ASHTON: Hello. This is Ashton (ph), and I just moved across the country from Denver, Colorado, to Rochester, New York, where I will be starting a Ph.D. in music theory at the Eastman School of Music. This podcast was recorded at…
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
1:06 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
ASHTON: Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully, I will finish building what feels like an infinite amount of furniture. All right, here’s the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: We’ve all been there.
MCCAMMON: Congratulations on the Ph.D. program.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Absolutely.
MCCAMMON: Hey, there, it’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.
ORDOÑEZ: I’m Franco Ordoñez. I cover the White House.
JOHNSON: And I’m Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.
MCCAMMON: On today’s show, soon after taking office, President Trump made good on a campaign promise – pardoning those who were charged or convicted of crimes associated with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which was meant to illegally keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election. So, Carrie, let’s just start with the basics. How many people are we talking about here?
JOHNSON: This is about 1,500 people – virtually all of the people charged with crimes in connection with the attack on the Capitol four years ago in January. And it applies to people who engaged in violence against law enforcement officers, and it also applies to some of the more well-known defendants, including Enrique Tarrio. He was the chairman of the Proud Boys, that far-right extremist organization that, very famously, Donald Trump told to stand back and stand by in that debate several years back.
MCCAMMON: You know, you mentioned the Proud Boys. I think the Oath Keepers were also involved. Carrie, just remind us who these groups were and what was it that federal prosecutors said they were trying to do on January 6.
JOHNSON: These are both well-organized far-right extremist groups, and members of both of these groups were charged with the very rare charge of seditious conspiracy for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government by violence four years ago. And the allegations against each set of defendants is a little different. I covered the two major seditious conspiracy trials. With respect to Enrique Tarrio, prosecutors say that after Trump said in that debate that the Proud Boys should stand by, Tarrio basically organized a private cell of Proud Boys members. They communicated using encrypted texts, and they basically tried to plan some violence at the Capitol in 2021.
And then, with respect to the Oath Keepers, that separate far-right group, prosecutors said that Stewart Rhodes, the leader and the founder of the Oath Keepers, basically had said in advance of January 6 that we’re not getting through this without a civil war. And he also said, the final defense here is us and our rifles. So these were very, very serious allegations, and juries in Washington, D.C., convicted these men of seditious conspiracy. Tarrio actually got sentenced to 22 years in prison and Rhodes got sentenced to 18 years in prison. And now, in the last 24 hours – according to their lawyers – they’ve both been released.
MCCAMMON: Now, of this larger group, the 1,500 people or so affected by this action by President Trump, some had their sentences commuted rather than receiving a full pardon, right? I mean, what’s the difference there, and why?
JOHNSON: Yeah. The difference is that a pardon basically allows you to do a whole bunch of things that a commutation does not. If you’re pardoned, you can make an application to basically own a gun. And in fact, one of the more famous defendants convicted in January 6, the guy who dressed up like the shaman, the QAnon Shaman, remember him? He actually posted on social media last night that he’s going to try to go get some guns. And pardons mean that you basically have a free ride. You can vote again in elections, things like that. Commutations are basically just a shortening of your sentence. They allow you to leave prison or jail almost immediately, and that’s what happened to 14 people.
MCCAMMON: And Franco, as we’ve said, this is something that Trump campaigned on. He has continually referred to those convicted in connection with January 6 as hostages. What is his motivation here?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, it’s really just a yearslong effort to kind of rewrite history of what happened that day. You know, the violence, the attacks on police, the efforts to stop the certification of election. I mean, Trump on the campaign trail would repeatedly, you know, kind of downplay the events, that the people being convicted were being prosecuted for their political views. He would say that it’s another example of the government being weaponized against him and his supporters.
I mean, I will say that, you know, the news of the pardons was met with a lot of joy for those supporters. I mean, there was so much applause, you know, every time he teased it during the day, when he would speak to supporters, you know, kind of like this overflow room at the Capitol. And some supporters even went to the jail in Washington, D.C., where some of the defendants were being held, and demonstrated there.
