I mean, that's what this comes to, right? If he ordered Seal Team Six to storm Mar-A-Lago to recover classified materials with deadly force, then he's operating in order to maintain national security via his authority as Commander in Chief. That would be legal under this ruling, correct?

I get that would lead to an actual civil war, and I get that their argument is important to shield the office from neverending frivolous lawsuits, but in being forced to rule so explicitly on this it seems like they've opened the door to political assassinations. All a President would need is a willing wing of the military and a superficial rationalization and there'd be nothing a court in this country could do about it.

Please, someone tell me I'm missing something.

But national security is. All they would need is a flimsy justification that the person was stealing state secrets (like Trump) or organizing a terrorist attack, which could include any contact with an armed or paramilitary group that's planning a protest. They could use state influence to coerce that group to take action, and the records of that planning process would be inadmissible per this ruling. It's not hard to come up with superficial reasons that do align with Constitutional obligations.

Edit to add: Hell, just look at the McCarthy era, or the Iraq war. It's not hard at all for a sufficiently shameless group of politicians to gin up a moral panic about national security. They don't even need evidence, they just need motive. We're real fucking close to the government being able to legally assassinate purported communists for subversion.

The syllabus only says that SCOTUS can't decide the line between official and unofficial acts because it's a court of final review, and they offered a list of guidance to lower courts who they charged with making the distinction. They point to pp 16-32 for more detail on that guidance.

The guidance says:

1. Courts cannot consider motive

2. An act is not unofficial simply because it violates a law

3. Courts cannot consider negotiations with DoJ

4. Courts cannot consider negotiations with or influence of the VP if the VP is serving an executive branch function, but may consider influence of the VP if the VP is serving a legislative branch function (i.e. supervising the Senate)

5. Engagement with private parties is not an official act

6. Public communication of the person serving in the role of President is official, but public communication of the President serving in another role is not

7. Prosecutors cannot use a jury to indirectly infringe on immunity unless a judge has already ruled that immunity does not exist

So again, if a President sends a branch of the military to a) assassinate a terrorist or b) recover national security secrets, none of the allowable court considerations above come into play. Nor do they if the assassinated individual is a SCOTUS justice or a political rival. The executive branch and military are the only entities involved, no public communication happens, murder is OK if it's done in an official capacity, and planning records are inadmissible. A prosecutor would have no authority to bring a case, and a court would have no precedent to allow consideration of the charge even if they were brought.

That's a loophole the size of the Hoover Dam.

So then nothing a President ever does can be considered premeditated. This timeline is fucking insane.

You ignored a lot of other information in my comment.

Imagine how powerful leftist grassroots organizations would be if folks like you would dedicate the same amount of time and energy to voter engagement and activism that you devote to ranting and raving on political message boards. This country would be completely transformed in a matter of months.

Edit: Seriously, 6,800 comments over a 12 month period is almost 19 comments every single day of the year. That's borderline obsession, and it can't possibly be good for your mental health.

You've offered no proof that it is, despite my asking several times. From what I can tell that's just your opinion, which is fine but carries significantly less weight.

The subtext here is just as important as the main story. The reason the EPA has had to try desperately to stretch their interpretations of statutory authority into gray areas that are vulnerable to judicial review, is that Congress has utterly failed to pass any truly meaningful environmental protection laws for decades. The Clean Water Act, for example, has only been meaningfully amended once since it was passed 50 years ago, and that resulted in a huge (albeit slow) improvement in stormwater management in urbanizing areas. The last time we had a bipartisan interest in curtailing the excesses of industry, the Cuyahoga River was routinely catching fire and places like Love Canal had children playing in actual toxic sludge.

There have been very few times that the EPA has been granted any kind of legal authority since the 1970s, and most of them were intentionally ambiguous. Bush II's Clean Skies Act, for example, was a direct result of the Kyoto fiasco and actually weakened a lot of environmental regulations from the 1970s. In contrast, things like Obama's Clean Power Plan were simply agency-level policies devised to get around the fact that Congress hadn't amended the Clean Air Act since 1990. Since they were policies and not laws, they could be subsequently gutted by future administrations (i.e. Trump) and the courts. Policies and rules have no staying power.

