January 23, 2025

Jan 24, 2025

Last night, in an interview with host Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, President Donald Trump tried to explain away his blanket pardons for the January 6 rioters, calling the instances of violence against police officers “very minor incidents.”

In fact, as Brett Samuels of The Hill reported, about 600 of the rioters were accused of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers, and ten were convicted of sedition.

Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News explained that rioters wounded more than 140 officers with “firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, a metal whip, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a massive ‘Trump’ billboard, ‘Trump’ flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches and even an explosive device.”

Three federal judges have weighed in on the pardons after Trump’s appointees in the Department of Justice ordered them to dismiss pending cases against current January 6 defendants, an order that, as David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo noted, “flies in the face of decades of DOJ independence.”

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly summed up the judges’ outrage when she wrote: “Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”

The leaders of two key paramilitary gangs who participated in the January 6 violence, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, are not helping Trump to put the pardons behind him. Now out of prison rather than serving his 22-year sentence, Tarrio called in to conspiracy-theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars within hours of his release to claim that he still commands the gang and that he plans retribution for those who put him behind bars. Tess Owen of WIRED reported that the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which monitors online activity, saw a surge among Proud Boys’ channels after the pardons, as members discussed ways to advance Trump’s agenda.

Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison, also wants revenge. On Wednesday, he was at the U.S. Capitol, where Michael Kunzelman and Lisa Mascaro of the Associated Press reported he met with at least one lawmaker and chatted with others.

Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian reported tonight that those January 6 rioters Trump pardoned are already talking about running for office. Mahtesian notes that in primaries where candidates need to prove they are truly MAGA, those who served time in prison for Trump will have sterling credentials.

Kunzelman and Mascaro also noted that, in an apparent attempt to divert attention from the pardons back to Trump’s contention that the bipartisan January 6 committee had been biased against him, on the same day that Rhodes was at the Capitol, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) revived a special committee to retrace the steps of the House committee that investigated the riot.

But that didn’t go terribly well, as Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post today reported an exclusive story revealing that last June an aide to Johnson advised the committee not to subpoena White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson out of concern that if it did, the sexually explicit texts Republican lawmakers had sent her might come to light. According to Alemany, “multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of ‘sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors’ with Hutchinson.” Instead, the committee accused former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) of talking to Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s lawyer present. Cheney called the report “defamatory” and a “malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”

Apparently undaunted, Trump today issued pardons for nearly two dozen antiabortion activists convicted of violating the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, which the civil rights division of the Department of Justice explains “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.” Trump, who is due to speak tomorrow by video with the annual antiabortion March for Life, said it was a “great honor” to pardon the protesters.

Still, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico reported that one antiabortion activist, who wanted to remain anonymous because she fears retaliation from the administration, wondered why Trump hadn’t pardoned the antiabortion activists on Monday, as he did the January 6 rioters. “These pardons are fully in line with Trump’s agenda to oppose the weaponization of the government,” she told Ollstein. “So why he couldn’t have pardoned them along with the 1,500 on Day 1 is beyond me.”

It seems that for Trump and his extremist supporters, the federal government—which reflects the will of the majority—has been “weaponized” against a political minority that seeks to control the country.

To gain that control, Trump has assured his followers that the country is literally under attack and that the United States, which has the strongest military and the strongest economy in the world, is losing. On Monday, Trump—who persuaded congressional Republicans to kill a strong bipartisan measure to tighten the border and fund immigration courts so asylum-seekers could have quick hearings—declared that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States, although border crossings are lower now than they were at the end of his first administration. The order asked the heads of the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security to consider whether it was necessary to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy the military to suppress domestic insurrection.

Yesterday, acting secretary of defense Robert Salesses told reporters that the Department of Defense has ordered 1,500 active-duty military personnel along with air support and intelligence assets to the southern border of the United States, joining 2,500 active-duty military personnel already there, and that the military will provide flights for deportations led by the Department of Homeland Security. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump is directing “the Department of Defense to make homeland security a core mission of the agency.”

Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart of Reuters report that there have been informal discussions in the department about sending as many as 10,000 troops to the border, a discussion that raises the question of whether Mexico would feel obliged to respond in kind. And, according to Meg Kelly, Alex Horton, and Missy Ryan of the Washington Post, the Trump administration is trying to get rid of an office in the Pentagon that works to protect civilians in battlefield operations. The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence is housed within the Department of the Army and works to help the military limit unintended civilian deaths.

And yet the idea of using a strong military to defend America apparently does not extend to its leadership. Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported that Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Fox News Channel weekend host Pete Hegseth, who has a history of financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse, and allegations of sexual assault, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he paid a woman $50,000 as part of a confidentiality agreement to maintain her silence after she accused him of sexual assault.

Today, both Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said they could not support Hegseth’s nomination. They were the only two Republicans who refused to vote in favor of his nomination advancing to the full Senate today.

But they are not the only ones standing against Trump’s attempt to overturn traditional American values.

Today, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s executive order that sought to end the birthright citizenship established in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment. Twenty-two states and two cities, as well as other parties, have sued over the executive order. Coughenour was responding to a suit brought by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington.

Coughenour, who was appointed to the bench by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, told Trump’s Department of Justice attorneys, “I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented is as clear as it is here. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order." When the lawyers told him they maintained the order was constitutional, Coughenour was aghast. "I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?"

Coughenour blocked the order until February 6, when he will hold a hearing to consider a preliminary injunction.

And after Trump announced he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), billionaire former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday announced that his philanthropic foundation will cover the financial contribution the U.S. will not. According to Zack Budryk of The Hill, it will also provide the agreement’s reporting requirements for emissions associated with climate change.

“[P]hilanthropy’s role in driving local, state, and private sector action is more crucial than ever—and we’re committed to leading the way,” Bloomberg said.

Finally, tonight, firefighters have begun to control the fires in Southern California. As of this evening, the Hughes fire is 36% contained, the Laguna fire is no longer expanding, the Palisades fire is 75% contained, and the Eaton fire is 95% contained. New fires have broken out, but rain is forecast for the weekend.

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Notes:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5101875-donald-trump-sean-hannity-interview/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-set-pardon-defendants-stormed-capitol-jan-6-2021-rcna187735

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25501164/ckk.pdf

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/jan-6-judges-let-out-a-collective-primal-scream-over-trump-pardons

https://www.wired.com/story/proud-boys-comeback-revenge/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/politics/enrique-tarrio-stewart-rhodes.html

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-pardons-trump-2e2275ff164550de29c34de8d12886ab

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/23/cassidy-hutchinson-lawmakers-texts/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/23/trump-pardons-abortion-clinic-protesters-00200292

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4037935/dod-orders-1500-troops-additional-assets-to-southern-border/