MCCAMMON: I mean, this is something, clearly, that excites Trump’s base, as you’re saying, but at the same time, polls suggests it’s not something that most Americans want. The new vice president, JD Vance, had said at one point that he didn’t think violent offenders should be pardoned. Trump did so anyway, of course. But is this something that could eventually backfire, either on Trump or on Vance?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, I think that’s certainly possible. I mean, look, you are already hearing reports of concerns from some members of Congress. Republican senators like Thom Tillis of North Carolina, for example, said he couldn’t get behind pardons for those who attacked police officers. Josh Hawley of Missouri, he’s also raised concerns in the past about blanket pardons. We’ll see if we hear more of those concerns going forward.
You know, this is a move for his base. I mean, this is for those people who drove hours and hours to his rallies. I went to a lot of those rallies. Every time he talked about those convicted, the January 6 rioters – again, he referred to them as hostages – they would always get huge applause lines. This was for their satisfaction.
MCCAMMON: Now, let’s not forget dozens of people, scores of people, were injured on January 6.
ORDOÑEZ: Absolutely.
MCCAMMON: A couple of people died. So the impact was significant. Carrie, is this the end? Is there any opportunity, for example, for civil action by people who were harmed or further criminal action at the state level?
JOHNSON: It’s not the end in a couple of respects. One is that there are ongoing civil lawsuits against Donald Trump, against the Proud Boys and other groups in connection with the violence that occurred at the Capitol that day. These are filed by police officers and others who suffered injuries. As for criminal action, you know, it’s a little hard to say. The pardon power is really absolute when it comes to the president and the federal government.
There is a chance that some state prosecutors might want to try to look at some of these defendants and the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and others. But most of the activity that was criminal occurred here in D.C., and it’s very unlikely the acting U.S. attorney in D.C. under Donald Trump – a guy who was on the board of an organization supporting January 6ers – it’s very unlikely he’s going to be moving forward with any new cases on January 6.
MCCAMMON: Now, in addition to these partisan commutations, Carrie, Trump has ordered the Justice Department to stop any further court proceedings related to January 6, so no more in the future. How many outstanding cases are we talking about?
JOHNSON: Hundreds, really. Remember, the Justice Department, up until the last minute of the Biden administration, was continuing to investigate and prosecute people related to January 6. There are hundreds of those cases still in the pipeline. And Donald Trump has done is to say that the Justice Department should cease action on any of those cases.
As for cases in the court pipeline, they can’t just make those go away that easily. They have to petition federal judges here in D.C. to dismiss those cases. That’s already beginning to happen. Judges may have some second thoughts about that, but there’s actually some precedent here in D.C. back from when the Trump administration tried to back away from the prosecution of Trump’s former national security aide Mike Flynn, and the appeals court basically said, you can’t make the Justice Department prosecute somebody it doesn’t want to prosecute. And so I do expect those cases here in D.C. to be dismissed in the coming days against the remainder of those January 6 defendants.
MCCAMMON: You know, traditionally, the White House is not supposed to interfere with active investigations the Justice Department is undertaking. But this upends that precedent. What could this mean going forward?
JOHNSON: Well, the word tradition is really interesting here because that tradition really developed after Watergate. And we have a new sheriff in town, and the new sheriff is the United States Supreme Court, which last year told Donald Trump and future presidents that their actions are immune from prosecution if they’re official acts they undertake in the White House. And so that decision by the Supreme Court basically said a president can talk to the Justice Department all he or she wants with respect to ongoing investigations at the Justice Department. Now, just because he can doesn’t mean he should, but the law allows it.
MCCAMMON: All right, Franco, I’m going to ask you to stick around. Carrie, we got to say goodbye, but thank you so much for your reporting.
JOHNSON: Oh, my pleasure.
MCCAMMON: When we come back, other executive actions the president signed yesterday related to immigration.
And we’re back. NPR’s Ximena Bustillo is here. She covers immigration policy. Hi, Ximena.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Hey.
MCCAMMON: So among the hundreds of executive actions the president signed after taking office yesterday, several related to immigration to the United States, so let’s focus on a couple of them specifically. One of the first things Trump did was to declare what he called a state of national emergency at the southern border. Franco, what does that mean? Especially in practicality, what does it mean?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. It basically means that he can surge money and military resources to this effort. I mean, Trump ordered the Pentagon to support construction of the border wall, to detention space. It also empowers the secretary of defense to send troops to the border as needed.
MCCAMMON: You know, he also reinstated what’s known as the Remain in Mexico policy. Can you just remind us what that is and how it affects immigration to the U.S.?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. I mean, that was a policy that Trump enacted during his first administration. It basically requires anyone seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their cases are being heard, and that could take months or even years. Now, in his executive order he said as soon as practical that this would be implemented. But I will add that this is something that the Mexican government would have to agree to, and they have not done so yet. And actually, for months, they have said that they won’t.
