Closing summary
Joe Biden issued a sweeping batch of sentence commutations that affected nearly 1,500 people, as well as 39 pardons. The acts of clemency came after the president drew criticism for pardoning his son Hunter Biden, who was about to be sentenced on tax evasion and gun charges. A recently released public opinion poll found most Americans don’t approve of Biden’s decision to pardon his son, but they also are not on board with Donald Trump’s plan to pardon defendants facing charges or convicted over the January 6 attack. Nonetheless, the president-elect told Time magazine in an interview conducted as he was named its “person of the year” that issuing those pardons would be among the first things he will do once he takes office. Trump also promised to make good on campaign promises to expand oil and gas production and carry out mass deportations, while declining to rule out a return of the family separation policy from his first term that was widely condemned as cruel.
Here’s what else happened today:
Trump campaigned on lowering grocery prices, but no longer sounds so sure that he can pull it off.
An inspector general report found that no FBI agents took part in the January 6 insurrection, though about two dozen informants were at the Capitol or in the crowd. It also said the bureau should have communicated more with its Washington DC field offices about threats to the joint session of Congress held that day.
Kari Lake, a failed Republican candidate for governor and senator in Arizona and multi-time election denier, has been named by Trump to lead Voice of America.
The president-elect stopped by the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell this morning and celebrate being named Time magazine’s “person of the year”.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon and Washington Post honcho, plans to meet with Trump next week, while Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta donated $1m to the president-elect’s inauguration fund.
Monmouth University pollsters also asked Americans if they thought Donald Trump would unite the country during his presidency, or divide it further.
Forty-four per cent of respondents said it would wind up more divided, while 34% said it would become more united.
Trump won last month’s election decisively, besting Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris in all seven swing states and the popular vote – the first time a Republican has done so since 2004. Since then, he has not made baseless allegations of fraud, as he did following his election loss in 2020, and the Monmouth poll shows Americans mostly believe the vote was fair.
Eighty-three per cent of respondents described the election as “fair and square”, and 12% said he won due to voter fraud.
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