JD Vance Offers the Worst Defense Yet of Trump’s January 6 Pardons

Defending America’s police force is apparently no longer a priority for Republican leadership.

Five years after the party took a hard pro-police stance in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, Vice President JD Vance believes it’s okay to support individuals who beat and kill cops, so long as they do so in support of Donald Trump.

While listening to a list of January 6 offenders who had harmed police officers while invading the U.S. Capitol, Vance said he continued to “stand by” the decision to grant the violent attackers full, complete, and unconditional pardons.

“If you stand with law enforcement, how can you call these people unjustly imprisoned?” asked CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday.

“Margaret, you’re separating—there’s an important issue here,” Vance said. “There’s what the people actually did on January the 6th, and we’re not saying everybody did everything perfectly, and then what did Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice do in unjustly prosecuting well over 1,000 Americans in a way that was politically motivated?”

“Is violence like that against a police officer ever justified?” pressed Brennan.

“Violence against a police officer is not justified but that does not mean that you should have Merrick Garland’s weaponized Department of Justice expose you to incredibly unfair process, to denial of constitutional rights, and frankly, to a double standard that was not applied to many people,” Vance responded.

“The pardon power is not just for people who are angels or people who are perfect. And of course, we love our law enforcement and want people to be peaceful, with everybody, but especially with our good cops. That’s a separate issue from what Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice did. We rectified a wrong, and I stand by it.”

Last week, the country’s most powerful police union torched Donald Trump for pardoning more than 1,500 people in connection with the January 6 riot, including individuals who attacked Capitol Police as they broke into the Capitol building.

“The [International Association of Chiefs of Police] and FOP are deeply discouraged by the recent pardons and commutations granted by both the Biden and Trump Administrations to individuals convicted of killing or assaulting law enforcement officers,” the Fraternal Order of Police said in a statement. “The IACP and FOP firmly believe that those convicted of such crimes should serve their full sentences. Crimes against law enforcement are not just attacks on individuals or public safety—they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law. Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.”

The both-sides statement was a humbling turnaround for the fraternal order, which endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Moments after the pardons were announced, the order initially reacted with “no statement” statement.

Even some of the people who raided the U.S. Capitol and received pardons do not believe they deserve the nation’s forgiveness. Former MAGA granny Pamela Hemphill, 71, rejected Trump’s offer of clemency last week after serving 60 days in jail on a misdemeanor charge for her role in the insurrection. In an interview with NPR on Thursday, Hemphill claimed that accepting the pardon “would be a slap in the face to the Capitol police officers, to the rule of law, to our whole nation.”

“You know, I broke the law that day—period, black and white. I’m not a victim. I’m a volunteer,” Hemphill said. “And I don’t want to be a part of them trying to rewrite history what really happened that day. So if I took a pardon, I’m saying, yeah, it’s OK what I did that day. No, it was not OK.”

Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts are already going too far and have caused Native Americans to be questioned and detained.

At least 15 Native people in New Mexico and Arizona have reported that they’ve been stopped, questioned, or detained by federal law enforcement officials during immigration roundup efforts since Wednesday, according to Navajo Nation officials. They were asked to provide proof of citizenship despite being Indigenous to the United States.

In a news release, the Navajo Nation said its officials contacted the governors of Arizona and New Mexico, the Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to follow up on the reports.

“My office has received multiple reports from Navajo citizens that they have had negative, and sometimes traumatizing, experiences with federal agents targeting undocumented immigrants in the Southwest,” said the office of Navajo President Buu Nygren.

One Navajo woman was reportedly questioned by ICE after her workplace in Scottsdale, Arizona, was raided Wednesday morning, and was asked to show proof that she was Native, Arizona state Senator Theresa Hatathlie, who is Diné/Navajo, told CNN. The woman and seven other Indigenous people were lined up behind white vans and questioned for two hours without a way to contact their families.

“Now is it ICE or some other entity? I don’t know,” said Hatathlie, whose district includes Navajo land. “I did work with some individuals to confirm whether or not ICE did do that worksite raid, but the communication back to me was that it’s not a normal practice for ICE to confirm a raid or not.”

The woman was eventually allowed to use her cell phone and contact family members for proof of Native citizenship and then was allowed to leave, Hatathlie said.

With Trump reportedly dissatisfied with the pace of deportations and urging higher detention numbers with higher-profile raids, incidents like these are sure to continue as officers rush to meet the administration’s quotas. Due diligence is going to be swept aside as long as the president and right-wing lawmakers can claim that they are deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants. All the while, more citizens and legal immigrants are likely to be swept up.

Vice President JD Vance wants you to believe that Donald Trump will bring down grocery prices, even if he can’t spell out the nitty gritty of how it’s going to be accomplished.

Speaking with CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday, the vice president insisted that the price of food would come down—but couldn’t muster up any details on exactly how or when that would happen.

