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I keep asking this question because whining over the government debt looks to be a huge growth sector in the next year or two, or perhaps until Republicans retake the White House. I regularly ridicule debt whining, because, unlike its cousin, deficit whining, it has no basis in economic reality.
Before again showing why the debt is a meaningless number, let me contrast it with the budget deficit, which can be a real cause for concern. The way in which deficits can pose a problem is that a large deficit can push the economy beyond its ability to produce goods and services.
This is a textbook story that happens to be accurate. The point at which the economy is being pushed too far by a budget deficit is not easy to determine and it varies hugely over the course of the business cycle.
When the economy is in a severe slump, there is plenty of excess capacity and unemployed workers, and therefore little basis for concern that a deficit is creating more demand than the economy can supply. However, near the peak of a business cycle, when the unemployment rate is already low, a large budget deficit can create demand that the economy is unable to meet.
The consequences of excessive demand are hard to know at this point. One possible consequence is that the Federal Reserve Board decides to raise interest rates. This will reduce demand by reducing housing construction and to a lesser extent lowering public and private investment. It also is likely to raise the value of the dollar, which leads to a larger trade deficit, which will also lower demand.
But suppose the Fed doesn't raise the rate. Fed Chair Jay Powell indicated that he plans to keep short-term rates near zero for the immediate future. In the old days, we would have thought that would create serious problems with inflation, but that is less clear now.
First, the economy is far more internationalized, which means that is easier for excess demand in the United States to simply spill over to increased demand for imports, rather than driving up domestic prices. This is pretty much the story that we see if a single state has very strong demand.
If Ohio were to have a booming economy, it would mostly translate into higher demand for a wide range of goods and services from neighboring states, not an inflationary spiral in Ohio. This is likely to be the case with any excess demand that results from large budget deficits here.
The other major difference between the economy of today and the economy of the 1970s, the last time we saw an inflationary spiral, is that unions are much weaker today. This means workers have far less bargaining power.
While this is a big part of the story of the growth of wage inequality over the last four decades, it does mean that we are less likely to see the sort of wage-price spiral we saw in the 1970s. If we do see a rise in prices due to excess demand, it is likely that workers today will be able to respond by demanding higher wages.
For these reasons, whether or not the large budget deficits that we are now seeing will lead to problems with inflation is an open question. I have argued that it is worth pressing the economy to try to get back to full employment quickly, as well as do many of the positive things included in the American Recovery Act, such as increasing the child tax credit and enhancing the subsidies in the health care exchanges. But there is a real basis for concern about inflation.
The Debt Is Not a Measure of Anything
While deficits are potentially a problem, the debt is not, first and foremost because it doesn't really measure anything. The debt whiners are fond of telling stories about how the debt is a burden on our children, or how the debt can lead to financial crisis and other bad things, but these claims are inventions, not economic realities.
Interest that we pay on the debt can be a burden, but it is dwarfed by other factors like productivity growth. (The impact of ten years of even modest productivity growth swamps an increment to debt service that we pass onto to our kids from higher deficits today.) Furthermore, debt service burdens at present and the near-term future will almost certainly be much smaller than what we saw in the 1990s.
The debt whiners only care about the debt issued by the national government, they don't care at all about the burden of patent and copyright monopolies.
But there is another aspect to this story that our debt whiners desperately do not want anyone to talk about. Direct spending is only one way in which the government pays for things. We also pay for things, like coronavirus vaccines, by giving out patents or copyright monopolies.
These monopolies can be very costly. In the case of the coronavirus vaccines, they mean that we are paying roughly ten times as much for each vaccine as we would in a free market. Vaccines that would likely cost around $2 a shot instead cost us $20. And, they may cost us even more in future years if we need boosters after the pandemic is over.
These government-granted monopolies are effectively a form of government debt. Incredibly, I have literally never seen any of the debt whiners ever mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in rents paid out each year to drug companies, medical equipment suppliers, software companies, or other beneficiaries of these monopolies as part of the burden of the debt. This in spite of the fact that the rents from these monopolies are several times larger than the debt service that we pay out on the official debt.
