Politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The picture of who will be in charge of executing President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration and border policies has come into sharper focus after he announced his picks to head Customs and Border Protection and also the agency tasked with deporting immigrants in the country illegally.

Trump said late Thursday he was tapping Rodney Scott, a former Border Patrol chief who’s been a vocal supporter of tougher enforcement measures, for CBP commissioner.

As acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump said he had chosen Caleb Vitello, a career ICE official with more than 23 years in the agency.

They will work with an immigration leadership team that includes South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security; former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Tom Homan as border czar; and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff.

Here’s a closer look at the picks:

Rodney Scott

Customs and Border Protection, with its roughly 60,000 employees, falls under the Department of Homeland Security. It includes the Border Patrol, which Scott led during Trump’s first term, and is essentially responsible for protecting the country’s borders while facilitating trade and travel.

Scott comes to the job firmly from the Border Patrol side of the house. He became an agent in 1992 and spent much of his career in San Diego. When he joined the agency, San Diego was by far the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Traffic plummeted after the government dramatically increased enforcement there, but critics note the effort pushed people to remote parts of California and Arizona.

San Diego was also where wall construction began in the 1990s, which shaped Scott’s belief that barriers work. He was named San Diego sector chief in 2017.

When he was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020, he enthusiastically embraced Trump’s policies.

“He’s well known. He does know these issues and obviously is trusted by the administration,” said Gil Kerlikowske, the CBP commissioner under the Obama administration.

Kerlikowske took issue with some of Scott’s past actions, including his refusal to fall in line with a Biden administration directive to stop using terms like “illegal alien” in favor of descriptions like “migrant,” and his decision as San Diego sector chief to fire tear gas into Mexico to disperse protesters.

At the time Scott defended the agents’ decisions, saying they were being assaulted by “a hail of rocks.”

While Trump’s focus may be on illegal immigration and security along the U.S.-Mexico border, Kerlikowske also stressed the other parts of CBP’s mission.

The agency is responsible for securing trade and international travel at airports, ports and land crossings around the country. Whoever runs the agency has to make sure that billions of dollars worth of trade and millions of passengers move swiftly and safely into and out of the country.

And if Trump makes good on promises to ratchet up tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, CBP will play an integral role in enforcing them.

“There’s a huge amount of other responsibility on trade, on tourism, on cyber that take a significant amount of time and have a huge impact on the economy if it’s not done right,” Kerlikowske said.

After being forced out under the Biden administration, Scott has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s immigration agenda. He has appeared frequently on Fox News and testified in Congress. He’s also a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, he advocated for a return to Trump-era immigration policies and more pressure on Mexico to enforce immigration on its side of the border.

Caleb Vitello

Vitello will take over as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for arresting and deporting migrants in the U.S. illegally. A career ICE official, he most recently was the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs.

He’s also served on the National Security Council and held positions at ICE directly related to the agency’s enforcement operations. That will be key as the agency attempts to ramp up efforts to find and remove people in the country illegally.

ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader in years.

“I know Caleb Vitello very well. He’s a consummate professional, cares about the mission,” said Jason Houser, a former chief of staff at ICE under the Biden administration. “He’s probably one of the smartest guys” on enforcement and removal operations, Houser said.

Houser also noted the challenges that come with the job.

There are a limited number of enforcement and removal officers — the people who actually track down migrants and remove them from the country. And there’s more than a million people with final orders of removal, meaning they’ve gone through the immigration process and been found to have no right to stay in America. But the problem is that many of them come from countries to which it’s very difficult to deport people, such as Venezuela or Cuba, Houser said.

Houser said he anticipates that another arm of ICE, called Homeland Security Investigations, will be pulled in more to help with efforts to remove migrants through things like worksite enforcement. Currently HSI investigates anything with a connection to the border, which can mean human trafficking and human smuggling, counterterrorism or cybercrime, he said.

Others

Trump announced Anthony W. Salisbury as the deputy homeland security adviser. Salisbury is currently the special agent in charge of the HSI office in Miami. He has held key positions in Mexico City and overseeing money-laundering investigations.

Separately, Trump announced he was sending the former head of the National Border Patrol Council, Brandon Judd, to Chile as ambassador. The council represents Border Patrol agents.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — While the election was over a month ago, voters in some parts of the country are discovering that having their say at the ballot box is not necessarily the final word.

