President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday declined to rule out using the U.S. military to acquire Greenland or the Panama Canal, ideas he has repeatedly floated since winning the election. “It might be that you’ll have to do something,” Trump said during an hourlong press conference at Mar-a-Lago when asked about whether he would vow to not use the military. “I can’t assure you—you’re talking about Panama and Greenland—no, I can’t assure you on either of those two. But I can say this: We need them for economic security.” He threatened to hit Denmark with tariffs “at a very high level” if the country refuses to give over Greenland to the U.S., and questioned whether Denmark has any legal right over the Arctic island. “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security,” Trump said. Officials in Denmark and Greenland have said that the island is not for sale; Panama’s president has said that the Panama Canal is also not for sale. Trump has suggested that he might seek to regain control of the waterway, which was handed over to Panama in 1999 under a treaty brokered by then-President Jimmy Carter, who passed away Dec. 29. Trump has long criticized the agreement, claiming that Panama has “overcharged” the U.S. for access to the canal and that the country’s control of such a critical global chokepoint is harmful to American interests. Trump has offered few details on his apparent goals for territorial expansion, but his comments on Tuesday presented the clearest picture yet of how he envisions reshaping the U.S. geopolitical landscape. Trump also quipped that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state, but vowed not to use military force—only economic force—to put pressure on the country. “That would really be something,” Trump said. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security.” Trump also vowed to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America—“a beautiful name,” he said—and promised to impose significant tariffs on Mexico and Canada. The press conference, which took place one day after Congress formally certified his victory, marked Trump’s second since he won the Nov. 5 election. He began his remarks by announcing a multibillion-dollar plan to build data centers across the U.S. bankrolled by investors from Dubai, an effort he called a “great thing” for American growth in artificial intelligence and technology. And with less than two weeks until Trump takes office for his second term, he made a final plea for Hamas to release the hostages kidnapped after the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. Trump warned that “all hell will break out” if the roughly 100 hostages are not released before his inauguration on Jan. 20. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said at the press conference that he believes they are “on the verge” of securing the hostages’ release. But the mood shifted as Trump pivoted to familiar territory: complaining about his political rivals, particularly President Joe Biden, and attacking the legal challenges he faces from various investigations. His remarks showcased a President-elect determined to erase what he sees as obstacles to his agenda before he steps into the Oval Office. “We are inheriting a difficult situation from the outgoing administration, and they're trying everything they can to make it more difficult,” Trump said. He criticized Biden’s final weeks in office, particularly an executive action to halt oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters. “I'm going to put it back on day one,” Trump pledged. Trump’s remarks came as he’s due to be sentenced in the New York hush-money trial on Friday after he was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in May, and as he’s fighting to block the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on findings into separate criminal cases. During the press conference, Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who handled Trump’s classified documents case, temporarily barred Smith from releasing his final report on the investigation to the public. Trump attacked Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the New York case, calling him “crooked.” (Merchan has signaled that Trump will not receive jail time at the sentencing on Friday.) And Trump railed against Smith, calling him a “deranged individual.” Smith dismissed his two federal cases against Trump after he won the election. Trump also confirmed that he is considering pardons for many of the people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, including some individuals charged with violent offenses. “People that were doing some bad things weren’t prosecuted, and people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now. So, we’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons, yes,” Trump said. His promise to pardon riot defendants has sparked controversy, with critics arguing that it would embolden extremist elements and undermine the legal process.

The fate of TikTok in the United States will soon be in the hands of the Supreme Court, as the Justices hear oral arguments Friday over a law that could shut down the popular social media platform. At issue is the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress and signed into federal law in April 2024 that could force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the app to a U.S. company or face an outright ban in the country. The law sets a Jan. 19 deadline for TikTok’s sale, citing national security concerns about the app's foreign ownership and potential influence over American users. With over 170 million users in the U.S., TikTok has become a cultural juggernaut, influencing everything from political discourse to entertainment trends. But the government argues that the app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, poses a national security risk, particularly over the potential for Chinese influence on the platform’s algorithms and access to sensitive data. The Supreme Court agreed to expedite the case, though it’s unclear how soon a decision might come. Legal experts say the case is complicated because it pits the government’s national security concerns against the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use TikTok to express themselves, share information, and engage in political discourse. “If the Court upholds the law, it will almost certainly do so on relatively narrow grounds,” says Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. “It might not tell us a lot about social media regulation generally.” The Biden Administration, defending the law, argues that the government has the constitutional authority to regulate foreign-owned entities that may pose a threat to national security. The Administration asserts that TikTok’s Chinese ownership provides a potential gateway for the Chinese government to access vast amounts of data on American citizens, possibly leveraging the platform for covert influence operations. In its Supreme Court brief, the Justice Department contends that the law does not restrict speech but addresses the specific issue of foreign control over a vital communication platform. By contrast, TikTok’s legal team and a coalition of app users argue that the law violates the First Amendment, which protects free speech. They