Congress has done fuck all for the environment since Nixon, and that lay at the feet of the Reaganite neoliberal coalition wedded to the free market which had champions in both parties for several decades. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is a fucking awful ruling because it'll take away the few powers the EPA tried to devise in the absence of Congressional action, but it's actually overdue because Congress should have dealt with these problems long before now.

In the end, voters are left with a choice. Start giving enough of a shit to vote for politicians that will pass environmental laws, or live in the regulatory world that stopped evolving before the personal computer was invented. We've been able to eke out a meager existence because things like Superfund and NPDES exist, but as we can see from the Flint and GenX disasters, we've taken clean water, soil, and air for granted for far too long. It's not the job of the EPA to devise creative ways to get around the shitty, intansigent Congress we keep sending to DC. It's our job to send better politicians to DC to help them keep us safe.

If Biden decided to step down, his delegates are pledged to support Kamala Harris.

I've tried to verify that this is the case and can't find evidence anywhere. Can you point me to a source? I was under the impression that they'd be expected to turn to her, but that they're not required to.

Edit: After lengthy back and forth, it finally became clear that this is simply an opinion. User has absolutely no proof.

So his delegates are not pledged to Harris, they aren't required to support Harris, her name isn't on a single ballot in the country, Biden's name isn't on a single ballot in the country, and no one has officially been nominated. You've offered no proof to the contrary.

Whether you think a change is likely before ballots are finalized was not my question, merely whether or not you had proof that it's impossible.

As you suggest it’s a regulatory problem. There was a recent kerfuffle involving the Ohio ballot, which was solved by putting Biden/Harris on the ballot before they are officially nominated. So any changes made at the Democratic convention will come too late to change the Ohio ballot.

.....nnnnno. That's not what's happening in Ohio. From your article:

President Joe Biden will be formally nominated as the Democratic presidential nominee through a virtual roll call ahead of the party’s official convention in Chicago in August

The Democratic National Convention, where the president would otherwise be formally nominated, comes after Ohio’s ballot deadline of Aug. 7. The party’s convention is scheduled for Aug. 19-22.

I really hate to repeat myself because it seems like you're engaging sincerely and at least trying to support your argument, but there are currently no ballots that have been formalized in the entire country. Biden and Harris have not been put on the ballot before they're nominated, they're being nominated before the ballot access deadline in Ohio. So quite simply, as long as the Democrats nominate any US-born person older than 35, that person's name will appear on the Ohio ballot. You have it quite literally backwards.

And sadly, the campaign response to this sentiment is not inspiring a lot of faith in their judgment. This after the NYT Editorial Board called on him to step aside:

“The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement it turned out pretty well for him,” Biden campaign co-chair Cedric L. Richmond said in a statement.

Does he think that "LOL! Fuck you!" is the correct response here? The chorus of people in every corner of the country calling for him to step aside is deafening, and all he can muster is a Trump-style clapback?

Furthermore, at this point I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario where asking the incumbent to drop out would be more justified. Like, how bad would it actually have to get for the party to admit, "hey guys, this isn't fixable, time for Plan B"? Incumbency advantage is huge, but it's certainly not all-powerful.

partly because her name can’t be taken off the general ballot in multiple states

Again, where is your proof of this? Ballots haven't been finalized anywhere in the country, as Biden isn't even officially the nominee yet. You keep saying these things as if they're set in stone, but from what I can tell they're not. Do you have proof that ballots have been printed before the convention, or that states have closed the registration window for running mates before closing the registration window for candidates?

Note: I agree with the rest of what you said, for the most part.

We're going to have to start organizing at the grassroots level. Folks will need to develop a class consciousness that transcends cultural boundaries and harnesses the power of the internet. The major eras of civil rights expansion and reversal of the otherwise upward mobilization of wealth only came with significant grassroots organization, public protest, political activism, and sadly, bloodshed.

