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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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There is a vast gulf between executive orders and pardons.

With EOs, he can just sign another EO declaring the first one void. Just tweeting about it is not enough, though.

My guess is that at least half of the EOs are probably non-partisan stuff which most presidents would generally want to keep, and just getting rid of all of them will be unpopular, but if each president was willing to have their staff go through all the current EOs and evaluate them, that would sound beneficial.

Pardons can not be reverted, it would defeat their whole point. Now, if a criminal had personally conspired with White House staff to get a pardon without the president noticing, forging his signature etc, then my guess is that the courts would indeed declare such a pardon void.

But in any cases where the beneficiary of the pardon did not obviously illegally conspire on his own behalf, I think it would be generally beneficial to let the pardon stand, rather than creating a situation where pardons no longer offer legal certainty.

Also, Biden's broadest pardon scandalously benefits Hunter Biden. The persons inside the WH who had any interest in pardoning Hunter are Biden and his wife, not anonymous staff who were running his administration.

Finally, Trump is a master of wielding pardons as a political tool. One might be excused to think that he would have the sense to avoid establishing any precendent where pardons are declared null and void.