| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker and Jesse Naranjo | What up, Recast fam. On today’s agenda:
- Activists are pressuring Joe Biden to pardon death row inmates, not just turkeys
- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez talks Trump’s gains with Latino voters
- How Kamala Harris lost voters in the battlegrounds’ biggest cities
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President Joe Biden speaks after pardoning the national Thanksgiving turkey, Peach, during a ceremony Monday on the South Lawn of the White House. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP | Joe Biden seemed to relish the opportunity to ham it up one last time for the White House’s annual Thanksgiving tradition: pardoning this year’s two lucky turkeys, Peach and Blossom. The lighthearted ceremony, where aides and Cabinet members are forced to laugh at the president’s scripted dad jokes, comes as a concerted push for Biden to grant real-life clemency ramps up, with just 55 days before he leaves office. Since Donald Trump’s decisive electoral victory, Democrats and criminal justice reform advocates have been pressuring Biden to use his presidential authority to pardon those currently in federal prison on crimes ranging from drugs to tax evasion — particularly those awaiting execution for more serious charges. Clemency is something that can’t be far from top of mind for Biden. As my colleague Ankush Khardori points out, Biden's son, Hunter, is set to be sentenced on Dec. 12 for purchasing a gun while addicted to drugs. And while the president has previously stated he won’t pardon him, Biden’s on strong ground to, at a minimum, commute Hunter’s sentence. The Democratic president has issued pardons to 22 people convicted mainly on drug charges. In April 2022, he granted clemency to 78 people. And in June 2024, he pardoned potentially thousands of LGBTQ+ former service members who were convicted of violating the now-repealed military ban on consensual gay sex. Still: no mercy for federal death row inmates. Prior to Biden's turkey pardoning on Monday, the group Prison Policy Initiative slammed the president for reneging on a central campaign promise: putting an end to the federal death penalty. “More turkeys have been pardoned from dinner plates in the US than people have been granted clemency from death row,” the organization said in a social media post. It also noted that Biden himself has pardoned a total of eight birds, yet “has made no announcement to grant clemency to the 40 people on federal death row.”
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Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal capital punishment early on in the Biden administration, but that can be easily overturned when Trump returns to the White House. For those keeping score, the first Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions, with the last one coming just days before Biden was sworn into office, raising concerns among criminal justice advocates that he’ll resume where he left off.
Sarah Gersten, executive director and general counsel for the Last Prisoner Project — which works to free prisoners who remain incarcerated or are serving time for crimes that have since become legal — is hopeful Biden will move with more urgency in the waning days of his administration. Gersten, whose organization successfully secured pardons for 12 people during the first Trump administration, said Biden’s legacy is at stake. “The one thing that is probably of top concern to the president right now is his legacy, and I know that he wants to leave a positive legacy on racial justice, on criminal justice. That's why he did center those things in his administration,” Gersten tells The Recast. |  Trump and Alice Johnson, a formerly incarcerated woman who he granted clemency to, smile after he signed a full pardon in the Oval Office, Aug. 28, 2020. | Evan Vucci/AP | Earlier this month, several Democratic senators including Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) sent a letter to Biden, echoing Gersten’s points. They urged him to commute prison sentences that would have been shorter under the 2018 First Step Act, Trump’s signature bipartisan criminal justice reform law. And some 67 House members sent a letter to Biden just last week urging the president to use his executive clemency powers to “set our nation on the path toward ending mass incarceration.” They detail what they called the “exorbitant” costs — both in financial terms and in the devastation to families — that add to an already “bloated prison system” and “embolden biases that undermine the ideals of our nation.” At a press conference announcing the letter, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) spoke about how the justice system impacted her own family. “Growing up with an incarcerated parent myself, I can only imagine how different my own childhood would have been if my father was able to get the help that he desperately needed,” she said. “Instead of compassion and care, the system only offered him criminalization and incarceration for his substance use disorder.” Whether these pressure tactics will be enough to motivate Biden to move on clemency remains to be seen. With precious few days left in his presidency, the only real strategy advocates have is to stress how history will view him if he does nothing at all. All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | | Want to know what's really happening with Congress's make-or-break spending fights? Get daily insider analysis of Hill negotiations, funding deadlines, and breaking developments—free in your inbox with Inside Congress. Subscribe now. | | | | | THE VIEW FROM MIAMI
