President Biden announced he is commuting the sentences of some 1,500 people and pardoning another 39, in what the White House says is the largest single-day act of presidential clemency. The commutations will affect people who were transferred from prison to home confinement during the pandemic. The pardons involve nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses. Advocates are pressing Biden to commute federal death sentences before leaving office, as well as pardon or grant clemency to high-profile figures facing political persecution, including human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, Assata Shakur, Leonard Peltier and Edward Snowden.