In the last week and a half, President Donald Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to…

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was sentenced to 45 years in prison after being found guilty of working with drug traffickers to ensure more than 400 tons of cocaine were moved into the United States…

And, Enrique Roberto Cuellar, the former Texas Democratic representative who was indicted on bribery charges last year for allegedly accepting about $600,000 from an Azerbaijan government-owned oil and gas company and a bank headquartered in Mexico City…

And, entertainment CEO Tim Leiweke, who was charged by Trump’s DOJ, which accused him of working with a competitor to rig the bidding process to develop the $375 million Moody Center, a 15,000-seat arena on campus at the University of Texas.

Trump also commuted the sentence of former private equity CEO David Gentile, who in May was sentenced to seven years behind bars for wire and security fraud after being found guilty of what the Justice Department at the time called a Ponzi scheme to defraud more than 10,000 investors.

All of this comes on the heels of Trump’s pardoning of about 80 staffers, lawyers and other loyalists who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in early November. And, don’t forget, his pardoning of anyone convicted of offenses related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., or the commutation of sentences for those convicted, upon his return to the White House in January.

Let’s sum it up this way: That’s a lot of forgiveness not demanded by the vast majority of the American people, for people convicted through the American judicial process, for crimes that hurt a lot of Americans and some who undermined the laws protecting them from harm.

The most frustrating facet of these pardons for American citizens should not be found in the fact that it was Trump who issued them, as easy a target as he is for his critics. It’s that what could easily be considered abuses of the powers granted to the president under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution have become commonplace.

No matter who the president is.

No matter what political party he represents.

Still fresh in the mind of many area residents, President Joe Biden’s commutation of former Luzerne County judge Michael T. Conahan’s sentence last December tore open a wound that had barely started to heal.

Conahan was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in the infamous Kids For Cash scandal that broke the region’s collective hearts in the 2000s. He was found to have conspired to sentence area minors to extended punishments at a private, for-profit juvenile detention center in exchange for more than $2 million. Biden’s decision made sure Conahan only had to serve a touch more than half of that punishment, which made ripples in the national news but rates as just about unforgiveable around Northeast Pennsylvania.

Biden also pardoned his son, Hunter, for offenses against the nation he “may have committed or taken part in” during a decade-long stretch from the beginning of 2014 to the end of his term in 2024. Getting family members out of trouble they aren’t in, and forgiving them for crimes they haven’t been charged with, is hardly the spirit of the law. Nor is forgiveness for those who stroke your ego, or support your stances publicly, or donate to your campaigns. Bowing to the president’s whims should not be a way to evade paying debts to society.

It is long past time for Congress to work at least toward narrowing the president’s broad power to issue pardons, especially considering the amount that have been clearly handed out along political lines. Obviously, presidents should not be allowed to preemptively pardon themselves or their family members. Nor should they be allowed to pardon anyone who contributes in any tangible way to their campaigns, or in exchange for support of their policies.

It will be a difficult process, and perhaps not one many lawmakers would have the stomach to undertake. But for the American people, it is essential to have trust restored both in the office of the presidency and in a judicial process expected to weed out and punish those who break our laws. No matter who those who break the law are, or what political ideals they support.

In the United States, it has always been simple: Those who commit illegal acts against the people are answerable to the people in a court of law. A punishment issued for those crimes is only a deterrent as long as it is a punishment served.

Presidents should not be allowed to betray that process with a signature, a pen put to paper when it is most politically or personally expedient.