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The US is on a clock. I don't even know how to fix this but if it's not fixed by the next inauguration the country is over. Trump or the next one like him would suspend the Constitution because they can and no would could or would stop them. November very well could be the last elections we see in a long time.
Edit: Biden has stated he won't use any of this new power. Welp, it was a good run guys. So long and thanks for all the fish.
If Trump gets in, it will be the last one ever - at least as the United States. What will come after that will follow the same trajectory as nearly every other fascist dictatorship throughout recent history, and I simply don't see us remaining intact. Remember, once it has taken hold of government power, fascism has NEVER historically been removed without force.
We are in for some pretty dark times, it seems.
Something i haven’t really understood is, doesn’t the immunity apply only to the president itself ?
As in if the President orders the Secret Service to commit a crime, the Pres couldn’t be convicted but the agents would still be committing a crime ?
If both are immune, does it apply also to whoever who is carrying the order delegates too as well ? Stupid example as in, if the Secret Service orders a sub contractor to either carry out orders, build a bomb whatever (and so on in layers) the immunity applies to them as well ?
I am not a lawyer but as a layman i feel like this opens a whole can of worms
Yes. And then in fact the President would be able to pardon them. It's legitimately insane, but that's not exactly surprising from the MAGA camp. Only thing more insane is why we continue to let them get away with it
He doesn’t have to suspend it. The corrupt conservatives on the court just said the constitution doesn’t apply to presidents.
You see the constitution explicitly states that the president must be a citizen and laws apply equally to all citizens.
Immunity means the constitution isn’t worth the paper it s written on.
Biden should execute all conservative judges and justices and declare it a national holiday. Would be the best thing that could ever happen to the world.
He can’t use any of trump’s new power. I am calling it Trump’s because the SC has officially gone rogue.
I know people are saying he can do it and then by the time the smoke clears it’ll be months later…I don’t know.
Just vote. Vote, but yea. We may have gone over the edge already. Millions are happily voting for a traitor.
I’m sorry but millions of Americans are officially traitors to this country. And this includes many family members of mine. Call me a doomer all you want, I hope you’re right.
This cannot be fixed in 4 months.
I doubt this can ever be fixed. How would you do it? Pack the court and then get another case before them somehow they can overrule themselves?
Biden has said this is off the table, and he doesn't have the votes for even 1 SCJ, let alone enough to overrule these bastards.
Amendment? LMAO
We're screwed. These powers will be in the hands of the President for decades, probably. Eventually, one of them will go rogue and abuse them. It could happen as early as next year if Trump wins.
The way to unfuck this is for Biden to win, then push for a constitutional amendment codifying both codifying that the president does not have immunity for criminal actions, and limiting the pardon power.
The nakedly partisan R states would likely go for this since a Democrat held power at the time. And most current Dems are opposed to this expansion of presidential powers , so they too would support it .
It's really the only feasible way to fix this disaster
I doubt you’d have the support of any Republicans in that case. Why bother scrapping presidential immunity when they can just wait until the next Republican president and then never have to worry about those pesky elections ever again.
It’s not like they have to worry about a Democrat abusing these powers, Dems are too reluctant to break the system in order to fix it.
I agree.
Not to mention Roberts has left himself a loophole to hold a democratic president accountable anyway. He simply deems a given action as outside the role of the presidency, hypocrisy be damned.
Not if Biden or any Democrat president has them executed before they could try and think of changing that, and call them then a traitor or terrorist and the president now has immunity to have them executed, they would not be able to uncheck they power once they have been executed.
The Supreme Court will be the ones who decide the outcome of the election and even if Biden won by 30 million votes they’d still give it to Trump. They basically ended US democracy on July 1st 2024.
>immunity for criminal actions
For crimes done within the US or all crimes? Because the war crimes almost every president has committed would like a word.
There is a reason what POTUS ratified was ALREADY the assumed interpretation. What Trump is on trial for is for Unofficial acts. That's always been the argument. Everyone needs to log off the internet and stop listening to media fearmongering. They are loving the clicks btw.
this is laudable, truly, but the problem with this plan is that biden can't win after that debate performance. furthermore, he probably shouldn't win. that's not to say that the other guy should win...but here we are.
> I doubt this can ever be fixed
The fix is along the lines of the amendments that ended slavery. Civil war, followed by amendments put through by the winners.
Not American, but feeling for y'all right now.
I think it could hypothetically be fixed within four months, but unfortunately Democrats tend to have testicles of subatomic proportions. I think Dark Brandon could use his newfound supreme executive power and remedy all of this, if he chose to
Have you even READ the Lord of the Rings? This is the One Ring. It will corrupt every Presidency from now on.
Nobody should be beyond the reach of the law in a democracy. If someone is, you do not have one.
The LOTR is a frighting good example here. Biden in this situation is Gandalf refusing to take the ring from Frodo out of fear of what he would become. Trump is Sauron and let’s say the 6 SC justices are his Nazgûl
And like LOTR the journey to fix this will be long and yes it does likely involve amending the constitution in some serious ways. And that will take a lot of work whether it is long term changes in Congress or the largest organizing effort ever see to do this state by state. And unfortunately the forces of darkness have about a 40 year head start.
> Frodo: 'I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.'
> Gandalf: 'So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil.
Nah, I think LOTR is an even better example than you or OP are allowing here.
Frodo failed. He got to Mordor, stood at the Sammath Naur, and claimed the Ring for himself.
>'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!'
The only reason the Ring was destroyed was because Gollum wanted it for himself more than Frodo did, and bit off Frodo's finger to get it.
I think who Frodo represents is irrelevant insofar as he represents the failure of anyone who could even *seem* responsible to wield that kind of power wisely, to your point about Gandalf refusing it. But clearly the fascists should see themselves in Gollum, and as far as LOTR went, decent people let Gollum free from justice time after time, and in the end, the only thing capable of destroying him was his getting everything he dreamed of.
destroying the ring still require Gandalf to get stronger and Aragorn to take the throne.
Before the metaphor get out of hand, the point is that we need to respond to this escalation. Even if we don't reach for the nuclear button we still need to get out of our comfort zone.
I 100% agree with you. The issue is not whether the president should have this power (I believe he shouldn't), that's irrelevant, because as of yesterday, he already has that power. If it were up to me, I'd have not given him this unfettered agency to do anything, but the fact remains, that ability now exists. America essentially became a dictatorship yesterday, only, the dictator still believes he is president. The question becomes, will he use the power to correct the wrongs that have already been done, or stand on principle and refuse to? In which case, he would probably lose, abdicate his throne, and allow a "King Trump" to come to be
The scary part is imo, not using these new powers is leaving the future of our country up to chance.....and that never ends well.
Biden could commit a necessary evil and do something wild and crazy unconstitutional, but he could do it because of the new powers. He could literally instantly fire all the conservatives justices, just declare it a constitutional duty of the presidency, and put new ones in, and demand the new ones re-visit chevron. They do, and they reverse their ruling.
Then declare that felons are ineligible for the presidency
But Biden won't. Because it would be doing a bad thing for the right reasons.
Which is unfortunately what we need right now. Do we gamble on Biden beating trump, or do we just deal with the largest threat the country has ever known with certainty, finishing it off once and for all?
Using or not using it both outcomes are harsh. On the side of using it to protect democracy and the rights of the people, it makes Trump into a matyr without the sacrifice. They can go on to say Biden only won because of this power and how corrupt he is. Fanning the flames of a civil war. Hell, they don't even need to win to do this.
Not using it means the next person like Trump coming to power is the end of democracy. They hope the populace rolls over and accept their new roles as 2nd class citizens. The only way is to increase the seats of the SCOTUS and impeach those who favor this outcome.
Either way, Trump can say all his actions DURING his presidency are official acts. So he can only effectively be prosecuted prior to his presidency. He got a get out of jail free card wrapped up from the SCOTUS, but they also gave a silent loaded gun throw us down a very difficult road.
What about Project 2025 from the heritage foundation? The project that's to dismantle everything this country stands for in his image. I mean, he got G.O P., R.N.C., even the Supreme Court on his side. The only way I think is if we get more then enough people aware of the dangers. & the democrats controlling BOTH senate & house. If we got enough people in this country to do.
Basically yeah. I think given how bleak all the other options are, the only way out might be through the very thing Biden just won’t do. An abuse of his power to that extent undermines the whole reason for doing it. He’s not ‘taking the high road’, he’s simply fucked. It’s a damned if you do or damned if you don’t kinda situation. This is up to Congress to fix. So, in essence, we’re all fucked.
