No One Knows How Trump’s Pardon Process Actually Works

Donald Trump’s pardoning process has devolved into something that doesn’t make sense to anybody invested in the process.

After issuing thousands of pardons within hours of returning to office, Trump’s pardon pipeline went silent, and he even went so far as to ice out the woman tapped to handle the caseload, “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson, who was canceled on several times by the president.

Now, months into Trump’s second year, practically no one understands how to navigate Trump’s opaque pardon requirements, according to nearly a dozen sources that spoke with NOTUS. Those unidentified sources included lobbyists, attorneys, and White House insiders.

“There is no process, there is no right way to do this,” one individual involved in the process told the digital publication. “It’s chaos.”

A senior White House official rejected that characterization, telling NOTUS that there is a “defined process” in place to manage pardons.

“There has been no change to the pardon process,” another White House official said. “The Administration has always had a robust review process which involves the Department of Justice, Alice Johnson, and the White House Counsel’s office. Ultimately President Trump is the final decider. Susie is simply ensuring the process, which has always existed, is followed,” the official said, referring to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

But there is speculation that Johnson was pushed to the fringe over concerns that the public would not take kindly to the pardons, which all too often carry a covert personal tie or benefit for the president. The controversial recipients of Trump’s forgiveness include 1,600 January 6 defendants, as well as the alleged co-conspirators of Trump’s 2020 election interference case, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, and 72 others.

Conservatives have reportedly been dismayed by the lack of progress, wondering why Trump opted to appoint Johnson if he never intended to allow her to do her job.

“If you elevate someone to a role like pardon czar and create a new pardon office, you should use it to carry out your goals,” a Republican operative told NOTUS.

Yet Trump has set no time on his schedule to meet with clemency advisers, an official told NOTUS.

President Donald Trump was so desperate to stack the commission overseeing the construction of his ballroom with allies that he tapped his 26-year-old assistant to serve as its newest member—even though she has absolutely no expertise in art at all.

Chamberlain Harris, deputy director of Oval Office operations, was reportedly picked to join the Commission on Fine Arts, which is charged with advising the federal government on the art, design, and architectural development of Washington.

When Congress first established the Commission on Fine Arts, some 100 years before Harris was even born, lawmakers decreed that the members should be “well-qualified judges of the fine arts.” By all accounts, Harris is not one.

Harris, who served as Trump’s executive assistant when he was out of office, received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2019 from the University of Albany with minors in communications and economics, according to an archived copy of her résumé on her LinkedIn profile. A quick search of the Scholar’s Archive at SUNY Albany turns up a 2019 honors thesis titled, “Missing the Mark: Obama and Trump’s use of similar communication strategies.”

Several former fine arts commissioners told The Washington Post that they could not recall a commissioner in the panel’s history who had less experience in fine arts than Harris.

So, what qualifications does Harris have? She may not know art—but she does know Trump.

“She understands the president’s vision and appreciation of the arts like very few others, and brings a unique perspective that will serve the Commission well,” said White House communications director Steven Cheung. “She will be a tremendous asset to the Commission of Fine Arts and continue to honorably serve our country well.”

Harris is expected to be sworn in on Thursday, when the commissioners are slated to review the latest plans for the ballroom.

In December, a federal judge ordered Trump to run decisions for the construction of a new White House ballroom through the Commission of Fine Arts. There was only one problem: The president fired all six members in October in order to clear the way for a slew of changes to the nation’s monuments. Ahead of the commission’s first meeting to discuss the ballroom, Trump embarked on a three-week hiring spree in January to refill the positions with sycophants willing to green-light his major construction project.

Since the project was initially announced last year, the price tag for Trump’s behemoth ballroom has ballooned to $400 million. Luckily for Trump, there is no shortage of shadowy billionaires and major corporations just clamoring to foot the bill.

President Trump is moving to protect prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket as nationwide backlash against them grows. 

“Over the past year, American prediction markets have been hit with an onslaught of state-led litigation. In response, the CFTC has today filed a friend-of-the-court brief to defend its exclusive jurisdiction over these derivative markets,” Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Mike Selig said in a video on X Tuesday. “Prediction markets aren’t new.…  They provide useful functions for society by allowing everyday Americans to hedge commercial risks like increases in temperature and energy price spikes. They also serve as an important check on our news media.”

Selig published a Wall Street Journal op-ed on February 16 titled “States Encroach on Prediction Markets,” noting that the CFTC has always had authority over prediction markets and will work to stop states’ legal attacks.

