“F**k It”: The Real Logic Behind Trump’s Sweeping January 6 Pardons

Donald Trump’s decision to pardon some 1,500 January 6 offenders was a spontaneous move that overrode his administration’s internal debate.

“Trump just said: ‘Fuck it: Release ’em all,’” one White House adviser told Axios.

That was, apparently, completely kosher with Vice President JD Vance, who told Fox News just last week that Trump’s more violent supporters didn’t deserve pardons.

“I think it’s very simple: Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6, and you had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” Vance told host Shannon Bream. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

But when push came to shove—as in, when Trump was ready to make his own executive call on the long-promised pardons—Vance’s dissenting opinion suddenly caved.

“Vance was 100 percent on board,” a Trump insider told Axios. “The president didn’t change his mind. He just made up his mind, and Vance got a little over his skis on Fox, but it’s no big deal.”

“Never get ahead of the boss,” another Trump transition source told the publication, “because you just never know.”

Trump’s decision to legally and unilaterally forgive his most aggressive supporters was, actually, wildly unpopular with the American public. A November Scripps News/Ipsos survey found that few Americans—just 30 percent—actually supported a legal reprieve for the Capitol rioters, versus an overwhelming 64 percent of the country that was against it. Just 1 percent of respondents believed that the pardons should be Trump’s first priority—let alone something that he issued a sweeping executive order for on his first day in office.

Trump has claimed for years that he would free the men and women who rioted through Congress in 2021, forcing the legislature to delay the certification of the presidential election results. In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press in December, the MAGA leader said he would act “very quickly” to release the January 6 defendants.

“They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” Trump said at the time.

Trump is so intent on winning the DEI culture war that he’s now killing bedrock programs from the segregation era.

The president on Tuesday revoked Executive Order 11246, which was signed into law in 1965 by Lyndon B. Johnson and installed antidiscriminatory practices into U.S. federal government contracting.

EO11246 prohibited federal contractors “who do over $10,000 in government business” from “discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.”

Trump’s executive order, which was first reported on by Law Dork’s Chris Geidner, formally repealed those protections.

“The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs within the Department of Labor shall immediately cease: Promoting ‘diversity’; holding Federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking ‘affirmative action’; and allowing or encouraging Federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin,” Trump’s order read. Contractors have 90 days until they have to comply.

This is a massive, regressive attack on basic policy that helps protect people from real discrimination. And it won’t lower the price of eggs.

The Trump administration has only been in power for two days, but some of its core players already appear to be at odds.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced Stargate—a public-private joint AI venture between the federal government, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, which the forty-seventh president claimed could invest as much as $500 billion into the bubbling tech sector over the next four years.

“This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential,” Trump told reporters in the White House. “We’re going to make it as easy as it can be.”

But hours later, one of Trump’s closest tech advisers—the richest man in the world, Elon Musk—was already publicly questioning the initiative, telling users on his platform that the effort was a dud.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on X in response to a post from OpenAI announcing the digital infrastructure deal. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”

OpenAI and SoftBank are set to lead the project, with SoftBank taking on Stargate’s financial responsibility, according to Fortune. OpenAI’s chief Sam Altman called the venture the “most important project of this era.” Stargate involves an initial private investment of $100 billion into America’s AI infrastructure, a move that would begin a digital “re-industrialization of the United States,” ushering in “hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” OpenAI said in a statement Tuesday.

But Musk’s decision to reveal the rocky ground beneath Trump’s trophy deal, all while elevating his own know-how, could cause cracks in the powerful duo’s dynamic. In December, tech journalist Kara Swisher argued that the relationship between the two self-imagined strongmen is destined to flame out, just as it did with Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon.

“They’re both narcissists, and there can be only one narcissist as head of the country, and that’s Donald Trump who just won the election,” Swisher said. “You know he owes things to Elon, but at some point, you know if he takes too much of the attention—think about Steve Bannon. You remember he was on the cover of that magazine, and how quickly he got out, even though he was critical to Trump’s first campaign and he was right in the middle of the White House, and then he wasn’t.”

“Trump goes through people like tissues, essentially,” Swisher noted at the time. “And even if it’s Musk, they’re going to clash at some point.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to use the wildfires in California as an opportunity to impose Donald Trump’s agenda.

During a one-on-one interview Tuesday night, Fox News’s Sean Hannity asked whether Johnson thought that disaster aid could be used for leverage against sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“Are you saying that California, if they continue to aid and abet lawbreaking and harboring illegal immigrants, money from D.C. gets cut off?” Hannity asked.

“Yeah, we’re talking about conditions to this disaster aid. Look, they are natural disasters, but there are man-made disasters as well,” Johnson said. “And they made terrible decisions, you know? They knew exactly what they were doing.”

“That reservoir outside the Pacific Palisades, 117 million gallons—it was empty for a year. Why? They were trying to save a smelt fish or something,” Johnson said.

Hannity, who often acts as MAGA’s shadow policymaker, asked a question that was ripped straight from the pages of Project 2025. A chapter written by Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former deputy secretary of homeland security, suggested that funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be withheld from places that fail to comply with immigration laws, such as sanctuary cities.

But even the authoritarian handbook added one caveat, noting that “post-disaster or nonhumanitarian funding” could be exempt from the immigration policy requirements.

It seems that Johnson is way past concessions for the sake of humanity now. While it’s unclear from his answer whether he plans to use the wildfires to impose immigration policy, it’s clear he views it as an opportunity to reform liberal policies he doesn’t like: namely environmental regulations.

Johnson’s line about smelt is one that Trump has been using to complain about California’s water conservation efforts since he was on the campaign trail. In reality, the reservoir was offline for repairs.

By shifting the lion’s share of the blame onto the California government, Republicans seem to think they can buy themselves more time to play politics with money for struggling families who have lost their homes, businesses, and belongings.

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is already beginning its anti-immigration crusade, starting with policing state and local governments.

The Associated Press obtained a department memo Wednesday directing federal prosecutors to investigate state and local government officials who interfere with new federal immigration laws. The memo states that prosecutors should “take all steps necessary to protect the public and secure the American border by removing illegal aliens from the country and prosecuting illegal aliens for crimes.”

If state or local officials obstruct or add hurdles to federal immigration enforcement, prosecutors are ordered to look at potential criminal charges.

“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests,” the memo states. “The U.S. Attorney’s Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution.”

This is all part of Trump’s campaign promise to carry out mass deportations, given that such a large-scale effort will require cooperation from local and state authorities. Republican officials have already pledged their support, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is already taking steps to pass laws to assist the deportation effort.

But Trump is headed for a clash with Democratic state and local officials, many of whom, like California Governor Gavin Newsom, are already preparing to take on the new administration with lawsuits and special legislation of their own. The next weeks and months are going to involve plenty of chaos and legal fights between Trump and immigration advocates.