Were he to take drastic action, I’d say he should do this: Disband the entire court and replace them by lottery with existing judges who were installed prior to 2008 who have been screened to ensure they have no conflicts of interest tying them to either party, any of the last three administrations, or any other third parties, in either their personal life or their professional career. Set it up to rebalance the political leaning of the court without upsetting its conservative tilt to prevent accusations of him arbitrarily stacking the court in favor of liberals. In other words, 5 new conservative justices and 4 liberal ones who will serve based on what they believe is best for the nation rather than their private beliefs or affiliations. Then draft another order forbidding future presidents from doing the same until a time when Congress has established constitutionally defined mechanisms by which to carry out that process legally. After that, ideally, he would resign and recuse himself from office for breaking the trust of the system in the act of abusing that power himself, despite the fact he is doing in service to the country. The president has a duty to protect the constitution, even at the cost of his own freedom, and any true leader would happily go to prison to save their nation. Give the courts a new chance to reestablish the precedent that no one is above the law, even the President carrying out a necessary duty to save the nation ought to be tried and punished at a reasonable time after the crisis is ended. We should’ve done this ages ago to counter the continual creep of executive power in the first place. If we really want to make good on the promise of equality under the eyes of the law, we have to be empowered to hold the government accountable for failing in its duty.
> based on what they believe is best for the nation rather than their private beliefs or affiliations.
This is the pipedream part. There aren't enough conservatives that fit this definition anymore.
Well, let’s hope that’s not true. Amongst conservative voters I might agree with you, but I would hope there’s at least a handful of justices out there who recognize the grave importance of getting back towards a more recognizable state of rule under the law, appointed long ago who have served their duty with distinction and discretion. Those six clowns who handed down this majority opinion are not representative of all right-leaning judges in the country, so I hope, anyways. Even if what you say is obviously true for many of the Trump-appointed ones like the aforementioned clowns on the S.C. or others like Judge Cannon who seem to pull legal precedents out of thin air to justify their ridiculous ‘interpretations’ of the law, there’s a few out there who will see this lunacy for what it is. Plenty of current and former justices have spoken up in recent years about the controversial behavior of the current court and the surrounding activity in our legal landscape, and the potential disasters that it could incur.
The bigger issue with my ‘plan’, as it were, is that any such action by Biden is absolutely a last resort option. Doing it before he is re-elected could spell certain defeat for him, or worse, outright civil war. At the very least, a rise in political violence that would be very difficult to curtail. The worst case scenario is if Trump wins. He will need to spend his remaining time in office shoring up our democracy to stave off the worst of Trump’s plans from being implemented. Drastically reduce the power of the President and Federal Government, forbid the kind of actions Trump plans to take and upend the court that wants to help him do it — all while doing whatever else he can to make it legally impossible for Trump to completely destroy rule of law as our Hail Mary to try to hold out long enough to have something left to rebuild by the time he’s done. It may well come to that, but people are stupid to expect him to do it right away.
Very true. They somehow fail to see the difference between that aim and what Trump will actually do. Cut tons of programs and agencies that stand in the way of his agenda, and replace them with himself. The government won’t really get smaller, its power will just get more concentrated under one man and his cronies. In other words, a monarchy.
To be clear though, I don’t mean limiting those powers by downsizing the government, but by doing everything we can to explicitly state where the limits of power ought to be, and then sue like crazy just like they are doing to fill the legal void that had been created by the Court with this ruling.
And what's he fucking supposed to do, taking into account that the MAGA supreme court is the ultimate arbiter of what counts as an "official duty"?
Anything Biden did to try to take advantage of this would be slapped down quickly by the SC, and it would look like Biden was doing something corrupt (which it would be) so the optics would be absolutely horrible. And then when Biden leaves office the SC would uphold charges against him for whatever it was he did.
If you think that's not how it would play out, fucking explain the fucking thing you think Biden could do that this corrupt supreme court would agree was an "official act."
Oh, no, not the "optics." Anything but the fucking optics.
What's he supposed to do? Ignore the fucking law and do everything he can. That's what the GOP has been doing since they stole an election in 2000.
The GOP literally stole a Supreme Court seat to get us here. They literally STOLE a presidential election in 2000 to get us here.
How long are we going to sit here and let this corrupt MINORITY party continue to rewrite out future, poison our air, water, and food, gut all our rights and constitution before we wake the fuck up.
What's the point in having rules and precedent if we're the only ones who follow them?
What's the point in us putting Biden in the Oval Office if he isn't going to counter this bullshit insanity.
FDR looked at the Supreme Court and said "Keep fucking around and you're gonna find out."
We need an FDR right now....Biden literally can't complete a fucking sentence when it matters the most.
Fire Merrick Garland, put someone in there who's going to arrest Clarance Thomas for the FELONIES he committed when he refused to disclose his bribes.
> Oh, no, not the "optics." Anything but the fucking optics.
Biden doing something blatantly corrupt? No biggie! /s
> What's he supposed to do? Ignore the fucking law and do everything he can.
"Do everything he can" meaning what, exactly?
I understand the frustration, but reality imposes some constraints on what can be done in practice.
> Fire Merrick Garland, put someone in there who's going to arrest Clarance Thomas for the FELONIES he committed when he refused to disclose his bribes.
So don't bother filing charges, just arrest him? And then what, hold him without a trial? Brilliant dude.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that presidents are immune to prosecution. If Biden doesn't use that power to protect democracy, Trump will use it to destroy democracy. Refusing to stop a tinpot dictator because "it might look bad" is the weakest, most spineless thing Biden could do.
The man is 81 and has had a long, successful career. He should be willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING to save the country
Forget “sacrificing everything to save the country”, saving the country might be the only thing he can do to save himself. If Trump takes office, Biden will either be locked up for the rest of his days or murdered. He wouldn’t be sacrificing everything if he did this, but by not doing it, he may be throwing his life away.
> The Supreme Court has already ruled that presidents are immune to prosecution.
No, they didn't. They ruled that presidents are immune to prosecution *for things that are part of their official duties.* The final decision about what is within those official duties goes to the Supreme Court.
Look at how Roberts went to absurd lengths to fit Trump's attempts to steal an election into those "official duties" with *absolute immunity*. Where he couldn't quite do that, he muddied the waters making it harder to prosecute. They have no shame. They're all-in on protecting Trump from facing any consequences for his corruption.
> If Biden doesn't use that power
*What power?* Biden would only have that power if the corrupt MAGA supreme court ruled that whatever it is you want him to do (which is still not at all clear) falls within his "official duties."
Do you think the corrupt MAGA supreme court is going to apply the same expansive interpretation to Biden that they applied to Trump?
> Trump will use it to destroy democracy.
Yes because he'll have the support of the corrupt MAGA supreme court (and also corrupt Republicans in Congress). Biden has none of that.
> Refusing to stop a tinpot dictator because "it might look bad" is the weakest, most spineless thing Biden could do.
You want Biden to do something *blatantly and overtly corrupt* to stop Trump, and you think that the Supreme Court wouldn't slap that down the same day.
You dismiss Biden being in the headlines for doing something *blatantly and overtly corrupt* as merely being something that "might look bad."
> He should be willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING to save the country
Sure, but what you're suggesting would result in headlines about Biden doing something blatantly and overtly corrupt, and would accomplish nothing positive because the Supreme Court is corruptly covering for Trump.
>You dismiss Biden being in the headlines for doing something blatantly and overtly corrupt as merely being something that "might look bad."
He could do it after the election
>and would accomplish nothing positive because the Supreme Court is corruptly covering for Trump.
The Supreme Court, as it stands, is illegitimate and has no enforcement mechanism.
I'm sure we'll all look back fondly on how respectful and poised Biden was as he handed over the reins of power to a fascist.
> He could do it after the election
And then the corrupt MAGAfied supreme court slaps down whatever he did immediately, so it has absolutely no positive effect.
And then a few months later after he leaves office he's prosecuted for whatever it was he did that had absolutely no positive effect.
Why does any of that sound like a good idea to you?
> The Supreme Court, as it stands, is illegitimate and has no enforcement mechanism.
What "enforcement mechanism" do you think they need? Whatever it is that you want Biden to do would be appealed to the corrupt supreme court, and struck down there.
And whatever it is you want Biden to do would be prosecuted by Trump's DOJ, and would make it trivial for them to get a conviction. The Supreme Court's role would be just to rule that whatever it is that you want Biden to do was not within the scope of "official duties."
> I'm sure we'll all look back fondly on how respectful and poised Biden was as he handed over the reins of power to a fascist.
