January 9, 2025

Thursday, January 9, 2025. Annette’s News Roundup.

Joe is always busy.

The Bidens meet their great-grandson!

— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T22:03:53.656Z

NEW: President Joe Biden has quickly approved @governor.ca.gov Newsom’s request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration to support ongoing response efforts related to the major wildfires burning in the Los Angeles area. #PalisadesFire #HurstFire #EatonFire 🔗 https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/01/08/governor-newsom-quickly-secures-major-disaster-declaration-from-president-biden-for-los-angeles-fires/

— Brandon Richards 🐻 (@brandonrichards.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T22:27:01.057Z

Biden Says He’s Considering Pre-emptive Pardons for Potential Trump Targets

The president hasn’t yet decided what he will do, he said, acknowledging that the makeup of Trump’s new administration could influence his decision.

President Biden said in a new interview published on Wednesday [in USA Today] that he was considering pre-emptive pardons for people President-elect Donald J. Trump considered his political enemies, but he added that he had not yet decided what to do.

“A little bit of it depends on who he puts in what positions,” Mr. Biden told USA Today in the interview, which was conducted Sunday.

Mr. Biden was asked whether he would pardon Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative frequently targeted by Mr. Trump and his supporters for her role investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the Capitol, or Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former top federal infectious disease official who oversaw the nation’s Covid-19 response.

“I think there are certain people like, if he were to, I don’t want to name their names,” Mr. Biden said, before asking to speak off the record.

Mr. Biden said that he had appealed to the president-elect in a two-hour Oval Office meeting after the election. “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive to go back and try to settle scores,” Mr. Biden said. But Mr. Trump did not say how he would handle his threats of retribution.

“He didn’t reinforce it; he just basically listened,” Mr. Biden said.

Since late last year, Mr. Biden’s staff has considered what the pardons might look like were Mr. Biden to pursue them, including how to extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years.

Mr. Trump told NBC recently that he would like to jail members of the congressional panel that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. Ms. Cheney served on the panel. At least two of its other members, Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican representative, have said they do not want pardons, arguing that accepting one would falsely suggest that they had committed crimes.

“It would be the wrong precedent to set,” Mr. Schiff told CNN earlier this week. “I don’t want to see each president hereafter on their way out the door giving out a broad category of pardons.” (New York Times)

---

Trump is always crazy, cruel, deranged and dangerous.

The world will not roll over for Trump or his evil twin.

We are not alone in this fight.

Trump’s threat to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Can Trump rename the Gulf?

Mr. Trump, as president, could press for changes to geographical names as they are used in the United States.

There is a precedent: In 2015, President Obama used his executive powers to change the name of an Alaska mountain from “McKinley” to “Denali.” Mr. Trump has vowed to reverse that decision.

But whether other countries would honor any change is a different story.

“Today, there is no formal international agreement or protocol in place for naming maritime areas,” said John Nyberg, the director of the International Hydrographic Organization, which works to standardize and chart marine boundaries, in an email.

The national geographic naming authority of the U.S. is the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, he added.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, part of the United States Geological Survey, says on its website that it only considers name changes for “compelling” reasons. “Generally,” it adds, “the most important policy regarding names is local use and acceptance.” (New York Times)

Trump’s threat to make Canada a U.S. State.

Trump’s threat to take over Greenland.

Here’s how Trump’s Greenland plan could affect Ozempic, Legos and hearing aids.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many countries for many different reasons.

On Monday, he found a new purpose for his favorite economic tool. Mr. Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to allow Greenland — a North American island that is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark — to become part of the United States.

“They should give it up, because we need it for national security,” Mr. Trump said of Greenland.

Denmark, which has a smaller population than New York City, is not a huge trading partner for the United States. The country — a U.S. ally and a NATO member — sent the United States more than $11 billion worth of goods in 2023, just a tiny slice of more than $3 trillion of imports. The United States, in turn, sends Denmark more than $5 billion in goods, including industrial machinery, computers, aircraft and scientific instruments.

But despite its small size, Denmark, which handles Greenland’s foreign and security affairs, is home to some products that are very well-loved in America, goods that could become more expensive if Mr. Trump follows through with heavy tariffs. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a trade data platform, roughly half of Denmark’s recent exports to the United States are packaged medicines, insulin, vaccines and antibiotics.