To many, prediction markets are legalized, freewheeling virtual gambling at best and perfect fronts for insider trading at worst.

“Mike, I appreciate you attempting this with a straight face, but I don’t remember the CFTC having authority over the ‘derivative market’ of LeBron James rebounds,” Utah Republican Governor Mike Cox said. “These prediction markets you are breathlessly defending are gambling—pure and simple. They are destroying the lives of families and countless Americans, especially young men. They have no place in Utah. Let me be clear, I will use every resource within my disposal as governor of the sovereign state of Utah, and under the Constitution of the United States, to beat you in court.”

Independent journalist Joon Lee chimed, “Trump-appointed chairman of CTFC says they will go to court to protect the national legality of prediction markets. Does not mention sports makes up 90% of bets placed on prediction markets. Also not mentioned: Trump Jr is an investor in Polymarket and a paid advisor to Kalshi.”

“Thank you, Chairman,” one X user wrote sarcastically. “Debt, depression and suicide rates among young men is a very small price to pay for our God-Given Right to wager on who will get engaged in the current season of Love Is Blind.” 

A 2-month-old baby at an ICE detention center in Texas had to be hospitalized late Monday night because a doctor wasn’t available at the facility.

Juan Nicolás, held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, 71 miles from San Antonio, has been suffering from respiratory problems for nearly half of his life— the one month he has spent in detention with his mother. Over the weekend, Nicolás was reportedly choking on his own vomit and had a medical episode at 3 a.m. Sunday.

Texas Representative Joaquin Castro has been pushing for Nicolás’s release, having visited the CoreCivic-run facility late last month and noticing that its on-site clinic was empty and unstaffed in the afternoon that he was there.

“His life is in danger,” Castro said in a live Instagram video Monday afternoon, noting that a 7-year-old girl had been released from Dilley but not Nicolás. “They couldn’t take him to a doctor, because there weren’t any doctors in the early morning hours at Dilley.”

Univision’s Lidia Terrezas reported that Nicolás was taken to the hospital, but there have been no updates on his condition. He’s being held with his mother at a South Texas hospital, guarded by armed federal agents. It’s better than the facility in Dilley, which is known to be unsanitary. Mothers reportedly have issues getting clean water for formula, and measles shut down the facility over two weeks ago. Despite Castro’s best efforts, there’s no word on whether Nicolás will have to go back to Dilley if and when he recovers.

Univision’s Lidia Terrezas confirmed that Nicolás was taken to the hospital, but didn’t have any  updates on his condition. He was initially held with his mother at a south Texas hospital, guarded by armed federal agents. It’s better than the facility in Dilley, which is known to be unsanitary. Mothers reportedly have issues getting clean water for formula and measles shut down the facility over two weeks ago. 

In an update Tuesday afternoon, Castro posted that Nicolás has bronchitis, according to his mother, and was unresponsive at some point in the last few hours. He was still discharged from the hospital at about midnight Tuesday. Nicolás’s mother still had to appear before an immigration judge Tuesday, who told her that she will be deported, but didn’t say when or to where. 

“Both Juan and his mom are back at Dilley and their future remains uncertain. We are all deeply concerned that Juan and his mom will be deported and that Juan’s health will continue to deteriorate,” Castro posted. “His life is in danger because of ICE’s monstrous cruelty. I will continue to provide updates and we will keep fighting to protect them.”  

This story has been updated.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright is attempting to repackage America’s illegal efforts to seize and sell Venezuela’s oil as an act of “out-of-the-box” diplomacy. Some might just call it piracy. 

Speaking on Fox News Tuesday, Wright boasted that the United States had already sold an “enormous amount” of the oil it took from Venezuela after it mounted a deadly military strike to kidnap the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.  

“We’ve sold about a billion dollars of oil so far. We’ve recently signed agreements to sell about another $5 billion of oil in the next several months. So you’re talking well north of $10 billion a year,” Wright said.

“This is a win all around and a transformation of a country without any American soldiers on the ground, and without any American taxpayer dollars. This is way out-of-the-box, ground-breaking Trump diplomacy,” Wright said. 

To be clear, what President Donald Trump did in Venezuela was more akin to armed robbery than diplomacy. 

Wright didn’t fully explain where the money was actually going—or the oil. The secretary claimed that some of the money would go back to help “establish a free press and a representative government” in Venezuela. Meanwhile, the seized oil was a “specific kind of crude” American refineries were built to process, and could bring down the production cost of asphalt, he said. 