Rights aren't granted. They're taken.

I'm sorry, but what universe are you living in? You don't remember this exchange?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1lY5jFNcQ?t=1h13m25s

But they're not "Biden/Harris delegates". They're Biden delegates, as he was the only name on the ballot. Are you just saying they'll go with her out of deference?

This is also why corporate and/or establishment types can justify voting for non-conservative, populist Trump and his lackeys. They're getting so obscenely rich and powerful thanks to Trump's SCOTUS picks that nothing else could possibly ever outweigh the short-term gains for them.

Dems will need to run the table on Senate races, in addition to keeping the White House, for that to happen. If not, Alito and Thomas get to pick their hard right replacements and all but the youngest of us will wither and die with a conservative SCOTUS supermajority.

In all honesty I think negotiating with Kamala for her to step into the AG role and open up the VP slot for Newsome or Buttigieg would be the game changer.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/06/27/joe-biden-sick-voice-presidential-debate/74240214007/

That's all the media can do nowadays. It's a bunch of journalism graduates twiddling their fingers while cranking out endless "Read the Tea Leaves!" type articles. Everything nowadays is "survey says this", "polls say that", "model says this", "odds predict this or that". It's literally everywhere from sports to politics to the stock market, it requires zero thought or in-depth analysis, and it's both a response to and a cause of the decline in mainstream and investigative journalism. It's team-based tribalism through and through.

Yes, and the rules were voted on by party members before the primary started. They're now in place, and they're obligated to respect them until this process plays out. Same thing happened in 2016. Say what you will about whether the rules were "fair" or not, they were agreed upon before Iowa, and they were respected through the Convention.

The way you use "kneecap progressives" tells me you're conflating DNC primary rules and campaign finance. The two are not the same thing. They could do to Biden what they did to Bernie and blast the airwaves with damaging, misleading attacks, but none of that would fundamentally change the fact that the primary rules were agreed upon and are immutable until the Convention comes to a close.

And to reiterate, it's not "principles" that are holding them back. It's a contractual obligation whose violation would open them up to civil litigation. Voters picked delegates and they're obligated to respect the voters who selected them. The DNC can't just tell them to take a hike.

But Biden can.

edit: AP just put out a piece that confirms what I've been saying. They'd be sued into oblivion if they usurped the process right now. The ball is very much in Biden's court.

He absolutely can be replaced at this stage, and by nearly anyone.

Only if they can convince him to step aside and let someone else run. At this point the voters have selected 3,904 delegates who are contractually obligated to cast a vote for him at the Convention. If the delegates somehow simply ignored the primaries, they'd be quite literally ignoring the will of their voters and taking matters into their own hands. It's alarming how many on the left (who presumably had a problem with the DNC's treatment of Bernie in 2016) are cheering for the DNC to heavily influence the primary process again. I don't necessarily disagree that something drastic needs to be negotiated, but the irony of this is really hard to ignore.

They're extrapolating trends from just over ONE year of data. The survey was started in 2023, which means statements like this ring very hollow:

Second, the year-over-year change in worry for this population is large and significant. In April 2023, 20.7 percent of those who could currently pay all of their bills were worried about the next six months; one year later, 26.2 percent reported worries, with nearly every demographic group showing large and significant increases as well. We did not observe such a year-over-year increase in our previous report (comparing January 2023 with January 2024).

And from that we get Matt Egan's overarching conclusion that "wealthy Americans are struggling to make ends meet", which conflicts with the findings that only 6.9% of people earning more than $150k/yr are reporting that they can't currently make ends meet (6% of those making more than $100k/yr). Or, in other words, 93.1% of people earning more than $150k/yr can currently make ends meet. (someone tell Egan!) But the surveyors go on to claim that it's a significant uptick from 3.4% a year ago, which is true (yay!). You know what it's not a significant uptick from? The very next survey (i.e. July), which tallied a 6% rate of not being able to make ends meet. That number then fell to 3.0% in October before jumping again in January, then again in April.

