Politics – Page 107

Joe Biden says he made clemency and pardon decisions at end of presidency, defends use of autopen

July 14, 2025 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Joe Biden, in an interview with the New York Times published on Sunday, said that he personally made every clemency and pardon decision during the last few weeks of his presidency — including those made with an autopen.

However, he and aides told the Times that some decisions for large batches of pardons were based on broad categories that various people fell into, not based on reviewing individuals on a case-by-case basis. Biden said he approved the categories and standards for choosing who to pardon.

“I made every single one of those. And — including the categories, when we set this up to begin with,” Biden said of the clemency and pardon decisions.

In December, Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges; commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people on home confinement; and pardoned 39 people who were convicted of nonviolent crimes.

In January, he pardoned nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders; on the last day of his presidency, he issued preemptive pardons to potential targets of the incoming Trump administration and to several close family members.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have also focused their ire on Biden’s use of an autopen device to sign pardons and other documents, claiming either that the pardons Biden approved are void because they were signed using an autopen, or that it matters who controlled the autopen when the pardons were signed. Trump has said he has used an autopen for some trivial matters, but criticized its use for pardons.

In June, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether the Biden administration sought to conspire to cover up his mental state while in office, and to look through Biden’s use of the autopen.

Biden defended the use of autopen.

“The autopen is, you know, is legal. As you know, other presidents used it, including Trump. But the point is that, you know, we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”

“They’re liars,” Biden also said of Trump and Republicans. “They know it … they’ve had a pretty good thing going here. They’ve done so badly. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else.”

He called the furor “consistent with Trump’s game plan all along … if I told you three years ago, we’d have a president doing this, I think you’d look at me in the eye and say, ‘What, are you, crazy?'”

Asked about the Times’ report Monday morning, Trump called Biden’s use of autopen a “tremendous scandal.” The president once again claimed without evidence that Biden wasn’t aware of what was being signed.

“I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing, I guarantee you,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Biden’s latest remarks come as Trump and Republicans continue to argue that Biden was not the one making decisions to grant pardons or clemencies, or in charge of decisions more broadly during his presidency.

In May, Senate Republicans announced their plans to launch the probe into Biden’s mental fitness while in office, including his use of autopen.

The House Oversight Committee is also conducting an investigation into Biden’s health in office. Last week, Biden’s former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor briefly appeared before the Oversight Committee behind closed doors, where he declined to cooperate, invoking the Fifth Amendment and asserting physician-patient privilege.

The Times said it reviewed emails from the Biden White House that corroborated that it had put in place a process where Biden made decisions before clemency records were signed by an autopen device. ABC News has not obtained or reviewed these emails.

For larger categories of individuals being considered to be pardoned, the Times reported, Biden did not approve every single name, but approved what standards would be used to figure out which people would get their sentences adjusted. Biden himself did discuss pardons for higher-profile figures, such as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, according to the New York Times’ report.

“Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been home confinements for, during the pandemic,” Biden told the Times.

“So the only things that really we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley? Mark’s a good guy. We know how vindictive Trump is and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason … I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add,” Biden told the Times.

The Times said there were some small changes made to the lists of people set to receive pardons after Biden had approved the category based on new information from the Bureau of Prisons, and that aides did not bother to run the revisions by Biden before putting the pardons through autopen, although the aides saw that as routine.

Biden further defended the decision to pardon his family members because Trump would “go after me through my family,” he told the Times.

“I know how vindictive he is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is,” Biden told the Times. “So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. And my family didn’t do anything wrong … and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills.”

White House defends tariffs on Brazil despite trade surplus

July 13, 2025 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett defended President Donald Trump’s newly unveiled 50% tariff against Brazil, the United States’ second-largest trading partner, saying the move is part of the administration’s broader global tariff strategy.

Speaking with ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, Hassett said that the president has the authority to impose new tariffs if he thinks there is a national defense emergency or a national security threat — though Trump’s letter to Brazil highlighted the ongoing criminal case against his political ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

“So how is it a national security threat … how Brazil is handling a criminal case against its former president?” Karl asked.

“Well, that’s not the only thing,” Hassett said.

“The bottom line is that what we’re doing absolutely, collectively across every country is we’re onshoring production in the U.S. to reduce the national emergency, that is, that we have a massive trade deficit that’s putting us at risk should we need production in the U.S. because of a national security crisis,” he added.

“But again, as we’ve just established, we have a trade surplus with Brazil, not a deficit,” Karl noted.

“If you look at an overall strategy, if you don’t have an overall strategy for this, then there’ll be transshipping and everything else, and you won’t achieve your objectives,” Hassett said.