Lawmakers in several states have already initiated or indicated plans to alter or nullify certain results. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are moving to undercut the authority of the incoming Democratic governor, Republicans in Missouri are taking initial steps to reverse voter-approved abortion protections, and Democrats in Massachusetts are watering down an attempt by voters to hold the Legislature more accountable.

The actions following the Nov. 5 election continue a pattern that has accelerated in recent years and has been characterized by critics as undemocratic.

“I think certainly when you’re a voter and you’re voting on the issue, you’re not thinking about whether someone’s then going to overturn or just ignore the things that you voted on,” said Anne Whitesell, an assistant professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio.

The strategies range from outright reversals to “slow walking” the implementation of voter-approved ballot initiatives, such as lawmakers refusing to provide funding. Whitesell said that was a prevalent strategy for some Republican governors and lawmakers after voters in their states approved expanding Medicaid coverage following the passage of the Affordable Care Act. The matter ultimately had to be settled in the courts, extending the lag time between vote and implementation.

“When you’re a voter, that’s not what you’re thinking is going to happen,” Whitesell said.

North Carolina provides one of the most egregious examples of a legislature moving to counter the will of the voters.

Voters there ended the Republican supermajority for the upcoming session and elected Democrats to nearly all statewide offices, including governor and attorney general. Despite that, Republican lawmakers called a lame-duck session to push through a series of wide-ranging changes before they lose their veto-proof majority next year.

Those include taking powers from several of the Democrats elected to statewide office. Under the abrupt changes, the new governor would lose the authority to appoint members to the state elections board. Current Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, but that action was overridden by the Republicans in the state Senate. The House vote is expected next week.

The Republican change would put control of the state election board in the hands of the state auditor, the only statewide office to be won by a Republican last month. The legislation also weakens the authority of the governor to fill vacancies on the state court of appeals and the state supreme court, while prohibiting the attorney general from taking legal positions contrary to the legislature’s.

The Rev. Rob Stephens, an organizer with Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign, was among those who protested the moves at the state Capitol. He said North Carolinians had “voted to end single party rule” and select the state officials to lead the incoming government, only to have that threatened by Republican lawmakers in a process he called “a betrayal of democracy.”

Patrick Williamson, general counsel with the Fair Elections Center, an election reform group based in Washington, D.C., said more than 5.7 million North Carolina voters elected whom they wanted and did so with the understanding of what authorities those officials would have.

“This runs entirely contrary to what voters expected when they were casting their ballots in November,” he said.

He also said the actions run counter to voters’ actions in 2018, when they rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that sought to strip part of Cooper’s authorities surrounding the elections board.

In Missouri, voters approved a constitutional amendment last month enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution. Shortly after, a Republican state senator introduced a new attempt at a constitutional amendment that “prohibits the performance or inducement of an abortion upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency.”

Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly approved giving the state auditor the authority to audit the Legislature. But Democrats, who control both chambers, have said the vote violates the separation of powers.

After the election, lawmakers in the House approved a change to the process by which they would seek an independent financial audit of their practices. State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, a Democrat who championed the ballot question, said lawmakers are trying to take the teeth out of the measure and give themselves the ability to control the scope of any review.

The actions taken by some legislatures after the November election continue a recent pattern.

In Ohio, legislation is pending in the Republican-controlled Legislature that could significantly alter an initiative voters approved last year legalizing recreational marijuana use. Key changes include doubling the approved tax rate on adult-use cannabis and cutting in half the number of plants per household that Ohioans agreed could be grown at home.

Voters in several Texas cities in recent years — including Dallas last month — also have passed measures that decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. But the state’s Republican attorney general has taken them to court, arguing that cities can’t override Texas’ strict laws banning marijuana.

In Tennessee, the Republican-led Legislature has tussled for years with left-leaning Memphis and Nashville to override some of their local policies. Memphis voters in 2008 approved ranked-choice voting and rejected an attempt to repeal it a decade later. But in 2022, lawmakers banned ranked-choice voting statewide.

After Nashville voters approved a community oversight board for the city’s police force, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law in 2023 that gutted such bodies.