MCCAMMON: Now, you mentioned asylum. Trump also took action on asylum. Ximena, what did he do, and what will it mean for people who are either trying to get into the U.S. on that basis or who are already here with asylum seeker status?
BUSTILLO: So he is looking to put significant pauses on both the asylum and the refugee processes, and what we saw was, very quickly, things came to a halt. A lot of the processing of these claims came to a halt. So immediate impact here for sure with folks who were hoping to get an appointment to make a claim for asylum or hoping to make it into the United States with a claim that had already been approved.
And also yesterday, one thing that we saw was shortly after he was inaugurated, the CBP One app, which was an application that was used at the border by migrants to schedule appointments to request asylum, among other things, shut down in front of people’s eyes, and this created panic and confusion. It was also before any sort of executive action was ever signed, but people’s appointments were completely canceled. They showed up for their appointments. All future appointments, they’d waited weeks and months, no longer exist. And so there’s already a lot of confusion and panic about what’s to come.
MCCAMMON: And do we know what it means going forward for people who are already here, or is that to be determined, like so many other things?
BUSTILLO: A lot of these things are definitely to be determined, but there have been some efforts to roll back someone’s legal authorization to be here. We see that with the CHNV program, which is a special humanitarian parole program for those coming from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. This allowed for a temporary entry into the United States. So this was a program – there are a lot of caveats here about how it worked and who’s in it, but at this point, there’s hundreds of thousands of people whose status, we don’t know what it is now or what it will be moving forward.
MCCAMMON: And Franco, specifically the president campaigned on this idea of mass deportation. He promised to do it right away. How do these executive actions fit into that larger objective?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. I mean, I think there are certainly pieces of the puzzle. I mean, these actions, these steps that he took yesterday, I think they’re more about shutting down access, ending programs, making it harder to come into the country. But he is promising – continuing to promise mass deportations. He was actually asked about this when he was signing the executive orders in the Oval Office last night. And he didn’t want to say when these would start, but he promised that there would be raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, happening in big cities, possibly soon, but he wouldn’t say exactly when. He just said, quote, “It’s going to happen.”
MCCAMMON: Trump also promised to eliminate birthright citizenship for some people in the country. He took steps to try to at least try to do that yesterday. Tell us about what he did.
BUSTILLO: So that order is probably one of his boldest promises, and I will say it’s not a new Trump idea. He had been talking about wanting to make moves to revoke birthright citizenship since his first term. The administration wants to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s clause stating that people born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. They argue it should not apply to the children of people who are in the country without legal status or to the children of people who are here on temporary visas.
The way that the order is written – it wouldn’t kick into effect for 30 more days, but we are already seeing states have filed lawsuits and immigrant rights groups have already filed lawsuits as well. So this is definitely one that we knew was going to be legally challenged. It’s actively being legally challenged, and it’s being challenged in the areas where it’s likely to get a stay.
MCCAMMON: As we’ve said, we’ve known that immigration would be a big focus for President Trump. What else should we be looking out for?
BUSTILLO: Moving forward, we do still have a lot of questions on implementation. So this question of deploying the military to the southern border, you know, what are they going to do, where are they going to go, how long are they going to be there? And then, ultimately, the relationship that the Trump administration has with lawmakers in Congress is going to be really important. How much funding Congress gives will ultimately determine how the Department of Homeland Security is able to scale up its operations. We saw even from the first Trump term, they really struggled to meet the goals and demands that Trump had then.
ORDOÑEZ: I think what also I will be watching is what type of reaction does the public have to these actions. I mean, how far is the Trump administration going to go with these mass deportations? I mean, the previous Trump administration went through this with their zero-tolerance policies where they separated children from their parents, and there was a huge outcry from the public, and the policies were reversed. I’ll be very interested to see how far they go this time and what the public reaction is.
MCCAMMON: He’s somebody that cares about optics, historically, but also somebody that really likes to energize his base, so we’ll see. I’m Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.
ORDOÑEZ: I’m Franco Ordoñez. I cover the White House.
BUSTILLO: I’m Ximena Bustillo, and I cover immigration policy.
MCCAMMON: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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