Wouldn't this mean a president has an obligation to kill his political opponents if they're seen as a threat to the United States, and as an official act, it would be completely legal? Effectively making one man above the law.
Even if it's not seen as an official act, you can't charge the president while they're in the office, and with that power and a loyal justice department, you could eliminate anyone who might try to argue the legality of your actions.
Good luck convincing anyone to bring a case against the guy who keeps making people disappear when they investigate him.
This + project 2025 & a trump presidency is the end of US democracy. I don't even wanna start thinking about the impacts globally..
Trump could now argue he, as sitting president, was threatened in his functioning by the new president elect, and it was an official act to block the transfer of power as long as the sitting president has concerns about the validity of the votes.
(Ofcourse he always has those concerns)
And now with the coming elections he will claim the same and as a bonus he officially and in the open has the republicans refuse to certify a losing vote because that also threatens his position and impedes his functioning.
If the lower courts now claim his acts were not official he will just appeal that back to the Supreme Court, thereby still delaying any closure of the case well after the elections.
Biden should just pass an official law that SCOTUS must be evenly split between major parties.
This couldn't be illegal to do anymore, as Biden will be immune, as it'll be an official act.
Are you saying it might be a crime for a President to unilaterally invent a new law and make the federal government enforce it? Well, you see...
No just unconstitutional which is what the scotus exists to make judgments about. They just take it upon themselves to judge everything else too...
You are confusing the United States that existed until this decision with the United States that exists after this decision. As long as it’s an official act, the president can now do whatever it wants. If the supremes court objects, the president and threaten or assassinate the justices as long as it’s an official act. The President is now effectively a king. Read Sotomayor’s dissent in this decision. She explicitly states this.
That's the thing, for the executive branch, passing laws is not an official act. It's outside that branch of government. That's what the Legislative branch does.
It would be like Biden overturning a court ruling. That's the Judicial branch, not your dance.
I get it. This is how government functions according to the constitution. Please understand however, under this new interpretation there is no effective legal check on the executive doing anything at all. Yes, it’s not official for the president to do that, but there is no enforcement mechanism, and the president now has authority to coerce anyone or any institution. I know it is difficult to grasp the implications of that, but that is in fact what the Supreme Court did today.
That's the plan right, that's part of Project 2025, to instantiate Unitary Executive Theory to make everything they do legal regardless of courts and impeachment trials.
The Constitution as we knew it is null and void.
So in your opinion, did they just reaffirm something like the presumption of innocence but it's tailored for someone who's job it is to sometimes order the deaths of people? So he has "The presumption of immunity" when making otherwise illegal orders, until it's otherwise determined by a court case, or impeachment hearing? Is that what's going on?
It protects any official action.
So, for example, the notorious drone strikes that Obama ordered which killed a bunch of innocent people.
As commander in chief, that's an official act, he would have immunity.
Bush and Abu Ghraib torture? Same.
Bear in mind that the drone strikes are less attributed to Trump because he revoked or ignored accountability rules and authorized the CIA and defense department to conduct drone strikes without seeking authorization from the White House.
It’s easy to assume that Trump was ‘better’, but nope. He was much, much worse. He just hid the evidence and delegated the crime to others.
Oh, I never meant to bring Trump into it, just that Obama continued Bush's drone program and in a perfect world it would have all been illegal... but not if the President does it. ;)
No, he can just order members of Congress to be executed until they pass the law he wants.
I would rather he just pack the bench to 50 seats, one for each state, fast track nominations, and force congress to stay in session until a full court is appointed by putting hoteling them in the vicinity and only allowing them movement between hotels and congressional chambers. This would be in his power and immune as official acts after all.
Well that's true! :)
That's...not how it works. Like where your heart is, but this makes no sense.
That's not how it worked. Past tense!
We all know it’s not how it works, but that’s precisely what Trump et al will try to do. This is just malicious compliance.
Presidents can't pass laws any more then you or I can. Even Trump isn't insane enough to think he can.
Well now you're just speaking out your ass
Yes.
Sotomayor’s written dissent explicitly says that this decision makes the US President a king that and can now act with impunity. This is effectively the end of the republic as described by the constitution.
Ok, so biden can officially order the assassination of the right wing supreme court justices and Trump, then appoint replacement judges and lobby congress for a constitutional amendment permanently stripping presidents of their absolute immunity. Since his orders would have occurred while he had immunity, he’d be in the clear, he’d have illustrated the flaw in the ruling, removed a dangerous individual, and prevented future abuses. Win.
He won't. Too honourable.
The Democrats' achilles heel.
There are some democratic politicians that might be interested into taking the offer up, but it isn't public, nor they won't reveal it. Can't name any, but I can imagine at least 1 is out there. On the other side of aisle, we already know Republicans wants to enact the fourth reich and just about all of them wants to execute their political opponents.
Summon Genocide Joe where he's actually needed.
He won't, but honor has nothing to do with it. He's a democrat and therefore unwilling to wield power he's been given.
Yep, it's an "official act".
He could just dissolve the supreme court, it would be a little easier. I doubt the (current) military would actually carry out any sort of assassination. The military leadership are selected and it is instilled in them to pledge loyalty to the nation, not the president.
When haven't presidents been able to order assassinations?
Biden can be the first President since Washington to give back the power to We the People. He needs some official acts that return the power back to We the People. If they're considered crimes by the right wing fascists, don't worry. It would take too long to investigate, prosecute, and hold him accountable. His old age is also a super power!
Biden definitely needs to make a move here, but I don't see that working. There's a difference between "the POTUS is immune from criminal liability", and "the POTUS has the power to alter the government as they choose", at least, there is for a President that isn't going to enforce their changes with violence, which Biden hasn't shown any sign of being.
Perhaps there's a way to swing this new legal freedom in a way that does something like that, I'm not smart enough to figure that out. I do at least know that, if this isn't addressed A fucking SAP, then the US is in some serious trouble.
Everything's possible through the magic of drone strikes. "Oh, I can't do that, can I? Well, I'll just call up the ol' reaper team and see what they think. You're going to miss the impeachment hearing, btw, and so will everyone else if they know what's good for them"
Again, I already addressed the violence approach. Does nobody read the full comment?
That all sounds very complicated, there is a much simpler way, in an official act of course, to deal with traitors:
Title 18 §2381. Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, ...
I already commented on Biden's willingness to enact violence on his political rivals.
What a power move that could be.
"Currently, any act, no matter how illegal, is available to me without repercussions due to this Supreme Court decision. So I am going to fix that. I would like an amendment to be put forth explicitly stating as much, and also would like to have an amendment put in place to establish ethical rules for the Supreme Court and an enforcement method for it. Keep in mind, currently any action I consider part of my duties, including... removing... legislators who vote against Democracy itself, until I have enough of a majority of whoever is left t9 accomplish the same goal. Before that, though, I would like a voting reform to establish rules across the nation to maximize voter participation and remove gerrymandering and other systems to diminish the voting power of any group."
This is how the power could be used for good and to restore our democracy. King Joe needs to do this and then give up the power that Chief Justice Roberts and his corrupt cohorts gave him. He needs to move swiftly or even HYPER EXPEDITIOUSLY.
Accountability for these biased, compromised, and corrupt Justices needs to happen now. Special Ops need to deploy and execute ASAP.
That’s a bingo!
Well, fellow Americans. This experiment with democracy was fun while it lasted. Every significant goal of the founding fathers has been systematically thwarted by these Christofascists. We once again have a de-facto monarch.
The consequences of this decision will be dire, and unpredictable. Every law, every right, every freedom can now be undone by an official wave of the president’s hand. Rights to privacy? Gone. Due process? Gone. Bill of Rights? Gone.
No one—democrat or republican—should be happy about this. The right to bear arms is now on the chopping block right along with LGBTQ+ and abortion rights.
Hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m misreading the situation. But it sure sounds like every right that previously defined us as American people now hinges on the benevolence of our president. Americans can no longer brag about “American freedom.”
And Europe’s next. Another far right puppet of Putin will be elected to run a European country in the next few weeks. Just shows that Europe follows the US in lockstep with a 5 year delay.
The sad thing is that you're completely correct.
It's over. This is the beginning of the true end. The end has been in sight for a while now, but it was always over the horizon.
Now we can actually see it.
There is not a way for us to legally come back from this.
In retrospect, I guess that we should have seen it coming that the Supreme Court of lifelong, unelected officials would be our undoing.
It's pretty sad that we're all taking this lying down with all of our Second Amendment talk.
Joe Biden is ABSOLUTELY IMMUNE if he decides to Assassinate a Supreme Court Justice according to the Supreme Court Justices!
He doesn’t even have to assassinate 1 or 2. Thomas committed tax fraud on his RV deal and Alito probably did on his bribes. Joe Biden apparently has dictatorial powers over the IRS and DOJ. Start arresting people and when Trump supporters act up, use emergency powers to drone strike Mar-a-Lago. Those are all official acts.
Biden doesn't have the balls to do this. It would be cool as heck if he did.
No. No, it would not. The cooler thing would be to deny SCOTUS in this. Their interpretation of this is far and away the wrong decision. Playing by the new rule only legitimizes it. Pull an Andrew Jackson, deny SCOTUS their ruling and continue as though nothing happened. Same with the end of Chevron deference and Roe.
Wild response
The idea od suggesting following any prior tactics of Andrew Jackson is revolting, as cool as your response is
Andrew Jackson was a racist pursuing genocide, but he was right that the court doesn't have any inherent power to enforce its edicts. That was explicitly outlined in the Federalist Papers as a reason giving court "ultimate decider" powers wasn't a problem.
I admire your intelligence.
Ah, right, certainly the next President will also behave the same way...
This feels terribly naive. It would be one thing if we could cement into the Constitution that the President does not have immunity, but Congress can barely pass a funding bill, let alone an amendment. But failing to use the power granted to try and set the country on a better path just ensures that a dictator will rise who does not care about keeping the status quo. And Trump will have a rubber-stamp SC that will say any act he seems to be official is.