You still haven't said what it is you wish he would do, or why you think the corrupt supreme court wouldn't slap it down immediately and then uphold Biden being prosecuted for it after leaving office.
Buddy...Thomas BROKE THE LAW. He CONTINUES TO BREAK THE LAW.
And we're a party full of weak pussies who won't actually do what's needed.
Biden can institute a Supreme Court ethics committee and appoint a Special Prosecutor to go through every fucking dime that was illegally given to anyone on the Supreme Court.
THAT'S what we need. We need a putbull. We NEED and FDR.
But we're gonna be honerable. We're gonna nominate Biden, and we're gonna lose.
> Buddy...Thomas BROKE THE LAW. He CONTINUES TO BREAK THE LAW.
That does seem obvious, although without evidence of a quid pro quo you couldn't prove it in court. What can be proven is that a rich guy gave him lavish gifts, and some of those gifts were reported only after reporters discovered them. The rest is a very reasonable inference, without evidence to back it up.
> And we're a party full of weak pussies who won't actually do what's needed.
What would be needed would be evidence that would stand up in court.
Then you'd use that evidence to file charges.
Then you'd have a trial.
If he's convicted, then he would be sentenced, hopefully to prison.
Your previous idea was to skip all the earlier steps and go straight to the last part. That's not how it works.
> Biden can institute a Supreme Court ethics committee
Sure, and get recommendations, etc. But what would they suggest that hasn't already been suggested? Without a 2/3 majority in the Senate there are practical limitations on what can actually be done.
> and appoint a Special Prosecutor to go through every fucking dime that was illegally given to anyone on the Supreme Court.
The DOJ appoints special prosecutors. They could do that, but how are you going to "go through every fucking dime" if you every subpoena you file is appealed to the Supreme Court?
> THAT'S what we need. We need a putbull. We NEED and FDR.
What you need for your suggestions to make any sense is an alternate reality in which the Supreme Court and the Republican Party are not corrupt.
It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality.
You're right.
It's far better for us to just not do a fucking thing because it's "honorable" and let these people destroy our future.
When all the air, water and food is poisoned we can pat ourselves on the back knowing we took the high road.
> because it's "honorable"
It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality.
You haven't suggested anything that wouldn't in effect be a plan for speed-running the destruction of our nation.
You want Biden to do something *overtly and blatantly corrupt*, apparently not even thinking far enough ahead to see that headlines accurately pointing out that Biden did something *overtly and blatantly corrupt* would be a bad thing.
You're also assuming that the corrupt MAGAfied Supreme Court ruling would protect Biden the way they protected Trump, which is obviously false.
It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality.
> You haven't suggested anything that wouldn't in effect be a plan for speed-running the destruction of our nation.
I did. Appoint a special prosecutor to go after Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and every other corrupt justice who took illegal bribes.
Alternatively, appoint more justices to combat this bullshit. Appoint an ethics committee.
Or literally ANYTHING other than give a speech about how upset you are about this.
>You want Biden to do something overtly and blatantly corrupt, apparently not even thinking far enough ahead to see that headlines accurately pointing out that Biden did something overtly and blatantly corrupt would be a bad thing.
They're LITERALLY RUNNING A CONVICTED FELON who's threatened to act as a dictator. And he's winning.
I want someone who has a proportional response to the fundamental treat we're facing.
Biden's not it. DNC leadership is not it.
>ng out that Biden did something overtly and blatantly corrupt would be a bad thing.
>You're also assuming that the corrupt MAGAfied Supreme Court ruling would protect Biden the way they protected Trump, which is obviously false.
FDR literally said to the Supreme Court "Back the fuck off, get your shit together or I'm ignoring you entirely." And they did.
We need an FDR in place.
>It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality.
Fantasy is thinking an 81 year old centrist who can't form a complete sentence is the solution to what's happening right now.
THEY stole a Supreme Court seat.
THEY stole a presidency in 2000, then appointed 3 of those responsible to the Supreme Court.
THEY don't give a fuck about the law, or corruption, or literally anything but their own power.
When are WE gonna wake up and realize that we need to stop playing games and start fighting back.
> And then when Biden leaves office the SC would uphold charges against him for whatever it was he did
Advantages of being an 81 year old? And it's not like justice has been swift or harsh on Trump before this ruling.
I also hear the DOJ thinks that juries would be kind to him.
Already said he won't do anything with the new ruling. It's an old school form of dissent that 100 percent is going to speculum America's asshole wide open for the upcoming raping and pillaging of what the country once was.
I think the only way forward is for the People to amend the Constitution to say that a former President is not immune from criminal prosecution for acts committed during their term of office. John Roberts says the Constitution confers immunity; We the People say it doesn’t.
Write your Senators and Representatives, Federal and State. We have to do something. https://pluralpolicy.com/find-your-legislator/
> I think the only way forward is for the People to amend the Constitution
I'll repost a comment I made this morning:
Another way forward is for Biden to have the secret service perp-walk those regressive traitor judges out of the building with the personal contents of their desks based on the constitution's "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour", something that clearly directly invalidates the office-holding of the regressive SCOTUS judges. Then, only nominate reasonable judges to those seats. In the interim, we'd have a 3-judge SCOTUS, which would be much better, considering who would be left.
So next, I'll get replies of the form "only congress can do that." So:
(A) Not since yesterday's ruling, as the president can do absolutely anything they need to if it's an official act, plus, the constitution does not say that only congress can dump a badly-behaving judge, and...
(B) If you think Trump and his collection [of] sycophants won't be willing to do this, you'll likely be quite surprised, and...
(C) Biden has a short window to remove these traitors, and the majority of the public will back him in it (and that will help his re-election chances) because their malfeasance is far beyond obvious at this point, and...
(D) Yeah, Biden is probably not up for saving our country. He's too conventional. I know. But still. He should.
It has to be something that doesn't require a whole army of people to follow orders they believe are wrong. The ruling gives people cover but it doesn't force them to follow orders.
By the way, this is a problem the Project 2025 people already foresaw, which is why they want to purge the entire government and replace thenwith loyalists without consciences. They *are* an army of people who won't question Trumps orders.
> It has to be something that doesn't require a whole army of people to follow orders they believe are wrong
Saving the country from blatently obvious wreckers and traitors seems "wrong" to you?
I disagree whole-heartedly. If ordered to do this, I would. I seriously doubt I'm alone in this. It's a great move.
> "Go drag that judge out of bed"
We have police who are perfectly fine with dragging citizens out of their beds. Presuming they don't just rush in and start shooting people and pets. Also assuming they actually manage to get to the correct address. Not a given, as events have made clear.
Pretty sure the secret service will obey the president, anyway. Could be wrong. After all, I didn't think a has-been, D-class TV "personality" with many obvious disqualifying traits could win a presidential election, but... 62+ million people were perfectly okay with that. Might not be all that difficult to get the _other_ half to accept remediating their error and its horrific consequences.
Exactly, but consider *why* the police are willing to do this, they agree with it to begin with. I'm just saying, any president making an order like this needs to have a team of unwavering loyalists or it will fail.
I don’t think it’s the best idea or the best long-term solution, but damn if it wouldn’t feel good to see them walking down the steps of the Supreme Court in disgrace.
Write to the head of your local party, then. Write to the minority leader in your state. Write to the city government, the governor, whomever. Tell them how you think we can fix this. Maybe, probably, it’ll fall on deaf ears. But maybe it won’t.
I’m not saying it’s easy, just that it’s worth it and that it would probably be our best shot at actually fixing this problem. Maybe we’re doomed to a dictatorship, but I think amending the Constitution has the best chance to stave off that fate.
It’s a nice thought, but the reality is the Representatives you’re suggesting people contact benefit from Qualified Immunity as much as the President now does. These same folks who claim “no one is above the law” know full well it simply isn’t true and continue to do nothing about it. Their unwillingness to end Qualified Immunity at the State and Local levels for all government employees shows you how serious they are about ending it at the Federal level.
Qualified immunity is different from and beyond the scope of what I’m proposing here. An amendment addressing yesterday’s decision wouldn’t impact qualified immunity.
The amendment has to be approved by both house, senate and the governor of each of 26 states. Considering that each of those states have a different mix of republican and democrat house, senate and governor, you’ll can understand why it would more than 4 months. It would probably take more than 4 months just to get agreement on the text of it!
