Former Fox News star Jeanine Pirro was sworn in Wednesday as interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. The swearing-in happened inside the Oval Office and was attended by President Donald Trump.
After being sworn in, Pirro told reporters, “No more tolerance for hatred. No more mercy for criminals. Violence will be addressed directly, with the appropriate punishment.”
Sounds tough and, yes, she was talking about the District of Columbia. But you have to ask if Trump was paying attention. While talking with reporters, with Pirro behind him, Trump actually said he is considering pardons for the two men who conspired to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
Remember that case? Federal prosecutors claimed that Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox were anti-government extremists. Their plan, according to prosecutors, was to kidnap Whitmer and start a civil war.
During the closing arguments at their 2022 trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said, “These defendants were outside a woman’s house in the middle of the night with night vision goggles, and guns, and a plan to kidnap her.”
Croft was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, and Fox was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Other men believed to be involved in the plot were also sentenced to prison terms.
But on Wednesday, Trump said that he “would take a look” and then, incredibly, suggested the men might have been “railroaded.”
Trump said, “You know, they were drinking, and I think they said stupid things, but I’ll take a look at that.”
Trump also said that “a lot of people from both sides” are asking about the case.
Both sides? What does that even mean? Both sides of what?
Trump said, “I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job, I'll be honest with you.”
He watched it? That doesn’t seem possible. As The Detroit News’ Grant Schwab and Craig Mauger wrote, “The federal trials for Croft and Fox were never broadcast on television or livestreamed, but there was a remote audio feed.”
Schwab and Mauger noted, “The president's comments came six days after the U.S. Justice Department's new pardon attorney, Ed Martin Jr., said on a podcast he would take a ‘hard look’ at pardoning the men he called ‘victims just like January 6,’ when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol while Congress met to certify the November 2020 election results.”
Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told The Detroit News, “When you take somebody who is clearly guilty of an offense, who shows no remorse of any kind, who does not demonstrate that they have been rehabilitated and, for political reasons, to either commute their sentence or to pardon them is the type of thing that really impacts of the morale of any prosecutor's office.”
It is also strange considering that Trump and Whitmer, despite being on opposite sides of the political spectrum, seem to get along. Schwab and Mauger wrote, “Trump did not respond Wednesday to a follow-up question on whether he has discussed the matter with Whitmer, whom he has praised and spoken with in person at least three times since his second term began.”
More grim VOA news
Politico’s Ben Johansen reports that employees at the Voice of America are expected to receive termination letters this week, “likely closing the book on the network founded 80-plus years ago to combat Nazi disinformation during World War II.”
“Those terminations,” Johansen writes, “would affect the 800 remaining workers at the agency, after nearly 600 VOA contractors were dismissed by the Trump administration earlier this month. Employees have been advised by management to expect termination notices in the coming days.”
In March, Trump signed an executive order that called for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, to eliminate all activities to “the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The real reason? Trump essentially doesn’t like its content, claiming it’s “anti-Trump.”
In truth, as stated on VOA’s website, its purpose is to provide “comprehensive coverage of the news and telling audiences the truth. Through World War II, the Cold War, the fight against global terrorism, and the struggle for freedom around the globe today, VOA exemplifies the principles of a free press.”
VOA sued Trump and there has been a bit of back and forth in the courts, but last week, a federal appeals court basically said it would not get involved in the administration's plan to gut the agency. In recent weeks, the VOA has been dark, with only a few dozen staffers back to work since Trump’s original executive order.
And now comes this news.
Johansen wrote, “A senior VOA employee told POLITICO that based on his team’s conversations with staff at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, VOA’s parent company, the notices will likely affect all staff, effectively shutting down the international broadcasting network.”
Nasty question?
I learned a new phrase this week: TACO Trade. It’s apparently a slogan being thrown around on Wall Street, and was coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong. It stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. In other words, Trump announces huge tariffs that send the markets spiraling, and then he backs off.
So, CNBC White House correspondent Megan Cassella asked Trump about it Wednesday, saying, “Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the ‘TACO Trade’ — they’re saying ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’ on your tariff threats, and that’s why markets are higher this week. What’s your response to that?”
Totally fair question. Trump, naturally, wasn’t a fan.
Trump gave a bit of a rambling answer, and then eventually got to the point he really wanted to make. He said, “This country was dying. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere else in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said, ‘You got the …’ we have the hottest country in the world right now. Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country we didn’t think was going to survive, and you ask a nasty question like that.”
Nasty. Trump loves to call things nasty.
He told Cassella, “But don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.”
Later, while Cassella was appearing on CNBC’s “The Exchange,” anchor Kelly Evans said, “I hear he called that a ‘nasty question,’ Megan.”
Cassella said, “He sure did. A badge of honor, I guess.”
International journalists could get caught up in student visa pause
For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.
Foreign media workers and students coming to the United States for journalism schools and fellowships could get caught up in the Trump administration’s pause on certain visa interviews.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed all American embassies and consulates Tuesday to stop scheduling student and exchange visitor visa interviews, Politico reported. Though the State Department will allow previously scheduled appointments to proceed, it is halting new interviews until it can release expanded guidelines on “social media screening and vetting” for visa applicants.
It is unclear how long the pause will last — Rubio’s message said the new rules will be issued “in the coming days” — but foreign nationals currently applying for visas to participate in journalism programs and fellowships during the 2025-2026 academic year will likely be affected.
Some of the top journalism schools in the country enroll a significant number of international students. For example, international students made up 28% of the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism’s class last year and 25% of enrollees at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism boasts that its programs include students from nearly 50 countries.
Prestigious journalism fellowships in the U.S. also admit foreign nationals. Each year, international journalists make up roughly half of the class of Harvard University’s Nieman Fellowship and a third of the class of the University of Michigan’s Knight-Wallace Fellowship. More than a third of the incoming class of John S. Knight Journalism Fellows at Stanford University are international.
(Harvard’s incoming international Nieman Fellows have already had to grapple with uncertainty regarding their visas after the Trump administration attempted to revoke the university’s ability to sponsor visas for international scholars last week.)
Though Rubio’s order does not specify what the new vetting procedures will entail, it “alludes to executive orders that are aimed at keeping out terrorists and battling antisemitism,” Politico reported. Since President Donald Trump took office, the State Department has revoked thousands of visas, including those of international students who participated in protests for Palestine last year.
The crackdown on student activists led to Columbia Journalism School staff advising students in March to scrub their social media accounts and avoid publishing content about sensitive topics like Ukraine and Gaza. Less than two weeks later, the Trump administration detained Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national, for an op-ed she had co-authored last year for her university’s student paper.
Trump’s attacks on higher education, the press and free speech more broadly have led some J-schools and student newspapers to take extra steps to ensure international student journalists understand their rights and the risks they face in the current political climate.
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