Make it nice and official though!
Maybe not. But Dark Brandon does...
If there were ever a time for Dark Brandon to emerge, this would be it!
You know as well as I do that this ruling will only apply to Trump. They'll have some other bullshit to come up with if Biden wants to do literally anything, but Trump will have absolute immunity.
Trump IS going to win and with this ruling we just created a king...
Who's gonna apply it?
60% of the house and 51% of Congress
But he won't, and neither will any Dem presidents, which is what the right wing SCOTUS is counting on.
Lord Trump the first won't have such qualms...
So Biden should just shoot Trump... Let the courts decide if it's an official act or not, delay delay, appeal to the supreme Court like all these decisions will be, and Biden may have shrugged of this mortal coil by the time all that happens
That's no how this works. He is a democrat so by default unofficial. No matter if he orders a hit on Cheeto by Seal Team 6. /s
What he did was not official. Now the lower court gets to decide what is official, and it's being intentionally slowed down until AFTER the election so the current admin can't go ballswild with the new allowances. Fuck these Maga-locing shitheads on the SC.
I’m positive Cannon will decide that relocating documents to Mar-A-Lago was an official act.
It happened before AND after he was out of office, and they were caught on tape moving locations. Knowingly relocating Presidential documents outside of the chain of command in itself is a crime. It's technically treasonous.
Yeah, but that law requires intent and all that evidence you mentioned can be thrown out.
Intent is proven by subjective knowledge of what he knew about the law, and his internal staff have already testified he knew of the existing laws. There's also recent recodings of him saying so and worrying about a crime being committed. He knew, and illustrated such, it's not a hearsay case if he's on tape, and others acted at his direction, which again, is already on record.
The ruling explicitly states that those things on the record are not admissible if they were not through some public form of communication. So his phone call to the Georgia governor would be inadmissible even though it is currently public knowledge since it was originally a private call he claims was official business.
His public tweets would be admissible.
It does not state that AT ALL. I've read it twice. Please feel free to link me to my error.
More treasonous than inciting armed insurrection?
Okay.
Biden should officially execute half the Court with no trial.
So americans, now you can show if you actually mean it when you say this is what you have the 2nd for.
Unfortunately the ones who say that about 2A are on the side of the nationalists.
I'm clairvoyant and I can see the future: They won't. It's always been all bark and no bite when it comes to armed revolution here in the states.
Well I suppose not always. We did have a revolutionary war and a civil war.
But anybody alive today? Less bite than a newborn.
Also the Whiskey rebellion and Union/county wars, but nobody remembers them because they were relatively small. Also a lot of Rednecks especially Boomers and Gen X ended up being fucken bootlickers, sure there are some of us within Gen Z who are trying to revers the damage but well culture rarely moves fast.
Hey now, don't besmirch the name Redneck with those sad sods. The Rednecks fought the good fight at the Battle of Blair Mountain, only to be put down by the US military backing robber barons.
Oh no I agree, I was moreso opining the damage done to Redneck culture as a whole. I may be of the Southern Californian variety and have little to no relations to those fine sons of bitches in the Appalachians but I have nothing but respect for mine distant kin. No I was simply stating that the bootlickers in who were taken advantage of through several points of cultural weakness did a shit tonne of damage. I have had the pleasure of talking to Rednecks of the Greatest generation and Silent generation, theyre no shits given savagery is something I wish I could muster but given the fact at least one of them car bombed one of his bosses and smuggled guns to the IRA I can say that I will never match up. But im still doing better than the Boomers.
2A has been toothless for awhile. What good is stock modded AR15 supposed to do against tanks and fighters jets.
To be fair, the fighting would be guerilla warfare which the us hasn't been that great at dealing with.
might have a tough time as a guerilla when your maga neighbors are informing on you
remember what we used to do with collaborators during the french resistance?
I'm a pacifist and don't want to glorify violence at all but, the 'RA also was very effective at dealing with collaborators and informers. Minority rule cannot sustain itself in the long-term.
I used to be a pacifist too. But apparently, peaceful protests can be too easily ignored.
Takes all kinds.
It's still good enough to shoot people who accidentally step on your lawn, or the teachers and co-students you had a disagreement with.
20 years of war, 2,459 US lives, plus about 3 months.
We could probably mount a pretty decent resistance with what we have available. look what happened in iraq during the occupation. insurgency would be the way to go in a rebellion against the us govt.
Exactly why I think americans who say the 2A needs to stay to overthrow a fascist government is full of shit. I would love to be proven wrong though
cough Vietnam cough
And that's why they didn't bother with guns in Iraq. Defeating the Americans was hopeless; mission accomplished.
This response is so weird I can't quite tell what your point is. Are you suggesting that the Iraqis resisted with small arms fire? Because that's not the case.
More US citizens die each year in the US from guns than US soldiers died in the entirety of the Iraq war. And it's not a small difference either - each year 4-5x as many citizens die from gun violence. Not including suicides (which would more than double the number)
So was your post trying to say the small arms resistance in Iraq was effective?
Lol yeah right.
Did they just make it legal for the president to be officially crooked?
Yup
Citizens United was the first step to make it blatantly legal by being able to hide donations in a way that makes make it easy to give money directly to candidates from any source, foreign and domestic.
Then that "it was a gratuity, not a bribe" ruling last week means anyone can just buy off politicians in the open.
So as of this morning it is legal for a foreign country to bribe the president to have someone assassinated.
Very legal and very cool
Maybe. But Biden still has time for it to not be so cool for Trump.
Yes
Fucking insanity.
Civil immunity makes sense because anyone can sue anyone for anything at anytime, and allowing people to sue the president for official acts would leave him vulnerable to a nonstop barrage of lawsuits. Crime doesn't work that way. The only way the president should be facing criminal prosecution is if he's breaking the fucking law. That's kind of the opposite of what the president is supposed to be doing. You know, faithfully executing the laws and all that. If a presidential action violates the law, it can't really have the legitimacy that's being presumed for all official acts here, because by definition it violates his official duties under the constitution.
Now, I would never suggest that a sitting president order the unlawful detention or summary execution of political opponents and/or corrupt justices. But I might suggest that, in the interest of national security, that he order intelligence agencies to troll through communications records, financial records, etc. to search for signs of treason and corruption at the hands of foreign powers. And if that search should happen to find evidence of any kind of illegal activity among his political opponents or on the Court, well...
...Then justice for those criminals should be swift and harsh. There I finished your thought for you :-)
So, is insurrection an official act?
Only if done by a republican.
IOKIYAR
Only if you win.
Also if you lose apparently
Then its called a revolution instead.
The only sane thing to do, full on assassinate, or kidnap in secret and report youve assassinated, all the justices that ruled in favor of presidential immunity. Nominate a new set of justices, with confirmation under threat of further assassinations, bring the case back before the new supreme court to rule against presidential immunity
Yes. Remove the conservative justices, institute new ones, undo all the bad SCOTUS decisions of the last 4 years, implement standards/ethics/accountability laws for the justices, put greater limits on their powers, and then remove the president's "king" status. Also put Trump in jail for life. It is the only way to save this country. Today, democracy in the US is completely gone. It's over.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
That sounds easy
message me if you need some help brother
Biden, I urge you to, once your cold has passed, begin officially eating treasonous Supreme Court justices. Who’s going to say it’s unconstitutional? Not the Supreme food Court.
Damn, if that's not what they call the cafeteria in the Supreme Court Building, I'm going to be thoroughly disappointed.
God, we're so fucked. SCOTUS is turning the Presidency into an autocracy, Biden refusing to get out of the way for a capable candidate...that judge sentencing Trump to jail time in the Stormy Daniels case is basically the only thing that can save us from a right-wing theocracy at this point.
Surely Trump just appeals to the SCOTUS and they free him in line with today's ruling?
Wouldn't be that simple. The Stormy Daniels case was about things that happened before he became president. Sure reimbursing Cohen might have occurred at least in part while Trump was president, but Cohen was never part of the administration. They were disguising the reimbursement as paying Cohen in his capacity as Trump's personal lawyer. So there's pretty much nothing that this ruling does to hamper this case.
That said, I have no doubts that they'd find some way to rule in his favor if an appeal managed to land in front of them. But I think he'd have to go through normal appeals first, he can't just go straight to SCOTUS.
It’ll be interesting to see how stiffing your lawyer is an official act
You're right, but I'm confident he'll get there in the end.
Yeah. The Roberts Court has been nothing if not the Court of Post-Hoc Justification. They're great at concocting the most batshit crazy of legal theories to reach the outcome they want after shopping for the perfect cases to do so. I'm absolutely positive that if/when he gets an appeal to reach SCOTUS they'll give him exactly what he wants even if they have to tie themselves in logical pretzels or even directly contradict themselves to do it.
They ruled on a goddamn hypothetical. 6-3.
None of the conservative judges are qualified to do anything except take leaves.
They've pulled that one a lot recently, haven't they? I seem to recall one of the other recent rulings, I think it was against the EPA basically being a hypothetical about a proposed rule they hadn't even actually passed yet?
SCOTUS can't do shit for state charges. Doesn't mean they won't try.
However, His legal team will argue literally any punishment is too harsh and appeal the NY state charges, which will be granted because he was a president and has money. Then it will be delayed past the election and not matter anyway because this system is not made to resist willful destruction by those entrusted to protect it.
Edit: Turns out they can. The NY prosecution has agreed to postpone charges less than a day after the ruling. Trump's team asserts that the criminal activities occurred before he was president, but since the evidence was gathered during, he can not be prosecuted. Apparently concealing evidence unrelated to the presidency is an official act...
There's move afoot by the GOP to get any state charges against the president to be elevated to the Federal court.