“You campaigned on lowering prices for consumers. We’ve seen all these executive orders. Which one lowers prices?” asked Brennan.

“We have done a lot,” Vance said. “And there have been a number of executive orders that have caused, already, jobs to start coming back into our country, which is a core part of lowering prices. More capital investment, more job creation in our economy, is one of the things that’s going to drive down prices for all consumers but also raise wages so that people can afford to buy the things they need.”

“So grocery prices aren’t going to come down?” Brennan interjected.

“No, no, Margaret, prices are going to come down, but it’s going to take a little bit of time,” Vance continued, claiming that Trump has so far used the power of his office to accomplish more in five days than President Joe Biden did during his entire term.

“The way that you lower prices is that you encourage more capital investment into our country,” Vance added.

But even with just one week in the bank, prices of some common grocery items are going up, not down, thanks to one of Trump’s most controversial economic policies: aggressive international tariffs.

Most recently, coffee prices have jumped in the wake of Trump’s weekend tariff dispute with Colombia, which saw the president threaten a 25 percent tariff increase against one of America’s strongest allies in Latin America, in order to force the country to accept the use of military aircraft to receive deportees out of the U.S.

Approximately 20 percent of the U.S coffee supply comes from Colombia. It’s second only to Brazil, which has failed to produce its typical yield while suffering through record temperatures and the worst drought in more than seven decades.

Meanwhile, Trump’s favorite TV network celebrated the price hike on Monday, saying on live air that rising consumer prices would be worth the cost if it successfully pushed immigrants out of the country.

“Ultimately, would you pay an extra quarter on a cup of coffee to send those people back?” Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked, to which Brian Kilmeade replied: “Yes!”

The co-hosts’ solution? Buy cheaper coffee options at the grocery store.

“You just go Taster’s Choice. It’s instant. You put it in, and you stir it,” Kilmeade said.

Trump—who claimed he won in November based on his promise to lower grocery costs—suddenly changed his tune in December, telling Time that “it’s hard to bring things down once they’re up.”

Trump is using the Justice Department to make key information regarding January 6 insurrectionists inaccessible to the public. 

CNN reported on Sunday that a database containing the names, charges, and convictions of Jan 6ers has been removed from the DOJ’s website—just as Trump allowed more than 1,500 of them to return to society via his mass pardons. The FBI also removed its page on “US Capitol Violence—Most Wanted,” seeking information on rioters who were fugitives or not yet identified.

“This has been a personal crusade I have worked on for many months.… This is a huge victory for J6ers,” wrote Brandon Straka, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his actions around January 6, which included giving an incendiary speech the day before and directing the mob to “go, go, go” on the steps of the Capitol building on that day.  

“This site was one of countless weapons of harassment used by the federal government to make life impossible for its targets from J6,” Stranka continued. “Every time a potential employer, landlord, new social or business contact, etc, would search somebody targeted for J6 they would read a dossier on each person filled with FBI and FOJ accusations and narratives that were never proven, along with links to documents with even more damaging allegations.… Thank you, Troy Nehls, Ed Martin, and all who worked to get this taken down!”

Ed Martin is Trump’s newly appointed U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., and played a prominent role in the fraudulent “Stop the Steal” movement in 2021.

Some parts of the Justice Department database are still viewable on the Internet Archive.

Donald Trump plans to sign a new set of executive orders Monday aimed at changing the makeup of the U.S. military.

CNN reports that the president plans to sign three executive orders that would ban transgender people from serving in the military; end the military’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and reinstate any service members, with backpay, who were discharged for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine. As of 2023, only 43 of the 8,000 service members who were discharged over refusal to get the vaccine have returned to the military.

One of Trump’s executive orders last week revoked a 2021 order from President Biden allowing transgender service members to openly serve in the military. That order in turn revoked a 2017 ban on transgender service members implemented in Trump’s first term. However, until Trump orders an outright ban, the estimated 9,000 to 14,000 transgender individuals currently serving the military are not affected.

Trump’s new executive order will go even further than his 2017 ban, according to two unnamed White House officials who spoke to CNN. It will create new military standards on gender pronouns and make a case against transgender service members based on mental and physical readiness.

“It can take a minimum of 12 months for an individual to complete treatments after transition surgery, which often involves the use of heavy narcotics. During this period, they are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements and require ongoing medical care. This is not conducive for deployment or other readiness requirements,” said one official, in attempts to justify the ban.

While the executive order on Covid-19 isn’t a big change, as Biden already rescinded the military’s Covid vaccine mandate in 2023, the other executive orders could hurt military recruitment numbers at a time when all three service branches are worried about future numbers. But that is of little concern to Trump and his new secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who has made negative remarks about even women serving in the military. It seems that Trump and conservatives are more concerned with how the military looks rather than its size and strength.