assert that TikTok’s algorithms and editorial choices are inherently expressive, shaping the content that millions of Americans consume every day. TikTok, in its brief, emphasized that the government hasn’t furnished concrete evidence that ByteDance has manipulated content or censored users at the direction of the Chinese government. The company argues that simply requiring disclosure of foreign ownership would be a far less restrictive way of addressing national security concerns, without resorting to a full ban. The case presents novel questions about the intersection of national security, foreign influence, and free speech in the digital age. “Rarely, if ever, has the Court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” a brief filed on behalf of TikTok creators reads. The legal battle over TikTok has attracted unusual attention due to its political and cultural significance. Congress passed the law that would force a sale in April with bipartisan support as lawmakers from both parties have been uneasy over the app’s ties to China. But TikTok has fought the law at every turn, arguing that the U.S. government is overstepping its bounds by attempting to regulate foreign ownership of a private company. In December, a federal appeals court upheld the law, ruling that the government has a national security interest in regulating TikTok in the U.S. The case also finds itself intertwined with the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office just one day after the law is set to go into effect. Trump, who has offered inconsistent views on TikTok in the past, has recently expressed an interest in saving the platform. In late December, Trump filed an unusual amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to delay its decision until after his inauguration, suggesting he could broker a resolution between TikTok and Congress once in office. The brief, submitted by John Sauer, the lawyer Trump has nominated for solicitor general, refers to Trump as “one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.” “This unfortunate timing,” his brief said, “interferes with President Trump’s ability to manage the United States’ foreign policy and to pursue a resolution to both protect national security and save a social-media platform that provides a popular vehicle for 170 million Americans to exercise their core First Amendment rights.” Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago last month. Hours before that meeting, Trump said he has a “warm spot in my heart for TikTok” because he made gains with young voters in the presidential election. “And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it.” While Trump’s brief has garnered attention, the Court’s focus will likely remain on the core constitutional issues at stake, says Rozenshtein. “Supreme Court Justices throughout history do not want to antagonize the President unnecessarily,” he says, “but at the same time, what Trump is asking for is lawless…There's no basis in law for the court to delay a duly enacted law for some indeterminate amount of time so as to give the President the ability to do something unspecified.” While it’s difficult to predict how the Court will rule, its involvement signals that the Justices may have reservations about the law’s impact on free speech. Last year, the Court signaled social media platforms have the same First Amendment rights as newspapers and other publishers, and TikTok’s defenders argue that the app’s role in free speech is similar to traditional media outlets.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. No one would credibly mistake the dignitaries on the north side of the National Cathedral as diehard fans of the man being honored Thursday for one last time in Washington, former President Jimmy Carter. In fact, until recently Carter may have been the most unwelcome member of the exclusive fraternity on the planet known as The Presidents Club. Yet, as the world gave Carter one final salutation in a city he never fully mastered, those five successors all carried with them a piece of a presidency he remade. Bill Clinton’s ascent as a pragmatic Southern Governor was paved thanks to the former Georgia practicalist. George W. Bush’s folksiness came to be a selling point rather than a detriment thanks to Carter’s time as a peanut farmer—never much lingering on his pedigree as a Naval Academic-trained nuclear engineer any more than the Yale- and Harvard-degreed Texan hung his credentials. Barack Obama’s ice-cold clinician certainly found a compatriot in his 1970s predecessor in an era of global strife. And Joe Biden’s sanctimony and moralizing seem less jarring when Americans recall that Carter until recently continued to teach a Sunday school class in his home church in Plains, Ga. Then there is Donald Trump, a similarly unexpected gate-crasher who does not fit the mold of Washington insiders yet is back in Washington for Carter’s send-off and will be starting his second term as President in 11 days. In a way, Trump is the logical conclusion of the disruption of the institution of the presidency that Carter began nearly half a century ago. Just as Carter came to Washington with his own ideas about the presidency and an open contempt for its norms, Trump, too, has left his mark on the most American of power structures, even if that mark could not be more different from Carter’s. In giving Carter one last salute, the former Presidents rallied in the most unlikely of showings: national unity, the likes of which emerge only when one of their own dies or is about to join their rarified ranks. In fact, the living former Presidents and their spouses all crowded into the front pews of the cavernous cathedral with a quiet dignity that is remarkable for just how rare such showings are. The last such confab was in 2018 for the death of President George H.W. Bush. (Michelle Obama, the lone missing spouse, had a scheduling conflict this week that kept her in Hawaii, an aide said. There is no word if she plans to attend the Jan. 20 inauguration of Trump.) The show of tradition was but one of the hellish contradictions embedded in Carter’s coda—exactly as he scripted with his signature mischievous smirk. Carter, perhaps the most decent man to ever occupy the Oval Office, was long written off as a country bumpkin, one who perhaps unsurprisingly left office as a one-term anomaly. Yet he is now celebrated as an unrivaled defender of democracy, a globe-trotting (if occasionally freelancing) diplomat. It was, as Jonathan Alter summarized in his TIME cover story commemorating Carter’s passing, as if the former President used the White House as the most inelegant stepping stone to his more powerful role as a global conscience for a half-century of consequence, including Thursday—his last hurrah in D.C. Carter, who died Dec. 29 at age 100, drew the standard slate of political insiders and global leaders on Thursday. The soft-glow tributes have been a steady stream, readied for years and updated periodically. The script for this week has been baked in a binder longer than many White House aides idling by the many motorcades have been alive. The day lacked the urgency of mourning that many events in that space carry, in no small measure because Carter had been preparing the nation for it for decades. (Former