Elizabeth Jo

speaker

2,299 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2025 last heard 27 Mar

Elizabeth Jo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.

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99% Invisible · Constitution Breakdown #5: Dr. Tom Frieden · 26 Dec 2025 podcast

Clause one tells us that the president is the commander in chief of the military, right?

So we have talked a bit about the war power and the fact that in our system, the president who is a civilian, is in charge of the armed forces.

And that's a very deliberate choice.

So there are some other powers here, but the other thing I want to mention now is that section two of Article Two includes the pardon power.

Article two says that the president shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

So what this means is that the constitution gives the president broad authority to grant pardons.

And the only real limits here are that they can only be used for federal criminal offenses.

So you can't use them for state offenses or civil claims of any kind, and it cannot be used in cases of impeachment.

And the president's pardon power is so broad that the Supreme Court has said previously that the power of the presidency is not subject to legislative control.

And there have been, of course, many controversial pardons in the past.

You know, for instance, in two thousand and one, President Clinton pardoned his brother Roger for his conviction on drug offenses.

And everyone thought, well, that's just using his influence to help out his family.

Right.

But Trump is a little bit different.

Trump has taken this pardon power much, much further.

So, for instance, on December first, Trump pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Hernandez, why was he being pardoned?

He had been sentenced to forty-five years in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

Why am I mentioning this?

Because this is just months after the administration began to blow up boats in the Caribbean because it claims that these boats are carrying narco terrorists smuggling drugs into the United States from Venezuela.

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