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Thursday, January 1, 2026
Democrats Propose Changing Constitution to Limit Trump's Pardon Power
Democratic lawmakers are trying to limit President Donald Trump’s ability to pardon those convicted of crimes.
They are pushing for a constitutional amendment that would narrow the circumstances under which a president can issue clemency.
California Rep. Mike Levin (D-49) posted a video on social media explaining his proposed amendment, arguing that “the presidential pardon system has reached a breaking point” and that the president’s pardon power “exists for justice and mercy” and to “serve the public good.”
“In my view, presidents of both parties have misused this power,” Levin continued. “No one has been perfect. But what we're seeing now is unprecedented, different in scale, different in pattern. Under President Trump, pardons have been used to erase convictions for extremely serious crimes, drug trafficking, major fraud, and violent attacks on our democracy.”
These aren't technical violations or low-level offenses. Many involved real danger to the public. On day one, President Trump pardoned individuals convicted for their roles in the January sixth attack on the Capitol. Since then, some recipients have committed new crimes and ended up back in jail. Other pardons involved major international drug trafficking and large financial crimes that cost workers and taxpayers many millions of dollars. In multiple cases, the people who benefited had direct political or financial ties to the president, including campaign or inauguration donations, sometimes by family members.
The lawmaker explained that his amendment “would ban self-pardons” and “bar pardons for family members, senior officials, and campaign staff.”
It would also prohibit a president from issuing pardons to “protect a president’s personal or financial interests.”
“Right now, there are almost no checks on this power. That makes it ripe for abuse. I know constitutional amendments are hard. I know there will be plenty of resistance, but this conversation has to start, and I hope it can be bipartisan because the rule of law matters,” Levin concluded.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8) supports the proposal. He told Newsweekthat “while previous presidents typically reserved pardons for those who took responsibility for their crimes and made amends to their victims, Trump uses pardons not only to reduce the sentences of his political allies but also to eliminate the debts they owe to their victims and society".
Democrats have been caterwauling about Trump’s pardons since he took office and granted clemency to those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol building. He recently pardoned former Rep. George Santos, who was serving time for defrauding donors and other offenses. He also pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando HernΓ‘ndez, who was convicted for cocaine trafficking, earlier this month.
However, the Framers insisted on endowing the president with sweeping pardon power for several reasons. Alexander Hamilton argued that presidents need broad pardon authority to handle national emergencies and to heal the country after conflicts.
Presidents used pardons to reunite the nation after the Civil War and also to end disputes over the Vietnam War draft.
Supporters also point out that pardon power is part of the system of checks and balances, allowing the president to correct unjust rulings made by judges or prosecutors.
Others point out that there are already ways to limit a president’s ability to abuse pardon power, such as impeachment.
Of course, this amendment is only aimed at stopping Trump from pardoning people. None of these people were pushing for this under the previous administration – even after former President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter.
Either way, this amendment isn’t going anywhere. Changing the Constitution is one of the most challenging endeavors in our system. The public isn’t going to get behind a wholesale effort to alter pardon policy when they are still struggling to put food on the table.
Canada Trying to Find Trade Partners
A recent article in Politico quoting several cabinet members of Prime Minister Mark Carney reflects a particular reality of the problem their economy will face in 2026.
It appears that Canadian government officials have finally recognized the Trump administration plans to dissolve the USMCA or what Canada calls CUSMA next year. With that reality they have a big problem.
Mexico has been working throughout the year to initiate economic policies in alignment with the United States. However, structurally and politically this is an alignment that is impossible for Canada to do. Like many contracting European countries, the economic policies of Canada are centered around their climate change agenda and green energy goals.
For the past few decades Canada bought into the carbon scam and enacted climate change goals into law for carbon pricing, alternative energy production, industry and manufacturing costs. These mechanisms to control “climate change” are nuts in the big picture.
In order for Canada to position their economy to be in alignment with the rest of North America (USA and Mexico), Carney would have to reverse years of legislated rules and regulations. That is not going to happen, and Canada will always be at a disadvantage because of it.
(Politico) – […] It’s a moment of existential crisis for Canada, a senior Carney government official told POLITICO. Waiting out the Trump administration isn’t an option, the official said, arguing that what’s happening in the United States reflects a generational shift — not a temporary disruption — and that returning to a policy of closer integration with America would be foolish. (more)
With three quarters of their economic production tied to exports into the USA, and with the USMCA likely to be dissolved in favor of a bilateral trade agreement, Canada now has to find other markets for its products or lower all the trade barriers currently in place. Prime Minister Mark Carney is trying to find alternative markets.
Carney has looked toward Europe, but that is a closed trade bloc difficult to engage. Carney has looked to southeast Asia, but that is an export driven market with limited capabilities to import costly western products. Carney has looked to Japan and China, but on scale there’s little to be gained.
