On July 4, 2026, the United States of America turns 250 years old.

Two and a half centuries since the Declaration of Independence. Since the founding promise that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights, subject to a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Since the beginning of an imperfect, ongoing, sometimes agonizing experiment in self-governance that generations of Americans have bled and died to advance, protect, and expand.

And according to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump is considering marking that milestone with 250 pardons.

The announcement could come June 14 — Flag Day, and conveniently also Trump’s birthday. Or July 4 itself. The plan is still in early discussions, a White House official told the Journal, emphasizing that "Trump is the ultimate decision maker on any clemency-related actions" and that no final decision has been made.

But we already know what Trump’s clemency decisions look like in practice. The record is extensive, documented, and damning.

What the Pardon Power Has Already Become

On his first day back in office, Trump issued more than 1,500 pardons to January 6 defendants — including people convicted of assaulting police officers during one of the most violent attacks on the Capitol in American history. That single clemency action was described by prosecutors, law enforcement organizations, and legal scholars across the ideological spectrum as an unprecedented mass pardoning of individuals convicted of attacking the constitutional process itself.

But the January 6 pardons were just the beginning.

Zachary Alam — described by federal prosecutors as one of the most violent Capitol rioters, captured on video smashing a Capitol window with a police riot shield — was pardoned by Trump and subsequently sentenced to seven years in Virginia state prison for breaking and entering and grand larceny.

Andrew Taake — who attacked officers with bear spray and a metal whip on January 6 — was freed by Trump’s pardon while still wanted in Texas on a charge of online solicitation of a minor. The pardon covered his federal conduct. The Texas charge did not go away.

Andrew Paul Johnson — another pardoned January 6 rioter — was later sentenced to life in prison for molesting two children. Trump’s pardon returned him to the outside world before his child sex crime case was resolved. It did not protect him from those charges. He is serving life.

These are not edge cases. They are the documented consequences of issuing 1,500 pardons without systematic review of what else the people being freed might have done or be accused of doing.

The Broader Pattern

Beyond January 6, Trump’s pardon pen has moved with a consistency that reveals its underlying logic: loyalty, political utility, financial connection, and celebrity are the operative criteria. Justice is the branding.

Todd and Julie Chrisley — reality television stars convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion, sentenced to a combined 19 years, ordered to pay restitution of more than $22 million to their victims — received full and unconditional pardons in May 2025. Their victims received nothing. The restitution obligation was erased along with the conviction.

Trevor Milton — founder of electric vehicle startup Nikola, convicted by a jury of securities and wire fraud for deceiving investors about his company’s technology — received a full and unconditional pardon in March 2025. Before the pardon, Milton had donated $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign. The pardon wiped out not just his four-year sentence but his obligation to pay $660 million in restitution to the investors he defrauded. That is, as the Cato Institute noted, "an impressive ROI" on a $1.8 million political investment.

George Santos — the serial fabulist and former congressman who pleaded guilty to using campaign funds to buy luxury goods and pay personal debts — had his seven-year sentence commuted in October 2025. Fellow Republicans who had previously called for his resignation reacted with fury. Representative Andrew Garbarino called it "not justice."

Changpeng Zhao — the former CEO of Binance, who pleaded guilty to federal money laundering violations and whose exchange processed prohibited transactions for Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas — received a full pardon. Before the pardon, Zhao had brokered a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company. A lawyer for Zhao told the Wall Street Journal he was "pardoned for justice." Critics noted the timing with the investment.

Juan Orlando Hernández — the former president of Honduras, convicted after a three-week jury trial of conspiring to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, sentenced to 45 years in federal prison by a George W. Bush-appointed judge who called him "a two-faced politician hungry for power" — was pardoned by Trump in December 2025 and released the same day. Honduras responded by issuing an arrest warrant for him. The Trump administration, which claims drug trafficking as one of its signature enforcement priorities, freed one of the largest drug traffickers ever prosecuted in the American federal system and called it correcting "over-prosecution."

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office calculated that Trump’s pardons have wiped nearly $2 billion in victim repayment and taxpayer recovery obligations — money owed to fraud victims, tax authorities, and defrauded institutions that simply ceased to exist the moment Trump signed his name.

The Math of the Loyalty Program

The pattern that emerges from this record is not subtle.

Trump pardoned Paul Walczak, who evaded millions in taxes, after Walczak’s mother raised millions for MAGA candidates and paid $1 million to dine with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump pardoned Trevor Milton after Milton donated $1.8 million to his campaign. Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao after Zhao’s connections produced a $2 billion investment in Trump family businesses. Trump pardoned a convicted Honduran drug lord and called it justice.

Over 16,000 formal pardon requests were submitted to the White House last year from people who followed the established legal process — the one designed for ordinary Americans without Mar-a-Lago memberships or cryptocurrency investments or reality television profiles. The queue is long. The access is unequal.

This is not mercy. This is a loyalty program with a constitutional mechanism attached to it.

The 250 Pardons Question

The Wall Street Journal’s reporting notes that some White House officials have privately expressed concern that another major pardon announcement could hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections — that voters already alarmed by the January 6 pardons may not respond well to watching Trump mark America’s 250th birthday by freeing more convicted criminals.

Those concerns have apparently not stopped the conversation. The cryptocurrency industry is watching closely whether Sam Bankman-Fried — the FTX founder convicted of seven counts of fraud and sentenced to 25 years — might be included. Bankman-Fried publicly requested a pardon last year. Trump said at the time he had no intention of granting one. But Trump has said many things he later reversed.

More than 1,500 January 6 pardons. The Chrisley family. George Santos. Trevor Milton and his $660 million in erased restitution. Changpeng Zhao and his $2 billion Trump family investment. Juan Orlando Hernández and his 400 tons of cocaine. Now, possibly, 250 more.

What the 250th Anniversary Actually Deserves

America’s 250th birthday is a genuine milestone. It is an opportunity to reckon honestly with what this country has been, what it has failed to be, and what it still aspires to become. The founding documents promised something radical: that government exists to serve the people, that no one is above the law, that justice is not a privilege of the powerful but a right of everyone.

The presidential pardon power exists in that framework as an instrument of mercy — a release valve for cases where the justice system has produced unjust outcomes, where the punishment exceeds the crime, where rehabilitation has genuinely occurred, where systemic inequity has created a result that the law cannot correct on its own.

It was not designed as a loyalty program. It was not designed to erase the financial obligations of campaign donors. It was not designed to free convicted drug lords the week before a foreign election. It was not designed to return accused child molesters to the outside world ahead of their trials. It was not designed to wipe $2 billion in victim restitution from the books so that connected defendants can keep the money they stole.

The people who signed the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago were, for all their profound contradictions, trying to build something. A system in which the law applied to everyone. In which power was constrained. In which the government answered to the people rather than the people answering to the government.

What Trump is considering for the 250th anniversary is the opposite of that. It is a demonstration that the law is negotiable for those with the right connections, the right donations, and the right relationship to the right man.

That is not how you honor 250 years of American democracy.

That is how you tell the American people what their democracy has become.