That’s largely because the country is home to Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, the popular weight-loss drugs. The company is so important to the Danish economy — it has recently accounted for half of Denmark’s private sector job growth and all of the country’s economic growth — that some have branded Denmark a “pharmastate.”

Novo Nordisk is increasing its U.S. production to meet the soaring demand for its GLP-1 weight loss products. The company does not specify publicly how much of its products are exported, but it produces drugs in Denmark and the United States for the U.S. market.

A spokesperson for Novo Nordisk said in a statement that they were following the situation closely but would not comment on hypotheticals and speculation.

Gilberto Garcia, the chief economist at Datawheel and a member of the Observatory of Economic Complexity team, said that Denmark’s exports of immunological products, which includes drugs like Ozempic, have been “growing exponentially.”

Denmark is also the leading supplier to the United States of hearing aids, he said.

Beyond medicines, Denmark also sends the United States medical instruments, fish fillets, pig meat, coal tar oil, petroleum and baked goods, among other products, according to the OEC.

And notably, for many children (and adults) Denmark is home to Lego Group, the world’s largest toymaker.

It’s not clear how much Lego exports directly from Denmark to the United States — the company serves much of the U.S. market from a factory in Mexico, as well as a new carbon-neutral facility in Virginia. It also manufactures the toy bricks in factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic, China and Vietnam, as well as Denmark. Lego did not respond to requests for comment.

But Lego, like other multinational companies that have global supply chains shuffling raw materials and products around the world, could see its business disrupted by tariffs. Mr. Trump has threatened to put levies on products coming into the United States from Mexico, China and other countries globally, in addition to Denmark.

“Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland,” Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede wrote on Facebook Tuesday. “Our future and fight for independence is our business.”

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow in Brussels at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that few politicians in Europe take what Mr. Trump says literally.

“This is an outrageous demand,” Mr. Kirkegaard said of Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland. “The only way you can logically think of it is that by making this outrageous demand, Trump is going to get some concessions he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.”

Mr. Kirkegaard said that should Mr. Trump follow through with his threat to implement tariffs on Denmark, he could expect an E.U.-wide response. “This idea that he can pressure Denmark as a single member state of the E.U., to offer policy concession by threatening tariffs, is going to invite retaliation from all of the E.U.”

Trump’s threat to take over the Panama Canal.

The leader of the Panama Canal Authority denied Donald Trump’s claims that China is controlling the vital trade route and said Trump’s suggestion that U.S. ships get preferential rates “will lead to chaos.” trib.al/HaHWPng https://trib.al/HaHWPng

— [The Great War & Modern Memory] (@ps9714.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T22:16:20.954Z

https://x.com/BettyBowers/status/1877064535976095860

---

Democrats win in Virginia.

We kept the Virginia legislation in special elections on Tuesday.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has one year left in his term.

In November Former Congresswoman, Abigail Spanberger, should win the Governorship, and will, with our help. Donate to the Virginia Governor’s race with this link.

Spanberger is a former intelligence officer who represented Virginia's 7th congressional district from 2019 to 2025.

Democrats Prevail in Virginia Races, the First Elections Since Trump’s Win.

The party held onto two key seats in Loudoun County that will allow them to maintain control of the state’s legislature.

The Virginia State Capitol. With victories in two special elections on Tuesday, Democrats held their majorities in the state’s General Assembly for another term.

Democrats on Tuesday held two key state legislative seats in Virginia, retaining their majorities in the General Assembly in the first special elections since President-elect Donald J. Trump won back the White House.

The results were expected in overlapping House of Delegates and State Senate districts in Loudoun County, a Washington suburb. Democrats have traditionally occupied the seats, which became vacant when the local state senator was elected to Congress and the delegate subsequently resigned to run to replace him.

But Democrats, who held single-seat majorities in both chambers, had worried that a shift toward Republicans in Loudoun County could accelerate after Mr. Trump’s victory. They poured far more resources into the contests than Republicans did.

Kannan Srinivasan, a Democrat who had held the State House seat for the last year, won election to the State Senate, defeating Tumay Harding, a Republican schoolteacher, according to The Associated Press. JJ Singh, a former Capitol Hill aide, won Mr. Srinivasan’s old State House seat, topping Ram Venkatachalam, an information technology consultant, The A.P. reported.