Earlier this year, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers had infringed on the constitutional rights of voters after they established a citizen-led redistricting commission to draw new congressional maps. Voters passed the initiative in 2018, but the GOP-controlled Legislature reduced the commission’s authority two years later and drew its own gerrymandered maps, touching off the legal fight.

In 2018, Democrats who control the District of Columbia council voted to repeal a voter-approved measure that would have raised the minimum wage for servers and other tipped workers.

Nowhere has legislative pushback garnered as much outside attention this year as in North Carolina, where some critics characterize the moves by Republican lawmakers as an audacious power grab.

John Fortier, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he does not know the specifics of the lame duck session in North Carolina, but said the GOP legislation sounds like part of a long-standing battle between the parties over who should wield certain powers.

“I agree, this does not always look pretty,” he said. “You think there’s some norms you should want to settle on, but I do think there’s been a shifting set of norms there.”

Christina Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the left-leaning Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said what is happening in North Carolina is why the center emphasizes that Election Day is not the end of the work.

Activists have to let voters know that attempts to ignore or overrule their actions at the ballot box are direct assaults on representative government, she said, yet many of these attempts often go unnoticed by voters.

To people who are struggling to pay for food or housing, “the concept of democracy feels very vague,” she said.

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Associated Press writers Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Jonathan Matisse in Nashville, Tennessee, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced a bid Friday to become the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, the latest example of generational shakeup that is beginning to ripple across the Democratic Party in the wake of their election losses this year.

The New York lawmaker, who at 35 would by far be the youngest to serve in the post, threw her hat in the ring in a letter to colleagues, saying this “is not a position I seek lightly.”

“The responsibility of leading Democrats on the House Oversight Committee during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House is a profound and consequential one,” she wrote. “Now, more than ever, we must focus on the Committee’s strong history of both holding administrations accountable and taking on the economic precarity and inequality that is challenging the American way of life.”

It’s just the latest example of a generational reckoning within the party as leadership and rank-and-file members seek a new approach to governing ahead of Trump’s return to the White House.

Earlier this week Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland took on senior New York Rep. Jerry Nadler to lead the House Judiciary Committee. Nadler, 77, abandoned his bid a day later. Other top committee posts are also being contested

The Oversight position, in particular, is prized because the committee is among the most high-profile in Congress, with sweeping jurisdiction over the government and subpoena power to conduct investigations. Republicans returning to the majority next year are pledging to open investigations into Democrats they believe are part of the “weaponization” of the federal government.

To win the job, however, Ocasio-Cortez will have to defeat Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who is vying for the top spot after serving on the Oversight Committee for the past 16 years. The 74-year-old told reporters this week that he feels comfortable about his chances.

“We must expose and dismantle bad faith Republican efforts to promote conspiracy theories, intimidate witnesses, and undermine democratic processes,” Connolly wrote in a letter to his colleagues, announcing his bid for the job.

House Democrats are expected to begin the selection for ranking members and committee assignments next week. The party has traditionally honored the seniority system, allowing veteran members to remain in top committee posts without limit.

But the Democrats’ adherence to the seniority system has started to crack. And it will certainly be put to the test in the race between Connolly, the seasoned investigator, and Ocasio-Cortez, a national star who often goes viral for her questioning of GOP witnesses.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden changed his mind about pardoning his son Hunter because “circumstances have changed,” the White House said on Friday.

Biden’s pardon of his son on Monday came after he had repeatedly promised he would allow the U.S. justice system to play out, and a day after President-elect Donald Trump nominated Kash Patel to lead the FBI.

“The fact is, when you think about how the president got to this decision, circumstances have changed. They have,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about the president’s timing.

“Republicans said they weren’t going to let up. … Recently announced Trump appointees for law enforcement have said on the campaign they were out for retribution, and I think we should believe their words.”

Patel is one of several Trump nominees who suggested Hunter Biden’s business activities deserved further scrutiny. The president’s son was scheduled to be sentenced this month for charges related to tax evasion and gun possession.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Heather Timmons; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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By Hannah Lang and Michelle Price

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s crypto policy is taking shape with the announcement of a White House crypto czar and a new securities watchdog, but questions remain over who will drive policy and whether too many cooks could slow down changes.

