025-10-240:41 Lol did you even read that...
Commutations are not pardons. They were for weed and being gay in the military offences, you know things that do t actually matter...
Trumps pardoning fraudsters and criminals who have harmed people's lives
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-rel...
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/understanding-trump-pardon...
By sethammons 2025-10-2323:33 Do you feel these are comparable to the pardons by Trump this term?
Trump is forgiving friends of debts to the US. Blatantly. He is for sale and always has been.
By oceansky 2025-10-2322:10 But both sides!
By abbycurtis33 2025-10-2322:52 [flagged]
Along with various other people to try to protect them from malicious political prosecution. Much like how Comey, Bolton, and a variety of current and former government officials are now being prosecuted on questionable charges.
By polski-g 2025-10-242:03 The Bolton investigation started in 2023, during the Biden admin.
Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish.
By AgentME 2025-10-2321:27 By considering the facts of the matter, sure it's as you said. But if you ignore every detail then it does look like everyone is exactly as bad as each other and it's impossible to say anything is good or bad.
By travisjungroth 2025-10-2321:35 You have the causality mixed up. It’s not bad because they’re doing it. They’re doing it and it’s bad.
By collingreen 2025-10-2321:25 That's nothing like what's being said, I'm really surprised you read it that way.
By array_key_first 2025-10-2322:21 Well yes some people commit crimes and others don't. It's not a double standard, it's the same standard.
> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
Are pre-emptive pardons a common thing for American presidents to do?
By ModernMech 2025-10-2322:04 Only when the incoming administration labelled your family a "crime family" and led stadiums to chants of "lock them up".
No. Absolutely not. I can't think of anyone using a pre-emptive pardon until Trump's first Presidency.
Sadly I think Biden's choice was completely rational given how Trump is weaponizing the US justice system.
By mwcremer 2025-10-241:56 Proclamation 4311.
> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them
Ha ha. They (democrats overall) need to look inwards for that.
> Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others. Fauci screwed up our country so bad, it aint even funny. The fact that he needed a PRE-EMPTIVE (i.e. he wasn't even accused of anything at the time) pardon says it all. And the fact that Biden gave it to him, says everything there is to say about Biden.
> And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Not even close.
> Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish. They should.
- Look at what Biden did to the southern border. And look at it now. - Look at almost any "democrat" run major city. Any. Then look at the crime rates and cost of living. - And the recent farce that was this "No Kings" crap...
Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
By travisjungroth 2025-10-2321:371 reply > However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
This is a ridiculous standard. Each of his policies (individually) only hurting some Americans is not a flex.
By kapone 2025-10-2322:38 Everything, always hurts “someone”. There is no universal good.
The totality is what matters, not you, not me.
By jaapz 2025-10-248:56 > However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country".
His foreign policy means even the EU is now looking inward more because we simply don't trust you guys anymore. Thanks, we were depending on you guys too much anyway! It will take a while before we're weened off of you for sure, but your global influence will shrink tremendously thanks to your current president's untrustwortiness.
In dutch we have a saying which is roughly translated as "Trust comes on foot, and leaves by horse"
> However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
Any? His energy policy.
I have plenty more.
What about it? What’s wrong with it?
Oil prices are down, we now produce more oil than anybody else, and enjoy low energy prices domestically.
Where’s the problem?
By triceratops 2025-10-242:171 reply Electricity prices are up. The administration is cancelling solar and wind projects because of ideology.
Electricity prices are up everywhere. We're still way lower than many many places. There's many parts of the US (take a wild guess where all the data centers are going...) where electric rates are <$.10/kwh.
Now compare that to...
Yes, solar and wind projects are being canceled, and yes, there may be an element of ideology involved, but the reality also is that the math aint working.
If the math worked, Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables. I'd much rather see a national focus on nuclear, which is as clean as any other form of energy, and to a degree that is happening now.
By triceratops 2025-10-2411:42 Lies and more lies. You've fallen for them too.
The math is clear - solar + batteries is the cheapest source of electricity. China isn't generating 80% of all new electricity with solar because they want to be green above all else.
> Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables
Again a tired old lie. Europe is a big place, just like the US. Some countries have high prices and some countries don't.
Be better informed. Stop lying.
By amanaplanacanal 2025-10-242:281 reply I guess we are pretending that climate change isn't real now.
Whether it is or isn't is not the point. A national energy policy has to work for its people first. If it's not working it needs to be changed.
And I guess the two countries (combined) that have almost 3B people don't believe in climate change either? Because if they did...