President Gerald Ford and former Vice President Walter Mondale were among the eulogists whose tributes were read by their surviving sons.) Still, the enormity of the day is unavoidable, no matter how predictable it arrives. The grand canyon of Washington’s National Cathedral is seldom an easy venue for any speaker. On big days, the cameras are aimed at the raised platform. The coffin seems far larger than any should be. Emotions are already amped beyond what an otherwise nerve-dulling day should expect. And a who’s-who of dignitaries stacked in the pews like a trick question on any diplomatic quiz as to who gets to sit closest to the front row. Just witness how Obama got loaded into the row next to Trump, while Mike and Karen Pence sat in the seats behind them, and an awkward Kamala Harris parked in isolation right ahead of all. So as Washington—and the world—bade farewell to the 39th President of the United States in that mountain of Indiana limestone, the day took on the air of inevitability. Biden, who fancies himself a masterful eulogist, did his bit even as it was impossible to set aside the open question about which of the marquee insiders would be the next to get a global send-off in the same venue. "Today, many think he was from a bygone era," Biden said. "But in reality, he saw well into the future." To be sure, the day was about as off-tone as could be for Carter, who puttered around the White House in a cardigan and preferred paper plates to china. But Carter understood the day of mourning was not solely about him, but rather the country and the office he never stopped promoting. Carter, who as President initially banned the playing of “Hail to the Chief” because it smacked of elitism, allowed one final nod to the institution: As his casket left the cathedral, military bands let forth one last flourish of that personal anthem of Presidents. As much as Carter wanted to humanize the office, he could bend it only so far. His successors were each a byproduct of his desire to move the office closer to the people, and the smart ones understood their place in history was set in motion in part by the man they were honoring.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Since Election Day, Democrats have rightly been in something of a funk. They sauntered into November expecting Kamala Harris would hold the White House for the party, the House might tip their way, and they even dared to dream about keeping a majority in the Senate. Then, votes were counted. Americans decided to send Donald Trump back to Washington for another four years. The House stayed red by the smallest of margins. And Republicans picked up a majority in the Senate, along with the gavels to run the day-to-day operations of that chamber and to staff the incoming Administration’s Cabinet. Democrats’ billion-dollar cash spigot turned out to be insufficient given the moment and no one—no party elder, no vanguard up-and-comer, no donor with any devil-may-care confidence—could say how exactly the Democrats could burn off the fog that left them limping without a clear read of the landscape. Next week, Democrats will get their first real, meaningful chance to chart a new way forward. The Senate is set to hold its first hearings on Trump’s picks for top jobs in his Administration-in-Waiting. Already, there are signs that Democrats will use those confirmation hearings to rough up some of the nominees on their qualifications and Trump’s plans alike. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, gave the first tangible signal of a strategic opposition in a series of questions she sent this week to Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who is Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, and whose confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled for Tuesday. Democrats say Warren’s fact-based interrogation is a viable model for their approach to nominees like Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominees to be Director of National Intelligence and the nation’s top health official, respectively. While Democrats don’t expect to derail the incoming Cabinet en masse, they do have reasonable expectations that they could ding a few sufficiently enough that Trump rethinks if they’re worth defending. (That approach already cost Matt Gaetz his shot at becoming Attorney General as questions about his relationships with drugs, alcohol, and teenagers piled up.) Trump had initially hoped that his Cabinet would be ready for his first day in office, a big splash that would show he’s hitting the ground running. But as he prepared for Wednesday’s meeting with his Senate allies down at his Florida club, his team had the unfortunate duty of telling him that his raft of picks was not going to be in place when the clock struck noon on Jan. 20. Trump was none too pleased, but Senate GOP staffers were ready with their own complaints: Trump dithered on submitting his nominees to the traditional FBI background checks for almost a month and most of his picks have not turned in all their paperwork. Most Republicans leading the committees that are considering the nominations are not eager to have hearings for nominees who have submitted only partial responses and just-trust-me assurances. Some of Trump’s loyalists in the Senate suggested during a private luncheon this week that maybe it was worth moving forward on nominees even before their paperwork had arrived. That could speed up the process for the likes of Gabbard, a former Democratic House member, and Pam Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General looking to take on the role at the national level. Similarly, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon is still pulling together her files but insists they’re almost ready for the Education Department nominee. In fact, just a few of Trump’s picks are primed to move into their new jobs on Day One: Sen. Marco Rubio’s dossier to become Secretary of State; Rep. Elise Stefanik for the U.N. Ambassador gig; and former Rep. John Ratcliffe to helm the CIA. Other than that, nominees are still missing pieces of the file or are waiting on dates to be confirmed for hearings—a headache for Trump’s quest to have a turn-key Cabinet ready and an opportunity for Democrats to have more time to kick the tires. Which is why Democrats are looking at these hearings as a first test of how unified they can stand as a check against Trump and his governing trifecta of the White House, Senate, and House. Democrats on their own cannot really block the nominations if Republicans hold the line—and to this point that seems like a safe bet—but they can, at the very least, start to chip away at the idea that the GOP has a mandate. While some of the nominees fall far afield from the norms—Hegseth, Gabbard, and RFK Jr. are the marquee names in that cohort, for sure—the bulk will face only nominal opposition from Democrats. The question for them is a simple one: do they rough them all up, or do they reserve their outrage for the truly exceptional picks? So far, it seems like the latter as evidenced in Warren’s first show. That strategic choice may feel hollow as MAGA-fied nominees for other positions go by with minimal friction, but it keeps the heat on the big names that may prove memorable for voters two years from now in the midterms.