Guess who can pardon himself or have federal charges dropped?
That's not how Federalism works. The President is not a member of any state government, and has no immunity from state crimes. There's no way to move this case from state court to federal.
Unless you change the laws to say you can! Which was the point of the above comment.
The Constitution can't be changed that easily. There's no reason for the State of New York to give up the case, even if it were possible to do. And there's no way to compel it, considering the issue is NY State law.
They’re already trying it on appeal, though. Sure, they’re applying federal precedent to a state case, but why would Trump’s team let stop them?
They cannot currently cancel state charges, but the GOP is trying to change that. It is one of a raft of measures underway. Some are truely frightening, such as using Red State National Guard troops against non-compliant Blue States. Check out Project 2025 - the Republicans are even trying to hide their planned dictatorship.
He was not President at the time of these acts, but I doubt that would stop them.
Did you read the article? The scope of this ruling is pretty narrow.
Not that narrow. They are saying fomenting an attack on Congress and conspiring to subvert the electoral college are official acts.
Where are you getting that? That question wasn't put to SCOTUS.
Trump was charged. Trump claimed he had "absolute immunity", and didn't have to face charges. Court rules against him in this issue; he appealed. Appellate court ruled against him, sending the case back to the trial court. He appealed to SCOTUS. SCOTUS said he doesn't have absolute immunity, and that the limit of his immunity is on his "official acts". SCOTUS then sent the case back to the trial court. The trial court will have to determine whether his actions were "official" or "unofficial".
From the decision:
Whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official re-
sponsibilities, they engage in official conduct. Presiding over the Jan-
uary 6 certification proceeding at which Members of Congress count
the electoral votes is a constitutional and statutory duty of the Vice
President. Art. II, §1, cl. 3; Amdt. 12; 3 U. S. C. §15. The indictment’s
allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to
take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification pro-
ceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presump-
tively immune from prosecution for such conduct.
What part of that statement is about attacking Congress or subverting the electoral college?
It is certainly within the president's and vice president's responsibilities to determine whether to certify the count. They have to be able to say "no, this should not be certified".
Saying "no" can still be used as evidence of another crime, it's just not a crime in and of itself.
Trying to convince the VP to fraudulently say no to the EC count is the crime. The president and the vice president don't get to pick the next president. The electoral college does. The only legitimate reason the VP could say no to the EC count is if for some reason the count itself were wrong, in which case the VP and Senate should correct it and move on.
That, of course, wasn't the basis for the discussion. Trump was trying to get his fake electors counted, or to at least have Pence declare that he couldn't tell which electors were real.
Trying to convince the VP to fraudulently say no to the EC count is the crime
Knowingly making a false statement to the VP would, indeed, be a criminal fraud, but the passage you cited does not contemplate such an act.
Trump was trying to get his fake electors counted
That, too, is not contemplated in the passage you cited.
The mere act of talking to the VP about it is contemplated and by default (according to this ruling) protected. You can't tell the VP to change the electors without talking to him!
Edit:
Obviously the fact that the pres. committed a crime can't be considered as a reason to deny immunity, otherwise it wouldn't be immunity.
Talking to the VP about not confirming is protected. Lying to the VP about the reason why he should not confirm is not protected.
Did you find anywhere in the decision where they make an exception for lying?
The trial court is free to determine that lying to the VP for purposes of committing election fraud does not constitute an official act. The fact that they remanded the decision to the trial court instead of reversing the trial and appellate court is the "exception" you are looking for.
They denied his appeal. Ok? He claimed absolute immunity, they said "No, you only have immunity for your official acts. We aren't going to save you here. The trial court is going to burn your ass."
BTW, my Lemmy instance isn't showing replies to your comment, including my own reply, so if it didn't come across, I'm sorry but I don't know what else to try.
People aren't reading the article. They did not rule that he is immune because his acts were official.
They ruled that official acts, and not unofficial acts, convey immunity, and remanded to lower courts to determine whether his acts should be considered official or unofficial.
The problem is that they effectively expanded everything the President does to be an official act, and foreclosed a reasonable inquiry into whether an action is actually official.
They've already said Donny is most likely immune for pressuring Pence to overturn the electoral college. Yeah, they've remanded it to lower court, but it's already clear if the lower court doesn't go the way they want, the Supremos will just flip it.
They gave it absolute immunity. That means there is no way to appeal, to argue, to halt, stop, or sue any act by a president. Even arguing whether or not the act is official would be a type of qualified immunity. Meaning that, if you are the office holder of president, everything you do has carte blanche, de facto legality. Sure, some future court could devise a test for this official vs unofficial distinction, but it means nothing for the near future. Biden is now a monarch with no legal method of stopping whatever he wishes to do, so long as it doesn't explicitly fall outside of the extremely broad powers of the executive as defined by SCOTUS and the constitution. Likewise with any future officer holder.
That's not what they ruled at all. They said there was immunity for official acts, specifically citing constitutional powers like appointing judges, commanding the military and recognizing foreign states. That was honestly never in question. A lot of people are reading this wrong. This was a massive punt, which basically opens up the door for a jury to decide what constitutes an official act.
Hi! I'm a real big dumb dumb, cause I never, ya know, studied law. But I sure do know that with SCOTUS decisions, the dissenting should be read as well, to get the proper context of the decision that the opinion won't state. Sotomayor sums up the majority decision like this, and she's a damn sight more knowledgeable than I could ever be:
The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First,
the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s
exercise of “core constitutional powers.” Ante, at 6. This
holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and
the majority’s attempt to apply it to the facts expands the
concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds. In
any event, it is quickly eclipsed by the second move, which
is to create expansive immunity for all “official act[s].”
Ante, at 14. Whether described as presumptive or absolute,
under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official
power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune
from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is
baseless. Finally, the majority declares that evidence con-
cerning acts for which the President is immune can play no
role in any criminal prosecution against him. See ante, at
30–32. That holding, which will prevent the Government
from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or
intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical.
You should really read it, it's such an important read.
PS: Sorry for formatting, it's copied verbatim from the dissenting pdf
Yeah? And who decides what's official? Ultimately, that also will end up with the SC
I felt like I must have misread the ruling after seeing all of the articles and comments.
Former presidents also have a “presumption of immunity” for their official acts while in office — but, the court ruled, there is no immunity for “unofficial acts.”
So chutkin is going to decide what acts were official acts and which were unofficial.
But "presumption of immunity" is a weird fucking phrase too because it makes it seem like you can prove they aren't immune? Like presumption of innocence--you start there and work the other way. So presumably(pardon the pun) you can start there with this and work the other way still?
I'd need actual lawyers to make this make sense.
But either way it didn't seem as "carte Blanche presidents can do anything" to me when I read it.
We're waiting at this point for the lower courts to to decide which of Trump's egregious crimes were "official" or not. In the meantime, all his trials get suspended. In January, if he takes office, they will vanish when he becomes a dictator on day one (his words).
I'd need actual lawyers to make this make sense.
You mean like the dissenting judges?
But either way it didn't seem as "carte Blanche presidents can do anything" to me when I read it.
Read the dissent. The most qualified people say it is literally carte blanche in the dissent.
Are the Dems gonna do anything or is America as we know it just going to die, "get out and vote" isn't going to cut it when they can just say it doesn't count
If we get enough Dems to be able to pack the court then the "they" changes.
Why bother, the president can just make an official act to suspend the elections as the country is being "invaded" by the southern border, and call it treason for anyone to oppose it. A lower court would do what? Say it is wrong and commit treason? Can arrest them faster than judges can have required cases.
At this point I'll take what I can get.
I see they have chosen violence. It is regrettable.
Arm phasers.
I'm honestly dumbfounded that there aren't riots, but then again they knew what they were doing with the timing of this and the Chevron ruling.
Yep, last week on "The Supremos", corrupt justices legalized bribery in one decision, then declared themselves the ultimate regulators in the next.
I mean, the ruling is just hours old.
Young enough for Trump to try to hit on it!
...ok that was gross. :P
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
The fix was in a long time ago. I’ve said it before… America is a shithole.
Happy cakeday.
Thanks!
The key point here is what constitutes an official act. I would say an insurrection is the opposite of official.
Kicking the can down the road to buy him time.
You sure do get what you pay for.
The coup marches on.
Welp. The Supreme Clergy that now rules what used to be the US has established King Trump as the leader of the Christian Caliphate that's coming.
Conservatives are gonma love living in the white version of Iran.
Can you believe all the conservative Supreme Court justices eat lunch together in the same room? Like the ideas that must be floating around that relatively unsecured... what were we talking about again?
RIOT
We won’t because we’re asleep at the wheel. Don’t worry though, we will finally wake up when Trump enters his third term. It’ll be too late to do anything about it but at least we’ll be awake.
Thats not gonna cut it. I'm down now. I'll lose my job over losing my democracy.
Where we marching?
DC
We got rally points set up? These jackasses are gonna try to turn us into slaves so they can survive the climate inferno.
Biden can now legally shoot Trump on stage during the next debate. Gotcha.
I don't think having a raspy voice will be the biggest talking point in the aftermath this time.
And if anyone raises a stink and somehow manages to prove that this was illegal anyway, I'm sure it's the same people who have claimed that he's senile, ergo not fit to stand trial.
Biden could, but he won't. We're just going to get more finger wagging and muttering at him about being a scoundrel and shit.
Correct. He's still trying to Chamberlain when it's long overdue that he goes full Kubiš & Gabčík.
"The only way to solve this is by voting harder." They leave out the "for the next 30 years, continuously, until the court is rebalanced through natural causes and decides to undo what is now 'precedent'".
Last person out, please turn out the lights.
Surely if something he does is unconstitutional, it is not within his official capacity or power!?
But somehow I have a feeling I'm being extremely naive just thinking that.
The SCOTUS majority just decided that nothing the president does is illegal, at least in a way that can ever be prosecuted.
