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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear.

A missing American man who was found alive in Syria is now one step closer to coming home.

More from NPR's Bill Chappell.

Travis Timmerman is now under the protection of U.S. forces.

Months after the 29-year-old went missing, he was handed

over near a remote base in southeastern Syria, a process witnessed by NPR's Jane Arroff.

His mother, Stacey Collins Gardner, says she's excited for her son to come back to their home

in Urbana, Missouri. Tell him, I love him very, very much, and I've been crying for him

every day.

Timmerman's immediate future is unclear. He was put in a Syrian jail, but not mistreated, he says,

after entering the country illegally on a religious pilgrimage. He was freed after the authoritarian

government of Bashar al-Assad was overthrown. Bill Chapel, NPR News. After President Biden granted clemency for nearly

1,500 people Thursday. Some advocates are calling on the president to do more. And BR's Deeper Chevron has

details. On Thursday, Biden commuted the sentences for about 1,500 people who were on home confinement

since the COVID pandemic because of the risk of spreading the disease.

It's the largest act of clemency in a single day in modern presidential history.

But some advocates of the pardon power have called those actions low-hanging fruit.

Cynthia Roseberry from the ACLU said she hopes Biden focuses his pardon actions on the 40 people on death row. If the president had the will

to do it, he could commute the 40 men who are on death row. He could commute thousands of people,

thousands of sentences, and reunite many families. Biden has said he will continue looking at

further clemency possibilities in the last weeks of his

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