The question is, where can Canada send its products if not to the USA. The brutally honest answer is nowhere. There just isn’t any other market, or combination of markets, who could replace the consumer base of the USA. Canada is refusing to admit this reality and 2026 is going to be a harsh awakening for the Canadian people.
The USMCA is currently facilitating around 60% of Canada’s exports into the United States. Cancel that agreement and suddenly 100% of all Canada-U.S. trade is on the table for negotiations.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and President Trump are going to put the squeeze on Mark Carney and every province within Canada as a consequence of their intransigence.
[…] Two-thirds of Canada’s economy is powered by trade, and roughly three-quarters of its exports flow to the U.S. It’s a C$1.3 trillion annual relationship that was celebrated on both sides of the border in good times but has become a source of leverage for America, especially with the Trump administration expected to continue squeezing Canadian industries with tariffs.
Europe is Carney’s top priority for deepening existing free-trade relationships. But closer integration with the European Union is a long game, and Canada has no interest in joining the bloc, according to the official, pushing Ottawa to explore other regions.
“Trade diversification is nothing new. People have talked about this for decades,” Sidhu said. “The difference here is other countries’ willingness to look at Canada as a reliable, stable trading partner,” he added, saying Trump has had a bigger influence on Ottawa’s strategy than any difference in trade philosophy between Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.
Canada’s governing Liberal Party is under new management, forcing a cohort of Trudeau-era lawmakers to quickly learn the language of economics to make an impression with the new boss. Social issues have been demoted — as have brown shoes.
Cabinet ministers are competing to establish themselves as closers to meet Carney’s high expectations. The result is overlapping mandates that sow confusion over who owns what.
Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc leads a new portfolio created under Carney, who sliced out North America from the international trade minister’s purview. (read more)
Protests in Iran Are Spreading, As More Bravely Stand Up to the Regime
The protests in Iran are spreading.
There have been numerous protests over the years in Iran, but there are indications in this one that are giving many great hope, as we enter a new year.
Demonstrations over the country’s economic crisis erupted in Tehran, the capital, on Sunday after the Iranian rial plunged to a record low against the dollar, forcing the head of the central bank to resign.
The protests soon morphed into wider outbursts against Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and his draconian restrictions on women, with students and shopkeepers demonstrating in a rare alliance against the government.
It's that last part that's perhaps most instructive. It's spread to various levels of society, including the students and shopkeepers. That's what happened in 1979, with the revolution that brought the mullahs to power.
It was the shopkeepers in Tehran who appear to have started it now; they closed their shops, and now others in areas around the country have done so as well. With over 50 percent inflation, how can anyone deal with that? But it's also the draconian policies, and the people have had enough.
It's pretty amazing that a woman is leading men among the shops, saying, "Don't be afraid, we are all together!"
I mentioned the students. Students at Tehran University were reportedly in conflict with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and they reportedly forced them out.
On Tuesday, Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in plain clothes trapped students who were chanting “freedom” and “death to the dictator” inside Tehran University and attacked them. It is not known how many were injured. [....]
Nafas, a student at Tehran University, told The Telegraph: “Students have been chanting since last night. They [security forces] surrounded the campus last night and rode their motorcycles around it – they returned today with batons, stun guns, and tear gas.
“Students clashed with them and forced them out, but the gates are now closed. Students at many universities have said they will not attend classes and will continue protesting. What’s the point of studying when there is no future, and the regime gives our money to Gaza and Lebanon?”
Notice that last part. That's a comment on the fact that they don't like their money going to prop up the actions in Gaza and Lebanon. But there's ongoing action there.
It's also spread to other universities.
Female students in at least one university removed their mandatory headscarves, waved them in the air, and called for Khamenei’s death, while others compared the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Islamic State.
Here's a post of a Bild reporter, asking where the left, why are they not supporting these female students who have ripped off their head scarves, waving them around, yelling, "You [the regime] are a slut, I am a free woman."
That is courage.
I mentioned protesters drove back security forces in my post yesterday about the protests, but we now have clearer pictures. It happened on Jomhouri Street, a major boulevard in Tehran. This is bravery. They are so fed up that they began kicking them and throwing things at them as they drove them away.
Since the protests started on Sunday, they have spread around the country.
[They were ]well outside the capital, including on the Persian Gulf island of Qeshm and in the western cities of Zanjan and Hamedan. And on Tuesday, videos showed that protests had spread to other major cities, including Kermanshah, Shiraz, Yazd and Isfahan.
Here they are ripping down a gate to a government building in Fasa.
There were also reports of the police firing at people in Fasa and in Kuhdasht.
It appears to be growing, despite reports of arrests of protesters.
We'll keep you updated. All good wishes to these brave people if they are finally able to free Iran. A free Iran would make for a better world.