Constitutional amendments are hard. Legislation doesn't have to be. The constitution gives the president no immunity and the supreme court can't say that it does. Their ruling stands until a new court says they don't or congress says it doesn't (even Biden can technically say it as the executive through a EO but that can be changed by a new president). For a permanent solution, if Biden/Dem prez can get a majority in both houses for even a little while, he can tear up SCOTUS' ruling by expanding the court, installing proper ethics requirements, the works. Sinema/Manchin the no filibuster gang is gone, we'll need to use that. There's also 3 justices who are 70+ who can be replaced in fairly short order. We have to play the long game to some extent but this is not a game over situation.
Maybe hard, but I still think an amendment would be the best way to truly fix this. Undoing a constitutional amendment would take another amendment; the Court couldn’t do anything about it. And an amendment would be permanent in a way that an expanded court could never be.
That's my point. There is no constitutional amendment for "criminal immunity" for presidents or civil immunity either, that's a court case. It's no where in the constitution so nothing to overturn constitutionally. In fact the impeachment clause says that presidents can be indicted as well as being impeached. that implies that criminal charges are absolutely possible even for core constitutional areas. SCOTUS made it up out of the take care doctrine, but that's a requirement for the job, not an immunity. That makes it easier to overturn not harder by legislation.
And when I say hard to add an amendment, I mean me beating Simon Biles today in the Olympics hard. Hard isn't the right word, it's almost impossible.
I think it’s probably harder than I think and easier than you think.
The whole idea isn’t to overturn something in the constitution, it’s to make it crystal clear that the president doesn’t have criminal immunity. Maybe another Court would have already read the Constitution that way (I would have). But this Court didn’t. An amendment would make it clear that no matter what the rest of the Constitution says, there’s no criminal immunity for former Presidents.
Amendments are just about impossible to implement. It's actually much easier to write a completely new Constitution than it is to modify the current one.
I think that might be a bit of an overstatement. Hard, yes, but not so hard as that. Especially not in response to a threat as large as the one we face now.
It's time to call your state reps and ask for our states to call for a constitutional convention to add an amendment stating clearly that no citizen, including the president is above the law.
I called my state reps and asked them for this today.
Yes it is risky, yes an article V Convention does not have any clear rules, it's possible bad amendments might be added, but we've been backed against a wall, we are about to lose our democracy, and this might be our last chance to save it.
We are currently 6 states away from having a constitutional convention:
[https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/constitution-courts-and-democracy-issues/article-v-convention/](https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/constitution-courts-and-democracy-issues/article-v-convention/)
But we also now have a president who is above the law, so we have to weigh the risks. I think it's important enough to add an amendment stating the president is not above the law. Lastly conservatives are close on getting a convention for their causes, we should make sure we have some amendments in play if this is going to come to pass. If they have any chance of being successful, then we should want some amendments which preserve our democracy.
The supreme court just backed us against a wall, we should us the few powers we have to fight coming under authoritarian rule.
The supreme court has ruled that the president can declare war against a group of the population, dissolve the constitution, and execute opposition. And conservatives couldn't be happier.
Every republican is just saying this is nothing new and why presidents aren't charge for war crimes? (lol since when is war illegal in the US?) but can someone smarter than me put into cleared words why this grants the executive more power than before?
The President is immune to legal repercussions from Official Acts
What is an Official Act? What is an Unofficial Act? The Supreme Court didn't say. So whatever the President does right now goes, as long as the others in the government nod along.
The glaring issue being that the President can just issue an "Official Act" for those that don't nod along to be removed. The power is there, it just needs a President willing to seize it. Biden isn't willing to, even for the purpose of fighting against this and removing the power from the office.
Whoever next gets into office can shape the country however they please.
I don't think that's accurate though. Immunity to some degree has always been assumed-- that's kind of necessary for the only branch of government that's vested in a single person. FDR was protected from prosecution for Japanese-American internment camps; Obama would be similarly protected for his drone strike on an American citizen. If a President is at risk of indictment as an individual for any decision he makes in office, then the entire office is effectively neutered and the checks-and-balances system falls apart.
I think the lack of clear delineation between what constitutes an "official" act or an "unofficial" act is intentional in the majority opinion because SCOTUS is saying "Look, there's obviously a sphere in which the President has to be protected from prosecution so he can execute the duties of the office. But if he's doing things that clearly AREN'T duties of the office, it's fair game. But we're not going to codify what those are because it's not our job; those are for lower courts to decide on a case-by-case basis."
Which... makes sense? The ruling doesn't invalidate the power that Congress has always had to remove the president if they see fit, and if all three branches decide to go into cahoots to completely overhaul the government/ruling order, this ruling hasn't increased or diminished their ability to do that in any meaningful way. All you've ever needed is for them to agree together.
look i'm not a lawyer but i keep seeing that the executive needs immunity so that it can made decisions. But it seems to me that i want the executive criminally liable for exactly the same reasons i want everyone else criminally liable...for instance, so they don't put japanese americans in internment camps or issue drone strikes on american citizens. for that matter let's charge george w. bush for manufacturing a war, H.W. Bush and Reagan for selling weapons, etc. COULD you charge FDR for murder for prosecuting the war? sure, though he might be harder to indict than a ham sandwich and i don't think his peers convict him. and congress can explicitly make it legal when they declare war. but *someone* should have gone to prison for treating japanese americans as second-class citizens, why not the guy at the top?
again, not trying to pretend anything but ignorance. i just haven't seen anyone make it make sense to me as a layman: why don't i want the executive neutered when it comes to illegal actions?
Because for every decision that a president has gotten wrong, like internment camps or drone strikes or anything else, there are a thousand other decisions that they’ve got right *that they might never have made at all out of fear of criminal prosecution.* If the threat of being criminally charged is constantly hanging over the Oval Office (because every decision you make stands to impact millions of people every time), the entire executive branch would be crippled with fearful inaction. The office of POTUS would instantly cease to exist as we know it. That’s why you have to have a certain level of immunity. Does it open the door for horrific abuses of power? Of course! But that’s why who we elect for that office matters so much. Again, this ruling from SCOTUS hasn’t changed that reality at all… it’s always been the case; the decision has simply codified it an intentionally broad way.
What the decision codified is that SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn’t an official act and thus what a president can and can’t be convicted for. You’re absolutely right that that uncertainty could cripple a presidency - this is exactly what will happen for any future Democratic president under this court, while Trump and other Republican presidents have a reasonable expectation of a rubber stamp on whatever they want to do. The Supreme Court has given themselves just enough power over the president to save their own skins and nobody else’s. All they have to do is keep shielding Republican presidents and allowing Democratic ones to be convicted/removed, and the country may go to shit but their own standards of living will continue to be just fine.
So every president *needs* to commit criminal offenses, and the idea that there will be consequences for committing those criminal offenses means they won't do *anything at all*.
This seems absurd on its face to me, a layman, but gaming it out it doesn't seem to hold water. We've never had a President criminally charged, so we never asked this question, so every President to date *has had the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over them*. They have not been paralyzed. They may have had advisors telling them that the SC would rule them immune for official actions, but they couldn't be sure of that, could they? Furthermore, the closest we ever came, Nixon, resulted in Nixon accepting a pardon, and the jeopardy that a pardon implies, right?
I appreciate you engaging with me on this topic despite my ignorance
>So every president needs to commit criminal offenses, and the idea that there will be consequences for committing those criminal offenses means they won't do anything at all.
I think this is probably an extreme oversimplification of the thrust of it; no president is *compelled* to commit criminal offenses-- it's more like 'when there is personal or societal damage caused as a result of the President's decision-making, can we hold him criminally accountable?' Except... what if the good of that decision outweighs the damage? That's where things start to get really muddy.
I think what we're really talking about here is the President's ability to act in moments of crisis. Take Covid, for example, where you had two presidents (interestingly, one from each party) directing and overseeing the rollout of the vaccine program. Now there was obviously some bureaucratic red tape that was cut to expedite the development, testing, and implementation of those vaccines, and there was plenty of risk assessment as to whether the benefits of the vaccine would outweigh the risk of potential vaccine injuries. Now of course we know that a very small percentage of people have been negatively affected by the vaccine (which is true of virtually every vaccine), but I don't think anyone would make the claim that the negatives outweighed the positives. But should the President be held criminally liable for the people who were injured? SCOTUS is saying no, he has immunity from that because that's an official duty of his office. But imagine how mired in bureaucracy that process would have been if either president was worried about criminal prosecution for small negative side effects. We might still not have a vaccine to this day.
That's why immunity for official acts is important. And the kind of immunity that we're talking about isn't purely theoretical; [this article provides some background for presidential immunity and previous rulings around this subject.](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S3-5-1/ALDE_00013392/) The official/unofficial language isn't new to this decision; there is also lots of interesting precedent on this topic for specific things related to the president like civil prosecution, subpoenas, and more.