Trump on Thursday appeared to make good on his campaign pledge to be a “crypto president,” announcing he would make former top PayPal executive and crypto evangelist David Sacks “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.” A day earlier, Trump said he would nominate pro-crypto Washington attorney Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While crypto executives cheered the news, saying the pair would end the Biden administration’s crypto crackdown and promote innovation, some Washington analysts said the creation of a crypto czar, a new role, sowed ambiguity over who would drive crypto policy and flagged the potential for policy clashes.

“One big question is whether the policy will be driven by Sacks himself. A czar appointed by Trump is going to want to see changes fairly quickly, but the SEC has processes and you can’t just snap your fingers at the SEC and have new rules,” Ian Katz, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, said in an email to Reuters. “Personalities will be important,” he added.

A Silicon Valley venture capitalist and friend of Trump billionaire backer Elon Musk, Sacks was an early bitcoin investor. In a 2017 CNBC interview, he said cryptocurrencies were revolutionizing the internet, but he acknowledged there were also scammers in the sector. He does not appear to have any experience writing or leading policy, according to a Reuters review of his background.

Atkins, meanwhile, is a former SEC official and respected veteran of Washington policy circles who has said he supports crypto innovation as way to boost financial services competition, and has helped crypto companies in their dealings with regulators via his consultancy Patomak Global Partners.

“Atkins is kind of a known quantity,” said Lene Powell, senior legal analyst at financial consultancy Wolters Kluwer. Sacks is from “a different sphere.”

Both have called for regulators to be more accommodating of crypto companies, but neither appear to have taken a position on whether and under what circumstances crypto tokens should be considered securities, commodities or utilities – a core issue that will ultimately decide how the industry is regulated.

“I think we’ll see more constructive regulation. Obviously, that includes some clarification around what is (a) security or not,” said Chen Arad, co-founder of Solidus Labs, a crypto compliance company.

Atkins and Sacks did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, surged past the $100,000 milestone for the first time after Trump announced Atkins as his pick to lead the SEC, buoyed by hopes that the new administration would usher in softer crypto policies.

Under President Joe Biden, the SEC has sued dozens of crypto companies, alleging they broke securities laws, while bank regulators discouraged lenders from dabbling in crypto and Congress failed to pass legislation that would help promote mainstream crypto adoption.

The crypto industry is pushing for an ambitious raft of policies that would promote adoption of digital assets, including the creation of a crypto regulatory framework which would address when tokens can be classified as securities or commodities.

Trump said in a Thursday post on his Truth Social platform that Sacks would “guide” crypto policy and “work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has … clarity,” leaving it unclear whether Sacks would lead the incoming administration’s crypto policy.

It was also unclear whether Sacks will lead Trump’s crypto advisory council, which is also expected to play a key role in shaping crypto policy. Reuters previously reported the crypto czar was expected to lead that body and coordinate policy among the various regulatory agencies.

That coordination will be crucial, since a crypto legal framework would need extensive input from the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, whose new chair has yet to be announced, and may also require congressional approval, said lawyers.

Regulations on less contentious non-crypto issues such as proprietary bank trading and capital have been snarled up for years by inter-agency squabbles, they noted.

“It definitely would be a lot of cooks,” Powell said.

In an email on Friday, a Trump transition spokesperson reiterated the President-elect’s Thursday announcement in which he said Sacks would guide crypto policy, and did not answer Reuters questions seeking more details on how the role would work.

Some consumer protection advocates have expressed concern that the Trump administration’s crypto agenda might create gaps that would leave investors at risk, a fear the industry has largely dismissed.

“I don’t think there will be under-regulation,” said Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of asset manager SkyBridge, who briefly served in Trump’s first administration. “I don’t think it will create fraud, but I think it will help the United States maintain what it should be, which is our mantle of financial services leadership.”

(Reporting by Hannah Lang and Michelle Price; Additional reporting by Pritam Biswas, Lawrence Delevingne, Douglas Gillison, Chris Prentice, Carolina Mandl, Arsheeya Singh Bajwa and Jaiveer Shekhawat; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, a Republican and appointee of Donald Trump’s during his first term as president, has announced that he will run for U.S. Senate in the hopes of unseating current member Bill Cassidy, also a Republican, who is up for reelection in 2026.

