And the Interesting Thing is on May 28

President Pardons Convicted Supporters

On Monday, President Trump issued or announced upcoming high-profile pardons of some of his supporters, including reality TV stars and a former sheriff convicted of bribery. This comes as the New York Times is out with blockbuster reporting on the April pardon of a former nursing home executive whose mother was a generous donor to the president and other Republicans.

Todd and Julie Chrisley, known for their reality show "Chrisley Knows Best," were charged by the Trump Justice Department in 2019 and indicted on 12 counts of bank and wire fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy. On June 7, 2022, they were convicted on all counts, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit tax evasion. The jury convicted Julie Chrisley of an additional charge of obstruction of justice. All told, they defrauded banks of $36 million.

Following their conviction, they were sentenced to 12 and seven years, respectively. “As this sentencing proves, when you lie, cheat, and steal, justice is blind to your fame, fortune, and position,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta following their sentencing. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last summer upheld the convictions.

In a video posted online by White House aide Margo Martin, Trump was shown speaking on the phone with the Chrisley children.

"Your parents are going to be free and clean and I hope we can do that by tomorrow," the president said. "I don't know them but give them my regards and wish them a good life.” He later added, “They’ve been given a pretty harsh treatment based on what I’m hearing.”

Savannah Chrisley is a podcaster and social media influencer who also appeared on several other reality shows and campaigned for Trump, including a speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, where she alleged that her parents had been persecuted by "rogue prosecutors" and that the US has a "two-faced justice system.”

The president also issued a pardon to former Culpeper County (Virginia) Sheriff Scott Jenkins, who was convicted in December in the Western District of Virginia on 12 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds. All told, the jury found Jenkins guilty of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes, in exchange for appointing several local business leaders as auxiliary deputy sheriffs within his department without any training.

Jenkins, a long-time supporter of Trump, was sentenced on March to 21 to 10 years in prison. “Scott Jenkins violated his oath of office and the faith the citizens of Culpeper County placed in him when he engaged in a cash-for-badges scheme,” Acting United States Attorney Zachary T. Lee said after sentencing. He was set to report to jail this week, but due to Trump's pardon, he will not spend a single day behind bars.

"Sheriff Scott Jenkins, his wife Patricia, and their family have been dragged through HELL," Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network. "As we have seen, in Federal, City, and State Courts, Radical Left or Liberal Judges allow into evidence what they feel like, not what is mandated under the Constitution and Rules of Evidence…"This Sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice, and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail," he added. "He is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,’ and ‘left for dead.’

This overlooks the fact that a jury of Jenkins’ peers heard the evidence, which included testimony from two undercover FBI agents who gave Jenkins envelopes with $5,000 and $10,000 cash and found him guilty of all counts. Considering that 62% of county residents voted for the president in November, it stretches credulity to suggest that prosecutors were able to pack the jury with 12 ‘radical left monsters,’ but I digress.

Scott Jenkins was a longtime, vocal supporter of President Trump, a fixture in terms of a campaign surrogate for Donald Trump in Virginia and appeared at the White House during Trump’s first term. There was no evidence of there being any misconduct or impropriety in the trial. Jenkins reportedly asked for clemency last month from Trump, saying during a webinar that he didn’t have the money for an appeal of the verdict and believed Trump would step in if he heard the evidence that he wasn’t able to share in front of the jury.”

The New York Times has new reporting on the April 23 pardon of Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who pled guilty in November to 13 counts of tax evasion, stealing more than $10 million from his employees to “fund his lavish lifestyle.” He admitted to using more than $1 million from his businesses’ bank accounts to purchase a yacht, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to his personal bank accounts and used the business accounts for personal spending.

Just last month, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay almost $4.4 million in restitution for willfully failing to pay over employment taxes and willfully failing to file individual income tax returns.

Walczak submitted his application for a pardon days after Trump’s inauguration in January, arguing that his criminal prosecution had resulted from his mother’s political advocacy, rather than the crimes to which he pleaded guilty. The New York Times reported yesterday that his mother, Elizabeth Fago, had raised millions of dollars for the president’s campaigns, as well as those of other Republicans. The application also claimed that Fago had connections to an effort to damage President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign by publicizing the diary of his daughter, Ashley Biden.

