Trump uses pardon power to build army of devoted MAGA vigilantes: analyst
President Donald Trump is sending a clear message to law enforcement officers who break the law, conservative analyst Bill Kristol wrote for The Bulwark in an urgent analysis published on Tuesday — you can do whatever you like as long as you're loyal to me.
Trump has become infamous for handing out pardons to his political allies hit with federal charges, including most notoriously around 1,500 January 6 rioters. But he followed this up over the weekend by pardoning a far-right Virginia sheriff convicted in a bribes-for-badges scheme.
Culpepper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins "had accepted more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing various untrained and unvetted individuals to no-show jobs as auxiliary deputy sheriffs," wrote Kristol. "The evidence was overwhelming, including video of Jenkins accepting bags of cash, the testimony of some of those involved in the scheme, and reports from two undercover FBI agents. In March 2025, Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison."
However, Ed Martin, the recently-disgraced GOP activist who served as Trump's former D.C. prosecutor, recently became the DOJ pardon attorney and got involved in the case.
"Jenkins was a rabidly anti-immigrant, pro-Trump sheriff who’d become a minor celebrity in MAGA world. Trump himself may not have known of him, but Ed Martin did," wrote Kristol. After Martin's intervention, Trump issued the pardon and baselessly claimed Jenkins was “persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters’” at DOJ and railroaded thanks to a “Biden Judge.”
"Trump’s pardon is an affront to the oaths both he and Jenkins swore. Though the pardon is legal in the sense that it’s within Trump’s power, it is an affront to the rule of law," wrote Kristol.
The message Trump sent by doing this, he continued, is that "under Trump’s pardon regime, law enforcement officers can become Trump enforcement officers. Others who decide to engage in vigilante action — perhaps in cooperation with Trump-supporting law enforcement officers — can also expect pardons. Trump sheriffs and wannabe sheriffs will increasingly believe, thanks to Trump and Ed Martin, that they can act with immunity. MAGA vigilantism over the next four years will be super-charged."
Ultimately, Kristol concluded, the only safeguard against Trump's unchecked pardon abuses "is political and civic leaders ... who call attention to its abuses, and who seek to guard against some of the implications of those abuses. The fundamental check has to be a citizenry that upholds standards of legality and decency even when the president and his administration don’t."
‘It would be a $3,000 iPhone’: CNBC challenges Trump aide on Apple tariffs
Conservative CNBC host Joe Kernen pressed White House adviser Kevin Hassett after President Donald Trump threatened to place a 25% tariff on Apple iPhones.
During a Tuesday interview, Kernen told Hassett that costs would skyrocket if Apple were forced to manufacture iPhones in the U.S.
"We're trying to figure out an off-ramp for Apple," the CNBC host said. "It'd be a $3,000 iPhone if they tried to make everything here."
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin pointed out that some iPhone models could cost consumers $3,500.
"What is [Apple CEO] Tim Cook supposed to do?" Kernen asked.
"Right. Well, you know, we'll see how it works out," Hassett replied. "But the bottom line is that what we're trying to do is onshore as much as we can in the U.S. and make it so that the U.S. is not hyper-dependent on imports from China."
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"And so I think that one of the things we're seeing is that people are moving way faster than you might expect," he continued. "You know, with supply chains moving fast and just-in-time inventory management and AI, I think you're going to be astonished in how quickly stuff moves onshore."
"And in the interim, you know, then we'll see how it works out. But they need to move their stuff onshore as much as possible to make it so that the U.S. economy is secure and not prone to, you know, Chinese extortion."
The New York Times reported that Trump may have threatened the new tariffs on Apple after Cook skipped the president's recent trip to the Middle East.
Trump’s ‘ultimate foe’ obsession plunges US state into ‘cloud of chaos’: mayor
President Donald Trump is leaving Massachusetts in a “cloud of chaos” as his moves against so-called “woke universities” have wide-reaching effects across the Bay State, according to a Boston Globe Correspondent, Kara Miller.
“In epic tales, heroes and villains often have a lot in common — even if they can’t initially see it,” Miller wrote. “For the Trump administration, the ultimate foe just might be liberal elites.”
She believes, “Massachusetts may be uniquely positioned to suffer in President Trump’s second term.”
This is because the state’s “economy is deeply reliant on elite colleges, elite hospitals, and the elite minds who come here from around the world. In Massachusetts — like it or not — we have built an economy on expertise, excellence, and education.”
We’re living under “a cloud of chaos,” Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu told the Globe.
With Trump targeting the very industries that make Massachusetts successful, Miller is now calling the industries “liabilities,” and Mayor Wu agreed.
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“Boston is at the center of many of the most targeted industries and communities, and so we’re feeling it very much — very urgently,” Wu said. Boston is “trying to plan for unpredictability. And so our city budget this year includes preparations for worst-case scenarios.”
Wu is expecting “immediate, significant impacts to federal funding or larger macroeconomic impacts.”
She’s not the only one with concerns. Boston University economist Adam Guren told the Globe, “I think the local economy is going to hurt. I think it’s going to hurt a lot. This is a particularly scary time for Massachusetts.”
“Up until a couple of months ago,” says Cait Brumme, the CEO of MassChallenge, “Massachusetts was a really attractive place to be.”
Now Brumme says, “I feel like there’s a risk people will feel like: You may not be welcomed here.”
“It will be hard for the state — and some of its most significant institutions — to win the battles of the next three-and-a-half years,” Miller wrote. “The question is whether they can hold on long enough to win the war.”