In a news release Wednesday, Fleming said that U.S. Sen. Cassidy “has failed the people of Louisiana.” He lambasted the lawmaker for being one of seven Republicans in Senate who joined Democrats in voting to convict Trump in the then-President’s impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

“A number of Republicans walked away from President Trump in the last year of his first term,” Fleming, 73, said. “But those who turned their backs on him and America First were not committed to his fight to make America great.”

Cassidy, who is in his second term, is up for reelection in reliably red Louisiana, where residents overwhelmingly supported Trump during the past three presidential elections. While Cassidy, 67, won his last election handily, he did not face another well-known GOP candidate.

In addition, the election occurred before Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump — a move that resulted in the lawmaker being trashed on social media and censured by Louisiana Republicans.

While Cassidy has not yet formally announced that he will seek a third term, Joe Ramallo, a spokesperson for the senator, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the Republican has said “multiple times that he is running for reelection.” He added that when the time comes “to focus on the campaign” Cassidy “will see who is still in the race.”

In addition, Cassidy’s team touted his recent work — including meeting with Trump’s pick to lead the Veterans Affairs Department, securing tax relief for victims of natural disasters and “pushed (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer to hold a vote to repeal” the Windfall Elimination Penalty and Government Pension Offset. The policies broadly reduce payments to two groups of Social Security recipients: people who also receive a pension from a job that is not covered by Social Security and surviving spouses of Social Security recipients who receive a government pension of their own.

Fleming’s bid marks an early beginning for his campaign. It is an effort return to Capitol Hill, where he served in the U.S. House for four-terms beginning in 2009. Instead of seeking reelection, Fleming unsuccessfully ran for a U.S. Senate seat, losing to then-Treasurer John Kennedy.

After Congress, Fleming spent several years serving in the Trump administration, including as deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services and as assistant secretary of commerce for economic development. Last year, he was elected to the position of Louisiana Treasurer and assumed office in January 2024.

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By Bianca Flowers

(Reuters) – After President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, he needs to extend the same grace to thousands of people wronged by the U.S. judicial system, a growing chorus of civil rights activists and lawmakers say. 

Defense attorneys and civil rights groups are ramping up efforts to highlight compelling cases, working in conjunction with state legislators to draft letters to the White House and launching digital campaigns urging action to commute sentences or issue pardons for Americans they believe are wrongly convicted or serving excessive terms for nonviolent offenses. 

The White House is discussing the idea of broader pardons after Hunter, including those convicted of non-violent drug offenses and people civil rights groups have identified as unjustly incarcerated, sources say. A senior administration official said there will be a number of pardons for people who have served long sentences and are non-violent.

A broader pardon would not be unprecedented: a year ago, Biden pardoned thousands of people with federal marijuana charges.

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, told Reuters, “there are multiple conversations taking place” among a coalition of organizations to push Biden for clemency before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

The top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, on Tuesday called on Biden to pardon some “working-class Americans.” 

The Congressional Black Caucus has worked with the NAACP and is in favor of clemency, particularly because of the disparate incarceration rate of African Americans. 

“The Congressional Black Caucus has worked on legislation from the First Step Act to the executive orders dealing with federal offenses dealing with marijuana. These are areas that we believe should be high priority for the president to consider,” Democratic House member Steven Horsford told a press briefing.

Biden signed an unconditional pardon for his son on Sunday and said he believed Hunter had been selectively prosecuted and targeted unfairly by the president’s political opponents. Hunter was prosecuted for tax offenses and charges related to possession of a firearm.

Civil Rights attorney Jarrett Adams said Biden’s pardon is another example of “politics robbing the judicial process of justice.” 

Adams has been advocating for the release of two Black men, Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson. They were sentenced to life in prison in Virginia for the murder of a police officer, despite a jury finding them guilty only of selling crack but not of the killing. The sentence was based on a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows judges to consider actions for which a defendant was found not guilty when determining their sentence for other charges.

The two men initially pleaded guilty to murder, which Adams said was due to advice from their attorneys at the time, as they were facing the death penalty.

Adams, who is their attorney, is working with state legislators in Virginia to pressure the White House for the expedited release of the two men.

“I’m the last beacon of hope that they have– so I’m a part of their pain and struggle,” said Adams, who himself was wrongfully convicted at 17 years old and sentenced to 28 years in prison. “We’re begging that President Biden provides (these families) some relief they deserve.”