“Our win today shows the power of compelling candidates focused on unlocking Virginians’ potential and protecting their rights,” said Dan Helmer, the campaign chair for the Virginia House Democratic caucus. “It bodes well for expanding our majority and taking back the governor’s mansion.” (New York Times).

Reminder. The 2026 election is right around the corner.

Which party cracks up first in 2025? By Chuck Todd

If there is one certainty in politics these days, it’s that the status quo rarely holds.

And history tells us that when one party has control of the so-called trifecta of governing power — the White House, the House and the Senate — the new status quo has a shelf life of closer to two years than four. The GOP already feels time pressure to make use of its majorities under President-elect Donald Trump, while Democrats face the pressure of how to rebound from their loss. A big question animating 2025 will be which is greater: the pressure of losing or the pressure of governing?

The periods of one-party control of the trifecta since President Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 tell us as much. Just before Reagan, Jimmy Carter had the trifecta for four years — but saw his party fragment by year three. It’s the last time the Democrats had an uninterrupted four-year hold on both houses of Congress and the White House. Reagan and George H.W. Bush never got a trifecta during their presidencies, though Reagan’s party did have the Senate for six of his eight years. Bill Clinton and the Democrats got it for all of two years (his first two).

When George W. Bush was elected, he had it for less than six months before a party switch tipped the 50-50 Senate to the Democrats by one seat. Bush would end up getting the trifecta back after the 2002 midterms and holding it until the Democratic wave in 2006 — the first time the GOP had had the trifecta since 1955!

Democrats then nabbed the trifecta for two years after Barack Obama's 2008 election, before the GOP’s House takeover of 2010. Republicans would get it again for the first two years of Trump’s first term, only for the House to go Democratic in the 2018 midterms. And Joe Biden and the Democrats got the trifecta back after 2020 but, like Obama, Trump and Clinton, lost the trifecta in the first midterm.

That brings us to the current GOP trifecta, which will start when Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20. It’s Trump’s second time with a Republican-controlled Congress, and this time, he won’t be at war with his own party, like he was that first year in office. In fact, judging by their rhetoric and actions, Republicans are under no illusion they will hold this trifecta for any longer than two years, and they are trying to get all of their promises in legislative form before the 2026 midterms.

They realize they are simply renting their hold on power until the landlord (the American electorate) decides otherwise. (NBC News)

---

Don’t faint. Merrick Garland claims he will take action.

Garland plans to release Jack Smith's Jan. 6 report over Trump's objections

Attorney General Merrick Garland in a court filing on Wednesday said the Justice Department plans to release publicly special counsel Jack Smith's findings on Donald Trump's alleged efforts to subvert 2020 election results.

Why it matters: Trump's federal 2020 election case was dropped after his presidential victory, and he has relentlessly fought any effort to release information about the investigation's findings.

Garland in the Wednesday court filing said that the department will not release the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents, as to "avoid any risk of prejudice" to Trump's co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, whose cases are still pending.

Garland said that "for the time being," the report over Trump and his co-defendants' handling of classified documents will be "made available for in camera review" by the chair and ranking members of House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

The big picture: Lawyers for the Justice Department argued in the court filing Wednesday that there was no legal basis for preventing the release of the portion of the report related to Trump's election subversion case.

The Justice Department also urged the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's temporary injunction on releasing any part of the report until three days after the circuit court's ruling on a similar emergency motion.

The filing also noted that Smith had already transmitted a copy of the final report to Garland.

Zoom out: Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, has repeatedly faced scrutiny over her handling of Trump's classified documents case.

Trump called Cannon a "brilliant judge" in a speech on Tuesday.

In July, she dismissed the case on the basis that Smith's appointment was unconstitutional.

Trump's federal Jan. 6 case was also dismissed in the wake of his election win.(Axios)

---

Tomorrow is President Carter’s funeral.

A decent man will be buried.

Vice President Harris spoke about him in advance of the funeral.

Former President Jimmy Carter was a president "ahead of his time," said Vice President Kamala Harris in her eulogy.

"Jimmy Carter was that all-too-rare example of a gifted man who also walks with humility, modesty and grace."

Vice Pres. Kamala Harris shared a story about how former Pres. Jimmy Carter and his beloved late wife, Rosalynn, opted to sleep on the floor of a church while on their first trip for Habitat for Humanity so they could give their private room to a young couple who put off their honeymoon to join the trip.

Here is her full eulogy. 👇

A decent man will be buried.

---