President Donald Trump asked NFL players who to pardon. Here’s how they responded

President Donald Trump has continued to attack NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem to raise awareness of racial inequality even after the league implemented a new policy requiring players to stand for the anthem.

However, earlier this month he added that he’d take suggestions from NFL players who have protested during the national anthem on who to pardon next. On Thursday, a group of those players, including Chris Long, Malcolm Jenkins, and the recently retired Anquan Boldin, responded with their recommendations.

Rather than respond with a handful of names, the players asked the president to use his pardon power to “the sort of systemic injustice that NFL players have been protesting.”

Jenkins, Boldin, Doug Baldwin, and Benjamin Watson — all members of the Players Coalition, an advocacy group of NFL players — took to the New York Times to pen an op-ed in response. Together, they asked the president to make a real change in sentencing for nonviolent drug offenses and pardoning tens of thousands of Americans serving life sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. The players also asked Trump to examine the growing population of the elderly in America’s prisons.

From their piece, which is published here:

Of the roughly 185,000 people locked up in federal prisons, about 79,000 are there for drug offenses of some kind — and 13.5 percent of them have sentences of 20 years or more. Imagine how many more Alice Johnsons the president could pardon if he treated the issue like the systemic problem it is, rather than asking professional football players for a few cases.

There is also a systemic problem in federal prison involving the elderly, who by next year will make up 28 percent of the federal prison population. Releasing these prisoners would pose little to no risk to society. And yet from 2013 to 2017, the Bureau of Prisons approved only 6 percent of roughly 5,400 “compassionate release” applications. About half of those applications were for people who had been convicted of nonviolent fraud or drug offenses. Of those denied release, 266 died in custody.

President Trump could order the release of any drug offender over the age of 60 whose conviction is not recent. That would be the morally right thing to do.

That group of NFL veterans offered more suggestions beyond pardons. They also called on Trump to eliminate life sentences without parole for nonviolent crimes (the type of sentence Johnson was serving before it was commuted), pointing out the stark difference between these types of sentences at the federal level — where nonviolent offenders make up 30 percent of the prisoners effectively jailed for the rest of their lives — and the state level, where that number is just two percent.

Jenkins reiterated his support for these reforms on Twitter Thursday morning.

Long, Jenkins’ teammate with the Philadelphia Eagles and a fellow member of the Players Coalition, wasn’t a credited part of the Times op-ed, but still voiced his opinion on the matter through Twitter. In a 38-second video and series of tweets, he called for pardons for the more than 11,000 people incarcerated due to marijuana-based offenses, citing the increased legalization of the drug in recent years as a catalyst.

Long also echoed his fellow players’ sentiment toward ending life sentences for nonviolent offenders and the potential pardons of low-risk, elderly inmates.

Thursday’s responses will shift the focus back on President Trump, who made headlines by pardoning Johnson (thanks to Kim Kardashian West’s involvement) and former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson (thanks to a recommendation from actor Sylvester Stallone). Now some of the NFL’s most socially active players have come to him with their recommendations. It’s up to the president whether or not to follow their lead.