DL Open Thread: Friday, December 19, 2025
Trump’s Pardons Wiped Away Mandatory Restitution For Victims. You just know that Trump was thinking of himself when he did this:
At least 20 people who have received clemency from Trump so far this year — cutting their sentence short, restoring their civil rights after imprisonment or allowing them to avoid prison altogether — were also forgiven of financial penalties totaling tens of millions of dollars. Some of these offenders owed money to real-life victims of fraud. Marian Morgan, for example, was sentenced in 2013 to nearly 34 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme and was ordered to pay $17.5 million to dozens of investors, most of which remains unpaid. In 2021, she filed a statement in court saying, “I want to pay restitution to my victims so they know I am truly sorry for the damage I caused.” But in May, Trump commuted her sentence “to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions.”
In other cases where Trump granted clemency, the federal government was the main victim. Paul Walczak, a health care executive and convicted tax cheat, was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay over $4 million to the Internal Revenue Service. Walczak had pleaded guilty to tax crimes and agreed to pay restitution to the IRS, according to court filings. His pardon came through just 12 days after his sentencing, relieving him of his financial obligations and sparing him from going to prison.
“I don’t think that people are fully appreciating the way these pardons are working or whether they are paying attention to the financial interests of crime victims,” said Elizabeth Oyer, who served as U.S. pardon attorney for three years until she was fired two months into Trump’s second term. “It’s having a detrimental effect on victims and taxpayers, and it’s a windfall to the people who committed crimes.”
The White House did not respond to questions from The Washington Post about whether Trump considers victims and their ability to receive restitution when making clemency decisions. “President Trump has exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons and commutations for a variety of individuals,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, adding that former president Joe Biden’s clemency record warrants tough scrutiny. (Blahblahblah.)
Trump:
Trump administration health officials announced Thursday that the federal government will block transgender care to children by targeting hospitals and doctors that provide it.
New proposed rules would prohibit hospitals from participating in Medicare and Medicaid if they provide care such as puberty blockers and surgeries for transgender minors, and would prevent federal coverage of such treatments.
“These procedures fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, calling many types of transgender care “malpractice.” “Medical professionals or entities providing sex-rejecting procedures to children are out of compliance with these standards of health care.”
Medical groups denounced the announcements, saying they intrude on physician-patient relationships and jeopardize care for everyone.
It’s the latest in a string of actions by President Donald Trump’s administration that target transgender people, including eliminating mention of trans people on federal websites, halting data collection on health issues, removing trans people from the military and suing states that allow trans athletes to play on high school sports teams.
Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., may be the first openly transgender member of Congress, but the historic nature of her role is something she rarely addresses publicly.
That changed Wednesday, when McBride spoke out in highly personal terms against two anti-trans bills that House Republicans are trying to push through before leaving for a holiday break on Friday.
“All Republican politicians care about is making the rich richer and attacking trans people,” McBride told reporters on the steps of the Capitol. “They are obsessed with trans people. I actually think they think more about trans people than trans people think about trans people. They are consumed with this, and they are extreme on it.”
Research has shown that only a tiny fraction of transgender minors —less than half of one percent — receive gender-affirming medications, and that surgeries in particular are nearly nonexistent on young people. Leading medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, support access to gender-affirming care, including for minors, and oppose efforts to restrict it.
But Republicans — including President Donald Trump — have continued to campaign against gender-affirming medical care and pass bans in dozens of states across the country. Polling also suggests a majority of Americans have grown to support bans on providing gender-affirming care to minors.
McBride said Greene’s bill “would put parents and providers at risk of being jailed — literally jailed — for affirming their transgender child and following medical best practices.”
McBride charged that Republicans “are trying to use transgender people as political pawns in this moment.”
“They are trying to politicize a misunderstood community and misunderstood care,” she said. “No one’s health care should be politicized.”
FBI Going After Trump’s Enemies. Including Inflatable Frogs:
The FBI has launched “criminal and domestic terrorism investigations” into “threats against immigration enforcement activity” in at least 23 regions across the US, according to an internal report shared with the Guardian.
The two-page FBI document, dated 14 November, says some of the investigations are related to the “countering domestic terrorism” memo issued by Donald Trump in September.
Released after the killing of Charlie Kirk, Trump’s memo, known as NSPM-7, called for a “national strategy” to thwart “violent and terroristic activities” associated with “anti-fascism”. It described “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity” as threats and cited “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland, referring to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as examples of “political violence”.
The FBI document, disseminated to other law enforcement agencies, warns of increased “threat activity targeting government personnel or facilities related to immigration enforcement efforts”. It points to two violent attacks against ICE facilities in Texas, but says “domestic terrorist subjects”, who fall under NSPM-7, have also engaged in “reactive violent attacks which took advantage of First Amendment-protected activities nationwide”.
“[Domestic terrorist] attacks against ICE continue to be perpetrated primarily by individuals or small groups of actors,” the report continued, asserting that recent incidents marked “an escalation in violence compared to past attacks, which primarily resulted in property damage”.
Translation: Yet another Fascist fig leaf to promote the stifling of dissent.
Meyer Steps In On Behalf Of Captive Of ICE:
The arrest of a Seaford resident living with developmental disabilities by ICE sparked Gov. Matt Meyer to step in and call for his immediate release from detention. The Ecuadorian man is one of thousands of other immigrants who have been ordered detained while they fight their deportation.
On Sept. 22, Acurio Suárez was arrested in a Seaford Lowe’s parking lot when he waved down an ICE agent in an apparent effort to try to find work, according to Miller-Schaeffer. As a result of a new Trump administration policy, he has remained in custody ever since.
On Tuesday, Gov. Matt Meyer sent a letter to the immigration judge overseeing Acurio Suárez’s asylum case, asking for him to be “immediately released” from detention. Meyer asked the judge to release Acurio Suárez and grant him asylum so he can remain safely with his family in Delaware.
Meyer underscored in his letter that Acurio Suárez has no criminal history and poses no threat to public safety. In an interview with Spotlight Delaware on Thursday, Meyer described Acurio Suarez’s arrest as “ridiculously egregious.”
“It’s unnecessarily cruel, and it’s fundamentally at odds with our values as a nation,” Meyer said.
In Acurio Suarez’s case, Meyer stepped in at a critical juncture in the asylum process.
A now-postponed Thursday court hearing could have decided whether Acurio Suárez would be deported to Ecuador, or allowed to remain in the country.
A deportation order threatens to return Acurio Suárez to the gang that attacked him, left him for dead and set his house on fire – all in a country where he has no one waiting, and no one to care for him.
What do you want to talk about?