By beej71 2025-10-2423:58 I agree it has to put the people first, just like China is doing. And if you want to get on the climate change soapbox, it's too late. The US produces more global warming emissions per capita than any other country, and China's not going to catch up.
By beej71 2025-10-2423:54 The US has been a top, if not the top, producer and exporter of oil for some time. Trump's not particularly involved in that above and beyond using it as a campaign slogan.
The problem is that the rest of the world is very actively moving on, led by China. A great many oil importing countries reduced their imports last year. China deploys more solar in 6 months than the US has deployed ever and is distributing this technology to the rest of the world far cheaper than they can bring it here. The US had a program to get 1000 new auto chargers installed. China installed 100,000. People are simply unaware of the sheer scale of the Chinese juggernaut. They think that since we're ahead now (questionable) and we're going 95 MPH, we'll always be ahead. They don't realize that China is going 250 and we're getting passed.
Trump would do well for the country to plan ahead JUST A LITTLE BIT.
But as Bolton said, it's unclear if Trump knows the difference between his personal interest and the national interest, or if he's even aware there is a national interest.
We were producing more oil than anyone else prior to Trump coming in. We’ve been posting ATHs on that front for years every year
I know, and yet...we were draining the SPR for some odd reason. Why's that?
By ImPostingOnHN 2025-10-245:32 Now we're not, and yet, we're selling pardons for bribes. Why's that?
By lovich 2025-10-248:27 Because the energy market has more inputs than oil and that was a lever used to keep gas prices specifically stable.
We already stopped that a while ago so I don’t know why you’re referencing it other than the blatant partisanship you’re showing across the thread.
What level of evidence would you need to accept that this admin had done something negative?
Easy: what passes for diplomacy has been so awful that nobody wants to buy weapons from us anymore, nor do they value our treaty commitments. Oh the irony of proposing to meet in Budapest.
By kapone 2025-10-2322:41 Buy weapons from us?? That’s your barometer?
And they are not “our” treaty commitments. Treaties by definition involve more than one party.
But out of curiosity, what commitments are talking here? Talking in abstracts is meaningless.
By Hikikomori 2025-10-2321:581 reply >Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
They're usually not that bad for his billionaire grifter buddies, I'll give you that.
By zippothrowaway 2025-10-2323:181 reply I would say normalizing armed law enforcement wearing masks and refusing to provide any ID is utterly bad for the COUNTRY. Or maybe it's only bad for the people who get assaulted or shot by them and have no way of recourse. Let's hope that's not you, eh?
By kapone 2025-10-2323:31 [flagged]
By ModernMech 2025-10-2323:251 reply Personally directing the Attorney General to prosecute his political enemies and then firing prosecutors until he finds one who will agree to do it. Basically what Nixon was to be impeached for now happening on a weekly basis.
Can you name some examples? I have a reply in my head, but I wanna make sure I’m precise.
By ModernMech 2025-10-241:151 reply He posted on Truth Social explicitly directing Pam Bondi to prosecute Bolton, James, and Comey. Then the DOJ charged them with crimes.
In the James case, Kristin Bird and Elizabeth Yusi (prosecutors in EDVA) were both fired for refusing to bring charges, only to be replaced by Trump's personal attorney Lindsey Halligan (who is not even a prosecutor).
In the Comey case, again they fired Erik Siebert, also from EDVA, because he wouldn't prosecute. They put Trump's personal attorney on instead and she immediately gave the prosecution a greenlight against a tight statute of limitations deadline.
Just watch: today there was a report that prosecutors in Maryland are hesitant to bring charges against Adam Schiff. My guess is whoever is gumming up the works there will be fired and replaced by another Halligan.
Got it. It's gonna take me some time to reply to this, because I wanna get my facts right, and on mobile right now.
By ModernMech 2025-10-2914:08 So... it's been 5 days. Anything?
By bena 2025-10-2413:14 This is why it is pointless to reply to people like you.
You badger and badger and badger. You want examples, you want evidence. You want, you want, and you want. Never do you provide evidence. Never do you provide examples. And if you do provide something you claim to be an example, it's usually some vague declaration that really isn't true. But if someone pushes back, it's on them to "prove you wrong".
And the minute someone points out the actual facts of a situation in a way you are incapable of denying or shouting down, you run to your echo chambers to look for the talking points.
Why?
Why carry water for this administration? Their policies are going to be bad for you as well.
By Hikikomori 2025-10-247:39 Straight up nazi shit incoming.
ICE
Tariffs
You may not notice it yet, but he has ruined the reputation of your country. People consider it insane to travel there now for vacations. We are actively avoiding American garbage. We are migrating away from American clouds.