What appears to have elevated his application was his mother’s invitation to a $1-million-per-person fund-raising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to the president at his Mar-a-Lago club. Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Mr. Trump issued the pardon.

And the interesting thing is, this is likely to get worse before it gets better. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the Republican “has turned the pardon process into the Wild West. What had long been a sober legal proceeding done by career officials in the Justice Department increasingly resides in the White House and depends on the whims of a president who is receptive to arguments of political persecution.” The report went on to note that the White House is expected to announce “a substantial batch of pardons in the coming weeks.” Watch this space for more updates.

HHS Rescinds COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendation for Healthy Children and Pregnant Women

Yesterday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert Kennedy shocked the public health community by announcing the removal of COVID-19 vaccines from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women.

Kennedy made the announcement via a video posted on X, where he was joined by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "I couldn't be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC's recommended immunization schedule,

“It’s common sense, and it’s good science,” said Bhattacharya, whose agency is not involved in the regulation of vaccines, or in decisions on who should get them. Absent from the video was anyone from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which sets policy for who should get approved vaccines based on the advice of its expert panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The CDC is currently without an acting director.

The move effectively overrides the CDC, which traditionally sets vaccine recommendations based on expert panel discussions. Secretary Kennedy cited no new evidence to support the decision to rescind the recommendations, nor did he indicate why he circumvented the normal procedure for vaccine recommendations. A 58 second video on Twitter is not a thorough explanation.

The CDC Advisory Committee had already been weighing whether and how to narrow the agency's COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to only older adults and other people with an underlying condition that put them at risk of more severe illness from COVID-19. Yesterday’s announcement also goes further than the advisory panel, which had been weighing including pregnant women as among those who would remain eligible for COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, given their increased risk of severe disease and the fact that it could also help provide some protection to their newborns.

The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) blasted the decision. “ACOG is concerned about and extremely disappointed by the announcement that HHS will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy. As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID-19 infection can be during pregnancy and for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies from the vaccine for protection. We also understand that despite the change in recommendations from HHS, the science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. The COVID-19 vaccine is safe during pregnancy, and vaccination can protect our patients and their infants after birth.”

While COVID-19 vaccines remain available for now, access to the shots for children and pregnant women could get harder once the changes are official. The CDC's immunization guidance is closely watched by health experts because it serves as the basis for legal requirements for which vaccines health insurance plans are required to cover with no cost-sharing.

At the time of publication, the CDC’s website still listed Covid vaccines in the pediatric vaccination schedule, and in the Vaccine Recommendations Before, During, and After Pregnancy for pregnant women.

And the interesting thing is, CDC data released in November showed that pregnant women and their babies are at increased risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19, including death and stillbirths. A separate study showed just how much vaccination during pregnancy protects the infant after birth, with the vast majority (87.5%) of hospitalized infants less than six months of age—those not eligible for vaccination—born to unvaccinated mothers.

Yesterday’s announcement is also at odds with the FDA announcement last week of changes to the agency’s approval process for covid vaccines, which said that pregnancy was “among the underlying conditions that warranted continued eligibility for COVID-19 vaccine approvals.”

State Department Halts Student Visa Interviews Amid Expanded Social Media Vetting

The Trump administration yesterday ordered U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to pause all new student visa interviews, citing plans in a State Department directive that has not been made public, but has been reviewed by several media outlets, to expand social media screening for applicants. The decision is part of a broader effort to expand the screening of foreign students, including requiring a new layer of social media checks for applicants.

The directive states that the “Department is conducting a review of existing operations and process for screening and vetting of student and exchange visitor (F, M, J) visa applicants, and based on that review, plans to issue guidance on expanded social media vetting for all such applicants.

The planned changes come amid the federal government’s ongoing attacks on student visa holders, which began in March with the detention of multiple students and recent graduates who had been involved in campus protests. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have sought to detain or deport students and faculty members from Arizona State University; Brown University; Columbia University; Cornell University; Harvard University; Tufts University; the University of Colorado, and the University of Minnesota. While some of the students were targeted for participating in campus protests, as The New York Times reported, “in other cases, the government’s justification is unclear.”

