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Donald Trump, the president of the United States, claims that he has revoked all of his predecessor’s pardons and commutations using an autopen.

On Tuesday evening, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts signed by the now infamous and unauthorised ‘Autopen,’ within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect.”

Anybody who receives “Pardons,” “Commutations,” or any other legal document signed, please be informed that the document has been completely and legally terminated and has no legal effect, he said.

However, legal experts contend that the president’s decision is unenforceable.

What documents did Biden sign with the autopen, who will be affected, and is Trump’s move legal?

What documents did Biden and his autopen sign?

Trump has argued on numerous occasions that Biden’s use of the autopen, a mechanical device that makes it possible to sign documents without holding a hand, was indicative of the former president’s physical and mental frailty.

According to the non-partisan Pew Research Center, Biden has issued a record 4,245 clemency acts in his four years in office, more than any other US president since the start of the 20th century.

The majority of these actions involved sentence reductions or commutations. Although he only issued 80 individual pardons, which was the second-lowest number over the same time period, he was more well-known for enacting “pardons by proclamation,” which affected a wide range of people.

According to the Pew Research Center, these included pardons by proclamation for former military personnel who had been found guilty of abusing a gay sex ban, which has since been overturned.

However, it is unclear how many and which pardons and commutations Biden’s orders were executed using an autopen.

Trump’s decision: legal or not?

Trump does not have the authority to revoke pardons or commutations, according to Bernadette Miller, a Stanford University expert on US and UK constitutional law.

This declaration is legally unenforceable. Any laws or pardons that Biden has authorized remain effective. An executive order, she said, “would be the only exception that an executive order can have until it is overturned by the same president or another president.”

Trump might revoke those orders, so presumably this statement would undo any such orders. However, laws and pardons are still effective.

A separate study from PolitiFact, a fact-checking website run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, found that “there is no constitutional mechanism for overturning pardons, and an 1869 judicial ruling determined that a pardon is final.”

According to PolitiFact, the US Constitution does not require a pardon to be formally endorsed by hand.

Who might be impacted by Trump’s action?

Trump has previously argued that autopen signed a number of “preemptive” pardons that Biden gave US legislators as part of their investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

The Capitol was attacked by a mob of Trump supporters who claimed the 2020 election was a fraud and were trying to stop Biden from being elected president by Congress. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly failed to demonstrate widespread election fraud.

Republicans who opted to investigate Trump, such as ex-members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are seen by the US president and his allies as traitors of their movement.

Because they were issued by Autopen, Trump claimed on Truth Social in March that these legislators’ pardons were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”

Biden was the first to employ an autopen.

According to PolitiFact, Biden was not the only US president to rely on an autopen.

Similar devices have been around for the majority of American history, but autopens’s design has changed as technology has developed.

The third US president, Thomas Jefferson, used a technique known as a polygraph, which is a pair of pens rigged so that the second can imitate the first’s actions.

John F. Kennedy used a more contemporary version of the autopen in the early 1960s. Barack Obama has occasionally used autopens, more recently.

Democratic states that are currently contesting a government order to turn over information about recipients of food assistance have threatened to do so under the direction of United States Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.

Rollins spoke about the ongoing lawsuit, which pits US President Donald Trump’s administration against 21 states and the District of Columbia, on Tuesday at his final cabinet meeting of the year.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has resisted that states provide details about who receives funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under Trump.

SNAP, a term used to describe food stamps, aids low-income households in purchasing groceries. By the year 2024, nearly 41.7 million people in the US were relying on the program, or nearly 12% of the population.

According to the USDA’s order, states would be required to provide federal authorities with information such as birth dates, birth dates, and home addresses. Critics worry that transferring this kind of data could infringe on privacy.

However, Rollins stated to the cabinet that the information was necessary to “protect the American taxpayer” and to address alleged fraud.

We requested that all states provide their data to the federal government for the first time in order to ensure that those who actually need food stamps are receiving them.

She claimed that partisan politics might be at play in the opposition to her demand.

“Yes, 69 states responded. The red states, it seems, are unexpected. All of that information about fraud comes from there, Rollins continued. “But 21 states, including the blue states of California, New York, and Minnesota, continue to refuse.”

In consequence, Rollins claims that those states with Democratic ties would no longer receive federal aid for their SNAP recipients.

So, she said, “we have started and will begin stopping moving federal funds into those states until they comply” as of the following week.

A persistent legal issue

Rollins’ ability to carry out her threat is unsure.

A temporary restraining order was issued in a US district court in northern California in September to stop the government from implementing its data request. A temporary injunction was granted once more in October after a second hearing on the matter was held.

After the Supreme Court’s decision in October, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, a Democrat, stated in a statement that “the President is trying to hijack a nutrition program to fuel his mass surveillance agenda.

“We won’t allow that to occur,” he said. “Neither on our watch nor within our communities.”

Some of the most senior Democrats’ outraged after the lawsuit’s states announced on Tuesday that federal SNAP funds would be suspended.

“Genuine question: Why is the Trump administration so hostile toward people who are hungry?” Rollins’ remarks were shared by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in a social media post.

The Trump administration’s plan is also being denounced by the House Agriculture Committee, which also issued a statement.

Trump and Rollins have once more allegedly threatened to withhold federal funds. Trump continues to use the term “hunger,” but SNAP has one of the lowest fraud rates of any government program.

Rollins responded on social media, claiming that the states were trying to “protect their bribery schemes,” a claim that was made without any supporting evidence.

It’s that easy, she wrote, “No DATA, NO MONEY.” A state won’t receive any money from the federal SNAP administrative budget if it doesn’t share information about criminal use of SNAP benefits.

Using SNAP as a tool?

In a report released last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that 11.7% of SNAP benefits were “improper” in the fiscal year 2023. This included incorrect payments of about $10.5 billion.

However, according to the report, some of those “improper” disbursements were overreported and underreported to legitimate recipients.

Additionally, the Trump administration has attempted to suspend SNAP funds previously with Tuesday’s threat.

The USDA announced that it would not be paying SNAP benefits for the month of November during the government shutdown, which lasted for an unprecedented 43 days.

Numerous states sued, accusing the Trump administration of using food aid to compel Democratic lawmakers to approve the budget.

The states were given the order to resume funding by two federal courts. The Supreme Court subsequently halted the lower courts’ decisions after the Trump administration filed an appeal.