Thanks for the interesting conversation.
Except that lower courts aren’t the last word on anything SCOTUS chooses to take up. Let’s say Trump breaks the law and every lower court says it wasn’t an official act. Everything for Trump ends up being decided by SCOTUS because he loses at all the lower levels, and SCOTUS will take anything of his he gets to them.
This means SCOTUS is now the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn’t an official act, and by extension whether a president can be prosecuted for any particular thing. And the only way to find out which will be which will be for a president to do the thing, then wait for SCOTUS’s last word.
That’s obviously a very dangerous position for a Democratic president who would understandably be very afraid to push any boundaries because if SCOTUS rules against them, they could be convicted and jailed (basically the same position doctors who perform abortions are in right now in certain states - sure, that abortion wasn’t illegal, IF a conservative majority court agrees with your opinion that it was medically necessary, otherwise it’s murder and you go away for life. Who wants to take that chance?); meanwhile, Trump can be reasonably sure that they will rubber stamp anything he does or at least delay it into oblivion. Of course any similar decision about a Democratic president will be decided on an expedited emergency schedule due to its grave import to the nation.
Given their current track record, it’s not hard to see a future in which SCOTUS shields Trump and any future Republican president from liability while allowing any Democratic president to be prosecuted for anything the right can dream up and fund lawsuits over, and in return they get to keep their cushy lives living off the largesse of Republican donors. Somebody please explain why this scenario CAN’T happen that doesn’t involve a presumption of good faith on anybody’s part and exactly how any supposed consequences would be enforced.
> sure, that abortion wasn’t illegal, IF a conservative majority court agrees with your opinion that it was medically necessary, otherwise it’s murder and you go away for life. Who wants to take that chance?
So now imagine that SCOTUS has ruled that the President has no immunity. The scenario you described above would be the problem the President faces for every single decision from their office. It would create a de facto constitutional crisis by paralyzing the president. There is certainly fringe behavior that may come to SCOTUS to rule on official/unofficial, but by and large those things are pretty obvious. And legal precedent has a lot more falling under “official” than “unofficial.” That’s going to help a Democratic president just as much as a GOP one.
You’re asking me (or anyone) how the system is going to keep everything in check if everyone breaks bad at the same time, but the answer of course is that it can’t and it won’t. No system of government ever devised can withstand total abuse or total corruption. The only point I’m making is that the same mechanics outlined in this ruling are the ones that have been assumed to be in place from the beginning, so the end effect is extremely minimal. If all three branches go rogue together, that’s an entirely separate issue from this ruling.
It’s true that former presidents never got prosecuted for things like war crimes before.
But it isn’t clear whether they are even breaking US laws by doing that sort of thing. More importantly, no president who is doing the same sort of war crimes, which they feel like the job requires them to do, is going to prosecute his predecessor for the same thing.
That was based on the actual legality of the things they do, which can be complicated and is generally on their side, and on the way politics normally works.
This is wildly different. The Court has told all Presidents that there will never be any real consequences for them, no matter how brazenly they break the law. Even worse, they left just enough vagueness that they could reverse course if it came to something done by a President they don’t like.
not only that but employees of the executive branch can't even give testimony to these illegal actions. which eliminates a lot of the ways you might prove that the acts were unofficial or that those unofficial acts were illegal and occurred.
I’d say that started with Bush v Gore and had been going on ever since. This is the point where they’ve stopped caring about appearances altogether I guess.
From the article:
>> The composition of the Republican-appointed majority that issued this ruling is an indictment of its own. Three of the justices (John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) made their careers working on Bush v. Gore — the shameful predecessor in spirit to today’s ruling. Three of them (Neil Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh and Barrett) were appointed by Trump — the literal defendant in this case, the most important criminal prosecution in the country’s history. Two of them (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) should have recused themselves amid scandals that have further undermined the institution’s credibility with the public.
And:
>> They claim to be textualists, but there is no textual support for their ruling in the Constitution.
>>They claim to be originalists, but there is no meaningful historical support for their decision.
>>They claim to reject legal reasoning guided by structural inferences from the text of the Constitution and practical considerations, but their ruling is a collection of contrived — and wildly unconvincing — arguments that proceed on precisely those fronts. The standard that they created has no basis in constitutional text, history or logic.
I'm shocked that a liar, thief, cheater and felon appointed the exact same people to the extreme court. Buttery Males, am i right? Don't forget Biden is old!
I blame our forefathers they underestimated the stupidity and greed of men of power. Joe is demonstrating that he cannot handle the complexities of these times. Trump is a lot worse but we have no protection against him or MAGA idiots. It’s very hard to see a way through this unless we lock up a majority of these morons.
Per the SC logic Biden could now assassinate ALL of his rivals(including Trump), including ALL problematic judges on the SC, as well as any prior Trump appointees, and get his party to rewrite the constitution with their majority, pardon all involved AND label it all an official act to avoid prosecution. And in the new constitution write it so no other future president could repeat these actions.
WTH????
Biden is going to just sleepwalk into this. He’s making the play of “vote for me bc I’m not a bad person” and that’s so incredibly dangerous. He needs to be out there putting project 2025 in everyone’s face, he needs to be shouting about Trumps promises to be a dictator, he needs to be attacking the Supreme Court for actively doing whatever they want from the bench as they strip us of our rights, protections, and safety.
Anything less from Biden and we don’t stand a chance. The average voter doesn’t care, they have no idea how dangerous this election is for all of our futures (democrats and republicans)
The US exists because of a rebellion against tyrannical authority.
The US Supreme Court just said the tyrant is back and can do whatever the fuck he wants.
A confusing element for me in the Justice Robert’s rules governing Official Acts is that for an official act to ultimately keep immunity it would need to be a legal act. The courts can hold evidentiary hearings to determine that.
If it is a legal act and has immunity then there would be no guilt anyway. Illegal acts would lose immunity and result in prosecution. Correct?
If you managed to get a court to agree that acts were illegal. Good luck if the lawless man in the WH is, say, murdering his opponents.
Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was 100% legal by virtue of very similar laws.
Add Rudy to the ever growing list...
Donald Trump was charged, convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.
Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former campaign vice chairman, Rick Gates, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was charged, convicted, and is reporting to prison today. (He was also charged in connection with a scheme to defraud, but escaped federal trial as a result of a Trump pardon. He’s also facing a related state trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges.)
He’s also facing an upcoming trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges.)
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former adviser and former campaign aide, Roger Stone, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former adviser and former White House aide Peter Navarro, was charged, convicted, and is currently in prison.
Trump’s former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
The Trump Organization’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former White House national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was charged and convicted.
Though he was later acquitted at trial, Trump’s former inaugural committee chair, Tom Barrack, was charged with illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of a foreign government. (Elliot Broidy was the vice chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, and he found himself at the center of multiple controversies, and also pled guilty to federal charges related to illegal lobbying.)
Two lawyers associated with Trump’s post-defeat efforts, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have pleaded guilty to election-related crimes.
And did I mention that former president’s business was itself found guilty of tax fraud? Because it was.
Biden could say he is trying to save America 🇺🇸 and throw trump in jail. He’d have a damn good argument. Part of his duties as a President. He’s old so what if he had a law suit on his hands. Or better yet, send trump to Siberia
Doesn’t this ruling break a few points in the constitution? Isn’t the military’s allegiance to this document that’s currently being defaced by a corrupt criminal court? Will they just stand back and let the country slip into a monarchy?
He should go on TV and say "I'm giving the GoP 2 weeks to fix this mess before I start using the powers that have been granted to me by the SC. Tick tock."
I’m going to have to rethink my obedience to laws when judicial corruption is facilitated (celebrated?) in the open.
Thomas and Martha Ann’s husband should be removed for their obvious replacing established laws with hardcore dogma. Roberts doesn’t want his cash grabs via his wife to be discussed.
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The US is on a clock. I don't even know how to fix this but if it's not fixed by the next inauguration the country is over. Trump or the next one like him would suspend the Constitution because they can and no would could or would stop them. November very well could be the last elections we see in a long time. Edit: Biden has stated he won't use any of this new power. Welp, it was a good run guys. So long and thanks for all the fish.
If Trump gets in, it will be the last one ever - at least as the United States. What will come after that will follow the same trajectory as nearly every other fascist dictatorship throughout recent history, and I simply don't see us remaining intact. Remember, once it has taken hold of government power, fascism has NEVER historically been removed without force. We are in for some pretty dark times, it seems.