But let's flip the story over in the hope of teaching something to the debt whiners. Suppose that we looked to replace much or all of the debt that troubles them with new patent monopolies. Imagine that we sold off trillions of dollars worth of patent monopolies to pay off a large chunk of the debt.
If this sounds strange it is important to step back for a second and think of the logic of a patent or a copyright monopoly. While we ostensibly link the award of these monopolies to innovation or creative work, there is no necessary link.
At the point where the rents are being collected, a patent or copyright monopoly is simply a monopoly on a particular item. It doesn't matter one iota whether the monopoly was awarded due to some brilliant innovation or whether it was awarded due to a payoff to a Trump friend or family member. The monopoly means that the holder gets to charge a price far above the free market price.
With this in mind, suppose the government decided to auction off monopoly selling rights to a number of goods and services. (We can even call them "patents" to make people feel better.) We surely could raise enough to pay off the national debt.
Just to take my favorite example, patent rents on prescription drugs will be over $400 billion this year. (I explain how I get this figure here.) Patents have a limited lifespan, but let's imagine the ones we auction off to continue in perpetuity. The current interest rate on thirty-year Treasury bonds is roughly 3 percent. This means that to generate the $400 billion in rents earned on prescription drugs, we would need $12 trillion in Treasury bonds.
Therefore, the claim to patent right on prescription drugs lasting in perpetuity should be worth roughly $12 trillion. If we had this auction and got $12 trillion, we could reduce our national debt by an amount equal to 60 percent of GDP. That should make the debt whiners very happy.
In fact, we can go further. I calculated that total patent rents in the economy come to over $1 trillion a year. If we auctioned off these rights (again being carried on in perpetuity) it should raise more than $30 trillion, more than enough to eliminate the national debt altogether.
And, we aren't limited to just auctioning off patent rents on the items where companies currently get them. We can auction off monopoly rights on anything, on selling cars, computers, bread, haircuts, anything. We can raise vast amounts of money through this route and make the debt whiners very happy.
Of course, these rents do have real economic costs. They create large economic distortions (think of tariffs of many thousand percent) and they create perverse incentives. We see this with the patent rents we currently have. For example, pharmaceutical companies misled physicians about the addictiveness of the new generation of opioids to maximize their sales. As economic theory predicts, patent monopolies give drug companies incentives to push their products as widely as possible, even if it means misleading doctors and the public about their safety and effectiveness.
But the debt whiners only care about the debt issued by the national government, they don't care at all about the burden of patent and copyright monopolies. So, we can answer their concerns simply by issuing enough of these monopolies to bring the debt down to a level that makes them happy.
The National Debt is a Meaningless Number
Perhaps some folks will read the prior section and decide that we need to auction off a large number of monopolies to reduce the national debt. The sane ones will instead recognize that the debt is a largely meaningless number. It can imply larger debt service burdens, and that can be a problem, but this is a very small part of the economic picture, especially compared to items like patent rents that get almost no attention at all from economists. What really matters is the underlying strength of the economy and society that we pass on to future generations.
I have no idea if the debt whiners understand this point and try to obfuscate reality, or are just confused. As the old saying goes, "economists are not very good at economics." But anyhow, the rest of the country need not take their debt whining seriously.
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
I keep asking this question because whining over the government debt looks to be a huge growth sector in the next year or two, or perhaps until Republicans retake the White House. I regularly ridicule debt whining, because, unlike its cousin, deficit whining, it has no basis in economic reality.
Before again showing why the debt is a meaningless number, let me contrast it with the budget deficit, which can be a real cause for concern. The way in which deficits can pose a problem is that a large deficit can push the economy beyond its ability to produce goods and services.
This is a textbook story that happens to be accurate. The point at which the economy is being pushed too far by a budget deficit is not easy to determine and it varies hugely over the course of the business cycle.