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Miami Mayor Francis Suarez watches an NCAA football game between South Florida and Miami on Sept. 21, 2024, in Tampa, Florida. | Chris O'Meara/AP | Miami’s Republican mayor, Francis Suarez, foresaw Trump’s gains with Latino voters 18 months ago, when he visited POLITICO’s Rosslyn office and launched his own short-lived White House run. According to exit polls, Trump won roughly 46 percent of Latino voters nationally and carried Miami-Dade County by double digits — the first time a GOP presidential candidate has won the Hispanic-majority county since George H.W. Bush in 1988. So we called up the two-term mayor to get his thoughts on the president-elect’s improved standing with Latinos and his Cabinet picks so far. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RECAST: Well, you were indeed correct about Trump’s connection with the Hispanic community. Why were those numbers able to remain so high for Trump, especially among Hispanic men? SUAREZ: The first misconception is that Latinos are different from everyday Americans. What we saw here in Miami — that started with my first election in 2017 — we started an agenda here which, I think, mirrored his economic agenda this past cycle: We're gonna keep taxes low and we’re going to keep people safe. No. 2, he did not treat Hispanics monolithically as the Democrats did by trying to brand them “Latinx” or saying they’re as unique as San Antonio tacos, right? Hispanics surprised people on things like wanting a strong border, you know, being law and order and being pro law enforcement. THE RECAST: Trump selected two Hispanic members for his Cabinet: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for secretary of State and Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) for Labor secretary. Some say that because Trump did so well with Hispanics, perhaps there should be more in his Cabinet. Do you agree with that? SUAREZ: I think giving Marco one of the most important Cabinet roles to represent the country in foreign policy is recognition of his and Miami's role in bringing Hispanics along and keeping those gains with these voters. How I see it, Trump is trying to build a dream team to maintain and create the American dream. I don't think he's trying to get into a competition with any prior presidents [on how diverse his Cabinet is]. He's picking great people who happen to be diverse, right? I think he's picked the first female chief of staff [Susie Wiles], the youngest-ever White House press secretary [Karoline Leavitt] and the historic pick for secretary of State, that's Hispanic. So I just think he's trying to find the best people. It just so happens that it's representative of a cross section of America.
| | | IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|  Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at her rally in downtown Philadelphia, on Nov. 4, 2024, the final day before the presidential election. | Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO | ABOUT THAT NIGHT: Kamala Harris was banking on a robust turnout in Philadelphia, hoping to ignite a multiracial coalition of voters against Trump. Instead, neighborhoods across the state — and other major cities in key battlegrounds — shifted to the right, our Jessica Piper, Paroma Soni and Brakkton report in a deep data dive. And more:
| | | TODAY’S CULTURE RECS YOU BETTER SANG! Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the “Moana 2” star, says moviegoers should feel free to sing along ... yes, in the theater! HE LOST THE RAP BATTLE … and he’s going to court. Drake is taking legal action, accusing Universal Music Group and Spotify of conspiring to “artificially inflate” Kendrick Lamar’s megahit “Not Like Us.” OK, SHE’S CONFIDENT: Caitlyn Jenner, who made a bid for California governor as a Republican, said she’d beat Kamala Harris in a potential second run. Edited by Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz | | | | Don't just read headlines—guide your organization's next move. POLITICO Pro's comprehensive Data Analysis tracks power shifts in Congress, ballot measures, and committee turnovers, giving you the deep context behind every policy decision. Learn more about what POLITICO Pro can do for you. | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