Black and Hispanic Americans disproportionately receive harsher sentences for minor and non-violent offenses compared to their white counterparts, studies have found. Experts say systemic biases in policing, prosecutorial discretion, and sentencing guidelines contribute to these disparities, perpetuating cycles of inequality. 

    Some Republicans believe that any announcement by Biden of blanket pardons would undermine the criminal justice system and could further tarnish his reputation after pardoning his son.

“There shouldn’t be a Roman emperor who goes, thumbs up, thumbs down,” said Republican consultant Jon Fleischman. “These people have been through the criminal justice system and they should abide by the outcome of that system.”

Democratic U.S. House member Ayanna Pressley is pushing for Biden to act soon, instead of waiting until the last days of his administration.

“Who knows what barriers or hurdles, procedurally that he could be met with,” if he waits until January, she said. 

Historically, presidents often wait until the end of their terms to issue clemency, leaving open the possibility that Biden could take significant action later. Brian Kalt, a law professor who specializes in presidential pardons, said the use of pardon power has diminished in modern history due to political polarization.

“Anything that he does is going to be opposed by half the country,” Kalt said. “But if he does something that offends his own side, that’s what really can make a difference to his legacy.”

(Bianca Flowers in Chicago, Gabriella Borter in Washington, Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Kat Stafford and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is weighing whether to issue sweeping pardons for officials and allies who the White House fears could be unjustly targeted by President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, a preemptive move that would be a novel and risky use of the president’s extraordinary constitutional power.

The deliberations so far are largely at the level of White House lawyers. But Biden himself has discussed the topic with some senior aides, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss the sensitive subject. No decisions have been made, the people said, and it is possible Biden opts to do nothing at all.

Pardons are historically afforded to those accused of specific crimes – and usually those who have already been convicted of an offense — but Biden’s team is considering issuing them for those who have not even been investigated, let alone charged. They fear that Trump and his allies, who have boasted of enemies lists and exacting “retribution,” could launch investigations that would be reputationally and financially costly for their targets even if they don’t result in prosecutions.

While the president’s pardon power is absolute, Biden’s use in this fashion would mark a significant expansion of how they are deployed, and some Biden aides fear it could lay the groundwork for an even more drastic usage by Trump. They also worry that issuing pardons would feed into claims by Trump and his allies that the individuals committed acts that necessitated immunity.

Recipients could include infectious-disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was instrumental in combating the coronavirus pandemic and who has become a pariah to conservatives angry about mask mandates and vaccines. Others include witnesses in Trump’s criminal or civil trials and Biden administration officials who have drawn the ire of the incoming president and his allies.

Some fearful former officials have reached out to the Biden White House preemptively seeking some sort of protection from the future Trump administration, one of the people said.

It follows Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter — not just for his convictions on federal gun and tax violations, but for any potential federal offense committed over an 11-year period, as the president feared that Trump allies would seek to prosecute his son for other offenses. That could serve as a model for other pardons Biden might issue to those who could find themselves in legal jeopardy under Trump.

Biden is not the first to consider such pardons — Trump aides considered them for him and his supporters involved in his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that culminated in a violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But he could be the first to issue them since Trump’s pardons never materialized before he left office nearly four years ago.

Gerald Ford granted a “full, free, and absolute pardon” in 1974 to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, over the Watergate scandal. He believed a potential trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States,” as written in the pardon proclamation.

Politico was first to report that Biden was studying the use of preemptive pardons.

On the campaign trail, Trump made no secret of his desire to seek revenge on those who prosecuted him or crossed him.

Trump has talked about “enemies from within” and circulated social media posts that call for the jailing of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. He also zeroed in on former Rep. Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who campaigned for Harris and helped investigate Jan. 6, and he promoted a social media post that suggested he wanted military tribunals for supposed treason.

Kash Patel, whom Trump has announced as his nominee to be director of the FBI, has listed dozens of former government officials he wanted to “come after.”

Richard Painter, a Trump critic who served as the top White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said he was reluctantly in support of having Biden issue sweeping pardons to people who could be targeted by Trump’s administration. He said he hoped that would “clean the slate” for the incoming president and encourage him to focus on governing, not on punishing his political allies.