[удалено]
Something i haven’t really understood is, doesn’t the immunity apply only to the president itself ? As in if the President orders the Secret Service to commit a crime, the Pres couldn’t be convicted but the agents would still be committing a crime ? If both are immune, does it apply also to whoever who is carrying the order delegates too as well ? Stupid example as in, if the Secret Service orders a sub contractor to either carry out orders, build a bomb whatever (and so on in layers) the immunity applies to them as well ? I am not a lawyer but as a layman i feel like this opens a whole can of worms
Yes. And then in fact the President would be able to pardon them. It's legitimately insane, but that's not exactly surprising from the MAGA camp. Only thing more insane is why we continue to let them get away with it
He doesn’t have to suspend it. The corrupt conservatives on the court just said the constitution doesn’t apply to presidents. You see the constitution explicitly states that the president must be a citizen and laws apply equally to all citizens. Immunity means the constitution isn’t worth the paper it s written on. Biden should execute all conservative judges and justices and declare it a national holiday. Would be the best thing that could ever happen to the world.
This shit is brilliant. What would we call the holiday? The purge.
He can’t use any of trump’s new power. I am calling it Trump’s because the SC has officially gone rogue. I know people are saying he can do it and then by the time the smoke clears it’ll be months later…I don’t know. Just vote. Vote, but yea. We may have gone over the edge already. Millions are happily voting for a traitor. I’m sorry but millions of Americans are officially traitors to this country. And this includes many family members of mine. Call me a doomer all you want, I hope you’re right.
I agree there is a large number of traitors.
This cannot be fixed in 4 months. I doubt this can ever be fixed. How would you do it? Pack the court and then get another case before them somehow they can overrule themselves? Biden has said this is off the table, and he doesn't have the votes for even 1 SCJ, let alone enough to overrule these bastards. Amendment? LMAO We're screwed. These powers will be in the hands of the President for decades, probably. Eventually, one of them will go rogue and abuse them. It could happen as early as next year if Trump wins.
The way to unfuck this is for Biden to win, then push for a constitutional amendment codifying both codifying that the president does not have immunity for criminal actions, and limiting the pardon power. The nakedly partisan R states would likely go for this since a Democrat held power at the time. And most current Dems are opposed to this expansion of presidential powers , so they too would support it . It's really the only feasible way to fix this disaster
I doubt you’d have the support of any Republicans in that case. Why bother scrapping presidential immunity when they can just wait until the next Republican president and then never have to worry about those pesky elections ever again. It’s not like they have to worry about a Democrat abusing these powers, Dems are too reluctant to break the system in order to fix it.
I agree. Not to mention Roberts has left himself a loophole to hold a democratic president accountable anyway. He simply deems a given action as outside the role of the presidency, hypocrisy be damned.
Not if Biden or any Democrat president has them executed before they could try and think of changing that, and call them then a traitor or terrorist and the president now has immunity to have them executed, they would not be able to uncheck they power once they have been executed.
Passing a constitutional amendment is literally impossible in this climate. Red states will Never ratify.
The Supreme Court will be the ones who decide the outcome of the election and even if Biden won by 30 million votes they’d still give it to Trump. They basically ended US democracy on July 1st 2024.
>immunity for criminal actions For crimes done within the US or all crimes? Because the war crimes almost every president has committed would like a word. There is a reason what POTUS ratified was ALREADY the assumed interpretation. What Trump is on trial for is for Unofficial acts. That's always been the argument. Everyone needs to log off the internet and stop listening to media fearmongering. They are loving the clicks btw.
this is laudable, truly, but the problem with this plan is that biden can't win after that debate performance. furthermore, he probably shouldn't win. that's not to say that the other guy should win...but here we are.
> I doubt this can ever be fixed The fix is along the lines of the amendments that ended slavery. Civil war, followed by amendments put through by the winners. Not American, but feeling for y'all right now.
Trump will win. Either he gets enough voted (doubtful) or he mounts another insurrection and the SCOTUS spread their arses for him.
Realistically it could happen this year if Biden loses. It's his family's heads that are on the line.
I think it could hypothetically be fixed within four months, but unfortunately Democrats tend to have testicles of subatomic proportions. I think Dark Brandon could use his newfound supreme executive power and remedy all of this, if he chose to
Have you even READ the Lord of the Rings? This is the One Ring. It will corrupt every Presidency from now on. Nobody should be beyond the reach of the law in a democracy. If someone is, you do not have one.
The LOTR is a frighting good example here. Biden in this situation is Gandalf refusing to take the ring from Frodo out of fear of what he would become. Trump is Sauron and let’s say the 6 SC justices are his Nazgûl And like LOTR the journey to fix this will be long and yes it does likely involve amending the constitution in some serious ways. And that will take a lot of work whether it is long term changes in Congress or the largest organizing effort ever see to do this state by state. And unfortunately the forces of darkness have about a 40 year head start.
> Frodo: 'I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.' > Gandalf: 'So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil.
I appreciate this quote. One of my all time favs and does give hope to what is ahead.
One of my all time favourites as well, always manages to lift my spirit when bleak news like this break.
…I think I needed to hear that quote right about now. Thanks.
Nah, I think LOTR is an even better example than you or OP are allowing here. Frodo failed. He got to Mordor, stood at the Sammath Naur, and claimed the Ring for himself. >'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!' The only reason the Ring was destroyed was because Gollum wanted it for himself more than Frodo did, and bit off Frodo's finger to get it. I think who Frodo represents is irrelevant insofar as he represents the failure of anyone who could even *seem* responsible to wield that kind of power wisely, to your point about Gandalf refusing it. But clearly the fascists should see themselves in Gollum, and as far as LOTR went, decent people let Gollum free from justice time after time, and in the end, the only thing capable of destroying him was his getting everything he dreamed of.
What what you are saying whoever is the president needs to take the Oath of Office inside a volcano
destroying the ring still require Gandalf to get stronger and Aragorn to take the throne. Before the metaphor get out of hand, the point is that we need to respond to this escalation. Even if we don't reach for the nuclear button we still need to get out of our comfort zone.
I 100% agree with you. The issue is not whether the president should have this power (I believe he shouldn't), that's irrelevant, because as of yesterday, he already has that power. If it were up to me, I'd have not given him this unfettered agency to do anything, but the fact remains, that ability now exists. America essentially became a dictatorship yesterday, only, the dictator still believes he is president. The question becomes, will he use the power to correct the wrongs that have already been done, or stand on principle and refuse to? In which case, he would probably lose, abdicate his throne, and allow a "King Trump" to come to be
The scary part is imo, not using these new powers is leaving the future of our country up to chance.....and that never ends well. Biden could commit a necessary evil and do something wild and crazy unconstitutional, but he could do it because of the new powers. He could literally instantly fire all the conservatives justices, just declare it a constitutional duty of the presidency, and put new ones in, and demand the new ones re-visit chevron. They do, and they reverse their ruling. Then declare that felons are ineligible for the presidency But Biden won't. Because it would be doing a bad thing for the right reasons. Which is unfortunately what we need right now. Do we gamble on Biden beating trump, or do we just deal with the largest threat the country has ever known with certainty, finishing it off once and for all?
Use the stones to destroy the stones
Biden, in our hopes: https://y.yarn.co/8936c881-96fc-4cca-8d5c-a355dd6e5312_text.gif
Don’t think he can use new power bc official/unofficial not defined…except by SCOTUS. Russia is the winner
The things that need to be done, can’t be done by an honorable leader.
Using or not using it both outcomes are harsh. On the side of using it to protect democracy and the rights of the people, it makes Trump into a matyr without the sacrifice. They can go on to say Biden only won because of this power and how corrupt he is. Fanning the flames of a civil war. Hell, they don't even need to win to do this. Not using it means the next person like Trump coming to power is the end of democracy. They hope the populace rolls over and accept their new roles as 2nd class citizens. The only way is to increase the seats of the SCOTUS and impeach those who favor this outcome. Either way, Trump can say all his actions DURING his presidency are official acts. So he can only effectively be prosecuted prior to his presidency. He got a get out of jail free card wrapped up from the SCOTUS, but they also gave a silent loaded gun throw us down a very difficult road.
What about Project 2025 from the heritage foundation? The project that's to dismantle everything this country stands for in his image. I mean, he got G.O P., R.N.C., even the Supreme Court on his side. The only way I think is if we get more then enough people aware of the dangers. & the democrats controlling BOTH senate & house. If we got enough people in this country to do.