When the economy is in a severe slump, there is plenty of excess capacity and unemployed workers, and therefore little basis for concern that a deficit is creating more demand than the economy can supply. However, near the peak of a business cycle, when the unemployment rate is already low, a large budget deficit can create demand that the economy is unable to meet.
The consequences of excessive demand are hard to know at this point. One possible consequence is that the Federal Reserve Board decides to raise interest rates. This will reduce demand by reducing housing construction and to a lesser extent lowering public and private investment. It also is likely to raise the value of the dollar, which leads to a larger trade deficit, which will also lower demand.
But suppose the Fed doesn't raise the rate. Fed Chair Jay Powell indicated that he plans to keep short-term rates near zero for the immediate future. In the old days, we would have thought that would create serious problems with inflation, but that is less clear now.
First, the economy is far more internationalized, which means that is easier for excess demand in the United States to simply spill over to increased demand for imports, rather than driving up domestic prices. This is pretty much the story that we see if a single state has very strong demand.
If Ohio were to have a booming economy, it would mostly translate into higher demand for a wide range of goods and services from neighboring states, not an inflationary spiral in Ohio. This is likely to be the case with any excess demand that results from large budget deficits here.
The other major difference between the economy of today and the economy of the 1970s, the last time we saw an inflationary spiral, is that unions are much weaker today. This means workers have far less bargaining power.
While this is a big part of the story of the growth of wage inequality over the last four decades, it does mean that we are less likely to see the sort of wage-price spiral we saw in the 1970s. If we do see a rise in prices due to excess demand, it is likely that workers today will be able to respond by demanding higher wages.
For these reasons, whether or not the large budget deficits that we are now seeing will lead to problems with inflation is an open question. I have argued that it is worth pressing the economy to try to get back to full employment quickly, as well as do many of the positive things included in the American Recovery Act, such as increasing the child tax credit and enhancing the subsidies in the health care exchanges. But there is a real basis for concern about inflation.
The Debt Is Not a Measure of Anything
While deficits are potentially a problem, the debt is not, first and foremost because it doesn't really measure anything. The debt whiners are fond of telling stories about how the debt is a burden on our children, or how the debt can lead to financial crisis and other bad things, but these claims are inventions, not economic realities.
Interest that we pay on the debt can be a burden, but it is dwarfed by other factors like productivity growth. (The impact of ten years of even modest productivity growth swamps an increment to debt service that we pass onto to our kids from higher deficits today.) Furthermore, debt service burdens at present and the near-term future will almost certainly be much smaller than what we saw in the 1990s.
The debt whiners only care about the debt issued by the national government, they don't care at all about the burden of patent and copyright monopolies.
But there is another aspect to this story that our debt whiners desperately do not want anyone to talk about. Direct spending is only one way in which the government pays for things. We also pay for things, like coronavirus vaccines, by giving out patents or copyright monopolies.
These monopolies can be very costly. In the case of the coronavirus vaccines, they mean that we are paying roughly ten times as much for each vaccine as we would in a free market. Vaccines that would likely cost around $2 a shot instead cost us $20. And, they may cost us even more in future years if we need boosters after the pandemic is over.
These government-granted monopolies are effectively a form of government debt. Incredibly, I have literally never seen any of the debt whiners ever mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in rents paid out each year to drug companies, medical equipment suppliers, software companies, or other beneficiaries of these monopolies as part of the burden of the debt. This in spite of the fact that the rents from these monopolies are several times larger than the debt service that we pay out on the official debt.
But let's flip the story over in the hope of teaching something to the debt whiners. Suppose that we looked to replace much or all of the debt that troubles them with new patent monopolies. Imagine that we sold off trillions of dollars worth of patent monopolies to pay off a large chunk of the debt.
If this sounds strange it is important to step back for a second and think of the logic of a patent or a copyright monopoly. While we ostensibly link the award of these monopolies to innovation or creative work, there is no necessary link.
At the point where the rents are being collected, a patent or copyright monopoly is simply a monopoly on a particular item. It doesn't matter one iota whether the monopoly was awarded due to some brilliant innovation or whether it was awarded due to a payoff to a Trump friend or family member. The monopoly means that the holder gets to charge a price far above the free market price.