Those numbers go up significantly when forecasting out 0-6 months, and then 7-12 months. The numbers for high earners go up to 32.5% and 33%, respectively. You know what's happening in just under 6 months? A pretty significant election! And to what do these high earners attribute their inability to make ends meet? Job insecurity? Medical expenses? Global instability? Inflation?

Who the fuck knows?! The survey is decidedly silent on that front. But that didn't stop Matt Egan from scrapping together the most fear-inducing, clickbait headline he could muster for our next dose of doom-fuel.

Regurgitation pieces require no formal journalistic training, can be produced with almost no research time, can be cranked out en masse, and can be subjectively framed to grab eyeballs because there's no entity able to claim libel if it's misrepresented. It's yellow journalism, plain and simple, and gullible rubes lap that shit up without a second's hesitation because it tells them something saucy that makes them feel vindicated.

Oh absolutely, and that AI part is already happening with local news outlets and some national sports outlets.

Conservatives: "States' rights!"

Voters: "Ok."

Conservatives: "Wait...NOT LIKE THAT!"

Biden: "You should get paid more."

Trump: indicted for 91 crimes and found liable for decades of tax fraud

Michigan Republicans: ¯\(ツ)/¯

"Ban books. Jail librarians." - the bad guys in every epoch of history

And no small number of supposed leftists found in all this cause for celebration.

and also

Those who approve or condone Hamas’s atrocities constitute a small minority of the left.

Mr. Levitz should take a deep breath and figure out what exactly he's trying to say, and to whom.

It was never about his job. It was always about putting Christianity back on a pedestal and the rest of us back in the shadows.

Fuck him.

Indeed. Also, Republicans have already proposed dramatic cuts to the IRS, so we should be under no illusions about what will happen to this loophole and Direct File if Trump & Co. take control in November.

The "judicial torpedo" herself, suddenly pearl clutching now that it's obvious to the rest of us she wasn't nominated because of her resume or experience, but in order to achieve a policy goal of the party who put her forward. Suddenly she's worried about appearances and decorum? After what we've witnessed over the past 8 years?

Get. Fucked. You. Absolute. Shitstain. I hope the scrutiny keeps you awake and in a cold sweat when you lie down in your bed at night.

I absolutely LOVE that PoppinKREAM is on the fediverse too. We don't deserve you, my dude, but we're glad you're here.

The President cannot unilaterally do any of those things.

He added that hardliners have little to show for all the effort they’ve put into dragging House GOP leadership their way this session. “We hold the House, yet we're not accomplishing anything. I mean, the most that we've actually accomplished this year is kicking out George Santos,” Burlison said of expelling the disgraced New York GOP fabulist.

No, you petulant fuck. REPUBLICANS hold the House. You hold like twelve seats and are a feeble minority that represents a dying slice of the electorate. The reason you can't get whatever your right-wing boner brigade wants is because you're dramatically out of step with the rest of the fucking country. I'm absolutely loving the fact that this shit keeps getting shoved into your face, and I hope your feckless infantile flailing continues indefinitely, or at least until the GOP loses their razor-thin majority.

The only thing that stops a bad pastor with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.

Indeed. He's just as disingenuous, illogical, and pants-shittingly stupid as his voters. All they care about is the tantrum, and it's about fucking time the military learned that the GOP doesn't give a damn about anything except using them as props.

“I was knee-deep in it,” Gore said about the local connections to the billionaires. “I guess I was just too naive. I should have known better.”

YES, YOU SHOULD HAVE. There's only so many different ways we can spell this out for you. Now your job should be to campaign relentlessly for Democrats up and down the ballot, because they're clearly the only ones who give a shit about public education, students, and teachers.

He did not receive any concessions he previously demanded, such as a change to the military funding bill to address the abortion policy.

“We got all we could get,” he told reporters.

LMFAO. Get fucked, you sniveling little shit. Republicans are nothing but performative, bloviating douchebags. They bring no policy, no goals, no ideals, just aimless, knee-jerk hand-wringing and finger-wagging.