Speaking to NBC News last week, Wright claimed that the U.S. deposited $500 million from initial oil sales in an account in Qatar in order to keep the money away from Venezuela’s creditors—like China, Russia, and a slew of international oil bondholders and oil companies. “Now we have an account at the U.S. Treasury. The money won’t go to Qatar anymore,” the secretary said.

Wright also claimed that the oil had mostly gone to U.S. refineries and countries in Europe—but without oversight from Congress there is simply no way to know what deals are being made, or whether the money will actually make it back to Venezuelans in the throes of a widespread hunger crisis. 

Smashed windows, Tasers, and death: The warning signs were there, but officials at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement did not heed them.

Top officials at the deportation agency knew as early as March that their officers were using more force against civilians than ever before, Politico reported Tuesday.

The upward trend for both lethal and nonlethal force was documented in internal emails obtained by the liberal-leaning watchdog nonprofit American Oversight through Freedom of Information Act requests, revealing that top officials were well informed of the violence under their purview months before federal officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

One March 20 email notified Caleb Vitello, the former acting director of ICE, that the agency had recorded 67 use-of-force incidents within the first two months of Trump’s term. That was nearly four times higher than the year before, when the agency reported just 17 incidents, according to Politico.

Vitello received a similar notice days earlier flagging near-identical rates for the first two weeks of March, which noted that use of force had quadrupled during that timespan compared to 2024.

Some of the reported violence included a March 10 instance in which officers smashed a woman’s car windows in order to grab an undocumented immigrant. In another instance, officers’ use of a Taser caused an individual to vomit and need medical assistance. At least one person was recorded dying from an encounter with immigration officers.

Yet the Trump administration has tried to frame the escalation as a nonissue or, worse still, completely nonexistent. The Department of Homeland Security has insisted that officers are demonstrating “incredible restraint” in their roles, and that their actions are still consistent with the expectations set in their training.

That’s in spite of the fact that AI-induced slip-ups have “sent many new recruits into field offices without proper training,” according to law enforcement officials who spoke with NBC News last month.

And the agency’s seemingly endemic violence will likely only be exacerbated by the Trump administration’s slapdash recruitment tactics, which involve a “wartime recruitment” hiring spree that aims to take on as many as 10,000 new officers in the coming year. Part of that strategy includes spending millions on social media advertisements targeted at gun rights advocates, UFC enthusiasts, and manosphere podcast audiences.

Loyal MAGA equivocator Tricia McLaughlin is leaving her post as Homeland Security spokesperson amid the widespread unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

According to Politico, McLaughlin planned to depart in December but stayed on through the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Most recently, she was asked to explain her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, labeling Pretti as a domestic terrorist, but she refused to use the same words.

“Secretary Noem accused Alex Pretti of being a domestic terrorist. Is the administration standing by that language?” Fox News’s Dana Peroni asked McLaughlin last month.

“So, initial statements were made after reports from CBP on the ground. It was a very chaotic scene. We know that our ICE law enforcement are facing rampant threats of violence against them, a violent campaign, so that is why this investigation is so important, so that we can get accurate facts to the American people,” she replied, avoiding the question.

“Would you use that expression again?”

“I think we have to really have the investigation be leading the way on this, Stuart,” she said. “And again, the early statements that were released was based on a chaotic scene on the ground and we really need to have true, accurate information to come to light, and so, again, Homeland Security investigators are leading that with the FBI supporting.”

Otherwise, McLaughlin has eagerly spouted the Trump administration’s talking points. In December, she made headlines for defending President Trump’s racist attacks on Somali Americans. She is the second senior immigration official to jump ship after Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, following former Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino’s reassignment last month.

Her deputy Lauren Bis, who previously worked at the Heritage Foundation and the Trump campaign before joining DHS, will be promoted in her place.

This story has been updated.

New Mexico’s state House is looking to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch in the state, unanimously passing a bill on Monday to establish an investigatory subcommittee to see what the convicted sex criminal was up to there.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, state Representative Andrea Romero, called the committee a “Truth Commission” that will use testimony, subpoena powers, and public records to “put the whole story together.”

New Mexicans “deserve to know the truth about what went on at the Zorro Ranch and who knew about it. We have heard years of allegations and rumors about Epstein’s activities in New Mexico, but unfortunately, federal investigations have failed to put together an official record,” Romero said in a statement. “With this Truth Commission, we can finally fill in the gaps by investigating the failures that led to the horrific allegations of abuse and crime at Zorro Ranch, so we can learn from them and prevent such atrocities from taking place in our state going forward.”