Pressed by Karl about Trump’s recent criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Hassett echoed the White House’s criticism of recent cost overruns in the renovation of the Fed’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

“I think that whether the president decides to push down that road or not is going to depend a lot on the answers that we get to the questions that [Office of Management and Budget Director] Russ Vought sent to the Fed,” Hassett said when asked if the cost overruns could be used as a pretext to fire Powell.

“Yes or no answer. Does the president, in your view, have the authority to fire the Fed chair?” Karl asked.

That’s a thing that’s being looked into,” Hassett said. “But certainly, if there’s cause, he does.”

Here are more highlights from Hassett’s interview

On new tariffs with the European Union and Mexico

Karl: So let me ask you, because what we’re hearing from the Europeans and from the Mexicans is they were in the middle of these negotiations as this was, as this was going on, so is this a negotiating tactic, or are these tariffs real?

Hassett: These — well, these tariffs are real if the president doesn’t get a deal that he thinks is good enough, but, you know, conversations are ongoing, and we’ll see where the dust settles. The bottom line is that President Trump has produced a huge amount of tariff revenue with the tariffs we’ve seen in the first half of the year. The Congressional Budget Office has said that tariff revenue over the next 10 years will help reduce the deficit and secure our entitlement programs is $3 trillion and consumers haven’t seen that.

You know, Consumer Price Index inflation right now is the lowest it’s been in over a decade. And so what President Trump has always said is that the foreign suppliers, the foreign governments are going to bear most of the tariffs. It’s being visibly seen, and I think that that’s probably affecting his negotiating position because we’ve got all this empirical evidence that his position has been proven correct in the data.

On copper tariffs

Karl: Let me ask you about the 50% tariff that the president has imposed on copper imports. Copper, of course, is widely used in construction, industrial manufacturing, cars, mobile phones, and the like. This is what The Wall Street Journal had to say about these tariffs: “Mister Trump is going to make U.S. firms pay 50% more for a vital metal while they wait five or more years for U.S. sourcing. How does making it more expensive to build aircraft, ships, and ammunition promote national security? This is national insecurity.” What’s your response to The Wall Street Journal?

Hassett: Right. The bottom line is that if there is a time of war, then we need to have the metals that we need to produce American weapons, and copper is a key component in many American weapon sets. And so, as we look forward to the threats that America faces, the president decided that we have plenty of copper in the U.S., but not enough copper production. And that’s why he’s taken this strong step.

Karl: But are you concerned about the effect of higher copper prices before American manufacturing can get up to speed?

Hassett: The fact is that that effect that you’re just discussing is something that you mentioned that economists said were going to be coming all year, these effects, and inflation is way, way down. In fact, inflation in the U.S. is right about the same level as it is in Europe.

Trump dismisses question about alert systems after touring Texas flood devastation

July 11, 2025 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump toured the devastation left by flash flooding in central Texas amid growing questions about how local officials responded to the crisis as well as questions about the federal response — including the fate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Trump’s visit on Friday came a week after heavy rainfall caused the Guadalupe River in Kerr County to rise 26 feet in less than an hour, killing at least 121, including dozens of children at the nearby Christian summer camp, Camp Mystic.

“The first lady and I are here in Texas to express the love and support and the anguish of our entire nation in the aftermath of this really horrific and deadly flood,” Trump said as he spoke at a roundtable event with first responders and local officials.

“We mourn for every single life that was swept away in the flood, and we pray for the families that are left behind,” the president added. “It’s amazing, the incredible spirit from those families.”

The search for more than 170 people still missing continues with more than 2,100 responders on the ground in Texas from local, state and federal agencies.

Meanwhile, local officials are under scrutiny about what steps were taken to adequately warn people and how long it took for authorities to take action based on escalating weather and other alerts.

Trump, notably, hasn’t engaged in similar criticism about how the crisis was handled — as he has done in the case of other disasters.

“Nobody has any idea how and why a thing like this could happen,” Trump said on Friday.

Trump was asked for his response to those who say the warning alerts didn’t go out in time and that more people could have been saved.

“Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances,” Trump said. “I just have admiration for the job that everybody did. There’s just admiration.”

Trump went on to criticize the reporter for asking the question: “Only an evil person would ask a question like that,” he pushed back.

“I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible. Really, the job you’ve all done,” Trump added. “It’s easy to sit back and say, ‘Oh, what could have happened here or there, maybe we could have done something differently.’ This was a thing … that’s happened before.”

Trump later added, “Two words: Unity and competence. If you were to ask me two words that I’ve seen here.”

