Trump immediately flexes presidential powers: 1,500 pardons and a raft of executive orders

President Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization. He also pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of his loyalists — more than 1,500 people — who stormed the same Capitol building in a failed attempt to illegitimately keep him in power four years prior, repeatedly referring to them as “hostages.” “We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” Trump said during an evening signing ceremony at the Oval Office — a reference to the fact that many of those defendants were in prison for serious offenses such as assaulting police officers. Trump said he would declare that there are only “two genders” — a swipe at transgender people that echoed attacks by Trump’s campaign — and revoke regulations intended to transition the nation toward electric vehicles. David Chiu said Monday that Trump had delivered a “dark, dangerous and authoritarian vision for our country,” and that his office would be analyzing Trump’s executive orders in coming days and weeks and “will do everything in our power to protect San Francisco and our residents from illegal federal action.” The Jan. 6 pardons could result in swifter action, and less resistance — given that a president’s pardon powers are generally unquestioned. “We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law,” Thompson said, “but for upholding it.” One of the committee members, Sen. Adam B. Schiff of California, said he was proud of the committee’s work and believed Biden’s grant of pardons to its members was “unnecessary, and because of the precedent it establishes, unwise.” However, Schiff — one of Trump’s favorite targets for derision — said he also understood why Biden had issued the pardons “in light of the persistent and baseless threats issued by Donald Trump and individuals who are now some of his law enforcement nominees.” The exercise of presidential powers on a new president’s first day in office — or his last, in Biden’s case — is not new.