IMO, someone who saved one billion people from certain death can have whatever they want FOR LIFE as long as what they want is not a crime of course but short of that ANYTHING and FOREVER. How can saving one billion lives just be swept under the rug by some shitty paper-pushing Admiral is beyond me. No wonder Starfleet is filled with moles Romulan and otherwise... It's ruled by a bunch of idiotic ingrates. They spend more time aggravating their heroes than they do enforcing any kind of security protocol.
Kirk saved Earth no fewer than three separate times between 2267 and 2286. That we know of. Nomad, V'Ger and the Whale Probe. The worst that happened to him was he was busted from Admiral back down to Captain.
And even that was basically a reward, not a punishment. Even the Federation President knew it. He might as well have said ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ as he was carrying out the sentence.
NTSA! I can remember 2 F words, an S word, couple assorted dams, dammits and dumb asses. Over 800 episodes and 13 films, no big deal.
He asked to have the Enterprise to help out Spock and was denied use of the Enterprise despite recently stopping V'Ger and stopping Khan.
Admiral Morrow. Sheesh. A decision which he promptly disregarded. Kirk didn't have time for no regulations.
The difference, of course, is STPicard is our first real entry into Star Trek Land outside of the Utopic ideal of the Federation and Starfleet. We're dealing with the nitty gritty of the universe and the language tells us that.
Who fucking cares if there's swearing in Star Trek? People swear even in the utopia of the 24th century.
If my civilization had survived a nuclear war I'd spend the next 300 years saying naughty words to celebrate.