The SCOTUS can lick my fucking SCROTUS.
If anyone ever doubted that the DNC and the GOP weren't on the same team, just watch as the DNC let this opportunity slip right through their fingers. Access to the greatest political, strategical, minds and they will let this opening wash away into a river of fascism.
It's a play, we are watching theatre. Meant to keep you distracted. Meant to keep you oppressed.
Meant to keep you distracted
From what?
We could all collectively decide to chop the heads off of the elite. We don't need to argue about which capitalist is better every 4 years. There's nothing physically stopping 90% of the country from just overthrowing the other 10% if we really tried together
Just make a balance of what the governments of the last 40 years did. Would the us be worse or better off if those changes had not been made? My opinion is that government is unnecessary. There are enough laws already. If anything really needs to be changed it can be done by referendum. Abolish the government!
Edit: government is the biggest illusion of them all
1000% this. If the DNC wanted to stop this, they could have.
How?
For starters, by spending the last 4 years training a different candidate to beat trump this year.
But failing that, they could absolutely have prevented that disaster on the debate. They knew full well how the rest of America will react to seeing Biden look like that, and I find it no coincidence that it happened directly before The Supreme Court ruled to overturn Chevron and Grant immunity to Trump.
While that is interesting, you realize before the 4 years you mentioned, Trump did everything he's in trouble for doing. He also established the supreme court we have. If Biden randomly died his first 5 months, we still would be in a similar (if not the same) situation. Every person who made this happen, would still have their previously established power. Training someone new would not have stopped this inevitability.
It wouldn't have, that's true. I just feel that it would have been a better circumstance than that we have now. But I think honestly I'm just reaching for copium right now. This entire week was a dark week in our country.
As an official act, dissolve the current supreme court and reverse every terrible decision they made.
The big thing everyone is missing here is the ruling says the president cannot be prosecuted for actions that are constitutional. So this does not mean the end of democracy or whatever people are saying. The president can't stay in office after his term expires. The president cannot order his political opponents killed- in fact, the Supreme Court issued a statement on that just this year.
Amici curae aren't Supreme Court decisions. "Amici curae" means "friend of the court". It's an argument from third parties submitted for a pending case. The dissents by the actual Supreme Court justices explicitly reference the assassination potential.
That is true, thank you for explaining that to me. Although I read the dissent and what Sotomayor said was that the president would get their day in court to determine if those actions were constitutional, not that this ruling pre-approves them to do so. Meanwhile Roberts said these concerns are overblown... idk really, I don't like the ruling, it basically feels like an expansion of qualified immunity to the president, which makes things more difficult for prosecuters but not impossible.
Qualified immunity for someone who single handedly controls the most powerful military in the world. Fabulous idea.
Can’t wait for the gunning down of protestors. Gilead, here we come!
They're only pre-approved for explicit constitutional duties, but they're presumed immune for all others and their reasoning can't be questioned. "I believed they were an imminent national security threat and took the hard choice." It's like "I feared for my life" for gun nuts, but you can apply it to nearly anything because the president has expansive emergency responsibilities and the only way to prove he wasn't actually taking an action "officially" would be using his private communications, but any communications with "advisors" are precluded from being used.
And anything that makes it through that gauntlet to the Supreme Court rather than being dismissed earlier will be decided on ideological grounds.
You say that like it's a defined thing that will keep a president in check. SCOTUS rules on constitutionality. Are you really that confident that they'll keep Trump in line if he gets another term and starts really getting to work? The road to fascism isn't paved with goods intentions, it's paved with mealy mouthed, two faced decisions like this that give more and more leeway until it's too late to take back.
Yes, and that is very important and I did not know that, so thank you for clarifying.
That said, this supreme court interprets the constitution however they want. The court in its current form (as a whole) is not ethical, lawful, or legitimate. As soon as a republican takes the presidency, there is no stopping them.
They didn't rule this, that was a "friend of the court" briefing by outside interests.
Yeah well I guess we'll see what happens if the orange jackass gets reelected. I'm not holding my breath.
Everyone needs to vote against the draft dodging felon rapist that is Trump.
Democracy in the USA ended today. It will be in the history books about the end of democracy.
for reference this same move of getting immunity from a fixed court was also huge for cementing the Chavez and Putin regimes in Venezuela and Russia.
This is a very important point, yes.
But by then, that history book will be banned, and only the bible will be left in schools (that will all be private)
The rule of law ended today. Democracy will end if the christo-fascists win the election.
I mean... I actually agree with (aspects of) that ruling. A nation's leader is going to have to, by necessity, do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put "war"
The issue is defining what counts as an "official act" and having any kind of checks and balances on that.
For example: Let's look at the purely hypothetical example of an outgoing president engaging in a violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to prevent losing power. Crazy, right? But, in that example, it is not at all a stretch that said former president is an enemy of the state. There is a lot of legal discussion on whether it is legal to pop them in the head without a series of trials but it is in that range where it is probably better than not to give the elected POTUS immunity in that situation.
But what if that outgoing president insisted that it was an "official act" to lead that violent insurrection? No intelligent person would at all consider that a defense.
From the dissent:
Whether described as presumptive or absolute,
under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official
power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune
from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is
baseless
When the foremost observers of the fascist cabal say their ruling is "just as bad as it sounds", I will take their word for it.
do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put “war”
Note that as bad as that is and as evil as it has sometimes been, it is "legal", and thus not subject to criminal prosecution. It is specifically legal for the president to do that sketchy stuff.
For an "official" act to be illegal, but not subject to prosecution just makes no sense. It shouldn't be possible for an illegal act to be "official".
Extra bonkers is the 5/4 opinion that you can't even mention official acts, like if you accept a bribe in exchange for an appointment, you can't mention the appointment while trying to prosecute the bribe.
Prior presidents have done all kinds of shady shit without worrying about prosecution. Even the angry orange didn't get charged until he tried to overthrow an election.
There was zero reason to even decide this case except to give immunity to someone who blatantly abuses their authority.
The thing that bugs me is how any order given to subordinates is a use of executive power, right? So that’s immune. But say the subordinate considered refusing an unlawful order. Why, then would they decide to refuse the order when the president could also choose to pardon them for any crimes they committed during the execution of the unlawful order?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Supreme Court ruled that presidents are “absolutely” immune from criminal prosecution when their actions involve allegedly official acts while they were in office.
In his majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts remanded the case to the lower courts, which now have to determine whether Trump’s conduct was official or unofficial.
A grand jury approved an indictment against Trump in August for charges including conspiracy to defraud the US and obstructing an official proceeding.
Trump faces a series of legal challenges across the country both at the state and federal levels.
Most recently, he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York in a trial over hush money payments, including payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress a story about her and Trump having sex.
That means — unlike in the state case — that if Trump were convicted but elected president, he could potentially pardon himself.
The original article contains 298 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Dear Biden, the path forward is now clear. Do what needs to be done.
Four years ago, I voted for President Harris as the lesser of two evils.
This year, I vote for Queen Kamala I, as the lesser of two evils.
9 people decide to allow presidents to act as dictators
The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.
Trump's appointments tipped the balance. They didn't "decide" as much as been taken over. It's a part of the judicial system gone rogue and Congress is supposed to reign it back in.
9 people had the influence to decide.
So 9 people.
Edit: Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people, and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
The level of corruption of the court is another matter.
6
Unless you think similarly in presidential elections.
Unless you think similarly in presidential elections.
When a majority elects a representative, it's called the will of the people. So yes it is perfectly normal to consider the group collectively.
It's similar to saying a team played badly, because collectively they did, even if a couple of players didn't.
So you can say 6 or 9 both are correct, meaning the "correction" was unnecessary.
at which point 3 people's views were ignored which is why they dissented to the majority opinion. Joe Biden in 2020 had 51.5% of the vote, under your same logic 155 million people as a group decided to elect Joe Biden. Which, while technically true, you're pushing semantics at that point that minimizes the differences in views and opinions.
at which point 3 people’s views were ignored
They are still part of a body of 9.
Right, so six.
Do you not understand the words you used or the word dissent.
I see from your own argument that you were a Trump supporter in 2016. Not someone I'd listen about anything.
I was never was and never will be a Trump supporter, or even Republican so you see wrong.
But I can see from your comment that you are one to jump to conclusions without reason, so "Not someone I’d listen about anything".
The person you're arguing with made the point that if you hold the ones who voted against the bad thing happening as partly responsible, by the same logic, you should hold people who voted for Clinton in 2016 partly responsible for the election of Trump.
I don't think you can have it both ways. Either the entire USA including you is responsible for Trump becoming president and the entire SCOTUS is responsible for today's ruling, or you're not responsible for Trump winning and the three dissenters are also not responsible for today's ruling.
I get that you're angry, and it's a good day to be angry, the day that they ended democracy, but maybe be more selective about who you're angry with and sometimes try to check if maybe there are some valid things people can disagree with you about.
including you
I'm not American. But yes in a way we have collective responsibility as a people for the politicians we elect, and what we allow in our society.
It’s similar to saying a team played badly
Yes, but the comment didn't say that the SCOTUS decided, it said 9 people did. Would you say that 53 people played badly? That's how many are on the team, after all.
OK I can see your point. I suppose I stand corrected.
Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people
funny how you are proud of your kindergarten logic
and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
and the majority in this case was... wait for it... SIX PEOPLE 😂
so "the court decided to..." or "6 members decided to..." is true, but "9 members decided to..." is not true, because 3 members decided not to.
similarly you can say "51% of people voted for biden" or "people voted for biden", but not "100% of people voted for biden" - because that would simply not be true.
if you have any other difficult question, like why is water wet, don't hesitate to ask 😂
Six.