He is focussed on short term bullshit while what matters on the world stage is soft power. America was considered trustworthy, the defacto leader of the world.
Now you're just a bully, an impotent one at that. You are no longer taken seriously.
You will notice the effects eventually, possibly after Trump is already rotting in his grave.
By AdieuToLogic 2025-10-241:07 > What matters on any stage is … power. Pure, unadulterated power.
This is some straight-up nihilistic BS. Might does not make right, instead standing for what is right is what creates might.
> Soft power is for pansies.
Here are some quotes you may want to familiarize yourself with:
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/lack-of-empathy.html
Maybe one or more of those will resonate and provide perspective as to many of your recent posts in this thread.
Ha. That's funny. But no, it seems you have drank the kool-aid and are delusional.
But you're right about one thing: FAFO
By kapone 2025-10-240:39 Touché.
We shall see.
By thinkharderdev 2025-10-2321:131 reply Trump is definitely the most egregious by a very wide margin, but the pardon power has been abused by every President in my lifetime. It's a truly insane feature of our constitution that needs to be changed.
It doesn't really matter who is more egregious, but IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.
By dragonwriter 2025-10-2323:58 Well, no, you can clearly be more banana republic than that:
* Using the justice system to corruptly punish the opposition and prevent them from competing in elections,
* Using the security/military/law enforcement establishment to simply kill the opposition,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish, to coerce media into friendly, or at least out of critical, coverage,
* Using the regulatory bureaucracy, and/or the security/military/law enforcement establish to reward people providing personal material benefit to the leader, or to punish those not doing so,
* Using the pardon power to assure that crimes committed in the course of doing any of the preceding items are unprosecutable
Pardoning family members, by itself (provided that the standards applied are different than those that would be applied to non-family members), is certainly corrupt as a form of nepotism, but hardly the outer limit of banana republic behavior.
By ModernMech 2025-10-2321:591 reply > IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members is about as banana republic as it gets.
That is until you see what's currently happening, the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies, of which Biden and his family are considered to be primary antagonists (remember they labelled them the "Biden crime family" and chanted "lock them up"). That is the most banana republic as it gets, so how is preemptively defending against that behavior out of bounds?
By davidguetta 2025-10-249:361 reply > the President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies
They tried to put true in jail for 4 years, and kept saying he is a Nazi so people would try to shoot him. I don't think it's so different
By ModernMech 2025-10-2413:11 > They tried to put true in jail for 4 years
I had made an extended repones about that notion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45689915
But it suffices to say Biden did not direct any prosecutions at all.
> kept saying he is a Nazi so people would try to shoot him.
These are very different things, you'll need to make a better argument to conflate them. The actions Trump took to direct his DOJ to prosecute is political enemies is a direct action that violates the presumed and intended independence of the DOJ.
You equate those direct actions with something neither Biden nor any Congressional Democrat I know of actually did. Biden never called Trump a Nazi, and never tried to get him killed. In fact Biden increased protection on Trump after there was an attempt on his life.
Do you have any quote I'm unaware of? I do recall that the current Vice President JD Vance has called Trump a Nazi, so apparently that's not really such a concern.
Trump has been accurately labelled a "fascist" by elected Democrats. I don't think that's any different from Trump calling Democrats "communists". He's also called them "fascists" as well.
By malcolmgreaves 2025-10-2321:431 reply Because he knew that Trump was a criminal who’d illegally go after his own family purely out of spite.
By mothballed 2025-10-2321:531 reply The prosecution of Hunter for being a user of controlled substances while in possession or acquiring a weapon was pretty clear cut IMO and been used against many more than Hunter as an easy way to put away drug users for a long time. He likely was pardoned in part because Hunter had the resources to actually get that law overturned, signaled intent to do so, and the establishment can't compromise their precious drug laws being found unconstitutional.
By vkou 2025-10-2321:29 It absolutely is, and it's complete ass covering from an administration that utterly failed in its primary duty - putting Trump in prison.
Nice to see the people who fucked it up isolated from the consequences of his second term. (/s)
Trump is miles ahead of other administrations in abusing it but as far back as my political awareness reaches (the Clinton admin) there have been clear awful examples like Marc Rich[1]. I certainly have a political lean but there are some really indefensible pardons on each side.
By kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2025-10-2322:354 reply Did you miss all the Biden pardons, including unprecedented pardons for crimes they may commit?
By munk-a 2025-10-2322:36 No, I'm well aware of and disapprove of a number of them - this is still worse.
