By Haley Britzky, Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Pentagon has ordered the military command that processes new recruits to hold off on initial training for people who are HIV-positive and recently joined the military, CNN has learned, saying that a decision on reinstating a Defense Department ban on their enlistment is “expected in the next few weeks.”

The Office of the Secretary of Defense directed the pause, according to guidance sent out Friday by US Military Entrance Processing Command and viewed by CNN, after a federal appeals court last month shelved a lower-court ruling from 2024 that prohibited the Pentagon from rejecting recruits solely because of their asymptomatic HIV status.

The appeals court has not yet issued a final decision in the case, though the guidance says the Pentagon’s Accession Policy office is working on the issue. A decision from the Pentagon’s personnel office, which could reinstate the previous longstanding ban on enlistment that had been Defense Department policy before the 2024 ruling, is expected soon.

“While awaiting the decision, we are pausing shipping any HIV+ applicants and will follow-up in the coming weeks,” the email says. The Pentagon referred questions on Friday to the Justice Department.

It was not immediately clear how many recruits who had already signed contracts to serve in the military will be prevented from beginning their training as a result of the new policy.

A federal judge ruled in 2024 that the military could not turn away enlistees solely because they had HIV, saying modern science has “transformed the treatment of HIV” and that “asymptomatic HIV-positive service members with undetectable viral loads … are capable of performing all of their military duties, including worldwide deployment.”

Medication can suppress HIV in individuals to undetectable levels; people who are virally suppressed or undetectable are not at risk of transmitting the virus through sex or syringe sharing, according to the CDC. There is also a 1% or less chance of people with virally suppressed HIV from transmitting the virus through pregnancy and childbirth, the CDC says.

The 2024 ruling came after an intense, yearslong legal battle, starting when three HIV-positive people were barred from joining or rejoining the military due to their medical diagnoses. One of the people, Isaiah Wilkins, was serving in the Georgia National Guard when he attempted to transition to the Army Reserve but could not after learning he was HIV-positive.

The ruling in August 2024 was specifically for new enlistees to the military who are HIV positive and asymptomatic.

“This is a victory not only for me but for other people living with HIV who wan

By Betsy Klein, Alejandra Jaramillo, Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump has leaned into his presidential clemency powers much more aggressively in his second term –in fact, he’s pardoned one woman twice.

Trump granted a slew of pardons on Friday, including one for Adriana Camberos, who was convicted for a second time after Trump commuted her sentence during his first term. The latest pardon was for a 2024 conviction related to a scheme the Justice Department said involved deception in her resale of wholesale groceries and other goods. Camberos’ 2021 pardon centered around unrelated fraud.

While the move falls squarely within presidential clemency powers, it is unprecedented.

“I can’t think of any example from recent history where a person has been pardoned twice on two different cases,” CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig said, but he added: “A president absolutely does have the power to grant the same person two different pardons on two different cases, even if they’re sequential. The pardon power itself is essentially unlimited.”

President of pardons

More broadly, the episode underscores an emboldened Trump who has escalated his use of clemency, far outpacing his first term and even his most recent predecessors. One year into his second term, Trump has issued roughly 1,609 pardons and clemencies, compared to 148 in four years during his first term.

Setting aside the approximately 1,500 January 6-related pardons, Trump has still granted a stunning 100 times more clemencies than he did at this point in his first term (just one in 2017).

Former President Joe Biden did not issue any pardons or clemency grants during his first year in office. But over the course of his presidency, Biden granted roughly 80 individual pardons, according to the Department of Justice, and granted a record 4,245 commutations, according to Pew Research Center. A large portion of those addressed non-violent drug-related offenses.

Trump has used his pardon power much more liberally than Biden – nearly 21 times as many pardons. Former President Barack Obama granted 212 pardons over his two full terms, according to the Justice Department’s official clemency records. While Obama issued more individual pardons than Trump did during his first term, Trump’s second-term actions, particularly the sweeping pardons tied to January 6, dramatically expand his overall use of the pardon power, surpassing Obama’s.

“It is unusual historically to see pardons granted this early and this frequently in a presidency,” Honig said. “Most presidents tend to wait until the very end of their presidencies, often, often granting the bulk of their pardons on their last day in office. Donald Trump is just granting pardons on a rolling basis.”

Doing so “might be actually a credit to him because it shows that he’s willing to take on whatever political consequences come with it,” Honig added. “You know, it’s always been seen as a little bit of a sneaking-out-the-door type phenomenon to drop your pardons on the last day.”

Trump’s pardon czar

One of the key officials leading the way for Trump has felt the firsthand impact of the president’s clemency. Trump named Alice Marie Johnson as White House pardon czar – a first-of-its-kind role – in February.

Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender, served 21 years of a life sentence after she was convicted on drug-related charges. Trump commuted her sentence in 2018 and in 2020 granted her a full pardon. Johnson emerged as a top criminal justice reform advocate, and became

By Ben Wedeman, CNN

Sulaimaniya, Iraq (CNN) — Farzat never meant to be a taxi driver.

While he was studying law in Tehran, he dabbled in politics. That’s when his troubles began, he told CNN.

He was arrested and jailed four times over the last nine years, he said, and most recently was facing a charge of “contact with a hostile state.” He denied the charge, which carries a seven-year prison sentence.

Because of his “criminal” record, the university expelled him, he explained.

So, a taxi driver he became, plying the busy streets of Karaj, a city near Tehran and lately the site of intense anti-government protests.

