Yesterday America celebrated its 250th birthday. Today, the hangover.
On the eve of Independence Day, the White House announced another round of presidential pardons and commutations — convicted fraudsters, political operatives, and violent offenders released back into society as a holiday gift. It was the latest in a pattern that has become one of the defining features of this presidency: the systematic abuse of the pardon power to reward loyalty, punish the justice system, and send a clear message that the rules don't apply to the people at the top.
This was the man who ran on "draining the swamp." Let's talk about how that's going.
The Pardon Power: What It's For vs. What It's Become
The presidential pardon is one of the broadest powers in the Constitution. Article II, Section 2 gives the president authority to "grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." The Founders included it as a safety valve — a way to correct injustices, show mercy in extraordinary circumstances, and heal national divisions.
George Washington used it to pardon participants in the Whiskey Rebellion, reasoning that the new nation needed reconciliation more than retribution. Abraham Lincoln issued pardons liberally during and after the Civil War to begin rebuilding the Union. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was deeply controversial, but Ford argued — and many historians now agree — that it was necessary to move the country forward.
Those were difficult decisions made in the national interest, even when they were unpopular. What we're seeing now is something fundamentally different. The pardon power has been turned into a personal loyalty reward program and a tool for undermining the rule of law itself.
The Pattern: Loyalty Above All
The pattern was established in the first term and has accelerated dramatically in the second.
The January 6th pardons set the tone. On his first day back in office, the president issued blanket clemency to roughly 1,500 people charged in connection with the Capitol breach — including individuals convicted of assaulting police officers, seditious conspiracy, and using weapons against federal agents. Not case-by-case reviews. Not pardons for people who were genuinely swept up in a crowd and committed minor offenses. A blanket pardon that treated everyone the same, regardless of what they actually did.
Over 140 police officers were injured on January 6th. Officers were beaten with flagpoles, sprayed with chemical irritants, crushed in doorways, and tasered. One officer lost an eye. Several later died, and four took their own lives in the aftermath. The people who did that to them walked free because their violence was committed in political support of the man who now holds the pardon pen.
Then came the political operatives. Steve Bannon, convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a lawful subpoena — pardoned. Peter Navarro, convicted of the same offense — pardoned. The message: if you stonewall investigations into the president, the president will make sure you never face consequences.
Then the donors and associates. People convicted of fraud, tax evasion, and corruption — people who hurt real victims, who stole real money from real people — released because they had the right connections or because their cases had become politically convenient.
And now, a fresh batch for the Fourth of July. Because apparently nothing says "independence" like freeing people who were convicted by juries of their peers through the legal system that the Founders created.
The Swamp, Revisited
"Drain the swamp" was one of the most effective political slogans in modern American history. It worked because it spoke to something real — the widespread and bipartisan frustration that Washington operates by its own rules, that the powerful protect each other, that accountability is for ordinary people while the connected get away with anything.
That frustration was legitimate in 2016. It's even more legitimate now. But the swamp hasn't been drained. It's been restocked.
When you pardon people who were convicted of defrauding the government, you're not draining the swamp — you're telling every future grifter that the risks of corruption are manageable as long as you pick the right side politically.
When you pardon people who assaulted police officers, you're not supporting law and order — you're telling the country that political violence committed on your behalf has a different set of rules than political violence committed against your interests.
When you pardon people who defied congressional subpoenas, you're not fighting government overreach — you're destroying the oversight mechanisms that the Constitution explicitly created to prevent executive abuse of power.
When you release violent offenders as a holiday publicity stunt while families of their victims are trying to enjoy a barbecue, you're not showing mercy — you're showing contempt for the justice system and the people it's supposed to protect.
This is what the swamp looks like when someone stops pretending to fight it and starts running it.
The Rule of Law Problem
This goes deeper than any individual pardon. The cumulative effect of what's happening is the erosion of a principle that makes everything else in American governance possible: the idea that the law applies equally to everyone.
When people see that political allies of the president can commit crimes and walk free while ordinary citizens face the full weight of the justice system, it doesn't just create cynicism. It creates rational disengagement. Why follow the rules if the rules only apply to people without connections? Why cooperate with investigations if witnesses know that anyone who stonewalls will be protected? Why trust the justice system to deliver accountability if the president can override any verdict with the stroke of a pen?
These aren't hypothetical concerns. Federal prosecutors have reported increasing difficulty getting cooperation from witnesses in cases with any political dimension, because potential witnesses reasonably calculate that cooperating with the government carries more risk than defying it. Defense attorneys in January 6th cases openly advised their clients to delay proceedings as long as possible on the theory that a pardon might eventually arrive. They were right.
The pardon power was designed as a check on the justice system — a way to correct errors and show mercy. It was never intended to be a systematic tool for placing an entire category of political actors above the law. And when it's used that way, it doesn't drain anything. It just moves the corruption from Congress and the bureaucracy into the Oval Office itself, where it's concentrated in a single pair of hands with no oversight and no appeal.
What "Accountability" Actually Looks Like
The Common Sense Party believes in accountability — real accountability, not the performative kind.
Real accountability means the pardon power should be used sparingly, transparently, and with a clear public interest justification. Every pardon should come with a written explanation that addresses why the specific case warrants executive clemency. Blanket pardons for entire categories of offenders — regardless of the severity of their individual crimes — should be off the table.
Real accountability means that no one — not a president, not a president's allies, not a president's donors — is above the law. The justice system isn't perfect, but the answer to an imperfect justice system is reform, not a parallel system where outcomes depend on who you know rather than what you did.
Real accountability means supporting law enforcement, including the officers who put themselves in harm's way on January 6th and every other day. You don't get to wave a "Back the Blue" flag at rallies and then pardon the people who beat officers with flagpoles. Those two things cannot coexist.
And real accountability means being honest with the American people about what's happening. This isn't about draining the swamp. This is the swamp. A system where the president can unilaterally override the justice system to protect political allies is exactly the kind of unchecked executive power the Founders were trying to prevent when they wrote the Constitution we just celebrated the 250th anniversary of.
The Day After the Birthday
America turned 250 yesterday. It was supposed to be a moment of unity — a chance to reflect on what this country has accomplished and recommit to the principles that made it possible. Instead, we got partisan celebrations and a batch of pardons that would have made the Founders physically ill.
The pardon power is in the Constitution. It's legal. Nobody disputes that. But "legal" and "right" are not the same thing, and a president who uses the most extraordinary power of his office to systematically reward loyalty and undermine accountability isn't draining anything.
He's just proving that the swamp was never the problem. The problem was always about who gets to be above the rules. And right now, the answer is: anyone on the right team.
That's not how a republic works. And if we want to keep this one — which, after 250 years, would be nice — we need leaders who understand the difference between power and accountability.
We deserve better than this. Happy belated birthday, America.