US President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Jan. 15, 2025.
Mandel Ngan | Via Reuters
President Joe Biden on Sunday posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Biden also pardoned immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir and criminal justice reform advocate Kemba Smith Pradia.
Congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey. Supporters long argued that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the increasingly popular leader who spoke of racial pride.
Ragbir was convicted of a nonviolent offence in 2001 and was sentenced to two years in prison. Smith Pradia is an advocate convicted of a drug offense in 1994 when she was sentenced to 24 years behind bars. President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence in 2000.
It’s still not clear whether Biden will use his last day in office to give pardons to people who have been criticized or threatened by President-elect Donald Trump.
Issuing preemptive pardons — for actual or imagined offenses by Trump’s critics that could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration — would stretch the powers of the presidency in untested ways.