* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Government_Accou...
May be worth noting/reminding of the 17 inspectors general that were fired on the first Friday (2025-01-24) of Trump 2.0 administration:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_U.S._inspec...
* https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-future-of-no...
* https://global.oup.com/academic/product/civil-resistance-978...
At least per historical surveys (600 movements since 1900).
This is absolutely what should happen, but what will almost certainly happen is that the most openly corrupt president the US has ever had will blanket pardon everyone who remains loyal to him for the remainder of his term and there will be no federal level criminal legal consequences for any of these people.
And this is kind of the optimistic outcome, the one where the corrupt people in power don't find a way to extend their power indefinitely, which is certainly their plan (their incompetence may stop this from happening).
But like many aspects of US federal government, the people who drafted the rules naively presumed the people invoking them would have some level of integrity and a shame response that would stop them from using it for openly corrupt purposes.
They were, of course, wrong.
At the very least they should have ignored Hamilton and made it so that Senate approval was required for the pardons... though even that wouldn't be enough of a check today because we now know that Congress is capable of completely abdicating its power to the executive branch.
But it is difficult to make a system Trump/asshole proof.
The US form of government is highly based on the existing British one and the British King had the ability to pardon and so that was copied over.
I do think it makes a lot of sense to do things like mass-pardon people for things that are no longer crimes (i.e. weed legalization) but I really don't see how singling out cases is correct since the supreme court already can do that.
You've obviously never been part of an SAP/ERP implementation. /s
And why wouldn't he? Biden preemptively pardoned his family, which was unprecedented, and Democrats said it was fine.
This is now the world we live in, and why these precedents are bad.
That's really the by far most important aspect!