With this in mind, suppose the government decided to auction off monopoly selling rights to a number of goods and services. (We can even call them "patents" to make people feel better.) We surely could raise enough to pay off the national debt.
Just to take my favorite example, patent rents on prescription drugs will be over $400 billion this year. (I explain how I get this figure here.) Patents have a limited lifespan, but let's imagine the ones we auction off to continue in perpetuity. The current interest rate on thirty-year Treasury bonds is roughly 3 percent. This means that to generate the $400 billion in rents earned on prescription drugs, we would need $12 trillion in Treasury bonds.
Therefore, the claim to patent right on prescription drugs lasting in perpetuity should be worth roughly $12 trillion. If we had this auction and got $12 trillion, we could reduce our national debt by an amount equal to 60 percent of GDP. That should make the debt whiners very happy.
In fact, we can go further. I calculated that total patent rents in the economy come to over $1 trillion a year. If we auctioned off these rights (again being carried on in perpetuity) it should raise more than $30 trillion, more than enough to eliminate the national debt altogether.
And, we aren't limited to just auctioning off patent rents on the items where companies currently get them. We can auction off monopoly rights on anything, on selling cars, computers, bread, haircuts, anything. We can raise vast amounts of money through this route and make the debt whiners very happy.
Of course, these rents do have real economic costs. They create large economic distortions (think of tariffs of many thousand percent) and they create perverse incentives. We see this with the patent rents we currently have. For example, pharmaceutical companies misled physicians about the addictiveness of the new generation of opioids to maximize their sales. As economic theory predicts, patent monopolies give drug companies incentives to push their products as widely as possible, even if it means misleading doctors and the public about their safety and effectiveness.
But the debt whiners only care about the debt issued by the national government, they don't care at all about the burden of patent and copyright monopolies. So, we can answer their concerns simply by issuing enough of these monopolies to bring the debt down to a level that makes them happy.
The National Debt is a Meaningless Number
Perhaps some folks will read the prior section and decide that we need to auction off a large number of monopolies to reduce the national debt. The sane ones will instead recognize that the debt is a largely meaningless number. It can imply larger debt service burdens, and that can be a problem, but this is a very small part of the economic picture, especially compared to items like patent rents that get almost no attention at all from economists. What really matters is the underlying strength of the economy and society that we pass on to future generations.
I have no idea if the debt whiners understand this point and try to obfuscate reality, or are just confused. As the old saying goes, "economists are not very good at economics." But anyhow, the rest of the country need not take their debt whining seriously.
I keep asking this question because whining over the government debt looks to be a huge growth sector in the next year or two, or perhaps until Republicans retake the White House. I regularly ridicule debt whining, because, unlike its cousin, deficit whining, it has no basis in economic reality.
Before again showing why the debt is a meaningless number, let me contrast it with the budget deficit, which can be a real cause for concern. The way in which deficits can pose a problem is that a large deficit can push the economy beyond its ability to produce goods and services.
This is a textbook story that happens to be accurate. The point at which the economy is being pushed too far by a budget deficit is not easy to determine and it varies hugely over the course of the business cycle.
When the economy is in a severe slump, there is plenty of excess capacity and unemployed workers, and therefore little basis for concern that a deficit is creating more demand than the economy can supply. However, near the peak of a business cycle, when the unemployment rate is already low, a large budget deficit can create demand that the economy is unable to meet.
The consequences of excessive demand are hard to know at this point. One possible consequence is that the Federal Reserve Board decides to raise interest rates. This will reduce demand by reducing housing construction and to a lesser extent lowering public and private investment. It also is likely to raise the value of the dollar, which leads to a larger trade deficit, which will also lower demand.
But suppose the Fed doesn't raise the rate. Fed Chair Jay Powell indicated that he plans to keep short-term rates near zero for the immediate future. In the old days, we would have thought that would create serious problems with inflation, but that is less clear now.