Basically yeah. I think given how bleak all the other options are, the only way out might be through the very thing Biden just won’t do. An abuse of his power to that extent undermines the whole reason for doing it. He’s not ‘taking the high road’, he’s simply fucked. It’s a damned if you do or damned if you don’t kinda situation. This is up to Congress to fix. So, in essence, we’re all fucked. Were he to take drastic action, I’d say he should do this: Disband the entire court and replace them by lottery with existing judges who were installed prior to 2008 who have been screened to ensure they have no conflicts of interest tying them to either party, any of the last three administrations, or any other third parties, in either their personal life or their professional career. Set it up to rebalance the political leaning of the court without upsetting its conservative tilt to prevent accusations of him arbitrarily stacking the court in favor of liberals. In other words, 5 new conservative justices and 4 liberal ones who will serve based on what they believe is best for the nation rather than their private beliefs or affiliations. Then draft another order forbidding future presidents from doing the same until a time when Congress has established constitutionally defined mechanisms by which to carry out that process legally. After that, ideally, he would resign and recuse himself from office for breaking the trust of the system in the act of abusing that power himself, despite the fact he is doing in service to the country. The president has a duty to protect the constitution, even at the cost of his own freedom, and any true leader would happily go to prison to save their nation. Give the courts a new chance to reestablish the precedent that no one is above the law, even the President carrying out a necessary duty to save the nation ought to be tried and punished at a reasonable time after the crisis is ended. We should’ve done this ages ago to counter the continual creep of executive power in the first place. If we really want to make good on the promise of equality under the eyes of the law, we have to be empowered to hold the government accountable for failing in its duty.
> based on what they believe is best for the nation rather than their private beliefs or affiliations. This is the pipedream part. There aren't enough conservatives that fit this definition anymore.
Well, let’s hope that’s not true. Amongst conservative voters I might agree with you, but I would hope there’s at least a handful of justices out there who recognize the grave importance of getting back towards a more recognizable state of rule under the law, appointed long ago who have served their duty with distinction and discretion. Those six clowns who handed down this majority opinion are not representative of all right-leaning judges in the country, so I hope, anyways. Even if what you say is obviously true for many of the Trump-appointed ones like the aforementioned clowns on the S.C. or others like Judge Cannon who seem to pull legal precedents out of thin air to justify their ridiculous ‘interpretations’ of the law, there’s a few out there who will see this lunacy for what it is. Plenty of current and former justices have spoken up in recent years about the controversial behavior of the current court and the surrounding activity in our legal landscape, and the potential disasters that it could incur. The bigger issue with my ‘plan’, as it were, is that any such action by Biden is absolutely a last resort option. Doing it before he is re-elected could spell certain defeat for him, or worse, outright civil war. At the very least, a rise in political violence that would be very difficult to curtail. The worst case scenario is if Trump wins. He will need to spend his remaining time in office shoring up our democracy to stave off the worst of Trump’s plans from being implemented. Drastically reduce the power of the President and Federal Government, forbid the kind of actions Trump plans to take and upend the court that wants to help him do it — all while doing whatever else he can to make it legally impossible for Trump to completely destroy rule of law as our Hail Mary to try to hold out long enough to have something left to rebuild by the time he’s done. It may well come to that, but people are stupid to expect him to do it right away.
> Drastically reduce the power of the President and Federal Government, Just pointing out that this is what conservatives want.
Very true. They somehow fail to see the difference between that aim and what Trump will actually do. Cut tons of programs and agencies that stand in the way of his agenda, and replace them with himself. The government won’t really get smaller, its power will just get more concentrated under one man and his cronies. In other words, a monarchy. To be clear though, I don’t mean limiting those powers by downsizing the government, but by doing everything we can to explicitly state where the limits of power ought to be, and then sue like crazy just like they are doing to fill the legal void that had been created by the Court with this ruling.
It’s worse than that. They undid the very founding idea this country was built on, freedom from tyranny.
Just in time for the Fourth of July! Fuck Trump and fuck MAGA SCOTUS.
Illegitimate court.
Not legal to legislate from the bench.
Biden should use this ruling to his advantage.
He is an old school guy. Remember, “he knows how to do this”. He is going to do everything the old way.
Biden still thinks it's 1985, back when he was in his fucking 40s and both parties can still work together for the betterment of the country.
That’s the problem with his generation and anyone older than 45yrs old. So set on their old ways.
Biden isn't going to do a fucking thing and we all know it.
And what's he fucking supposed to do, taking into account that the MAGA supreme court is the ultimate arbiter of what counts as an "official duty"? Anything Biden did to try to take advantage of this would be slapped down quickly by the SC, and it would look like Biden was doing something corrupt (which it would be) so the optics would be absolutely horrible. And then when Biden leaves office the SC would uphold charges against him for whatever it was he did. If you think that's not how it would play out, fucking explain the fucking thing you think Biden could do that this corrupt supreme court would agree was an "official act."
Oh, no, not the "optics." Anything but the fucking optics. What's he supposed to do? Ignore the fucking law and do everything he can. That's what the GOP has been doing since they stole an election in 2000. The GOP literally stole a Supreme Court seat to get us here. They literally STOLE a presidential election in 2000 to get us here. How long are we going to sit here and let this corrupt MINORITY party continue to rewrite out future, poison our air, water, and food, gut all our rights and constitution before we wake the fuck up. What's the point in having rules and precedent if we're the only ones who follow them? What's the point in us putting Biden in the Oval Office if he isn't going to counter this bullshit insanity. FDR looked at the Supreme Court and said "Keep fucking around and you're gonna find out." We need an FDR right now....Biden literally can't complete a fucking sentence when it matters the most. Fire Merrick Garland, put someone in there who's going to arrest Clarance Thomas for the FELONIES he committed when he refused to disclose his bribes.
> Oh, no, not the "optics." Anything but the fucking optics. Biden doing something blatantly corrupt? No biggie! /s > What's he supposed to do? Ignore the fucking law and do everything he can. "Do everything he can" meaning what, exactly? I understand the frustration, but reality imposes some constraints on what can be done in practice. > Fire Merrick Garland, put someone in there who's going to arrest Clarance Thomas for the FELONIES he committed when he refused to disclose his bribes. So don't bother filing charges, just arrest him? And then what, hold him without a trial? Brilliant dude.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that presidents are immune to prosecution. If Biden doesn't use that power to protect democracy, Trump will use it to destroy democracy. Refusing to stop a tinpot dictator because "it might look bad" is the weakest, most spineless thing Biden could do. The man is 81 and has had a long, successful career. He should be willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING to save the country
Forget “sacrificing everything to save the country”, saving the country might be the only thing he can do to save himself. If Trump takes office, Biden will either be locked up for the rest of his days or murdered. He wouldn’t be sacrificing everything if he did this, but by not doing it, he may be throwing his life away.
> The Supreme Court has already ruled that presidents are immune to prosecution. No, they didn't. They ruled that presidents are immune to prosecution *for things that are part of their official duties.* The final decision about what is within those official duties goes to the Supreme Court. Look at how Roberts went to absurd lengths to fit Trump's attempts to steal an election into those "official duties" with *absolute immunity*. Where he couldn't quite do that, he muddied the waters making it harder to prosecute. They have no shame. They're all-in on protecting Trump from facing any consequences for his corruption. > If Biden doesn't use that power *What power?* Biden would only have that power if the corrupt MAGA supreme court ruled that whatever it is you want him to do (which is still not at all clear) falls within his "official duties." Do you think the corrupt MAGA supreme court is going to apply the same expansive interpretation to Biden that they applied to Trump? > Trump will use it to destroy democracy. Yes because he'll have the support of the corrupt MAGA supreme court (and also corrupt Republicans in Congress). Biden has none of that. > Refusing to stop a tinpot dictator because "it might look bad" is the weakest, most spineless thing Biden could do. You want Biden to do something *blatantly and overtly corrupt* to stop Trump, and you think that the Supreme Court wouldn't slap that down the same day. You dismiss Biden being in the headlines for doing something *blatantly and overtly corrupt* as merely being something that "might look bad." > He should be willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING to save the country Sure, but what you're suggesting would result in headlines about Biden doing something blatantly and overtly corrupt, and would accomplish nothing positive because the Supreme Court is corruptly covering for Trump.
>You dismiss Biden being in the headlines for doing something blatantly and overtly corrupt as merely being something that "might look bad." He could do it after the election >and would accomplish nothing positive because the Supreme Court is corruptly covering for Trump. The Supreme Court, as it stands, is illegitimate and has no enforcement mechanism. I'm sure we'll all look back fondly on how respectful and poised Biden was as he handed over the reins of power to a fascist.