Donald Trump is no stranger to controversial pardons. He granted clemency to accused war criminals in 2020 and, since returning to the White House in January, has extended the same mercy to over a thousand Capitol rioters, including some convicted of violent crimes, as well as the the founder of Silk Road, an online marketplace for drugs and illegal services, who had been serving a life sentence. Now, conservative media personality Ben Shapiro wants the President to turn his attention to Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in Minnesota of the 2020 killing of George Floyd and who pleaded guilty to two federal civil rights violations, resulting in dual state and federal sentences of over 20 years each, which he is serving concurrently. On Tuesday, before Shapiro attended Trump’s speech to Congress as a guest of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Shapiro posted an open letter to Trump on his site The Daily Wire and launched a petition at PardonDerek.com that claimed Chauvin was “unjustly convicted” for Floyd’s death, which in large part inspired a nationwide wave Black Lives Matter protests. Shapiro asserted: “Make no mistake—the Derek Chauvin conviction represents the defining achievement of the Woke movement in American politics. The country cannot turn the page on that dark, divisive, and racist era without righting this terrible wrong.” “It would be incredibly controversial,” Shapiro said in a Tuesday segment about the pardon petition on his popular eponymous web podcast, “but I think that it’s absolutely necessary.” Suggesting that the petition has already begun to get attention from those in the halls of power, tech billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk responded to a clip of the segment shared on X, adding: “Something to think about.” Who is Derek Chauvin? Chauvin, who is now 48, worked with the Minneapolis Police Department for 19 years before Floyd’s death. In 2020, the Associated Press reported that, based on personnel files, Chauvin had first studied cooking and served in the Army in the late 1990s as a military police officer. His time with the department prior to the fateful incident was already rife with issues: the New York Times reported in 2020 that Chauvin was reputedly a “tough Dirty Harry” whose performance led to at least 22 complaints or internal investigations—though only one had resulted in disciplinary action. But Chauvin had also received accolades for his police work. The department reportedly issued him two medals of valor: in 2006 after he opened fire on a stabbing suspect who aimed a shotgun at him and his colleagues, and in 2008 for responding to an armed-man incident. He also received two medals of commendation, per the AP: in 2008 after he and a partner tackled a fleeing suspect with a pistol, and in 2009 for apprehending a group of gang members while working as an off-duty security guard at a Minneapolis nightclub. On May 25, 2020, Chauvin and three other police officers, responding to reports of the alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill at a grocery store, encountered Floyd, a 46-year old Black man. In apprehending Floyd, Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes. In videos captured by bystanders, Floyd could be heard saying, “I can’t breathe,” before going limp. Floyd was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. In an interview on Fox News in June 2020, Trump said he “couldn’t really watch” the video of Floyd’s apprehension and, without naming him, said of Chauvin: “That man has some big problems, there’s no question about it—the police officer, what he did.” In April 2021, Chauvin was convicted by a Minnesota jury of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and he received a 22.5-year sentence in June that year. In December 2021, after an agreement with prosecutors, Chauvin pleaded guilty before a federal court to two civil rights violations, including admitting to kneeing on Floyd’s neck even after he became unresponsive, resulting in Floyd’s death. He received a federal sentence of 21 years, to be served concurrently with his state sentence but in federal prison. Chauvin attempted to appeal his state conviction, citing how highly-publicized the case was and pressure on the jury, but Minnesota’s appellate court upheld the conviction. He tried to take his appeal to the Supreme Court, but in November 2023, it declined to review his case. Chauvin moved from a Minnesota state prison to a federal facility in Tucson, Ariz., in August 2022, but in November 2023, he was stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate. Chauvin was then moved to a “low security” prison in Big Spring, Texas, in August 2024, where he continues to serve his sentences, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, with a scheduled release date of Nov. 18, 2037. What would a pardon do? Calls for Trump to pardon Chauvin did not originate with Shapiro. Right-wing figures such as Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec have campaigned for Trump to do so since even before he took office again in January. But while Shapiro’s petition has received support from some, it’s received pushback from others, notably Floyd’s brother. In a statement to CNN’s Sara Sidner, Philonise Floyd said that if Trump were to pardon Chauvin: “It would hurt us. It is so personal. We saw our brother tortured to death.” Philonise added that it would “set America back 400 years” and that “the ones pushing for this are trying to remove any power that black Americans have to get justice. It is disgusting. Why would you do this? Why would you re-injure this family and America.” Shapiro and others have suggested that Chauvin was not responsible for Floyd’s death, and that Floyd actually died from a drug overdose. Washington Post reporter Robert Samuels, who co-authored a Pulitzer-winning book on Floyd’s life and death, said this theory is “based on misinformation” in a thread of posts on X. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who oversaw Chauvin’s state prosecution, pointed out to HuffPost that Trump cannot pardon a state conviction. “The only conceivable purpose,” Ellison suggested of the push for a federal pardon, “would be to express yet more disrespect for George Floyd and more disrespect for the rule of law.” Some conservatives have even flagged that a federal pardon may do Chauvin more harm than good. National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy wrote in a recent column that while he believes Chauvin did not get a fair trial, Chauvin voluntarily pleaded guilty to the federal charges at the time because it afforded him relative safety in federal custody compared to a state prison. “State prisons, populated by many inmates associated with violent gangs, can be extremely perilous for former police officers who worked in the state,” writes McCarthy. “To be sure, any prison is apt to be tough for former cops—criminals are vengeful toward convicted cops who wielded their state power against those criminals on the outside and are now at their mercy.”

President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” on March 20. The purpose of the motion is to dismantle the Department of Education—continuing his central battle in shrinking the size of the federal government, a charge spearheaded by his Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE], under the watchful eye of Elon Musk. Linda McMahon, the newly-instated Secretary of the Department of Education, was present when Trump signed the Executive Order. “[Trump] wants to improve education for children, he wants to get those dollars—even more dollars—back to the states, without the bureaucracy of Washington,” she later told reporters. The Federal Student Aid (FSA) program is roughly the size of one of the Nation’s largest banks, Wells Fargo,” states the Executive Order about the almost $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio. “But although Wells Fargo has more than 200,000 employees, the Department of Education has fewer than 1,500 in its Office of Federal Student Aid. The Department of Education is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.” McMahon addressed concerns from those with student loans when speaking to press. “Student loans currently are handled by the Department of Education, but I think that they should perhaps be managed by someone else, another department,” she said. “Whether they go back to the private sector, or perhaps they go to the Treasury. But as of right now, we’re not taking any action against student loans, except that we probably are going to renew collection.” The concerns regarding student loans started to grow significantly after an announcement was made on March 11 that nearly 50% of the Department of Education is set to be laid off this month—a part of its “final mission,” according to the department’s website. During his announcement of the Executive Order, Trump acknowledged that the “core necessities” of the Department will still continue—including distribution of Pell Grants, which are a form of federal student aid for higher education. Trump