The administration terminated thousands of student visa holders’ records in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System, the database the houses international students’ records, leading to a slew of legal actions from students who feared they wouldn’t be able to continue studying in the U.S.

“International students are not a threat.” said Fanta Aw, CEO of the Association of International Educators, adding that they comprise less than 6% of college enrollment in the United States. "Today’s decision will have a significant impact on international student’s ability to arrive in the U.S. in time for their studies, if they aren’t already discouraged and choose to attend in another country," Aw said.

It is not clear how the expanded vetting process will unfold; Secretary Rubio included no details in the memo, which said further guidance would be disseminated in the coming days. Though the memo did not explicitly say as much, the extra screening will likely involve looking at applicants’ social media handles more closely for statements on the war in Gaza, since the president has justified administration actions against American colleges and universities as protecting students from antisemitism.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to comment on reports of the cable, but said the U.S. will “continue to use every tool we can to assess who it is that's coming here, whether they are students or otherwise.” For now, thousands of students around the world—many of whom have already been admitted to American universities for the fall semester—are left in limbo, waiting to see whether they will be able to secure interviews, obtain visas, and pursue their education in the U.S.

And the interesting thing is, colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), education-related travel exports were valued at $50.2 billion and ranked 7th among service exports in 2023. The Association of International Educators finds that international students studying at U.S. colleges and universities contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023-2024 academic year. In addition to these direct economic benefits, international students are much more likely to pay full freight—their tuition dollars cross-subsidize financial aid for lower- or middle-income American students. In the 2022-2023 school year, more than three times as many international students were enrolled in the United States as there were American students studying abroad. Any supposed “benefits” of discouraging foreign students from attending U.S. colleges would be far less than the costs.

Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Halt Judge’s Order on

Deportations to South Sudan

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to halt an order allowing migrants to challenge their deportations to South Sudan, an appeal that came hours after a federal judge suggested the government was “manufacturing” chaos and said he hoped that “reason can get the better of rhetoric.”

Judge Brian Murphy ruled on May 21 that the White House violated a court order with a deportation flight to South Sudan carrying people from other countries who had been convicted of crimes in the U.S. He said those immigrants must get a real chance to raise any fears that being sent there could put them in danger.

The case centers around a deportation flight organized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that transported eight men—some from countries like Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, and Myanmar—to South Sudan. These individuals had criminal records in the United States and had been slated for removal, but their home countries refused to accept them. Consequently, the administration attempted to deport them to a third country, a strategy increasingly used by the Trump Administration.

However, Judge Murphy ruled that the administration had violated a prior court order by conducting the deportation without providing the individuals with an adequate opportunity to express their fears of persecution or harm. He said the immigrants had a legal right to challenge their deportation before being removed, particularly given South Sudan’s volatile political and security situation, which has drawn U.S. State Department travel warnings.

Murphy emphasized that the court had provided the government with “remarkable flexibility with minimal oversight” and accused officials of exploiting that leniency by fast-tracking deportations without due process. He added that the government seemed to create confusion deliberately to evade legal scrutiny.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to pause Judge Murphy’s order. “These judicially created procedures,” U.S. Solicitor D. John Sauer wrote, “are currently wreaking havoc on the third-party removal process,” infringing on the executive branch’s power over immigration and disrupting “sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts.”

The court called for a response to the government’s request by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, June 4.

And the interesting thing is, the judge’s decision struck a nerve with an administration that has repeatedly cast judges’ attempts to uphold the rights of migrants as a costly impediment to Trump’s broader push on illegal immigration. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing that “this judge is not only undermining our immigration system, undermining our foreign policy and our national security, but this judge is undermining the safety of the ICE agents who are putting their lives on the line. “It’s truly despicable what’s happening in our court system, and the president and this administration hope that the Supreme Court will do what it needs to do to rein in these liberal activist judges.”

The president and his allies have continually disparaged Murphy online, calling him an activist judge who is preventing the president from carrying out his immigration agenda. “The Judges are absolutely out of control,” Trump wrote about Murphy on social media last week. Murphy’s most recent order quoted the transcript of his earlier court hearing, in which the government said in court that it would be able to provide the men with due process abroad. “Since that hearing, merely five days ago, Defendants have changed their tune. It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated,” Murphy wrote.

That’s all for today. See you back here again tomorrow!