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Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson.

And today is Monday, December 23rd, 2024.

This is the excerpt.

Today, Donald Trump says he'll rename Denali. Plus, we look back on the year in space

exploration, and we look ahead to the new year by breaking down some doable financial resolutions.

President Joe Biden has announced that he is commuting the sentences of nearly every inmate on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The move is intended to keep his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, from going forward with executions he had previously halted.

In a statement today, Biden said that he was issuing the commutations to 37 of 40 federal death row prisoners in keeping

with a moratorium his administration imposed on executions. The moratorium excludes individuals

convicted of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. The list of commutations released

by the White House does not include Jokar Sarnayev, who was convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon

bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260. Or Robert Bowers convicted in the 2018

Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh that left 11 people dead. Biden also declined to

commute the sentence of Dylan Roof, who was convicted in the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina

mass shooting at an African American church. Nine people were killed there. Biden pledged to end the death

penalty during his presidential campaign and had been under pressure from progressive lawmakers

and criminal justice activists

to commute the sentences of federal death row inmates before Donald Trump takes office.

Trump has said he would seek to expand the death penalty in his second term.

During its first White House stint, the Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions,

...