First, the economy is far more internationalized, which means that is easier for excess demand in the United States to simply spill over to increased demand for imports, rather than driving up domestic prices. This is pretty much the story that we see if a single state has very strong demand.
If Ohio were to have a booming economy, it would mostly translate into higher demand for a wide range of goods and services from neighboring states, not an inflationary spiral in Ohio. This is likely to be the case with any excess demand that results from large budget deficits here.
The other major difference between the economy of today and the economy of the 1970s, the last time we saw an inflationary spiral, is that unions are much weaker today. This means workers have far less bargaining power.
While this is a big part of the story of the growth of wage inequality over the last four decades, it does mean that we are less likely to see the sort of wage-price spiral we saw in the 1970s. If we do see a rise in prices due to excess demand, it is likely that workers today will be able to respond by demanding higher wages.
For these reasons, whether or not the large budget deficits that we are now seeing will lead to problems with inflation is an open question. I have argued that it is worth pressing the economy to try to get back to full employment quickly, as well as do many of the positive things included in the American Recovery Act, such as increasing the child tax credit and enhancing the subsidies in the health care exchanges. But there is a real basis for concern about inflation.
The Debt Is Not a Measure of Anything
While deficits are potentially a problem, the debt is not, first and foremost because it doesn't really measure anything. The debt whiners are fond of telling stories about how the debt is a burden on our children, or how the debt can lead to financial crisis and other bad things, but these claims are inventions, not economic realities.
Interest that we pay on the debt can be a burden, but it is dwarfed by other factors like productivity growth. (The impact of ten years of even modest productivity growth swamps an increment to debt service that we pass onto to our kids from higher deficits today.) Furthermore, debt service burdens at present and the near-term future will almost certainly be much smaller than what we saw in the 1990s.
The debt whiners only care about the debt issued by the national government, they don't care at all about the burden of patent and copyright monopolies.
But there is another aspect to this story that our debt whiners desperately do not want anyone to talk about. Direct spending is only one way in which the government pays for things. We also pay for things, like coronavirus vaccines, by giving out patents or copyright monopolies.
These monopolies can be very costly. In the case of the coronavirus vaccines, they mean that we are paying roughly ten times as much for each vaccine as we would in a free market. Vaccines that would likely cost around $2 a shot instead cost us $20. And, they may cost us even more in future years if we need boosters after the pandemic is over.
These government-granted monopolies are effectively a form of government debt. Incredibly, I have literally never seen any of the debt whiners ever mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in rents paid out each year to drug companies, medical equipment suppliers, software companies, or other beneficiaries of these monopolies as part of the burden of the debt. This in spite of the fact that the rents from these monopolies are several times larger than the debt service that we pay out on the official debt.
But let's flip the story over in the hope of teaching something to the debt whiners. Suppose that we looked to replace much or all of the debt that troubles them with new patent monopolies. Imagine that we sold off trillions of dollars worth of patent monopolies to pay off a large chunk of the debt.
If this sounds strange it is important to step back for a second and think of the logic of a patent or a copyright monopoly. While we ostensibly link the award of these monopolies to innovation or creative work, there is no necessary link.
At the point where the rents are being collected, a patent or copyright monopoly is simply a monopoly on a particular item. It doesn't matter one iota whether the monopoly was awarded due to some brilliant innovation or whether it was awarded due to a payoff to a Trump friend or family member. The monopoly means that the holder gets to charge a price far above the free market price.
With this in mind, suppose the government decided to auction off monopoly selling rights to a number of goods and services. (We can even call them "patents" to make people feel better.) We surely could raise enough to pay off the national debt.
Just to take my favorite example, patent rents on prescription drugs will be over $400 billion this year. (I explain how I get this figure here.) Patents have a limited lifespan, but let's imagine the ones we auction off to continue in perpetuity. The current interest rate on thirty-year Treasury bonds is roughly 3 percent. This means that to generate the $400 billion in rents earned on prescription drugs, we would need $12 trillion in Treasury bonds.