All 9 were part of the decision making. For me it is amazing that so important decisions are left to so few
Someone must always make decisions, a world where no decisions are made would devolve into a Mad Max type thing, where the fact that we are members of the animal kingdom would become very readily apparent. We used to decide these things with trial by combat, where the most skilled warrior (or who chose the most skilled as their champion) was right because God apparently said so, by making him so good at fighting. Still a person making a decision. Not far off from a world where you decide if someone was a witch by trying to build a bridge out of them.
The modern trick is dividing up the decision-making power so much that nobody can assemble it all into their personal toolkit and fully embrace corruption with no consequences.
Wouldn't this mean a president has an obligation to kill his political opponents if they're seen as a threat to the United States, and as an official act, it would be completely legal? Effectively making one man above the law.
Even if it's not seen as an official act, you can't charge the president while they're in the office, and with that power and a loyal justice department, you could eliminate anyone who might try to argue the legality of your actions.
Good luck convincing anyone to bring a case against the guy who keeps making people disappear when they investigate him.
This + project 2025 & a trump presidency is the end of US democracy. I don't even wanna start thinking about the impacts globally..
Trump could now argue he, as sitting president, was threatened in his functioning by the new president elect, and it was an official act to block the transfer of power as long as the sitting president has concerns about the validity of the votes. (Ofcourse he always has those concerns)
And now with the coming elections he will claim the same and as a bonus he officially and in the open has the republicans refuse to certify a losing vote because that also threatens his position and impedes his functioning.
If the lower courts now claim his acts were not official he will just appeal that back to the Supreme Court, thereby still delaying any closure of the case well after the elections.
Biden should just pass an official law that SCOTUS must be evenly split between major parties.
This couldn't be illegal to do anymore, as Biden will be immune, as it'll be an official act.
Biden can't pass laws, Congress does that.
https://youtu.be/SZ8psP4S6BQ
Are you saying it might be a crime for a President to unilaterally invent a new law and make the federal government enforce it? Well, you see...
No just unconstitutional which is what the scotus exists to make judgments about. They just take it upon themselves to judge everything else too...
You are confusing the United States that existed until this decision with the United States that exists after this decision. As long as it’s an official act, the president can now do whatever it wants. If the supremes court objects, the president and threaten or assassinate the justices as long as it’s an official act. The President is now effectively a king. Read Sotomayor’s dissent in this decision. She explicitly states this.
That's the thing, for the executive branch, passing laws is not an official act. It's outside that branch of government. That's what the Legislative branch does.
It would be like Biden overturning a court ruling. That's the Judicial branch, not your dance.
I get it. This is how government functions according to the constitution. Please understand however, under this new interpretation there is no effective legal check on the executive doing anything at all. Yes, it’s not official for the president to do that, but there is no enforcement mechanism, and the president now has authority to coerce anyone or any institution. I know it is difficult to grasp the implications of that, but that is in fact what the Supreme Court did today.
That's the plan right, that's part of Project 2025, to instantiate Unitary Executive Theory to make everything they do legal regardless of courts and impeachment trials.
The Constitution as we knew it is null and void.
So in your opinion, did they just reaffirm something like the presumption of innocence but it's tailored for someone who's job it is to sometimes order the deaths of people? So he has "The presumption of immunity" when making otherwise illegal orders, until it's otherwise determined by a court case, or impeachment hearing? Is that what's going on?
It protects any official action.
So, for example, the notorious drone strikes that Obama ordered which killed a bunch of innocent people.
As commander in chief, that's an official act, he would have immunity.
Bush and Abu Ghraib torture? Same.
Bear in mind that the drone strikes are less attributed to Trump because he revoked or ignored accountability rules and authorized the CIA and defense department to conduct drone strikes without seeking authorization from the White House.
It’s easy to assume that Trump was ‘better’, but nope. He was much, much worse. He just hid the evidence and delegated the crime to others.
Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama’s numbers – Chicago Sun-Times
Oh, I never meant to bring Trump into it, just that Obama continued Bush's drone program and in a perfect world it would have all been illegal... but not if the President does it. ;)
No, he can just order members of Congress to be executed until they pass the law he wants.
I would rather he just pack the bench to 50 seats, one for each state, fast track nominations, and force congress to stay in session until a full court is appointed by putting hoteling them in the vicinity and only allowing them movement between hotels and congressional chambers. This would be in his power and immune as official acts after all.
Well that's true! :)
That's...not how it works. Like where your heart is, but this makes no sense.
That's not how it worked. Past tense!
We all know it’s not how it works, but that’s precisely what Trump et al will try to do. This is just malicious compliance.
Presidents can't pass laws any more then you or I can. Even Trump isn't insane enough to think he can.
Well now you're just speaking out your ass
Yes.
Sotomayor’s written dissent explicitly says that this decision makes the US President a king that and can now act with impunity. This is effectively the end of the republic as described by the constitution.
Ok, so biden can officially order the assassination of the right wing supreme court justices and Trump, then appoint replacement judges and lobby congress for a constitutional amendment permanently stripping presidents of their absolute immunity. Since his orders would have occurred while he had immunity, he’d be in the clear, he’d have illustrated the flaw in the ruling, removed a dangerous individual, and prevented future abuses. Win.
He won't. Too honourable.
The Democrats' achilles heel.
There are some democratic politicians that might be interested into taking the offer up, but it isn't public, nor they won't reveal it. Can't name any, but I can imagine at least 1 is out there. On the other side of aisle, we already know Republicans wants to enact the fourth reich and just about all of them wants to execute their political opponents.
Summon Genocide Joe where he's actually needed.
He won't, but honor has nothing to do with it. He's a democrat and therefore unwilling to wield power he's been given.
Yep, it's an "official act".
He could just dissolve the supreme court, it would be a little easier. I doubt the (current) military would actually carry out any sort of assassination. The military leadership are selected and it is instilled in them to pledge loyalty to the nation, not the president.
When haven't presidents been able to order assassinations?
Biden can be the first President since Washington to give back the power to We the People. He needs some official acts that return the power back to We the People. If they're considered crimes by the right wing fascists, don't worry. It would take too long to investigate, prosecute, and hold him accountable. His old age is also a super power!
Biden definitely needs to make a move here, but I don't see that working. There's a difference between "the POTUS is immune from criminal liability", and "the POTUS has the power to alter the government as they choose", at least, there is for a President that isn't going to enforce their changes with violence, which Biden hasn't shown any sign of being.
Perhaps there's a way to swing this new legal freedom in a way that does something like that, I'm not smart enough to figure that out. I do at least know that, if this isn't addressed A fucking SAP, then the US is in some serious trouble.
Everything's possible through the magic of drone strikes. "Oh, I can't do that, can I? Well, I'll just call up the ol' reaper team and see what they think. You're going to miss the impeachment hearing, btw, and so will everyone else if they know what's good for them"
Again, I already addressed the violence approach. Does nobody read the full comment?
That all sounds very complicated, there is a much simpler way, in an official act of course, to deal with traitors:
I already commented on Biden's willingness to enact violence on his political rivals.
What a power move that could be.
"Currently, any act, no matter how illegal, is available to me without repercussions due to this Supreme Court decision. So I am going to fix that. I would like an amendment to be put forth explicitly stating as much, and also would like to have an amendment put in place to establish ethical rules for the Supreme Court and an enforcement method for it. Keep in mind, currently any action I consider part of my duties, including... removing... legislators who vote against Democracy itself, until I have enough of a majority of whoever is left t9 accomplish the same goal. Before that, though, I would like a voting reform to establish rules across the nation to maximize voter participation and remove gerrymandering and other systems to diminish the voting power of any group."
This is how the power could be used for good and to restore our democracy. King Joe needs to do this and then give up the power that Chief Justice Roberts and his corrupt cohorts gave him. He needs to move swiftly or even HYPER EXPEDITIOUSLY.
Accountability for these biased, compromised, and corrupt Justices needs to happen now. Special Ops need to deploy and execute ASAP.
That’s a bingo!
Well, fellow Americans. This experiment with democracy was fun while it lasted. Every significant goal of the founding fathers has been systematically thwarted by these Christofascists. We once again have a de-facto monarch.
The consequences of this decision will be dire, and unpredictable. Every law, every right, every freedom can now be undone by an official wave of the president’s hand. Rights to privacy? Gone. Due process? Gone. Bill of Rights? Gone.
No one—democrat or republican—should be happy about this. The right to bear arms is now on the chopping block right along with LGBTQ+ and abortion rights.
Hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m misreading the situation. But it sure sounds like every right that previously defined us as American people now hinges on the benevolence of our president. Americans can no longer brag about “American freedom.”
And Europe’s next. Another far right puppet of Putin will be elected to run a European country in the next few weeks. Just shows that Europe follows the US in lockstep with a 5 year delay.
The sad thing is that you're completely correct.
It's over. This is the beginning of the true end. The end has been in sight for a while now, but it was always over the horizon.
Now we can actually see it.
There is not a way for us to legally come back from this.
In retrospect, I guess that we should have seen it coming that the Supreme Court of lifelong, unelected officials would be our undoing.
It's pretty sad that we're all taking this lying down with all of our Second Amendment talk.
Joe Biden is ABSOLUTELY IMMUNE if he decides to Assassinate a Supreme Court Justice according to the Supreme Court Justices!
He doesn’t even have to assassinate 1 or 2. Thomas committed tax fraud on his RV deal and Alito probably did on his bribes. Joe Biden apparently has dictatorial powers over the IRS and DOJ. Start arresting people and when Trump supporters act up, use emergency powers to drone strike Mar-a-Lago. Those are all official acts.
Biden doesn't have the balls to do this. It would be cool as heck if he did.
No. No, it would not. The cooler thing would be to deny SCOTUS in this. Their interpretation of this is far and away the wrong decision. Playing by the new rule only legitimizes it. Pull an Andrew Jackson, deny SCOTUS their ruling and continue as though nothing happened. Same with the end of Chevron deference and Roe.
