President Trump on Tuesday pardoned two cattle ranchers who were convicted of arson on public lands in 2012 and inspired an armed protest in Oregon in 2016, The Associated Press reports.

The White House announced that Dwight Hammond, 76, and his son Steven Hammond, 49, would be granted full presidential clemency and pardoned from their "overzealous" sentencing. The two men were sentenced to five years in prison in 2015, which the White House called "unjust."

"The evidence at trial regarding the Hammonds' responsibility for the fire was conflicting," read the statement. "The Hammonds are devoted family men, respected contributors to their local community."

The Hammond case was central to the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. After prosecutors won an appeal to give the Hammonds more jail time in 2015, organizers protested at the refuge, near the Hammond ranch, for more than a month. Demonstrators said the government was overstepping its bounds in federal land ownership, reports the Chicago Tribune, and continued the armed protest until leader Ammon Bundy was arrested during a traffic stop.

"Justice is overdue for Dwight and Steven Hammond," said the White House, noting that they have paid $400,000 to settle the case. The "grossly disproportionate" punishment, continues the statement, makes them "entirely deserving of these grants of executive clemency." Summer Meza

Federal authorities seized 33,000 pounds of cocaine Tuesday from a ship at Packer Marine Terminal in Philadelphia, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said.

This was one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history, with the cocaine having a street value of more than $1 billion. The U.S. attorney's office said several crew members were arrested and will face federal charges. There have been several major cocaine busts on the East Coast this year, with authorities finding 3,200 pounds at the Port of New York and New Jersey in February and drug dogs sniffing out 1,185 pounds just a month later in Philadelphia.

The drugs were found on a vessel called the MSC Gayane, The Associated Press reports, which made stops in the Bahamas, Panama, Peru, and Colombia. The ship's owner, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co.,said in a statement it "takes this matter very seriously and is grateful to the authorities for identifying any suspected abuse of its services." Catherine Garcia

President Trump's 2020 reelection bid is attracting a questionable crowd.

Trump is holding a Tuesday night rally in Orlando that officially launches his 2020 campaign, and hours before it began, thousands of supporters were already out waiting in the rain. Those supporters notably included swaths of white supremacists and believers in the often-destructive QAnon conspiracy, who marched in groups to wait for Trump's arrival.

In the hours before the rally, Trump backers in "Q" merchandise were everywhere. QAnon believers think Trump is discretely overthrowing entrenched government forces, Democrats, and Hollywood elites, and that there's an anonymous high-level government agent who goes by "Q" constantly updating followers on his progress.

Groups of white supremacists calling themselves "Proud Boys" also donned matching polos and marched toward anti-Trump protesters outside the rally, flashing "okay" hand gestures that reportedly represent a "W" and a "P" to make "white power." Orlando police stopped them from getting too close to the protesters.

And as The New York Times' Maggie Haberman spotted, one person waiting outside the Trump rally combined both those ideologies into one sign.

Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel's editorial board issued a very timely opinion ahead of the campaign launch, saying they haven't decided on a certain 2020 candidate to endorse, but that it certainly won't be Trump. Kathryn Krawczyk

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) teamed up from across the aisle on Tuesday to raise concerns over President Trump's decision on Monday to deploy 1,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East.

The two senators wrote a letter to the president, asking him to clarify several aspects of the decision, including where, specifically, the troops will be deployed, what their mission is, and if they'll be used to apply pressure on Iran. They also asked Trump to relay to them what the "new, specific imminent threat from Iran is."

The senators were joined by a bipartisan group of fellow senators, including Jeff Merkley (D-Or.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Ct.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in signing the letter. Together, they emphasized that Congress has not authorized war with Iran and "no current statutory authority allows the U.S. to conduct hostilities against the government of Iran." The letter concludes with a request for a joint Defense, State, and Intelligence community briefing by the end of June to address the situation. Read the full letter here. Tim O'Donnell

Don't count Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) among those who support reparations.

McConnell was asked about the matter at his weekly news conference on Tuesday, responding that he doesn't think "reparations are a good idea." Among McConnell's reasons were the fact that slavery ended over 150 years ago, no one alive was responsible for it, and it would be too difficult to figure out whom to compensate. He added that the U.S. has already made several efforts to reconcile with its "original sin," including fighting the Civil War, passing civil rights legislation, and electing former President Barack Obama.

A Democratic-led House subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on reparations on Wednesday. Several Democratic presidential candidates have voiced support for reparations. Tim O'Donnell

Katharine Gorka may not be as well-known as her husband Sebastian Gorka, a former adviser to President Trump. But that might be about to change.

On Tuesday, Acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders told CNN that Katharine Gorka is slated to become the next Customs and Border Protection press secretary. The job will come after Gorka's time at the Department of Homeland Security, during which critics called her out for quietly cutting funding to anti-hate groups that combated anti-Muslim bias.

Gorka wrote for the far-right outlet Brietbart before securing a job under Trump, implying in several articles that Islam is inherently violent and terroristic, CNN documents. She's since brought that stance to a role as an adviser to the secretary of homeland security and tried "to instill her anti-Islamist philosophy throughout the department," BuzzFeed News reported in August 2017. "She played a significant role in denying CVE grant funding to groups that work to de-radicalize neo-Nazis and other far right extremists and Muslim-American groups," former State Department official Eric Rosland told BuzzFeed News, saying that made her "much more dangerous than Sebastian."

CBP hasn't had a press secretary since March, and Gorka's expected appointment comes as the situation on the southern border grows direr by the day.

Sebastian Gorka, meanwhile, also spent some time writing for Breitbart, and served as a White House national security aide before his ouster in mid-2017. He's since moved on to criticizing gay rat weddings on Twitter. Kathryn Krawczyk

A judge is sanctioning Alex Jones after he ranted against the attorneys in his case and suggested one tried to frame him with child pornography, CNN reports.

Jones is currently being sued by families of Sandy Hook shooting victims over his false claims that the massacre was a hoax, which he later backed down from. On Monday, attorneys representing the families said they found child pornography in files Jones' team turned over to them. Plaintiffs said the pornography had "apparently been sent to Infowars email addresses," and Jones' attorney said that federal prosecutors determined there is "no indication anyone at Infowars knowingly possessed child pornography."

In a Friday broadcast, though, Jones suggested he was being framed and that the Sandy Hook families' attorneys were involved. He also pounded on a photo of one of lawyers in the case.

"You're trying to set me up with child porn," Jones said on the show as he offered a $1 million reward to "put your head on a pike," BuzzFeed News reports. Jones later said he is not accusing the attorneys of trying to frame him. The attorneys gave Bridgeport Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis footage of this broadcast, asking her to review it.

Bellis is now sanctioning Jones, CNN reports, blasting the Infowars host for his "indefensible," "unconscionable," and "possibly criminal behavior," also saying she wasn't "able to see an apology" from him in a followup Saturday broadcast and that she has "no doubt" that he was accusing the attorney of planting the child pornography. The judge has reportedly denied the defense the ability to pursue special motions to dismiss the case, and she awarded the families lawyers attorneys fees and filing fees. One of Jones' attorneys had previously argued his comments were not threatening while admitting they were "certainly inappropriate." Brendan Morrow