Therefore, the claim to patent right on prescription drugs lasting in perpetuity should be worth roughly $12 trillion. If we had this auction and got $12 trillion, we could reduce our national debt by an amount equal to 60 percent of GDP. That should make the debt whiners very happy.
In fact, we can go further. I calculated that total patent rents in the economy come to over $1 trillion a year. If we auctioned off these rights (again being carried on in perpetuity) it should raise more than $30 trillion, more than enough to eliminate the national debt altogether.
And, we aren't limited to just auctioning off patent rents on the items where companies currently get them. We can auction off monopoly rights on anything, on selling cars, computers, bread, haircuts, anything. We can raise vast amounts of money through this route and make the debt whiners very happy.
Of course, these rents do have real economic costs. They create large economic distortions (think of tariffs of many thousand percent) and they create perverse incentives. We see this with the patent rents we currently have. For example, pharmaceutical companies misled physicians about the addictiveness of the new generation of opioids to maximize their sales. As economic theory predicts, patent monopolies give drug companies incentives to push their products as widely as possible, even if it means misleading doctors and the public about their safety and effectiveness.
But the debt whiners only care about the debt issued by the national government, they don't care at all about the burden of patent and copyright monopolies. So, we can answer their concerns simply by issuing enough of these monopolies to bring the debt down to a level that makes them happy.
The National Debt is a Meaningless Number
Perhaps some folks will read the prior section and decide that we need to auction off a large number of monopolies to reduce the national debt. The sane ones will instead recognize that the debt is a largely meaningless number. It can imply larger debt service burdens, and that can be a problem, but this is a very small part of the economic picture, especially compared to items like patent rents that get almost no attention at all from economists. What really matters is the underlying strength of the economy and society that we pass on to future generations.
I have no idea if the debt whiners understand this point and try to obfuscate reality, or are just confused. As the old saying goes, "economists are not very good at economics." But anyhow, the rest of the country need not take their debt whining seriously.
"This move not only erases accountability for one of the darkest days in our nation's history but also emboldens far-right extremists and grants them free license to continue their ideological reign of terror," said one critic.
Democracy defenders on Monday night swiftly condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pardon roughly 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and commute the sentences of some others.
The widely anticipated move, which Trump made with television cameras in the Oval Office, came just hours after he returned to power on Monday afternoon—despite being convicted of 34 felonies in New York last year and facing various other legal cases, including for his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic former President Joe Biden that culminated in inciting the 2021 Capitol attack.
"Just hours after promising to bring 'law and order back to our cities,' Trump pardoned more than a thousand January 6th rioters and put violent offenders right back in our neighborhoods—people who assaulted police officers, destroyed property, and tried to overturn our freedom to vote," said Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, in a statement.
"By giving January 6th rioters a free pass, Trump is rewarding political violence and making all of us less safe," he continued. "No one should be above the law in the United States of America, and our first responders and the American people deserve better than this."
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the grassroots progressive political organizing group Our Revolution, said that "Trump's pardons of January 6 rioters, including those convicted of violence against law enforcement, mark a grave and unprecedented attack on the rule of law and American democracy. This move not only erases accountability for one of the darkest days in our nation's history but also emboldens far-right extremists and grants them free license to continue their ideological reign of terror."
"These are not patriots, these are traitors who will now be free to recruit others into what Trump views as his own personal militia," he asserted. "By granting clemency to these individuals, who sought to overturn the peaceful transfer of power, Trump is signaling that political violence and the rejection of democratic norms are acceptable tactics in service to his authoritarian agenda. This is a direct threat to the foundations of our democracy and the safety of our communities."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of watchdog Public Citizen, said that "it is perhaps on-brand that Donald Trump has kicked off his second term with an assault on our democracy, just as he ended his first term."
"This isn't just about degrading the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law in theory, his disgraceful actions here send a message that political violence is acceptable, so long as it is in support of him and his pursuit of unchecked power," she continued. "We intend to fight against these types of abuses over the next four years to maintain the integrity of the rule of law."