Wild response
The idea od suggesting following any prior tactics of Andrew Jackson is revolting, as cool as your response is
Andrew Jackson was a racist pursuing genocide, but he was right that the court doesn't have any inherent power to enforce its edicts. That was explicitly outlined in the Federalist Papers as a reason giving court "ultimate decider" powers wasn't a problem.
I admire your intelligence.
Ah, right, certainly the next President will also behave the same way...
This feels terribly naive. It would be one thing if we could cement into the Constitution that the President does not have immunity, but Congress can barely pass a funding bill, let alone an amendment. But failing to use the power granted to try and set the country on a better path just ensures that a dictator will rise who does not care about keeping the status quo. And Trump will have a rubber-stamp SC that will say any act he seems to be official is.
Make it nice and official though!
Maybe not. But Dark Brandon does...
If there were ever a time for Dark Brandon to emerge, this would be it!
You know as well as I do that this ruling will only apply to Trump. They'll have some other bullshit to come up with if Biden wants to do literally anything, but Trump will have absolute immunity.
Trump IS going to win and with this ruling we just created a king...
Who's gonna apply it?
60% of the house and 51% of Congress
But he won't, and neither will any Dem presidents, which is what the right wing SCOTUS is counting on.
Lord Trump the first won't have such qualms...
So Biden should just shoot Trump... Let the courts decide if it's an official act or not, delay delay, appeal to the supreme Court like all these decisions will be, and Biden may have shrugged of this mortal coil by the time all that happens
That's no how this works. He is a democrat so by default unofficial. No matter if he orders a hit on Cheeto by Seal Team 6. /s
Democrats = unofficial MAGA/republicans = official.
This may become the 1933 of this century if november the wrong guy gets elected and fast forward to 1939.
What he did was not official. Now the lower court gets to decide what is official, and it's being intentionally slowed down until AFTER the election so the current admin can't go ballswild with the new allowances. Fuck these Maga-locing shitheads on the SC.
I’m positive Cannon will decide that relocating documents to Mar-A-Lago was an official act.
It happened before AND after he was out of office, and they were caught on tape moving locations. Knowingly relocating Presidential documents outside of the chain of command in itself is a crime. It's technically treasonous.
Yeah, but that law requires intent and all that evidence you mentioned can be thrown out.
Intent is proven by subjective knowledge of what he knew about the law, and his internal staff have already testified he knew of the existing laws. There's also recent recodings of him saying so and worrying about a crime being committed. He knew, and illustrated such, it's not a hearsay case if he's on tape, and others acted at his direction, which again, is already on record.
The ruling explicitly states that those things on the record are not admissible if they were not through some public form of communication. So his phone call to the Georgia governor would be inadmissible even though it is currently public knowledge since it was originally a private call he claims was official business.
His public tweets would be admissible.
It does not state that AT ALL. I've read it twice. Please feel free to link me to my error.
More treasonous than inciting armed insurrection?
Okay.
Biden should officially execute half the Court with no trial.
So americans, now you can show if you actually mean it when you say this is what you have the 2nd for.
Unfortunately the ones who say that about 2A are on the side of the nationalists.
I'm clairvoyant and I can see the future: They won't. It's always been all bark and no bite when it comes to armed revolution here in the states.
Well I suppose not always. We did have a revolutionary war and a civil war.
But anybody alive today? Less bite than a newborn.
Also the Whiskey rebellion and Union/county wars, but nobody remembers them because they were relatively small. Also a lot of Rednecks especially Boomers and Gen X ended up being fucken bootlickers, sure there are some of us within Gen Z who are trying to revers the damage but well culture rarely moves fast.
Hey now, don't besmirch the name Redneck with those sad sods. The Rednecks fought the good fight at the Battle of Blair Mountain, only to be put down by the US military backing robber barons.
Oh no I agree, I was moreso opining the damage done to Redneck culture as a whole. I may be of the Southern Californian variety and have little to no relations to those fine sons of bitches in the Appalachians but I have nothing but respect for mine distant kin. No I was simply stating that the bootlickers in who were taken advantage of through several points of cultural weakness did a shit tonne of damage. I have had the pleasure of talking to Rednecks of the Greatest generation and Silent generation, theyre no shits given savagery is something I wish I could muster but given the fact at least one of them car bombed one of his bosses and smuggled guns to the IRA I can say that I will never match up. But im still doing better than the Boomers.
2A has been toothless for awhile. What good is stock modded AR15 supposed to do against tanks and fighters jets.
To be fair, the fighting would be guerilla warfare which the us hasn't been that great at dealing with.
might have a tough time as a guerilla when your maga neighbors are informing on you
remember what we used to do with collaborators during the french resistance?
I'm a pacifist and don't want to glorify violence at all but, the 'RA also was very effective at dealing with collaborators and informers. Minority rule cannot sustain itself in the long-term.
I used to be a pacifist too. But apparently, peaceful protests can be too easily ignored.
Takes all kinds.
It's still good enough to shoot people who accidentally step on your lawn, or the teachers and co-students you had a disagreement with.
20 years of war, 2,459 US lives, plus about 3 months.
We could probably mount a pretty decent resistance with what we have available. look what happened in iraq during the occupation. insurgency would be the way to go in a rebellion against the us govt.
Exactly why I think americans who say the 2A needs to stay to overthrow a fascist government is full of shit. I would love to be proven wrong though
cough Vietnam cough
And that's why they didn't bother with guns in Iraq. Defeating the Americans was hopeless; mission accomplished.
This response is so weird I can't quite tell what your point is. Are you suggesting that the Iraqis resisted with small arms fire? Because that's not the case.
More US citizens die each year in the US from guns than US soldiers died in the entirety of the Iraq war. And it's not a small difference either - each year 4-5x as many citizens die from gun violence. Not including suicides (which would more than double the number)
So was your post trying to say the small arms resistance in Iraq was effective?
Lol yeah right.
Did they just make it legal for the president to be officially crooked?
Yup
Citizens United was the first step to make it blatantly legal by being able to hide donations in a way that makes make it easy to give money directly to candidates from any source, foreign and domestic.
Then that "it was a gratuity, not a bribe" ruling last week means anyone can just buy off politicians in the open.
So as of this morning it is legal for a foreign country to bribe the president to have someone assassinated.
Very legal and very cool
Maybe. But Biden still has time for it to not be so cool for Trump.
Yes
Fucking insanity.
Civil immunity makes sense because anyone can sue anyone for anything at anytime, and allowing people to sue the president for official acts would leave him vulnerable to a nonstop barrage of lawsuits. Crime doesn't work that way. The only way the president should be facing criminal prosecution is if he's breaking the fucking law. That's kind of the opposite of what the president is supposed to be doing. You know, faithfully executing the laws and all that. If a presidential action violates the law, it can't really have the legitimacy that's being presumed for all official acts here, because by definition it violates his official duties under the constitution.
Now, I would never suggest that a sitting president order the unlawful detention or summary execution of political opponents and/or corrupt justices. But I might suggest that, in the interest of national security, that he order intelligence agencies to troll through communications records, financial records, etc. to search for signs of treason and corruption at the hands of foreign powers. And if that search should happen to find evidence of any kind of illegal activity among his political opponents or on the Court, well...
...Then justice for those criminals should be swift and harsh. There I finished your thought for you :-)
So, is insurrection an official act?
Only if done by a republican.
IOKIYAR
Only if you win.
Also if you lose apparently
Then its called a revolution instead.
The only sane thing to do, full on assassinate, or kidnap in secret and report youve assassinated, all the justices that ruled in favor of presidential immunity. Nominate a new set of justices, with confirmation under threat of further assassinations, bring the case back before the new supreme court to rule against presidential immunity
Yes. Remove the conservative justices, institute new ones, undo all the bad SCOTUS decisions of the last 4 years, implement standards/ethics/accountability laws for the justices, put greater limits on their powers, and then remove the president's "king" status. Also put Trump in jail for life. It is the only way to save this country. Today, democracy in the US is completely gone. It's over.
They don't even need project 2025 now.
Didn't our founders have something to say along the lines of when the government becomes tyrannical it's a duty to overthrow it?
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/historical/Declaration_of_Independence.htm
That sounds easy
message me if you need some help brother
Biden, I urge you to, once your cold has passed, begin officially eating treasonous Supreme Court justices. Who’s going to say it’s unconstitutional? Not the Supreme food Court.
Damn, if that's not what they call the cafeteria in the Supreme Court Building, I'm going to be thoroughly disappointed.
God, we're so fucked. SCOTUS is turning the Presidency into an autocracy, Biden refusing to get out of the way for a capable candidate...that judge sentencing Trump to jail time in the Stormy Daniels case is basically the only thing that can save us from a right-wing theocracy at this point.
Surely Trump just appeals to the SCOTUS and they free him in line with today's ruling?
Wouldn't be that simple. The Stormy Daniels case was about things that happened before he became president. Sure reimbursing Cohen might have occurred at least in part while Trump was president, but Cohen was never part of the administration. They were disguising the reimbursement as paying Cohen in his capacity as Trump's personal lawyer. So there's pretty much nothing that this ruling does to hamper this case.
That said, I have no doubts that they'd find some way to rule in his favor if an appeal managed to land in front of them. But I think he'd have to go through normal appeals first, he can't just go straight to SCOTUS.
It’ll be interesting to see how stiffing your lawyer is an official act
You're right, but I'm confident he'll get there in the end.
Yeah. The Roberts Court has been nothing if not the Court of Post-Hoc Justification. They're great at concocting the most batshit crazy of legal theories to reach the outcome they want after shopping for the perfect cases to do so. I'm absolutely positive that if/when he gets an appeal to reach SCOTUS they'll give him exactly what he wants even if they have to tie themselves in logical pretzels or even directly contradict themselves to do it.
They ruled on a goddamn hypothetical. 6-3.
None of the conservative judges are qualified to do anything except take leaves.