Are you equating Trump's pardons and commutations to Bidens? For review, Biden's were largely for non-violent drug offenders and preemptive pardons for people like Anthony Fauci and federal employees prosecuting Jan 6 defendants and the like. Save for his pardon of his son Hunter (who's own prosecution was littered with politics), Biden's were largely pedestrian.
Biden commuted many, many murderers and rapists -- not just "non-violent offenders". It was not pedestrian. Here are two: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-24/biden-co...
By amanaplanacanal 2025-10-242:051 reply Commuted from death to life in prison. Not pardoned. That's a whole different thing.
By Volundr 2025-10-241:13 Yes actually. As far as I'm aware even the President can't pardon crimes someone may commit in the future. Can you point out the ones where he did that?
By cosmicgadget 2025-10-241:07 Do you think he would have issued those if anyone else was succeeding him? Has Trump validated those concerns?
The only reason Trump hasn't challenged the constitutionality of the pre-emptive pardons is because he indends to do the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Sounds reasonable. This is ok for Trump to do because of Hunter Biden.
The Hunter Biden pardon was necessary because it was clear that despite his admission of guilt, he was not going to receive a fair punishment. The Republican party leadership was very open in expressing their intentions for him, and had _already_ circumvented the judicial system to give him cruel and unusual punishment.
By account42 2025-10-249:35 [flagged]
By collingreen 2025-10-2321:22 Would be nice if Trump only pardoned people who the incoming administration explicitly said they would target, after years of constant harassment and misinformation.
I think I would support those pardons even though I think Trump and his family and his cronies are acting the way really bad people act.
Taking the above scenario as license to sell pardons for person gain is such a stretch it looks like bad faith to me.
IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty good use of the pardon power.
The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.
By ahtihn 2025-10-2321:57 > The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case.
The solution is to fix that and make it retroactive. Remove the unjust law and release anyone who was convicted for violating it.
A pardon is just a bad, unfair bandaid fix.
By soraminazuki 2025-10-2322:281 reply Chelsea Manning. Prosecuting her and other whistleblowers instead of the officials they blew the whistle on was a mockery of justice. Though that wasn't the stated reason for the commutation, it was long overdue.
By AniseAbyss 2025-10-2322:41 [dead]
By FuriouslyAdrift 2025-10-2322:43 Obama commuted the sentences of 1,715 individuals and issued 212 pardons for non-violent fedral drug convictions.
By guywithahat 2025-10-2321:262 reply I mean there are lots of people arrested on effectively political charges, and it's good to be able to reflect on it years later and get them out of jail. I'm not convinced Changpeng Zhao's charges would have ever been brought against him if the Biden admin didn't go so hard against crypto, I'm happy to see him pardoned. Hopefully next Trump can get whistle blowers like John Kiriachou
By strangattractor 2025-10-2321:591 reply Doesn't necessarily have to be left up to the whims of one person though.
By guywithahat 2025-10-2415:03 Why not? A large portion of the punishment is just going through the court system. For a significant amount of time all you can do is stress about your next court date, you can't get work and burn through your savings. In his case he has already paid tens of millions in his money and the company paid billions. He spent four months in jail, and has spent years out of work.
By the time a pardon comes the persons life is usually already in deep distress, and whatever they were working on is likely already over. I don't see why it's such a tragedy to let some people get pardoned who maybe don't deserve it.
By stevage 2025-10-2322:02 Trump essentially defines all convictions that he doesn't agree with as political charges though.
That might be true, but CZ is a good candidate for a pardon. Did you know before Gensler went after him at the SEC he asked CZ for a job and was rejected?
What does that have to do with anything? Executive branch leaders can have both individual lives and public responsibilities.
If anything, it's better he was rejected for the job, as getting it would have provided an incentive to bury the prosecution.
By vessenes 2025-10-2820:23 To be rejected for a job and then pursue a criminal complaint against the person who rejected you has a lot to do with things like rule of law and corruption.
By mlrtime 2025-10-2412:03 I agree it is a good pardon, the past administration + SEC were not laying a foundation of up to date commodity/currency/securities laws, they were enforcing by prosecution. This is not a way to run a country.
By goodluckchuck 2025-10-240:44 No, government is the greatest threat to liberty. If the guy in charge of prosecuting feels the need to not just not prosecute, but actively protect someone from the state, then we really really don’t want (who? his unelected subordinates?) prosecuting people. It’s supposed to be an “err on the side of” failing to prosecute criminals. The whole point is yes… sometimes we want criminals to get away with crime, because it’s better than the alternatives.
What is the alternative? One of them is the public vote for a leader, the state destroys that leader (or his allies, etc) and then what? Do we think the public just says “Oh, well, I guess we didn’t pick the right guy?”