Accusing the Republican of "condoning insurrection," Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón similarly warned that "this will not be the last time President Trump attacks democracy" and vowed that her organization stands "ready to defend it."
During the insurrection, Kase Solomón said, "people died and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured protecting members of Congress from the attack that followed. These deaths and injuries should not be in vain. To pardon those involved is a blatant and dangerous abuse of power."
"Trump was charged with multiple crimes for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election which ended in the insurrection at the Capitol," she noted. "Only his reelection, coupled with an extremely misguided ruling from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity, allowed him to escape trial. In pardoning those who attempted to violently overturn the election and invalidate 80 million votes, Trump is showing his contempt for our justice system and our democracy."
Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor who is now president of the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, warned that "giving a pass to those who participated, all of whom were convicted after trial with ample evidence and process or pleaded guilty to crimes, sends a message that the right of the people to choose our own leaders no longer matters because the results can merely be overturned by force."
"And," he said, "it raises a terrifying question: What happens if Trump doesn't want to leave the White House at the end of his term?"
Trump commuted the sentences of Jeremy Bertino, Joseph Biggs, Thomas Caldwell, Joseph Hackett, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs, Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola, Zachary Rehl, Stewart Rhodes, Edward Vallejo, and Jessica Watkins. The others—whom Trump called "hostages"—received "a full, complete, and unconditional pardon."
"I further direct the attorney general to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021," Trump's order said. "The Bureau of Prisons shall immediately implement all instructions from the Department of Justice regarding this directive."
Shortly before leaving office on Monday, Biden issued a final wave of pardons, including for members of the U.S. House of Representatives select committee that investigated the insurrection. The Democrat said that he could not "in good conscience do nothing" to protect them and the pardons "should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense."
This post has been updated with comment from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The bill, noted one opponent, "has some egregious provisions that will have dramatic consequences beyond its stated goal of locking up undocumented individuals like the man who murdered Laken Riley."
A dozen U.S. Senate Democrats on Monday helped the GOP pass the Laken Riley Act—an immigration bill decried as a far-right power grab—just hours after Republican President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term.
Those 12 Democrats are Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Mark Warner (Va.), and Raphael Warnock (Ga.). Fetterman and Gallego co-sponsored the bill.
A version of the legislation—named for a 22-year-old woman murdered by a Venezuelan migrant in Georgia last year—was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month in a 264-159 vote, with support from 48 Democrats. However, it must be approved by the chamber again before it will head to Trump's desk.
"I just voted against the Laken Riley Act," said Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "This bill won't accomplish its goals. I'm disappointed in its passage as it stands, and I'm deeply concerned about how it will be implemented."
Writing to members of Congress ahead of the Senate's 64-35 vote, over 70 national groups said that "the senselessness of the murder of Laken Riley does not justify making unprecedented changes to immigration detention laws that—like all mandatory incarceration provisions—will only result in more discrimination while doing little to increase public safety."
Urging lawmakers to oppose the bill the coalition explained:
S. 5 would require the mandatory detention—without any possibility of bond—of undocumented persons who are merely arrested for or charged with certain offenses, including misdemeanor shoplifting. It does not require conviction. There is no statute of limitations, and the bill does not specify any process by which a person might contest either their immigration detention or the underlying criminal charges (if charges are even pursued). Mandatory immigration detention on the basis of a mere arrest is unprecedented, and it would invite abuses that almost certainly would disproportionately impact people of color.
We are also concerned with language in the bill that would give states standing to sue the federal government over any allegation that the federal government is improperly implementing immigration laws, such as detention and removal provisions, visa provisions, or its discretionary parole authority. This language would open the floodgates to litigation, and it would enable individual states to shape federal immigration policies.
"Laken Riley should be with us today. Her murder is a tragedy, and the perpetrator should be held fully accountable," said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) after the vote. "The Laken Riley Act, however, has some egregious provisions that will have dramatic consequences beyond its stated goal of locking up undocumented individuals like the man who murdered Laken Riley. Specifically, it requires mandatory imprisonment for undocumented children who have never been charged with or convicted of a crime. This is twisted."