They've pulled that one a lot recently, haven't they? I seem to recall one of the other recent rulings, I think it was against the EPA basically being a hypothetical about a proposed rule they hadn't even actually passed yet?
SCOTUS can't do shit for state charges. Doesn't mean they won't try.
However, His legal team will argue literally any punishment is too harsh and appeal the NY state charges, which will be granted because he was a president and has money. Then it will be delayed past the election and not matter anyway because this system is not made to resist willful destruction by those entrusted to protect it.
Edit: Turns out they can. The NY prosecution has agreed to postpone charges less than a day after the ruling. Trump's team asserts that the criminal activities occurred before he was president, but since the evidence was gathered during, he can not be prosecuted. Apparently concealing evidence unrelated to the presidency is an official act...
There's move afoot by the GOP to get any state charges against the president to be elevated to the Federal court.
Guess who can pardon himself or have federal charges dropped?
That's not how Federalism works. The President is not a member of any state government, and has no immunity from state crimes. There's no way to move this case from state court to federal.
Unless you change the laws to say you can! Which was the point of the above comment.
The Constitution can't be changed that easily. There's no reason for the State of New York to give up the case, even if it were possible to do. And there's no way to compel it, considering the issue is NY State law.
They’re already trying it on appeal, though. Sure, they’re applying federal precedent to a state case, but why would Trump’s team let stop them?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw4yp9g7ynwo
They cannot currently cancel state charges, but the GOP is trying to change that. It is one of a raft of measures underway. Some are truely frightening, such as using Red State National Guard troops against non-compliant Blue States. Check out Project 2025 - the Republicans are even trying to hide their planned dictatorship.
He was not President at the time of these acts, but I doubt that would stop them.
Did you read the article? The scope of this ruling is pretty narrow.
Not that narrow. They are saying fomenting an attack on Congress and conspiring to subvert the electoral college are official acts.
Where are you getting that? That question wasn't put to SCOTUS.
Trump was charged. Trump claimed he had "absolute immunity", and didn't have to face charges. Court rules against him in this issue; he appealed. Appellate court ruled against him, sending the case back to the trial court. He appealed to SCOTUS. SCOTUS said he doesn't have absolute immunity, and that the limit of his immunity is on his "official acts". SCOTUS then sent the case back to the trial court. The trial court will have to determine whether his actions were "official" or "unofficial".
From the decision:
What part of that statement is about attacking Congress or subverting the electoral college?
It is certainly within the president's and vice president's responsibilities to determine whether to certify the count. They have to be able to say "no, this should not be certified".
Saying "no" can still be used as evidence of another crime, it's just not a crime in and of itself.
Trying to convince the VP to fraudulently say no to the EC count is the crime. The president and the vice president don't get to pick the next president. The electoral college does. The only legitimate reason the VP could say no to the EC count is if for some reason the count itself were wrong, in which case the VP and Senate should correct it and move on.
That, of course, wasn't the basis for the discussion. Trump was trying to get his fake electors counted, or to at least have Pence declare that he couldn't tell which electors were real.
Knowingly making a false statement to the VP would, indeed, be a criminal fraud, but the passage you cited does not contemplate such an act.
That, too, is not contemplated in the passage you cited.
The mere act of talking to the VP about it is contemplated and by default (according to this ruling) protected. You can't tell the VP to change the electors without talking to him!
Edit: Obviously the fact that the pres. committed a crime can't be considered as a reason to deny immunity, otherwise it wouldn't be immunity.
Talking to the VP about not confirming is protected. Lying to the VP about the reason why he should not confirm is not protected.
Did you find anywhere in the decision where they make an exception for lying?
The trial court is free to determine that lying to the VP for purposes of committing election fraud does not constitute an official act. The fact that they remanded the decision to the trial court instead of reversing the trial and appellate court is the "exception" you are looking for.
They denied his appeal. Ok? He claimed absolute immunity, they said "No, you only have immunity for your official acts. We aren't going to save you here. The trial court is going to burn your ass."
BTW, my Lemmy instance isn't showing replies to your comment, including my own reply, so if it didn't come across, I'm sorry but I don't know what else to try.
People aren't reading the article. They did not rule that he is immune because his acts were official.
They ruled that official acts, and not unofficial acts, convey immunity, and remanded to lower courts to determine whether his acts should be considered official or unofficial.
The problem is that they effectively expanded everything the President does to be an official act, and foreclosed a reasonable inquiry into whether an action is actually official.
They've already said Donny is most likely immune for pressuring Pence to overturn the electoral college. Yeah, they've remanded it to lower court, but it's already clear if the lower court doesn't go the way they want, the Supremos will just flip it.
They gave it absolute immunity. That means there is no way to appeal, to argue, to halt, stop, or sue any act by a president. Even arguing whether or not the act is official would be a type of qualified immunity. Meaning that, if you are the office holder of president, everything you do has carte blanche, de facto legality. Sure, some future court could devise a test for this official vs unofficial distinction, but it means nothing for the near future. Biden is now a monarch with no legal method of stopping whatever he wishes to do, so long as it doesn't explicitly fall outside of the extremely broad powers of the executive as defined by SCOTUS and the constitution. Likewise with any future officer holder.
That's not what they ruled at all. They said there was immunity for official acts, specifically citing constitutional powers like appointing judges, commanding the military and recognizing foreign states. That was honestly never in question. A lot of people are reading this wrong. This was a massive punt, which basically opens up the door for a jury to decide what constitutes an official act.
Hi! I'm a real big dumb dumb, cause I never, ya know, studied law. But I sure do know that with SCOTUS decisions, the dissenting should be read as well, to get the proper context of the decision that the opinion won't state. Sotomayor sums up the majority decision like this, and she's a damn sight more knowledgeable than I could ever be:
You should really read it, it's such an important read.
PS: Sorry for formatting, it's copied verbatim from the dissenting pdf
Yeah? And who decides what's official? Ultimately, that also will end up with the SC
I felt like I must have misread the ruling after seeing all of the articles and comments.
So chutkin is going to decide what acts were official acts and which were unofficial.
But "presumption of immunity" is a weird fucking phrase too because it makes it seem like you can prove they aren't immune? Like presumption of innocence--you start there and work the other way. So presumably(pardon the pun) you can start there with this and work the other way still?
I'd need actual lawyers to make this make sense.
But either way it didn't seem as "carte Blanche presidents can do anything" to me when I read it.
We're waiting at this point for the lower courts to to decide which of Trump's egregious crimes were "official" or not. In the meantime, all his trials get suspended. In January, if he takes office, they will vanish when he becomes a dictator on day one (his words).
You mean like the dissenting judges?
Read the dissent. The most qualified people say it is literally carte blanche in the dissent.
Are the Dems gonna do anything or is America as we know it just going to die, "get out and vote" isn't going to cut it when they can just say it doesn't count
If we get enough Dems to be able to pack the court then the "they" changes.
Why bother, the president can just make an official act to suspend the elections as the country is being "invaded" by the southern border, and call it treason for anyone to oppose it. A lower court would do what? Say it is wrong and commit treason? Can arrest them faster than judges can have required cases.
At this point I'll take what I can get.
I see they have chosen violence. It is regrettable.
Arm phasers.
I'm honestly dumbfounded that there aren't riots, but then again they knew what they were doing with the timing of this and the Chevron ruling.
Yep, last week on "The Supremos", corrupt justices legalized bribery in one decision, then declared themselves the ultimate regulators in the next.
I mean, the ruling is just hours old.
Young enough for Trump to try to hit on it!
...ok that was gross. :P
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
The fix was in a long time ago. I’ve said it before… America is a shithole.
Happy cakeday.
Thanks!
The key point here is what constitutes an official act. I would say an insurrection is the opposite of official.
Kicking the can down the road to buy him time.
You sure do get what you pay for.
The coup marches on.
Welp. The Supreme Clergy that now rules what used to be the US has established King Trump as the leader of the Christian Caliphate that's coming. Conservatives are gonma love living in the white version of Iran.
Can you believe all the conservative Supreme Court justices eat lunch together in the same room? Like the ideas that must be floating around that relatively unsecured... what were we talking about again?
RIOT
We won’t because we’re asleep at the wheel. Don’t worry though, we will finally wake up when Trump enters his third term. It’ll be too late to do anything about it but at least we’ll be awake.
Thats not gonna cut it. I'm down now. I'll lose my job over losing my democracy.
Where we marching?
DC
We got rally points set up? These jackasses are gonna try to turn us into slaves so they can survive the climate inferno.
Biden can now legally shoot Trump on stage during the next debate. Gotcha.
I don't think having a raspy voice will be the biggest talking point in the aftermath this time.
And if anyone raises a stink and somehow manages to prove that this was illegal anyway, I'm sure it's the same people who have claimed that he's senile, ergo not fit to stand trial.
Biden could, but he won't. We're just going to get more finger wagging and muttering at him about being a scoundrel and shit.
Correct. He's still trying to Chamberlain when it's long overdue that he goes full Kubiš & Gabčík.
"The only way to solve this is by voting harder." They leave out the "for the next 30 years, continuously, until the court is rebalanced through natural causes and decides to undo what is now 'precedent'".
Last person out, please turn out the lights.
Surely if something he does is unconstitutional, it is not within his official capacity or power!?
But somehow I have a feeling I'm being extremely naive just thinking that.
The SCOTUS majority just decided that nothing the president does is illegal, at least in a way that can ever be prosecuted.
The SCOTUS can lick my fucking SCROTUS.
If anyone ever doubted that the DNC and the GOP weren't on the same team, just watch as the DNC let this opportunity slip right through their fingers. Access to the greatest political, strategical, minds and they will let this opening wash away into a river of fascism.
It's a play, we are watching theatre. Meant to keep you distracted. Meant to keep you oppressed.
From what?