Here Are The 10 Biggest Media Hoaxes Of 2025
In no particular order, here are the biggest hoaxes run by our truth-deprived media throughout the past year.
It turns out that when you spend every day parroting the most asinine conspiracies and narratives imaginable, people lose faith in your ability to play it straight pretty quickly. That’s the situation that America’s propaganda media found themselves in this year, as their credibility amongst the public hit the lowest level in recorded history.
For anyone who’s paid attention to their coverage of the 2025 “news” cycle, it’s not hard to see why. From running cover for leftist violence to gaslighting Americans about their role in the cover-up over Joe Biden’s ailing health, the corporate media’s bid to hide the truth was nothing short of remarkable.
So, as a public service, The Federalist has compiled a list of the top 10 biggest hoaxes run by our reality-deprived media throughout the past year. In no particular order, here they are.
Elon the ‘Fascist’
It didn’t take long after President Trump was sworn back into office for the media to pick up right where they left off after his first term.
While celebrating alongside Trump supporters at a post-inauguration event, X owner Elon Musk delivered remarks to attendees, in which he thanked them for making Trump’s victory possible. With his hand over his heart, the tech mogul then pointed to the crowd and said, “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.”
Media hacktivists quickly leapt into action to falsely characterize the hand gesture as a “fascist” or “Nazi” salute. This included outlets like PBS News, which wrote on X, “Billionaire Elon Musk gave what appeared to be a fascist salute Monday while making a speech at the post-inauguration celebration for President Donald Trump at the Capital One Arena.”
Anti-Hegseth Campaign
From the day President Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth has been under a barrage of media smear campaigns and hoaxes. Throughout his Senate confirmation battle to become America’s next war secretary, the media ran endless stories featuring anonymous sources alleging wrongdoing at his prior places of employment and dishonest hit pieces about his personal life — all to keep him from being confirmed.
Even after failing to prevent Hegseth’s confirmation, the media have shifted their focus to ousting him from the position. Throughout the past year, these efforts have included pushing the Signalgate dud, manufacturing a “constitutional crisis” about a Pentagon-led prayer service, elevating the voices of unnamed disgruntled officers to trash Hegseth, and — most recently — fomenting a hoax surrounding the military’s strikes on drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean.
Wait … Joe Biden Wasn’t OK After All?
Despite outlets like The Federalist reporting on it for years, America’s propaganda press didn’t just ignore Joe Biden’s clear cognitive decline — they actively participated in the cover-up. At every turn of his presidency, the media did everything possible to run interference for the doddering Delaware Democrat and preserve their party’s political power.
It was only after Biden disgracefully exited stage right that media hacks like Jake Tapper felt it was OK to acknowledge what those who aren’t regime simps have long known to be true about the now-former president. Earlier this year, the CNN talking head and Axios’ Alex Thompson embarked on a media tour to hawk their new book, which promises readers an inside look at the Democrat-led effort they participated in to hide Biden’s decline from the American public.
If that’s not gaslighting at its absolute worst, then I don’t what is.
A ‘Maryland Man’
Given their willingness to turn a blind eye to the border crisis under the Biden administration, it came as no surprise when the media ran to sow falsehoods about President Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts.
One of the most prominent examples of this came to a head with the deportation of Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a credibly accused MS-13 gang member and wife-beater. Rather than inform their readers that Garcia is an illegal alien and detail his reported criminal record, the media orchestrated a full-blown disinformation campaign to deceive Americans into believing the Trump administration abducted an unsuspecting “Maryland man” off the streets.
One Associated Press headline read, “El Salvador President Bukele says he won’t be releasing a Maryland man back to the US.,” while an NBC News piece partially read, “El Salvador won’t return Maryland man to the U.S. …”
The disinformation op was but one of many that media hacks ran throughout the year to smear and vilify immigration enforcement operations throughout the country.
Whitewashing the Russiagate Scandal
The damaging, years-long Russia collusion hoax would not have been possible without the active participation of America’s corrupt media. So, when explosive records on the subject were released earlier this year, it wasn’t exactly shocking that these so-called “defenders of democracy” immediately moved to sweep it all under the rug.
Declassified by the Trump administration, these damning documents showed how Obama-era intel leaders included uncorroborated intel in a 2017 intelligence report ordered by President Obama that parroted the false claim that Russia “aspired” for Trump to win the 2016 election. Not only was this and other unsubstantiated intel included at the behest of officials like then-CIA Director John Brennan, but intel contradicting that central claim was left out of the report altogether.
The propaganda press wasted little time in downplaying the scandal it helped to create. From running dishonest headlines to spewing outright falsehoods, the brazen hackery was a sight to behold.