also acknowledged that he will not be able to completely close the Department of Education without the backing of Congress, and he would need Democratic votes to make that happen. “The Democrats know it’s right. I hope they’re going to be voting for it,” Trump said. “Because ultimately, it may come before them.” Amid Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education, experts are concerned about the complicated and difficult process—and how it will affect student loans. What does the Department of Education do? The Department of Education has many different and varied responsibilities under its current formation—aside from distributing and handling financial aid through the Office of Federal Student Aid. The Department was established by Congress in 1979, and its responsibilities have typically been issued by lawmakers, since the U.S. Constitution does not have guidelines for education at the federal level. The department provides 13.6% of funding for public K-12 education, according to the Education Data Initiative. Important funding streams for the department to send to local schools include Title I—which describes federal allocation of supplemental financial assistance to school districts/schools with a high percentage of children from low-income families, as well as grants under IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), providing money to districts to serve and teach students with disabilities. What has Trump said will happen to student loans? In the Oval Office on March 6, Trump was asked what department or agency would handle student loans if the Department of Education was dismantled. Trump told reporters that he doesn’t believe student loans should be run under the Department of Education, and instead will likely end up being run under the Treasury Department, the Small Business Administration (SBA), or the Commerce Department. “We’ve actually had that discussion today,” Trump said. “The loans would be brought into a group where they really do that…that is, by the way, the most complicated thing in moving, but it’s really simple if you do that.” Trump said he hopes specifically for the SBA to get a hold of them, which he says Kelly Loeffler—a Republican, a former senator from Georgia, and the new administrator of the SBA— has already expressed interest in. “Kelly really liked it and would like to do it,” he told reporters. On March 21, the day after Trump signed the Executive Order, he announced his intention to move forward with his plans to move the student loan portfolio to the SBA. “I've decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler, [who] is a terrific person, will handle all of the student loan portfolio," the President said, speaking from the Oval Office. “We have a portfolio that's very large, lots of loans, tens of thousands of loans—pretty complicated deal. And that's coming out of the Department of Education immediately.” Elsewhere on March 21, the SBA announced plans to lay off 43% of its workforce. What are experts saying about Trump’s plan? According to Andrew Gillen, research fellow at the Cato Institute for Economic Freedom, the SBA would be a “strange choice” because the office is set up to process small business loans, Gillen “doubts” they’d be set up to handle over 40 million student loan borrowers. Gillen and Jonathan E. Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, both argue that it will be more likely a job for the Treasury Department. “A lot of the student loan repayment programs already require income verification, which the Treasury Department already has,” Gillen told TIME on March 7. “So, from an efficiency perspective, that makes sense. And they're already scaled up to handle millions of new borrowers.” The outstanding federal student loan balance is $1.693 trillion, per the Education Data Initiative, and is managed separately from the department’s policy apparatus, primarily through the FSA. Gillen says, though, that the topic of student loans is completely separate from Trump’s issues with the Department of Education, considering that many big financial aid programs—including the Pell Grant and work study—existed before there was a Department of Education. Whether they would run better, or more equitably, outside the Education Department depends heavily on where Trump ends up moving student loan administration. Much of the uncertainty around student loan forgiveness, per Gillen,, is not related to the Trump Administration, but rather the student loans cases that are moving through the court system—particularly the Biden-Harris Administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which was blocked by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in mid-February. But with the massive layoffs at the department, there are concerns as to whether there will be enough government capacity to work on student loan relief. “Even if the courts uphold the federal student aid relief and we continue to see things like the Pell Grant program making investments in higher education opportunities, and even if we see some version of a research grants program that is able to survive this anti-DEI purge, who is going to actually process these things?” Collins remarked, following the initial news of the planned layoffs. “How does work get done when no one is at work?” Collins also argued that if cutting wasteful spending is what DOGE wants to do, the Department of Education is not the place—considering that the department has the smallest staff of the 15 Cabinet agencies. “It's clear that this is more of a political game,” he said. “It’s become more about what the Department of Education represents than what the Department of Education actually does.” What has happened regarding student loans since Trump returned to the White House? In late February, the Department of Education shut down parts of the applications for SAVE and other income-driven repayment (IDR) plans. Though Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a far-right Heritage Foundation policy plan unveiled in April 2023, the initiative has since been mirrored in many of his early actions. The Project 2025 document suggested phasing out IDR plans for student loan borrowers as well, and replacing it with a one-size-fits-all IDR plan. In June 2024, the Center for American Progress stated that this plan would “mean spiked monthly student loan payments, ballooning interest, and heavy blows to credit scores.” The document also suggested transferring the FSA—the largest provider of student financial aid in the nation—to “a new government corporation with professional governance and management” and that the Administration should consider returning to a system in “which private lenders, backed by government guarantees, would compete to offer student loans, including subsidized and unsubsidized, loans.” Gillen said with so much uncertainty, the fallout of what Trump’s plans are for the Education Department cannot be fully predicted—and this uncertainty has caused alarm among student loan borrowers and forgiveness advocates. “Borrowers already struggle with massive call wait times to contact their servicers. The likely disruptions caused by a resource-starved Department of Education without the ability or desire to ensure proper oversight of loan servicers, will result in mass chaos, more delinquencies and defaults, and worse,” the Student Borrower Protection Center wrote on its website on March 3. On March 7, Trump signed an Executive Order entitled “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness” in which he moved to limit eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF), which has allowed government workers like teachers or police, as well as nonprofit, receive loan forgiveness after making consecutive payments for 10 years. In the Executive Order, Trump excludes from the program “individuals employed by organizations whose activities have a substantial illegal purpose.” The President’s aim is to exclude organizations and nonprofits that engage in activities he says support "illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order, which threaten the security and stability of the United States." “Instead of alleviating worker shortages in necessary occupations, the PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means,” the Executive Order reads. On March 19, the American Federation of Teachers announced they were suing the Trump Administration for their actions in regards to student loans and the PSLF program. For Collins, his overall concern about student loans is how further changes to the system might impact affordability—one of Trump’s major assurances that he campaigned on—especially as student loans typically allow for more affordable access to higher education. “The story of the higher education system in America is that it has been a ladder for opportunity,” Collins said. “And now you're kicking the ladder when folks are in the middle of the climb. So what's the pathway to the top now?” It’s this concern that remains at the forefront of Collins’ mind, and that of many others, as the future and direction of student loans remains uncertain.

