Summary
A West Virginia couple, Jeanne Kay Whitefeather and Donald Lantz, received prison sentences of 215 and 160 years, respectively, for forcing their five adopted Black children into slave labor.
Authorities discovered the abuse after a welfare check revealed children locked in a shed without water or sanitation.
The couple, charged with human trafficking, child neglect, and forced labor, targeted the children because of their race.
The court ordered them to pay $280,000 in restitution each.
How did this get 20 upvotes, 0 downvotes, and not a single person pointing out that this conviction was at the state level, something the POTUS unambiguously lacks any power to pardon?
Ten years ago, I would agree. Now we’re seeing the trump administration openly oppose federal judicial rulings and even telling the court they are “not showing respect” to the Executive. We’re seeing Musk say he will back a primary challenger for any elected official that doesn’t follow trump’s orders, with the most recent being musk offering to openly buy votes for $100 in support of his candidate. Any one of these ten year ago would have been unambiguously in violation of law and tradition and dealt with.
There is no “unambiguously lacks any power” anymore.
Our governor might be a GOP dipshit, but he’s…less on the Trump train than some others. I think he got shocked out of it a bit when the whole “stop all payments” thing first started less than 48 hours before the Medicaid disbursement was supposed to hit and he was needing to have emergency “how do we keep Medicaid going” meetings before the injunction against it. He can’t be totally off the Trump train if he wants reelected because this is a hard red safe state in the way it used to be a hard blue safe state before fucking Gore of all people fucked it up.
I don’t think he’d pardon someone just because Trump asked, barring Trump making a significant threat to force the issue.
Would trump have to use force? His minions are in control of the Treasury. It doesn’t matter that it would be illegal for trump to mess with state funding from the federal government. He’s already shown he is defying court orders which take week to arrive at anyway.
How bad would your state be if trump cut off all federal funding overnight?
He could do that, but it would become very public very quickly and that’s more a problem for your side politically when you do it to a state where your side is in power in general.
He can threaten Maine and Maines governor like that because they’re a blue state and turning on them doesn’t make his base realize he could do the same to them in the same way because they’re the other team. Doing the same to WV would read as a betrayal to his own followers precisely because they’re solid red and we’re not far enough down the “and then they came for…” list for that to be a safe move politically yet.
TL;DR: People on Lemmy have no idea how pardon powers work and don’t care to check before commenting and upvoting but want to save face by baselessly claiming he can do this anyway.
Tldr, you still think we live in the world of pre 2025. We don’t. American democracy is dead, the checks and balances are falling apart, and its only a matter of time in their crusade against the constitution before the states rights mask comes fully off, if it hasnt already.
You’re still working under the “technically correct” definition. Yes, a state crime is pardonable only by the head of that state, the governor. What you do not appear to be conceding is the trump may have the indirect power to replace the governor. trump is now targeting the governor of Maine (for an unrelated trump tantrum). If trump and Musk bring the power of the federal government to strip funding away from Maine, and Musk funds GOP friendly rivals for governor, that new governor would issue the pardon. The end result being trump wanting a pardon (yes at the state level), and getting it.
That’s Maine, Maine is a blue state and it costs him and his little electoral capital to attack a Dem politician in a blue state.
WV is red, extremely red. Trying to fuck with WV like that is attacking a strongly red state, and risks making the other red states realize that maybe, just maybe the leopard might eat their faces too. We’re not far enough down the “and then they came for…” list for that to be a safe move, yet.
Not true, but okay. That’s not the “technically correct” definition; that’s the unambiguously correct definition, and people who have no idea how pardon powers work are coping hard that they upvote whatever they think is true without actually doing any work to verify what they read. As with Reddit, so with Lemmy: it’s a constant on social media, and it’s a constant here that people have no fucking idea what they’re talking about and just vote based on what sounds right to them and what sounds the most authoritative. Evidenced by the fact you can’t go five seconds without reading an upvoted comment by someone who didn’t read past the headline (and then whining that that information should’ve been in the headline when they get called on it or trying to “um ackshually” their way out of it).
Come back to me if this person gets pardoned. Until then: lol.
ok
Because rules/law/ethics matter to the current ‘administration’…?
Many people are not fully aware of the extent of pardon powers.
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