(Meanwhile, The Federalist — which conducts actual journalism — was awarded the 2025 Dao Grand Prize for Investigative Journalism for its work exposing the Russia collusion hoax.)
Sydney Sweeney’s Good Jeans
It’s hard to imagine how even the most deranged members of the corporate press could turn an ad for denim jeans into a controversy about “racism.” And yet, they somehow found a way to do it.
When actress Sydney Sweeney modeled for American Eagle’s summer jeans line, shrieking leftist harpies and other media numskulls immediately rushed to characterize the ad campaign as one that promotes “racism,” “white supremacy,” “eugenics,” and pretty much every other left-wing outrage word you can think of. And then, after being inevitably mocked for their stupid responses, masculinity-challenged media flakes like David French were there to tell us that it was actually those darn right-wingers who made up the entire controversy.
Smearing Charlie Kirk
If you thought the barbaric assassination of a young husband and father of two small children would be enough for the media to change their grotesque ways, then you are gravely mistaken. Almost immediately after the murder of Christian and conservative speaker Charlie Kirk, the despicable ghouls allowed to permeate cable news wasted no time in smearing him.
Less than an hour after news broke that Kirk had been shot, MSNBC (now MS NOW) correspondent Katy Tur characterized the TPUSA founder as a “divisive” and “polarizing” figure and attempted to frame the shooting around gun access and Utah’s “permissive” firearm laws. She furthermore appeared to express more concern about the political fallout for her Democrat allies than for Kirk, saying, “You can imagine the [Trump] administration using this as a justification for something.”
Meanwhile Tur’s then-colleague Matthew Dowd initially suggested that Kirk could’ve been shot as the result of a “supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,” and then pivoted to smearing Kirk as “one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures … who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech … aimed at certain groups.” (Dowd was later fired for his repulsive conduct.)
The smears were two of the numerous media-led character assassination campaigns against Kirk that occurred in the wake of his assassination.
Excusing Leftist Violence
The assassination of Charlie Kirk. The attempted assassinations of Donald Trump. Attacks on ICE agents. The destruction of Tesla cars and dealerships. The firebombing of pro-life centers. The 2020 Black Lives Matter “summer of love” riots. The mafia-like murder of a health care CEO. The 2017 congressional baseball shooting. The attempted killing of Brett Kavanaugh. Transgender-led terror attacks on Christians.
These are but a few of the many acts of leftist violence to plague America in recent years — a problem that keeps getting worse by the minute. But according to our propaganda media, this is all just a figment of conservatives’ imagination.
When they’re not trying to downplay or “both sides” the issue, these so-called “journalists” are busy victim-blaming Republicans for getting attacked by Democrats’ wacko footsoldiers. And in the case of outlets like The Economist, they’ll even report out garbage studies conducted by literal Antifa to push the bogus narrative that political violence is really a right-wing problem.
Democrat Lawfare? Never Heard of It
If you pay close enough attention, you may notice a slight difference in the way the media covered the Biden administration and other Democrat prosecutors’ lawfare against Donald Trump and how they responded to the Trump administration moving to hold Dems’ corrupt allies accountable for their allegedly unlawful actions.
When Biden and Co. attempted to imprison Republicans’ 2024 presidential candidate on the eve of a major election, the “democracy dies in darkness” crowd could not have been more ecstatic. This unprecedented lawfare, media entities like The New York Times editorial board reasoned, was necessary to preserve what they professed to be the rule of law.
Yet when the Trump administration moved to hold figures like James Comey and John Bolton accountable for their allegedly unlawful actions, many of these same hacks have (unsurprisingly) been singing a different tune. Throughout the past year, they have twisted themselves into pretzels to deceive the American public into believing that this has nothing to do with the corrupt activities of such individuals and everything to do with Trump exacting “political retribution” against his enemies — all while ignoring their allies’ past lawfare against the president.
War on SCOTUS
The media’s bid to discredit the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices is not a new phenomenon. But this year, it took on a new phase.
With left-wing activists and groups filing lawsuits against the Trump administration at every turn, predominantly Democrat-appointed judges have been quick to grant these actors’ requests to issue overreaching injunctions designed to grind the president’s agenda to a halt. Several of these cases have since made their way up to the Supreme Court, which has stopped many of the legally dubious orders from going into effect while litigation continues in the lower judiciary.
Seizing the opportunity, the media have used the conservative justices’ willingness to stifle this judicial coup as part of their campaign to destroy the court. These regime mouthpieces have since adopted the bogus narrative that, by following the law, SCOTUS is doing the bidding of Trump, whom they gleefully paint as a lawless authoritarian.
“The Supreme Court Is Trump’s Partner in Crimes Against America,” a September Rolling Stone headline read.
“The overwhelming evidence that the Supreme Court is on Donald Trump’s team,” blared a September Vox article.