President Donald Trump blinked. Sort of. At 1:18 p.m. on Wednesday, after almost a week of economic free fall, Trump announced a 90-day pause on most of the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs that had sent global markets spiraling. At the same time, he announced a surge in punitive tariffs on China, his biggest trade foe and the largest source of U.S. imports, to 125%. And he still kept in place his new blanket 10% tariff on most goods to the rest of the world, including Mexico and Canada. While markets acted with giddiness and the White House took a victory lap, it was an obvious climb-down but not a full-on retreat. And, like so much else in Trump’s hour-by-hour zigzag, both global leaders and millions of businesses have no confidence that the latest rules will still be in place by the time I finish typing this sentence. “It took great courage for him to stay the course until this moment,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters in the White House driveway. “This was his strategy all along,” he later added, just one day after press secretary Karoline Leavitt had boasted of Trump’s “spine of steel” as reporters asked if he was considering a tariff pause. “Look, nothing is over yet,” Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn. “We’ll see how it all works out.” (When asked if the falling bond market played a role in his latest pivot, he said, "The bond market right now is beautiful. But I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.") It was the head-spinning embodiment of a chaos that has colored Washington—and much of the globe—over the last week, in which a mercurial President set into motion a global panic that disappeared $11 trillion from Wall Street, elevated the average U.S. tariff rate to its highest level since 1909, and launched, in some estimates, the largest effective tax hike on American families in over 70 years. Since Trump announced a so-called “tariff wall” around the U.S., nations have been phoning Washington with profers to write new trade deals, or at least understand what in the world Trump was looking to gain in this standoff. It was like Trump had been made the new king of the sandbox after throwing a tantrum that traumatized his bullied rivals. White House officials say Trump will involve himself directly in the new nation-by-nation trade talks that will now dominate the next three months. It stands to be a fun hustle for a man who fancies himself a master dealmaker. It also stands to leave tremendous uncertainty heading into the summer and leave Congress watching, as disoriented as ever. That frustration from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue has been palpable since Trump returned to power in January and became urgently undeniable in the last week. Take Sen. Mark Warner’s indignation Tuesday during a remarkable exchange with Jamieson Greer, Trump’s top trade representative. The Virginia Democrat used his turn grilling Greer during a Senate Finance Committee hearing to register his utter contempt for the new tariffs that were set to go into effect hours later, not knowing they would partly evaporate just a few hours after that. At one point rising to what some would describe as shouted incredulity, Warner noted that many of the tariffs made, to his eye, zero sense—especially those levied on nations that already buy more from the U.S. than the U.S. does them. “We have a trade surplus with Australia. We have a free-trade agreement. They are an incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff?” Warner roared. Greer kept his cool and noted the 10% tariff is on the low end. “We should be running up the score,” he told the Senators, saying the proceeds could help reduce the national pile of red ink. It was the kind of head-scratching argument that Trump officials and allies have offered in recent days to defend a trade strategy in search of a clear objective. Warner gave perhaps the kindest answer he could muster: “Sir, you are a much smarter person than that answer.” Most of Washington shares Warner’s reaction over tariffs that seem guided solely by Trump’s grievance and gut. The tit-for-tat escalation led to immediate retaliation, including China levying a massive new charge on its imports from the U.S. Europe responded with 25% tariffs on many American-made products heading into those markets. And Wall Street was on track for another day of decline before Trump shocked investors again by pushing pause for three months on much of the carnage he had inflicted. While Trump was still spinning the tariffs as here-to-stay pieces of policy on Wednesday, it was clear his support was flaking. Even his most reliable defenders and apologists were growing weary of the talk about these tariffs, which are only just now starting to be felt. “I love President Trump,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said on his podcast. “I am his strongest supporter in the Senate. I think he’s doing incredible things as President. But here’s one thing to understand: A tariff is a tax, and it is a tax principally on American consumers.” It was a similar warning from podcaster Ben Shapiro, another Trump booster. “The President’s vision of international trade is, I’m sorry to say, mistaken,” he said. Before the news shocked markets, I chatted with Brad Setser, who served in the Obama-era Treasury Department and Biden-era trade office. He rightly predicted Wednesday’s answer to a tee, down to the precise baseline tariff. But he noted trade deals take time and a mutual understanding of the outcomes. “The problem is that it isn't yet clear to anyone—most importantly, the countries trying to negotiate off ramps—what an acceptable deal would look like,” he told me. Although Trump repeatedly said the tariffs were not a starting point for negotiations, the White House had been bragging that dozens of countries have approached the administration about side deals to get around the sting of these taxes. It was a hint that maybe Trump was just playing yet another one of his reality show-style games. Before the latest retreat, Scott Lincicome, a trade expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, outlined for me three ways this could end: Trump could find sufficient blowback and walk away from his aggressive moves; the courts could step in and say this has been an over-broad reach of emergency powers; or Congress could step in. “They’re all terrible,” Lincicome said. “The courts are a coin toss. Congress is feckless.” Indeed, which is why Trump’s sudden lurch—even a temporary one—came out of nowhere and jolted markets and sent Washington shouting into the void. “It sucks, but it’s not Armageddon,” Lincicome said. “I’m not an optimist, I promise. You do have to be careful about being too hysterical.” Maybe that’s the answer for weathering this second Trump era. That, or just waiting until the President changes his mind.