It’s a marked contrast to how Trump has reacted in the past, including to the California wildfires earlier this year, where he blasted California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other local Democratic officials.

Some of the hardest-hit areas of central Texas, including Kerr County, are areas of strong Republican support that voted for Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Texas earlier this week. On Friday, it was expanded to include more areas affected by the floods.

Trump, instead, has largely focused on his relationship with Gov. Gregg Abbott — a Republican and strong ally of the president.

Trump and Abbott met with first responders on the scene on Friday. Abbott earlier Friday said the federal government updated Trump’s disaster declaration for the state to include more counties.

“There has been extraordinary collaboration with the state and the federal government to make sure that we address Texans’ needs as quickly as possible through disaster assistance programs,” Abbott said in a press release. “The State of Texas will continue to work with our federal and local partners to provide impacted Texans with the support they need to heal and recover.”

The White House has pushed back heavily on criticism of the administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service, which led to some to question if staffing levels or forecasting abilities were impacted.

Trump’s also avoided answering questions on whether he is still aiming to phase out FEMA.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, discussed the federal response to the floods during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters, the state does,” Noem contended. “We come in and support them. And that’s exactly what we did here in this situation. FEMA went to an enhanced level immediately. But as soon as you signed the major disaster declaration, we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned through state lot grants to help them with cleanup. And we’re still there in presence.”

Later in the week, though, Noem went after FEMA during the Biden and other previous administrations — alleging the agency has suffered from “gross mismanagement and negligence.”

“The list of famous failures is staggering,” Noem claimed in comments to the FEMA Advisory Council, a task force designed to recommend reforms to the agency, including possible dismantlement of the agency as it exists today. Trump appointed Abbott as a new member to the group back in April.

Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson had yet to visit the affected areas in Texas as of Thursday afternoon.

ABC News’ Luke Barr and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.

State Department cuts broader than anticipated, include diplomatic security

July 11, 2025 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The State Department is sending formal layoff notices to 1,107 civil service employees and 246 foreign service officers with domestic assignments, according to internal department communication reviewed by ABC News.

All notifications for civilian service employees and foreign service officers are expected to go out by the end of the day on Friday, according to the communication.

Impacted civil service employees will generally be placed on 60 days of administrative leave before termination, while foreign service officers will be placed on administrative leave for 120 days and then separated from the department.

Officials say more areas of the department were impacted than originally anticipated. ABC News was told that the workforce reduction includes multiple employees within the population, refugees and migration wings of the State Department and within the diplomatic security bureau.

There were also many cuts from the areas of the department that were anticipated, including its energy resources and conflict and stabilization operations wings, the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and the Office of Global Women’s Issues. Other impacted areas include Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, officials said.

In all, 3,000 employees are expected to depart as part of the reduction in force, according to the communication, but that number also includes voluntary departures.

Department leadership previously emphasized that they wanted to handle the layoffs with care, individually notifying each impacted employee; however, many are learning of the change in their employment status by seeing a downloadable Official Personnel Folder that was added to an online human resources portal in the overnight hours.

Employees have been informed they will lose access to the building, their email and some applications by the end of the day. Boxes for personal effects are being distributed at multiple points across the State Department’s campus. The department has also set up “Transition Day Out Processing” stations through the department

Impacted employees are also being instructed to send their teams a “brief update” on their projects, leave any hard files in their work area and to set an out-of-office message.

While these layoffs are focused of the domestic work force, they are based on personnel assignments on May 29 of this year. As such, a limited number of the impacted employees have been transferred abroad between then and now. They are being told to follow checkout procedures at their respective posts.

The State Department released a letter to all employees Thursday evening informing them that the department was officially moving to implement a “targeted reduction in domestic workforce.”

“Soon, the Department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force. First and foremost, we want to thank them for their dedication and service to the United States,” the letter, signed by Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Michael Rigas, reads.

The letter advised that once these notifications have taken place, the department will go into the “final stage” of reorganization, where the new organizational chart unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier in the year will fully take effect.

Senior State Department officials described the changes as “the most complicated reorganization in government history,” emphasizing that the cuts were largely made to eliminate Cold War-era redundancies as well as eliminating functions that were “no longer aligned with the president’s foreign policy priorities.”

“At the end of the day, we have to do what’s right for the mission,” one senior official said.

“There’s a tremendous amount of sort of unnecessary bureaucracy,” the second official asserted.

The State Department previously reported to Congress that it would aim to reduce its domestic workforce by around 15% as part of the reorganization. However, the senior officials specified that more than half of that goal would be met through “voluntary reductions” — people who elected to take the deferred resignation plan offered through the “Fork in the Road” emails earlier this year.