“It’s not an ideal situation at all,” Painter said. “We have a whole lot of bad options confronting us at this point.”

While the Supreme Court this year ruled that the president enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for what could be considered official acts, his aides and allies enjoy no such shield. Some fear that Trump could use the promise of a blanket pardon to encourage his allies to take actions they might otherwise resist for fear of running afoul of the law.

“There could be blatant illegal conduct over the next four years, and he can go out and pardon his people before he leaves office,” Painter said. “But if he’s going to do that, he’s going to do that anyway regardless of what Biden does.”

More conventional pardons from Biden, such as those for sentencing disparities for people convicted of federal crimes, are expected before the end of the year, the White House said.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his support for Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth, citing the Ivy League-educated former Fox News host’s “charisma” and calling him “a WINNER” even as the nomination faces headwinds in Congress amid allegations of misconduct.

A 44-year-old Army National Guard veteran, Hegseth has vowed to continue fighting for the top Department of Defense job and spent the week meeting with U.S. senators as some key lawmakers have said they are not yet ready to support him.

“Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform. “He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”

“Thank you Mr. President. Like you, we will never back down,” Hegseth responded. 

Trump’s fellow Republicans will take control of the Senate next month ahead of his Jan. 20 inauguration. If Democrats remain united against Hegseth, he can only afford to lose support from three Republicans and still win Senate approval.

Trump has weighed alternative Republican nominees, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Joni Ernst and Representative Mike Waltz, who Trump has already picked for national security adviser, sources told Reuters earlier this week.

Hegseth served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has two Bronze Stars. But he has been criticized for lacking the management experience needed to lead 1.3 million active-duty service members and the nearly 1 million civilians who work for the nation’s military.

A California police report showed a woman filed a sexual assault complaint in 2017. Hegseth was never charged and has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer told CNN late Thursday that they may take legal action against the woman if Hegseth is not confirmed.

On Wednesday, Hegseth told Sirius XM that he has “never had a drinking problem” but would nonetheless not drink alcohol if confirmed as defense secretary. 

Ernst, herself a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor, on Thursday said there must be a very through vetting process and that senators wanted “that any allegations have been cleared.” Other Republicans offered tepid support.

Two other Trump nominees have already ended their bids for top jobs: former Representative Matt Gaetz for U.S. attorney general and Florida sheriff Chad Chronister for head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Steve Holland; editing by Andy Sullivan and Jonathan Oatis)

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Elon Musk was the sole funder of a super PAC formed less than a month before the election that focused on advertising intended to convince voters that Donald Trump ‘s stance on abortion was akin to that of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A group titled RBG PAC, formed in mid-October, received a single contribution of $20.5 million from an entity entitled “Elon Musk Revocable Trust” a week later, according to federal campaign finance reports filed this week. Because of the short timeline between the donation and Thursday’s reporting deadline, Musk’s affiliation with the group — which he did not talk about publicly — wasn’t revealed until the filings became public.

In the closing weeks before the Nov. 5 election, the RBG PAC group ran a TV ad noting Trump’s statements that he would not, as president, sign a national abortion ban, with a narrator saying he “does support reasonable exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.”

Ginsburg believed that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion, though she suggested in 2012 that the landmark Roe v. Wade decision “moved too far too fast,” potentially changing how the debate over abortion rights played out over the ensuing decades.

Trump nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in 2022. That allowed many conservative-led states to ban or restrict access to abortion.

According to a report filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, the Musk entity spent nearly all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages.

That group’s funding represents a small fraction of the more than $200 million Musk spent in the 2024 election cycle, most of it through his super PAC intended to elect Trump, a signal of the influence wealthy people are angling to wield in U.S. politics and Trump’s incoming administration.

The world’s richest man, Musk poured millions into a get-out-the-vote effort to help the former president return to the White House. He is known politically for having transformed Twitter into X, a platform embraced by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” enthusiasts.

Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, ran ads that warned if people sat out the election, “Kamala and the crazies will win.” The PAC launched a $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that landed the group in court before a judge said it was allowed to continue.

Thursday’s filing came as Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were on Capitol Hill for closed-door meetings with lawmakers to discuss Trump’s DOGE initiative to dismantle parts of the federal government.

Trump tapped the two business titans to head his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations — as part of his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House.

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Meg Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

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