We could all collectively decide to chop the heads off of the elite. We don't need to argue about which capitalist is better every 4 years. There's nothing physically stopping 90% of the country from just overthrowing the other 10% if we really tried together
Just make a balance of what the governments of the last 40 years did. Would the us be worse or better off if those changes had not been made? My opinion is that government is unnecessary. There are enough laws already. If anything really needs to be changed it can be done by referendum. Abolish the government!
Edit: government is the biggest illusion of them all
1000% this. If the DNC wanted to stop this, they could have.
How?
For starters, by spending the last 4 years training a different candidate to beat trump this year.
But failing that, they could absolutely have prevented that disaster on the debate. They knew full well how the rest of America will react to seeing Biden look like that, and I find it no coincidence that it happened directly before The Supreme Court ruled to overturn Chevron and Grant immunity to Trump.
While that is interesting, you realize before the 4 years you mentioned, Trump did everything he's in trouble for doing. He also established the supreme court we have. If Biden randomly died his first 5 months, we still would be in a similar (if not the same) situation. Every person who made this happen, would still have their previously established power. Training someone new would not have stopped this inevitability.
It wouldn't have, that's true. I just feel that it would have been a better circumstance than that we have now. But I think honestly I'm just reaching for copium right now. This entire week was a dark week in our country.
As an official act, dissolve the current supreme court and reverse every terrible decision they made.
The big thing everyone is missing here is the ruling says the president cannot be prosecuted for actions that are constitutional. So this does not mean the end of democracy or whatever people are saying. The president can't stay in office after his term expires. The president cannot order his political opponents killed- in fact, the Supreme Court issued a statement on that just this year.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-939/303384/20240319133828340_AFPI%20Amici%20Brief%203.19.24.pdf
Amici curae aren't Supreme Court decisions. "Amici curae" means "friend of the court". It's an argument from third parties submitted for a pending case. The dissents by the actual Supreme Court justices explicitly reference the assassination potential.
That is true, thank you for explaining that to me. Although I read the dissent and what Sotomayor said was that the president would get their day in court to determine if those actions were constitutional, not that this ruling pre-approves them to do so. Meanwhile Roberts said these concerns are overblown... idk really, I don't like the ruling, it basically feels like an expansion of qualified immunity to the president, which makes things more difficult for prosecuters but not impossible.
Qualified immunity for someone who single handedly controls the most powerful military in the world. Fabulous idea.
Can’t wait for the gunning down of protestors. Gilead, here we come!
They're only pre-approved for explicit constitutional duties, but they're presumed immune for all others and their reasoning can't be questioned. "I believed they were an imminent national security threat and took the hard choice." It's like "I feared for my life" for gun nuts, but you can apply it to nearly anything because the president has expansive emergency responsibilities and the only way to prove he wasn't actually taking an action "officially" would be using his private communications, but any communications with "advisors" are precluded from being used.
And anything that makes it through that gauntlet to the Supreme Court rather than being dismissed earlier will be decided on ideological grounds.
You say that like it's a defined thing that will keep a president in check. SCOTUS rules on constitutionality. Are you really that confident that they'll keep Trump in line if he gets another term and starts really getting to work? The road to fascism isn't paved with goods intentions, it's paved with mealy mouthed, two faced decisions like this that give more and more leeway until it's too late to take back.
Yes, and that is very important and I did not know that, so thank you for clarifying.
That said, this supreme court interprets the constitution however they want. The court in its current form (as a whole) is not ethical, lawful, or legitimate. As soon as a republican takes the presidency, there is no stopping them.
They didn't rule this, that was a "friend of the court" briefing by outside interests.
Yeah well I guess we'll see what happens if the orange jackass gets reelected. I'm not holding my breath.
Everyone needs to vote against the draft dodging felon rapist that is Trump.
This is just depressing.
Democracy in the USA ended today. It will be in the history books about the end of democracy.
for reference this same move of getting immunity from a fixed court was also huge for cementing the Chavez and Putin regimes in Venezuela and Russia.
This is a very important point, yes.
But by then, that history book will be banned, and only the bible will be left in schools (that will all be private)
The rule of law ended today. Democracy will end if the christo-fascists win the election.
I mean... I actually agree with (aspects of) that ruling. A nation's leader is going to have to, by necessity, do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put "war"
The issue is defining what counts as an "official act" and having any kind of checks and balances on that.
For example: Let's look at the purely hypothetical example of an outgoing president engaging in a violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to prevent losing power. Crazy, right? But, in that example, it is not at all a stretch that said former president is an enemy of the state. There is a lot of legal discussion on whether it is legal to pop them in the head without a series of trials but it is in that range where it is probably better than not to give the elected POTUS immunity in that situation.
But what if that outgoing president insisted that it was an "official act" to lead that violent insurrection? No intelligent person would at all consider that a defense.
From the dissent:
When the foremost observers of the fascist cabal say their ruling is "just as bad as it sounds", I will take their word for it.
Note that as bad as that is and as evil as it has sometimes been, it is "legal", and thus not subject to criminal prosecution. It is specifically legal for the president to do that sketchy stuff.
For an "official" act to be illegal, but not subject to prosecution just makes no sense. It shouldn't be possible for an illegal act to be "official".
Extra bonkers is the 5/4 opinion that you can't even mention official acts, like if you accept a bribe in exchange for an appointment, you can't mention the appointment while trying to prosecute the bribe.
Prior presidents have done all kinds of shady shit without worrying about prosecution. Even the angry orange didn't get charged until he tried to overthrow an election.
There was zero reason to even decide this case except to give immunity to someone who blatantly abuses their authority.
The thing that bugs me is how any order given to subordinates is a use of executive power, right? So that’s immune. But say the subordinate considered refusing an unlawful order. Why, then would they decide to refuse the order when the president could also choose to pardon them for any crimes they committed during the execution of the unlawful order?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Supreme Court ruled that presidents are “absolutely” immune from criminal prosecution when their actions involve allegedly official acts while they were in office.
In his majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts remanded the case to the lower courts, which now have to determine whether Trump’s conduct was official or unofficial.
A grand jury approved an indictment against Trump in August for charges including conspiracy to defraud the US and obstructing an official proceeding.
Trump faces a series of legal challenges across the country both at the state and federal levels.
Most recently, he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York in a trial over hush money payments, including payments made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress a story about her and Trump having sex.
That means — unlike in the state case — that if Trump were convicted but elected president, he could potentially pardon himself.
The original article contains 298 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Dear Biden, the path forward is now clear. Do what needs to be done.
Four years ago, I voted for President Harris as the lesser of two evils.
This year, I vote for Queen Kamala I, as the lesser of two evils.
9 people decide to allow presidents to act as dictators
The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/01/us/trump-immunity-supreme-court
Trump's appointments tipped the balance. They didn't "decide" as much as been taken over. It's a part of the judicial system gone rogue and Congress is supposed to reign it back in.
9 people had the influence to decide.
So 9 people.
Edit: Funny how people refuse to recognize the body still consist of 9 people, and the key is that it needs to be a majority of those 9.
The level of corruption of the court is another matter.
6
Unless you think similarly in presidential elections.
When a majority elects a representative, it's called the will of the people. So yes it is perfectly normal to consider the group collectively.
It's similar to saying a team played badly, because collectively they did, even if a couple of players didn't.
So you can say 6 or 9 both are correct, meaning the "correction" was unnecessary.
at which point 3 people's views were ignored which is why they dissented to the majority opinion. Joe Biden in 2020 had 51.5% of the vote, under your same logic 155 million people as a group decided to elect Joe Biden. Which, while technically true, you're pushing semantics at that point that minimizes the differences in views and opinions.
They are still part of a body of 9.
Right, so six.
Do you not understand the words you used or the word dissent.
I see from your own argument that you were a Trump supporter in 2016. Not someone I'd listen about anything.
I was never was and never will be a Trump supporter, or even Republican so you see wrong.
But I can see from your comment that you are one to jump to conclusions without reason, so "Not someone I’d listen about anything".
The person you're arguing with made the point that if you hold the ones who voted against the bad thing happening as partly responsible, by the same logic, you should hold people who voted for Clinton in 2016 partly responsible for the election of Trump.
I don't think you can have it both ways. Either the entire USA including you is responsible for Trump becoming president and the entire SCOTUS is responsible for today's ruling, or you're not responsible for Trump winning and the three dissenters are also not responsible for today's ruling.
I get that you're angry, and it's a good day to be angry, the day that they ended democracy, but maybe be more selective about who you're angry with and sometimes try to check if maybe there are some valid things people can disagree with you about.
I'm not American. But yes in a way we have collective responsibility as a people for the politicians we elect, and what we allow in our society.
Yes, but the comment didn't say that the SCOTUS decided, it said 9 people did. Would you say that 53 people played badly? That's how many are on the team, after all.
OK I can see your point. I suppose I stand corrected.
funny how you are proud of your kindergarten logic
and the majority in this case was... wait for it... SIX PEOPLE 😂
so "the court decided to..." or "6 members decided to..." is true, but "9 members decided to..." is not true, because 3 members decided not to.
similarly you can say "51% of people voted for biden" or "people voted for biden", but not "100% of people voted for biden" - because that would simply not be true.
if you have any other difficult question, like why is water wet, don't hesitate to ask 😂
Six.
All 9 were part of the decision making. For me it is amazing that so important decisions are left to so few
Someone must always make decisions, a world where no decisions are made would devolve into a Mad Max type thing, where the fact that we are members of the animal kingdom would become very readily apparent. We used to decide these things with trial by combat, where the most skilled warrior (or who chose the most skilled as their champion) was right because God apparently said so, by making him so good at fighting. Still a person making a decision. Not far off from a world where you decide if someone was a witch by trying to build a bridge out of them.
The modern trick is dividing up the decision-making power so much that nobody can assemble it all into their personal toolkit and fully embrace corruption with no consequences.