“I saw regime forces firing at the people with live bullets,” he recalled. “The bullets were mainly fired at the belly and downward to the genitals. … I saw blood on the streets and three dead bodies in a drive of 15 minutes.” The most intense firing was on January 8 and 9, he said.

Farzat is not his real name. CNN met him in the northeastern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya on Friday, just days after smugglers brought him over the towering, snow-capped mountains to Iraq. He spoke on the condition that CNN not show his face and use only the pseudonym he provided for fear of retribution.

Soft-spoken and in his mid-30s, Farzat is from Iran’s Kurdish minority, which makes up about 10% of the population. He hails from eastern Iran but lived for years in the Tehran area.

With Iran almost 10 days into a near-total internet and telecommunications blackout — and international journalists not granted access to the country — the accounts of people like Farzat are critical in trying to understand events in Iran.

He said he participated in the wave of protests that shook Iran in 2022 following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the religious police. The government crackdown then was brutal, he recalled, but pales in comparison to the latest unrest.

The security forces “initially used rubber bullets in 2022. This time they went directly to shooting at protesters with live bullets,” he said. “In one small street (in Karaj), the security forces killed at least six protesters, as well as a young woman who was shot and killed as she chanted from her balcony.”

According to an eyewitness account reported by Amnesty International, one hospital in Karaj received more than 80 bodies on the night of January 8.

Nearly 3,000 people have been killed across the country since the start of Iran’s crackdown on dissent, according to US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). CNN cannot independently confirm those figures.

Compared to 2022, the depth of rage and frustration is of a different order, Farzat said. “The protesters were so angry they destroyed all symbols and signs of the regime,” he recounted. Even mosques were among their targets, he said.

He shrugged off US President Donald Trump’s vow that “help is on its way,” skeptical of the promises of a superpower with a checkered past for many Iranians.

“At the last moment, Trump raised the hopes of the people,” he said. “But behind the scenes he could be making

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Análisis por Zachary Wolf, CNN

Preocupado por perder el poder republicano unificado en Washington y desconcertado por su falta de apoyo entre el público, el presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, sigue hablando de no celebrar las elecciones de mitad de mandato de noviembre, en las que los republicanos podrían perder el control de la Cámara de Representantes, el Senado o de ambos.

Trump no entiende por qué su índice de aprobación está por el suelo (y lo está en todos los aspectos, según una encuesta de CNN realizada por SSRS y publicada el viernes).

“Ojalá pudieran explicarme qué diablos está pasando en la mente del público”, dijo Trump a los republicanos de la Cámara de Representantes en un discurso antes de este mes.

Más tarde, añadió: “Ahora bien, no diré: ‘Cancelen las elecciones. Deberían cancelar las elecciones’, porque las noticias falsas dirán: ‘Quiere que se cancelen las elecciones. Es un dictador’”.

Pero Trump sí habló de cancelar las elecciones en una entrevista con Reuters esta semana. Dijo que los republicanos han tenido tanto éxito que “si lo piensas bien, ni siquiera deberíamos celebrar elecciones”.

La secretaria de prensa de la Casa Blanca, Karoline Leavitt, dijo después que el presidente estaba “bromeando” y “siendo gracioso” sobre la cancelación de las elecciones.

Si se trata de una broma, es un tema en el que lleva meses trabajando. Durante una aparición con el presidente de Ucrania, Volodymyr Zelensky, el pasado septiembre, Trump expresó cierta envidia al decir que Ucrania no celebra elecciones durante el periodo de ley marcial en su guerra con Rusia.

“Así que dices que durante la guerra no se pueden celebrar elecciones”, dijo Trump. “Déjame decirte algo: dentro de tres años y medio, ¿quieres decir que si estamos en guerra con alguien, no habrá más elecciones? Oh, eso está bien”.

La gente se rió.

Trump suele decir cosas que parecen provocaciones hasta que dejan de serlo. ¿Adueñarse de Groenlandia? No es una broma. Sin embargo, parece haber abandonado la idea, repetida en numerosas ocasiones, de un tercer mandato inconstitucional.

Y, por cierto, a diferencia de Ucrania, Estados Unidos ha celebrado elecciones en medio de múltiples guerras, cuando los británicos invadieron el país en 1812 y cuando estaba en guerra consigo mismo en 1864. También celebró elecciones durante las guerras mundiales, cuando millones de estadounidenses lucharon en el extranjero en el siglo XX.

Trump sabe que los presidentes rara vez ganan escaños en las elecciones de mitad de mandato. Su administración se ha movido a una velocidad vertiginosa para cambiar el Gobierno porque, como dijo su secretaria general, saben que los presidentes generalmente pierden el poder después de sus dos primeros años. Una pérdida neta de solo un puñado de escaños daría el control de la Cámara a los demócratas, por ejemplo, lo que requeriría su aprobación para el gasto y les daría poder para investigar su administración.

La Constitución exige que el nuevo Congreso preste juramento el 3 de enero de 2027. La fecha de las elecciones está fijada por ley, por lo que, en teoría, el Congreso podría cambiarla, pero no cancelar las elecciones. Se supone que las elecciones deben ser administradas por cada estado, por lo que los gobernadores y las legislaturas estatales podrían, en teoría, cambiar sus propias elecciones para hacer frente a una catástrofe grave, pero no hay precedentes de ello. Para profundizar en todo esto, Read more