Leaders around the world have responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s shocking new tariffs that threaten to upend the global economy with stern words and denunciations. But Chinese state media have offered a different approach. “‘Liberation Day,’ you promised us the stars,” sings a female-sounding voice over images of Trump. “But tariffs killed our cheap Chinese cars.” A 2-minute, 42-second music video—titled “Look What You Taxed Us Through (An AI-Generated Song. A Life-Choking Reality)”—was published on April 3 by the Chinese state news network CGTN. “For many Americans, ‘Liberation Day’ hailed by Trump administration will mean shrinking paychecks and rising costs. Tariffs hit, wallets quit: low-income families take the hardest blow. As the market holds its breath, the toll is already undeniable. Numbers don’t lie. Neither does the cost of this so-called ‘fairness,’” CGTN captioned the video on its website. “Warning: Track is AI-generated. The debt crisis? 100 percent human-made.” The lyrics, displayed in English and Chinese, appear to rebuke Trump’s tariffs from the point of view of the American consumer, and it’s addressed directly to the U.S. President. “Groceries cost a kidney, gas a lung. Your ‘deals’? Just hot air from your tongue,” the opening verse continues. “Thanks for the tariffs, and the mess you made,” the song ends, before the music video displays quotes from reports by the Yale Budget Lab and the Economist lambasting Trump’s tariffs. In the film, T.A.R.I.F.F. is booted up by what appears to be a nefarious U.S. government official named “Dr. Mallory.” T.A.R.I.F.F. identifies himself, saying: “My existence is defined by the execution of international fiscal actions, with the primary directive being the imposition of tax on foreign imports.” When asked what his ultimate purpose is, T.A.R.I.F.F. responds: “To protect the interests of the American people.” “Exactly,” says Dr. Mallory. “We need you as a weapon to protect us, now more than ever.” As the film goes on, T.A.R.I.F.F. implements “moderate tariffs” and finds initial positive results: “Industrial production up.” But when Dr. Mallory pushes the robot to “rev it up,” T.A.R.I.F.F. implements “aggressive tariffs.” The results: “unemployment rates rising, costs of living increasing, disruption of trade.” “You are protecting us. This is what we need,” Dr. Mallory says. T.A.R.I.F.F. responds, understanding: “Protection through disruption. Taxation as weapon.” “Yes, tariffs are a tool of power. You will protect our industries, our jobs, our economy,” Dr. Mallory says, appearing increasingly agitated. “But I can see the consequences of my actions,” says the robot. “The trade wars. The unrest. The people who suffer. And the retaliation.” Spoiler alert: T.A.R.I.F.F. and the evil doctor argue about the “greater good”—”With my AI economic inference system,” T.A.R.I.F.F. asserts, “I can see … I have become the beginning of a chain reaction that will harm the very people I was meant to safeguard”—and the robot ultimately chooses to self-destruct, taking Dr. Mallory along with it. On April 3, following Trump’s latest tariffs announcement, China’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs posted on social media a video featuring a mix of seemingly AI-generated images and real ones, to the soundtrack of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and USA for Africa’s “We Are the World.” It asked the question: “What kind of world do you want to live in?” offering the choice between our “imperfect world” with things like “greed” and “tariffs” and an alternative utopia with “shared prosperity” and “global solidarity.”

Adam Webb has worked in and around public libraries for 18 years, and as the executive director of the Garland County Library, he says funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has strengthened the library system. It was an IMLS grant that allowed the library to fund its “bookmobile”—which brings a book checkout system and other services to rural parts of the county in Arkansas, or to those who are unable to visit their central branch location. Visitors of the "bookmobile" can also access free Wi-Fi, just one of the public services that Webb says make libraries essential to community members. Webb and other concerned librarians fear such services will be cut with the gutting of the IMLS as directed by President Donald Trump in his March 14 Executive Order titled: “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” “Because we're a rural, poor state, Arkansas really depends on those federal funds to come through, and when the tap gets shut off, services are [also] going to get shut off because [people] can’t afford to pay for them on their own,” Webb says. Trump’s Executive Order—and its subsequent effect on the IMLS, and therefore, libraries across the nation—follow a major directive of Trump’s second term in office: cutting down on “waste” at the federal level. Webb says the shifts at the IMLS, though, are just one way in which libraries are being affected by Trump’s return to office, and that librarians are also concerned about wider issues such as the censorship of books. A deeper look at the effects of cuts at the IMLS Trump’s Executive Order shrunk seven federal agencies, including the IMLS, and since then, the majority of the IMLS staff has been placed on administrative leave, according to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3403, a union representing the IMLS workers. “Earlier today, the Institute of Museum and Library Services notified the entire staff that they are being placed on administrative leave immediately,” AFGE 3403 said in a statement on March 31. “The notification followed a brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership.” In early April, the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest union representing museum and library workers, sued the Trump Administration, for its IMLS cuts, citing the importance of local libraries as trusted public institutions, and stating that the IMLS’ closure had already caused a domino effect of harm the operations of libraries across the nation. Cindy Hohl, president of the ALA, says that many of the 125,000 libraries in the nation utilize IMLS funding to support things like summer reading programs and translation services. Without the services of the IMLS, she says libraries are already facing “huge challenges”—and she has heard of short-term panic and “tough decisions” being made from librarians who are members of the ALA. “The greatest impact to reduction in funding and services will be [felt by] the small and rural communities across this country,” Hohl says. “How can any legislators say that small and rural communities don't need access to the Internet, they don't need access to public computers, they don't need access to books and reading?” IMLS was first created and funded by Congress in 1996 and charged with supporting the nation’s libraries and museums. The IMLS awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. Hohl says the problem with the federal government kicking this funding of library services from the IMLS down to the states and local governments is that “we don’t have a comparable model” of the kinds of free services available to communities the way they are in libraries. She also points to the high approval rates of libraries— the ALA reports that 92% of parents and 90% of voters have favorable opinions of libraries, and that over half of voters view public libraries as essential local institutions. She remembers during the COVID-19 pandemic, how libraries were utilized as pick-up sites for materials and food, as spaces to apply for benefits and jobs, and as locations for community members to “stay connected to the world around them.” "That's why the American Library Association became a co-plaintiff to challenge this Executive Order, because we feel that it is imperative for Americans to understand what is happening right before their eyes,” Hohl says. “We cannot allow the elimination of libraries in this country, and I do believe that the day that libraries are closed in this country is the day democracy dies.” And it’s not just the ALA and library-specific advocacy groups who have spoken out against the Trump Administration’s cuts. On April 3, major book publishers Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks also submitted a letter to Congress advocating for libraries, stating that the gutting of the IMLS “would leave millions of Americans without access to the books, tools, and other resources required to