The officials also said the department did not have current plans to reduce its force overseas.

“The secretary wants to take this one step at a time,” one official said.

The officials also defended the department’s decision to cut some highly trained foreign service officers rather than reassign them.

Trump tours Texas flood devastation while avoiding criticism he’s heaped on other governors

July 11, 2025 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is touring the devastation left by flash flooding in central Texas amid growing questions about how local officials responded to the crisis as well as questions about the federal response — including the fate of the Federal Emergency Management Agency — that he has so far avoided.

Trump’s visit on Friday comes a week after heavy rainfall caused the Guadalupe River in Kerr County to rise 26 feet in less than an hour, killing at least 121, including dozens of children at the nearby Christian summer camp, Camp Mystic.

He and first lady Melania Trump will see flood-affected areas and participate in a roundtable with first responders and local officials. The two left the White House on Friday morning, with the president stopping to take some questions from reporters.

“It’s a horrible thing. A horrible thing. Nobody can even believe it,” Trump said of the catastrophic flash flooding.

“But we’re going to be there with some of the great families and others, the governor, everybody,” he added.

Accompanying him to Kerr County, one of the hardest hit areas, are Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.

The search for more than 170 people still missing continues with more than 2,100 responders on the ground in Texas from local, state and federal agencies.

Meanwhile, local officials are under scrutiny about what steps were taken to adequately warn people and how long it took for authorities to take action based on escalating weather and other alerts.

Trump, notably, hasn’t engaged in similar criticism about how the crisis was handled — as he has done in the case of other disasters.

“I would just say this is a hundred-year catastrophe, and it’s just so horrible to watch,” Trump said on Sunday.

Instead, Trump has largely focused on his relationship with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — a Republican and strong ally of the president.

“We’ve been in touch with Gov. Abbott, I’m very close to Gov. Abbott, and everybody in Texas,” Trump said on Sunday.

Some of the hardest-hit areas of central Texas, including Kerr County, are areas of strong Republican support that voted for Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Texas earlier this week.

Abbott said during a news conference on Tuesday that he spoke with Trump that morning and received assurances that assistance would be provided.

“He could not stop talking about how sad he was for all the little girls who have lost their lives,” Abbott said. “He recounted his own understanding of what happened with what was really a tsunami wave, a wall of water, that swept too many of them away.”

“And he cares a lot about those young ladies. And he wants to step up and make sure that any need that we have here in Texas is going to be met very quickly,” Abbott continued.

Trump’s also avoided answering questions on whether he is still aiming to phase out FEMA.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, discussed the federal response to the floods during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Later in the week, though, Noem went after FEMA during the Biden and other previous administrations — alleging the agency has suffered from “gross mismanagement and negligence.”

Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson had yet to visit the affected areas in Texas as of Thursday afternoon.

ABC News’ Luke Barr and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.

Rubio meets with Chinese foreign minister

July 11, 2025 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday after his first meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that their talks were “positive and constructive” and could pave the way for a meeting between the two countries’ heads of state.

“The president wants to do it. The Chinese side wants to see it happen. President Xi said that publicly. So I think the odds are high,” Rubio said. “I don’t have a date for you, but I think it’s coming.”

Rubio said he and his counterpart, in their first meeting and the secretary’s first trip to Asia, did not focus on tariff tensions between the nations.

Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs on almost every foreign country are set to take effect on Aug. 1. He initially delayed “reciprocal tariffs” in April, vowing to strike roughly 90 trade deals in 90 days.

Goods from China are already hit with a 30% tariff.

So far, the White House says it has reached trade agreements with only the United Kingdom and Vietnam, as well as a preliminary accord with China.

It was Rubio’s second high-stakes meeting with the top diplomat of a U.S. adversary after he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met for 40 minutes on the sideline of summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Malaysia.

Rubio emerged from that Thursday meeting calling it a “frank” conversation in which he relayed Trump’s “frustration” for Moscow’s inflexible approach to the negotiating table for peace in Ukraine.

On Friday, Rubio said he shuttled the Russians’ message back to Trump in a phone call Thursday night, but tempered expectations for progress.

“I don’t want to oversell it, OK, but it was constructive, and there was some things that perhaps we can build on. [But] maybe not, I don’t know. We’ll find out, but there are some things that we will potentially explore,” he said.

The president has said this week that the U.S. will send weapons to Ukraine, expressing distrust in Russian president Vladimir Putin — and reversing course on a pause in specific munitions scheduled to head to Ukraine.

“You’ll be seeing things happen,” the president suggested Friday, in support of Ukraine.

More than 1,300 State Department employees to receive layoff notifications