Epstein’s Zorro Ranch was a sprawling 7,500 acres that he bought in 1993, which had its own helipad and airstrip. Court documents say that sex trafficking took place there with the help of Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, but the federal government has never conducted a full search of the property. In 2019, then–New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said his office conducted its own investigation and found “activity that occurred in New Mexico that was still viable for prosecution, including contact with multiple victims.”

Balderas added that federal prosecutors in New York asked his office to hold back on any investigations or prosecutions related to Epstein, as they had their own ongoing investigation of Epstein. In emails released earlier this month, Manhattan federal prosecutors said in 2019 that they had spoken with the New Mexico attorney general’s office, who they said had “agreed to cease any investigation into sex trafficking and share whatever they had gathered regarding sex trafficking activity with our office.”

Years later, New Mexico authorities are going to be taking a full look at what happened on the ranch. Several of Epstein’s victims have testified that they were abused there, but Epstein successfully managed to keep those activities hidden for many years, even from his neighbors. With this commission, the truth may finally come out.

After staving off major mark-ups during the holiday season, American companies are finally starting to hike prices in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other policies making business more expensive, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The initial tariff-driven price spike started to dull in October and fell before Black Friday—but it is back for a post-Christmas price reset, according to Alberto Cavallo, a professor at Harvard Business School who tracks online prices of U.S. retailers. Between the end of November and February 10, the prices of most affordable imported goods rose by 2.3 percent, according to Cavallo.

Driven by the rising price of appliances, bedding, computers, electronics, and furniture, online prices posted their largest monthly increase in a dozen years, according to the Adobe digital price index.

American companies aren’t shying away from blaming Trump’s tariffs for the suddenly soaring prices.

After delaying price increases on winter goods, Columbia Sportswear said it intended to up the price of spring and fall merchandise by, on average, a high single-digit percent. Speaking on an earnings call earlier this month, Columbia’s chief executive Tim Boyle said that raising prices, and other mitigation measures like renegotiating prices with its factories, was intended to “offset the dollar impact of high tariffs.”

Levi Strauss raised prices in January in response to Trump’s tariffs, and is continuing to mark up price tags in February. The company said it identified more opportunities to boost prices on new, high-end items, while only moderately increasing the price of entry-level products.

McCormick & Co said that tariff expenses added a whopping $70 million in gross costs last year, and will add $50 million in incremental costs this year. The spice maker initially raised prices in September, and plans to increase prices again this month.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on Trump’s disastrous tariff policy as early as Friday. But tariffs aren’t the only Trump administration policies making business more expensive.

Structural Systems Repair Group, a Cincinnati-based construction company, was forced to raise prices by 10 to 15 percent after tariffs and health care costs for its 115 employees both increased by 10 percent. In 2026, the absence of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which elapsed under the Trump administration, has caused health insurance premiums to spike even higher.

A 40-year-old man allegedly walked into a San Diego McDonald’s, asked for the manager, and violently put him in a headlock—all while claiming to be an ICE agent.

“Why do you think your 911 calls aren’t f—king working?” Joshua Cobb can be heard telling McDonald’s employees in a video of the incident last week. “Why do you think that? Why do you think I’m willing to take two punches in the fucking face from some illegal immigrant while I make an arrest for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement?”

“He grabbed me from, from the back, grabbed my neck like really hard,” general manager Daniel Martinez told ABC 10 News. “So when that happened, all my co-workers jumped on him, and he let go, but after that, he just punched me on the side.”

In this case, employees knew Cobb wasn’t an ICE agent because he frequented their McDonald’s. He showed no ICE identification and was wearing just a T-shirt and a backward hat. He was later arrested.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Police arrested a man in Galveston, Texas, in December for impersonating an ICE agent. Decked out in full (albeit cheap-looking) tactical gear, 44-year-old Joshua Warner allegedly tried to arrest two people, telling the civilians who confronted him that he didn’t need to give them his name or badge number.

“I’ve never seen police in a uniform like that, and his tool belt and all of his stuff … it looked like it had just came in from Temu or Amazon or something,” one witness told reporters.

It seems incredibly, alarmingly easy for any middle-aged loser to create chaos and fulfill whatever racist GI Joe fantasies they have under the guise of being a federal agent. And the aggressive, indiscriminate actions of the real ones aren’t helping.