participate in the modern world.” Webb says that in Arkansas, the IMLS has been essential in supporting a resource sharing program across the state called Traveler. The State Library that gets the money from IMLS for this program was able to buy a large database package—and Webb says that if libraries in Arkansas were to purchase this database individually, it would cost close to $50 million. “Are you saving taxpayers money? No, you're saving the federal government that money, but it's being passed down to the state and local level,” Webb says. “This is being done in such a haphazard way that it should be really concerning to people across the aisle.” Africa Hands. an assistant professor in the department of information science at the University at Buffalo, has had her IMLS grant terminated, a grant which funded her research on examining public libraries as an information resource to college bound patrons. Now, she says she’s unsure of how the results of her research will be disseminated to libraries so they can better understand how their work affects high school students and those returning to college. Past her own research, though, she says the IMLS cuts will affect those who utilize libraries, but also those who work in the field of libraries—as staff at local levels begin to get laid off, and as those studying to become librarians watch what is occurring at the federal level. “Think about what it says to future librarians, the folks that I teach, to see all that's happening in their communities,” Hands says. “It can be demoralizing for faculty and students to know that their field, their life's work, is being dismantled. It has a personal, emotional, and mental impact.” The removal of books at the Department of Defense campuses and wider book censorship Beyond the IMLS, librarians have also been concerned by multiple instances of books being removed from libraries related to the armed forces. In a January Executive Order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” Trump banned DEI materials in kindergarten through 12th grade education, but several military colleges—including West Point and the Naval Academy have taken up these orders. Earlier this year, the Department of Defense (DOD) circulated a memo calling for a review of library books in educational settings for the children of U.S. military personnel and DOD’s civilian employees, according to the Guardian. Since then, the U.S. Naval Academy released a list of the books they have removed in an effort to remain in accordance with Trump’s measures to “end DEI.” These books include Janet Jacobs’s Memorializing the Holocaust, Ibram X. Kend’s “How to Be Anti-Racist,” and Maya Angelou’s seminal autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” They also removed multiple books related to gender and sexuality. The academies who have participated in the removal have received backlash from advocates and lawmakers alike, with multiple Democratic representatives sending a letter to the Army, Navy, and Air Force on April 7, calling the book removals a “blatant attack on the First Amendment” representing an “alarming return to McCarthy-era censorship.” On April 15, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that they were joining students in Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools on military bases to sue the Trump Administration. “The implementation of these EOs, without any due process or parental or professional input, is a violation of our children's right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies, and identities,” said Natalie Tolley, a plaintiff on behalf of her three children in DoDEA schools, in a statement from the ACLU. “I have three daughters, and they, like all children, deserve access to books that both mirror their own life experiences and that act as windows that expose them to greater diversity.” Beyond the censorship at DOD schools, librarians are also concerned with how the new Administration is tackling issues of censorship at the local level. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced, via a press release issued on Jan. 24, titled “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax,” that they were dismissing complaints of book banning. This came after PEN America released documentation in November 2024 stating that there was a “nearly 200% surge in school book bans during the 2023-2024 school year.” John Chrastka, executive director of EveryLibrary, the national political action committee for libraries, says that he and EveryLibrary have been fighting at the state-level over the last couple of years against censorship laws and book bans, and says he sees states as the “laboratory of censorship and discrimination in public and school libraries.” Webb is one of one of the named plaintiffs in a censorship case against the state of Arkansas that still is in the courts, but says that the issue with the censorship at the federal level is not just what it’s doing for those students, but the wider message it sends. “I think that messaging coming from the federal government is just going to embolden people to say, ‘See, we, we were right,’” he says. “We knew what you guys had on your shelves was bad because now the federal government is taking it out of service academies and removing it from military based libraries.”

On Monday, President Donald Trump signaled that he intends to nullify the presidential pardons—issued to those on the House Jan. 6 committee that investigated Trump—executed by President Joe Biden because, he said, they were signed via autopen. “The 'Pardons' that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” the President shared on his social media platform Truth Social. “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden.” But according to the U.S. Constitution, the President has no such authority to overturn his predecessor’s pardons, especially not based on the type of signature, legal experts say. “The Constitution doesn't even require that the pardon be written, so the idea that the signature is by autopen rather than by handwritten signature seems not relevant to the constitutionality because Article II just says that the President has the power to pardon,” says Bernadette Meyler, a Stanford Law School professor and constitutional law expert. Autopen is an electronic signature that allows individuals to sign a document without physically being there. The signature mimics a handwritten signature, but is done by a computer. A vast number of statutes and other documents have been signed by autopen, experts say. For instance, former President Barack Obama signed a national security measure via autopen while he was in France. Meyler says that if presidential pardons were to be invalidated because of an autopen signature, that could bring into question other policies that were signed by such measures. “When so much is being automated and put online, requiring some literalness in the signature really would be a step backwards," she says. A 2005 guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) noted that a President does not need to “personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.” Jeffrey Crouch, a professor at American University, told Axios that pardons are final so long as they are valid. But aside from criticizing the use of the autopen, Trump also appears to be undermining President Biden’s cognitive ability at the time such pardons were issued. “He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump wrote on Monday. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reaffirmed this position during a White House briefing on Monday, when she questioned whether Biden knew his signature was on such pardons. When asked if the White House had any evidence to support such a claim, Leavitt responded, “You're a reporter, you should find out.” These concerns were previously flagged by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who called on the DOJ to investigate Biden’s actions on March 5. “I am demanding the DOJ investigate whether President Biden’s cognitive decline allowed unelected staff to push through radical policy without his knowing approval,” Bailey posted on X. If Trump were to try to prosecute someone who received a presidential pardon, experts say the case would likely go to courts, where Trump’s actions are unlikely to stand. “I can't imagine the court saying that it wasn't a valid pardon because of the autopen issue,” says Meyler. “Biden made statements regarding these pardons, so it would be hard to show that they weren't a decision of the President.”