"We've seen time and again the damage the federal government can cause our children with dangerous immigration policies like this," he added. "I will continue to champion proposals that keep all of us safe, fix America's broken immigration system, and strengthen our border security. Our families and communities demand nothing less."
The Senate vote came as Trump began imposing his anti-immigrant agenda with a slew of executive orders. The Republican, who campaigned on mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship, is expected to sign the Laken Riley Act once it reaches him.
"Trump's first actions as president show us exactly who he is and what he believes about America," said Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). "While he talked about unity, he used his first moment in the office to stoke fear and fuel division. While he talked about a 'golden age,' he signed unconstitutional and un-American executive orders that gut equality initiatives, criminalize immigrants, end asylum, roll back climate protections, and endanger our national security. There is nothing great about an America that denies peoples' civil rights, refuses refuge to the persecuted, or denies future generations clean air and water."
"I believe America is greatest when we pursue justice, equality, and peace and honor our shared humanity," she added. "This daughter of immigrants, citizen by birthright, and congresista from a district that celebrates our diversity, stands ready to fight for the soul of our nation. Regardless of who is president, I will continue to fight for the policies working people demand: affordable housing and healthcare, good-paying jobs, clean air and water, public safety, and comprehensive immigration reform."One former Swedish prime minister called the Republican president's pledge to grow U.S. territory "a recipe for global instability."
While the global far-right cheered President Donald Trump's return to the White House on Monday, world leaders, elected officials, activists, and others from across the rest of the political spectrum reacted with trepidation as the Republican vowed to expand the nation's territory for the first time in nearly 80 years and threatened the sovereignty of a U.S. trade and security partner.
In his second inaugural address, Trump promised a foreign policy that "expands our territory," as well as the renewed pursuit of "Manifest Destiny"—the 19th-century belief that God intended the United States to control the continent from coast to coast—beyond Earth by "launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars."
"That's a dangerous statement in itself, but then others around the world might also be inspired to do the same."
In the United States, Monday's inauguration coincided with the federal holiday honoring the assassinated civil rights champion Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Trump mentioned in his speech. Some observers noted the incongruity of Trump's message with King's anti-war ethos.
"How dare Donald Trump invoke Dr. King," pan-African studies professor and Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah fumed on social media. "Trump IS the embodiment of the three evils that MLK warned of: racism, materialism, and militarism."
Indigenous voices reminded listeners that belief in Manifest Destiny fueled genocidal violence against Native Americans.
"Trump is really going after Native Americans with references to Manifest Destiny, the frontier, Wild West, and erasing Denali's name," attorney Brett Chapman, a direct descendant of the Ponca Cshief White Eagle, said on social media. "This anti-Indigenous inaugural address sounds like one from the 1800s when presidents deployed the U.S. military on Native Americans seeking rights."
In his speech, Trump falsely accused China of "running the Panama Canal," said that Panama—which was last invaded by American forces in 1989—is overcharging U.S. ships to use the crucial waterway, and warned that "we're taking it back."
As angry demonstrators rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in Panama City, right-wing Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino issued a statement refuting Trump's threats and accusations and declaring that "the canal is and will continue to be Panamanian."
Trump's threat follows his refusal earlier this month to rule out the use of military force in order to conquer the Panama Canal or Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark.
South American progressives were left stunned by parts of Trump's address.
"In his inauguration speech, Donald Trump made it clear that reality surpasses fiction," Carol Dartora, a leftist lawmaker in the lower chamber of Brazil's National Congress, said in a video posted online. "Then the U.S. president exuded machismo, imperialism, and xenophobia, especially against immigrants."
Across the Atlantic, former center-right Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt said: "Now we know that President Trump wants to 'expand our territory.' That's a dangerous statement in itself, but then others around the world might also be inspired to do the same. It's a recipe for global instability."
German author, filmmaker, and journalist Annette Dittert
responded to Trump's expansionist pledge with a popular three-letter internet acronym: "'We will become a nation that expands our territory?' WTF?"