The Trumpian supermarket of pardons by Kingsley Cobb

Donald Trump has turned presidential clemency into something increasingly resembling a political supermarket, convicted criminals walk in with a record and walk out with a presidential eraser. Last week, Trump granted clemency to 30 people, including a former drug offender who later became a business executive, a longtime Philadelphia union leader convicted of bribery, and a former Navy sailor convicted of federal firearms offences.

Thirty pardons and commutations in a single announcement is not merely an exercise of constitutional power. It is a political statement about what Trump believes justice should look like when the person holding the pen is the president.

And the statement is deeply troubling. The presidential pardon exists for exceptional circumstances. It is supposed to provide mercy when justice has become excessively harsh, correct genuine miscarriages of justice and recognise extraordinary rehabilitation. It was never intended to become a revolving door through which political favour, celebrity, connections or presidential whim can allow criminal convictions to disappear.

Yet under Trump, clemency increasingly looks less like an instrument of justice and more like another extension of presidential power. The argument that Trump is legally entitled to issue these pardons misses the point. Of course he is. The Constitution gives the president extraordinarily broad authority over federal offences. But legality is not the same thing as legitimacy, and constitutional power is not a licence to turn justice into personal patronage.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pardoning someone who genuinely deserves another chance. A former offender who has rebuilt his life, served his sentence and demonstrated genuine rehabilitation can present a compelling case for mercy. That is precisely why a pardon system exists.

But mercy becomes dangerous when it loses standards. The central question should always be simple: Why this person? Why now? And what principle justifies the decision?

Americans deserve answers. Otherwise, the pardon power begins to resemble a presidential loyalty card. Collect enough influence, political usefulness, public attention or presidential goodwill and perhaps the criminal conviction becomes little more than an administrative inconvenience.

For millions of Americans who have encountered the criminal-justice system without access to political connections, that is a particularly ugly message. They do not have a president waiting at the end of the process. They have judges, prosecutors, probation officers, prison officials and a sentence.

That does not mean every conviction is just or every sentence fair. Quite the opposite. The American justice system has made mistakes, sometimes catastrophic ones. But the answer to an imperfect justice system cannot be to replace judicial discretion with presidential favour.

That simply moves the problem from one institution to another. There is an even larger danger here. When presidents repeatedly pardon people convicted of serious crimes, the symbolic damage extends beyond the recipients. It tells the country that criminal accountability is conditional, that the law may apply with full force to ordinary citizens but become surprisingly flexible for those who reach the president's political orbit.

That is poisonous for public confidence. Trump has spent years presenting himself as the champion of law and order. Yet law and order cannot mean enforcing the law when it suits the president and overriding it when it does not.

A republic cannot function on the assumption that justice ends where presidential preference begins. The United States does not need a president who behaves like a merciful monarch handing out royal pardons from the palace balcony.

It needs a president who understands that clemency is a solemn constitutional responsibility, not a political vending machine. The pardon supermarket may be open. But Americans should be asking who is behind the checkout counter and who keeps getting waved through without paying the price.