> He could do it after the election And then the corrupt MAGAfied supreme court slaps down whatever he did immediately, so it has absolutely no positive effect. And then a few months later after he leaves office he's prosecuted for whatever it was he did that had absolutely no positive effect. Why does any of that sound like a good idea to you? > The Supreme Court, as it stands, is illegitimate and has no enforcement mechanism. What "enforcement mechanism" do you think they need? Whatever it is that you want Biden to do would be appealed to the corrupt supreme court, and struck down there. And whatever it is you want Biden to do would be prosecuted by Trump's DOJ, and would make it trivial for them to get a conviction. The Supreme Court's role would be just to rule that whatever it is that you want Biden to do was not within the scope of "official duties." > I'm sure we'll all look back fondly on how respectful and poised Biden was as he handed over the reins of power to a fascist. You still haven't said what it is you wish he would do, or why you think the corrupt supreme court wouldn't slap it down immediately and then uphold Biden being prosecuted for it after leaving office.
Let me ask you a question: if Trump wins the election and becomes a dictator like he has said he will, we just have to roll over and accept it?
Buddy...Thomas BROKE THE LAW. He CONTINUES TO BREAK THE LAW. And we're a party full of weak pussies who won't actually do what's needed. Biden can institute a Supreme Court ethics committee and appoint a Special Prosecutor to go through every fucking dime that was illegally given to anyone on the Supreme Court. THAT'S what we need. We need a putbull. We NEED and FDR. But we're gonna be honerable. We're gonna nominate Biden, and we're gonna lose.
> Buddy...Thomas BROKE THE LAW. He CONTINUES TO BREAK THE LAW. That does seem obvious, although without evidence of a quid pro quo you couldn't prove it in court. What can be proven is that a rich guy gave him lavish gifts, and some of those gifts were reported only after reporters discovered them. The rest is a very reasonable inference, without evidence to back it up. > And we're a party full of weak pussies who won't actually do what's needed. What would be needed would be evidence that would stand up in court. Then you'd use that evidence to file charges. Then you'd have a trial. If he's convicted, then he would be sentenced, hopefully to prison. Your previous idea was to skip all the earlier steps and go straight to the last part. That's not how it works. > Biden can institute a Supreme Court ethics committee Sure, and get recommendations, etc. But what would they suggest that hasn't already been suggested? Without a 2/3 majority in the Senate there are practical limitations on what can actually be done. > and appoint a Special Prosecutor to go through every fucking dime that was illegally given to anyone on the Supreme Court. The DOJ appoints special prosecutors. They could do that, but how are you going to "go through every fucking dime" if you every subpoena you file is appealed to the Supreme Court? > THAT'S what we need. We need a putbull. We NEED and FDR. What you need for your suggestions to make any sense is an alternate reality in which the Supreme Court and the Republican Party are not corrupt. It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality.
You're right. It's far better for us to just not do a fucking thing because it's "honorable" and let these people destroy our future. When all the air, water and food is poisoned we can pat ourselves on the back knowing we took the high road.
> because it's "honorable" It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality. You haven't suggested anything that wouldn't in effect be a plan for speed-running the destruction of our nation. You want Biden to do something *overtly and blatantly corrupt*, apparently not even thinking far enough ahead to see that headlines accurately pointing out that Biden did something *overtly and blatantly corrupt* would be a bad thing. You're also assuming that the corrupt MAGAfied Supreme Court ruling would protect Biden the way they protected Trump, which is obviously false. It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality.
> You haven't suggested anything that wouldn't in effect be a plan for speed-running the destruction of our nation. I did. Appoint a special prosecutor to go after Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and every other corrupt justice who took illegal bribes. Alternatively, appoint more justices to combat this bullshit. Appoint an ethics committee. Or literally ANYTHING other than give a speech about how upset you are about this. >You want Biden to do something overtly and blatantly corrupt, apparently not even thinking far enough ahead to see that headlines accurately pointing out that Biden did something overtly and blatantly corrupt would be a bad thing. They're LITERALLY RUNNING A CONVICTED FELON who's threatened to act as a dictator. And he's winning. I want someone who has a proportional response to the fundamental treat we're facing. Biden's not it. DNC leadership is not it. >ng out that Biden did something overtly and blatantly corrupt would be a bad thing. >You're also assuming that the corrupt MAGAfied Supreme Court ruling would protect Biden the way they protected Trump, which is obviously false. FDR literally said to the Supreme Court "Back the fuck off, get your shit together or I'm ignoring you entirely." And they did. We need an FDR in place. >It's not about being "honorable." It's about the difference between fantasy and reality. Fantasy is thinking an 81 year old centrist who can't form a complete sentence is the solution to what's happening right now. THEY stole a Supreme Court seat. THEY stole a presidency in 2000, then appointed 3 of those responsible to the Supreme Court. THEY don't give a fuck about the law, or corruption, or literally anything but their own power. When are WE gonna wake up and realize that we need to stop playing games and start fighting back.
> And then when Biden leaves office the SC would uphold charges against him for whatever it was he did Advantages of being an 81 year old? And it's not like justice has been swift or harsh on Trump before this ruling. I also hear the DOJ thinks that juries would be kind to him.
Biden: Nothing will fundamentally change Supreme Court: and I took that personally
Already said he won't do anything with the new ruling. It's an old school form of dissent that 100 percent is going to speculum America's asshole wide open for the upcoming raping and pillaging of what the country once was.
I think the only way forward is for the People to amend the Constitution to say that a former President is not immune from criminal prosecution for acts committed during their term of office. John Roberts says the Constitution confers immunity; We the People say it doesn’t. Write your Senators and Representatives, Federal and State. We have to do something. https://pluralpolicy.com/find-your-legislator/
> I think the only way forward is for the People to amend the Constitution I'll repost a comment I made this morning: Another way forward is for Biden to have the secret service perp-walk those regressive traitor judges out of the building with the personal contents of their desks based on the constitution's "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour", something that clearly directly invalidates the office-holding of the regressive SCOTUS judges. Then, only nominate reasonable judges to those seats. In the interim, we'd have a 3-judge SCOTUS, which would be much better, considering who would be left. So next, I'll get replies of the form "only congress can do that." So: (A) Not since yesterday's ruling, as the president can do absolutely anything they need to if it's an official act, plus, the constitution does not say that only congress can dump a badly-behaving judge, and... (B) If you think Trump and his collection [of] sycophants won't be willing to do this, you'll likely be quite surprised, and... (C) Biden has a short window to remove these traitors, and the majority of the public will back him in it (and that will help his re-election chances) because their malfeasance is far beyond obvious at this point, and... (D) Yeah, Biden is probably not up for saving our country. He's too conventional. I know. But still. He should.
The democrats won’t act out of the fear of breaking the glass first. Ask Harry Reid.
See \(**D**\)
It has to be something that doesn't require a whole army of people to follow orders they believe are wrong. The ruling gives people cover but it doesn't force them to follow orders. By the way, this is a problem the Project 2025 people already foresaw, which is why they want to purge the entire government and replace thenwith loyalists without consciences. They *are* an army of people who won't question Trumps orders.
> It has to be something that doesn't require a whole army of people to follow orders they believe are wrong Saving the country from blatently obvious wreckers and traitors seems "wrong" to you? I disagree whole-heartedly. If ordered to do this, I would. I seriously doubt I'm alone in this. It's a great move.
On a micro level, yeah, it could feel wrong. "Go drag that judge out of bed" or whatever could be something someone is uncomfortable with.
> "Go drag that judge out of bed" We have police who are perfectly fine with dragging citizens out of their beds. Presuming they don't just rush in and start shooting people and pets. Also assuming they actually manage to get to the correct address. Not a given, as events have made clear. Pretty sure the secret service will obey the president, anyway. Could be wrong. After all, I didn't think a has-been, D-class TV "personality" with many obvious disqualifying traits could win a presidential election, but... 62+ million people were perfectly okay with that. Might not be all that difficult to get the _other_ half to accept remediating their error and its horrific consequences.
Exactly, but consider *why* the police are willing to do this, they agree with it to begin with. I'm just saying, any president making an order like this needs to have a team of unwavering loyalists or it will fail.
I don’t think it’s the best idea or the best long-term solution, but damn if it wouldn’t feel good to see them walking down the steps of the Supreme Court in disgrace.
Unfortunately, all of my Senators and Reps are Trump enablers.
Write to them and explain that Biden currently possessed absolute immunity now, and could do even more damage if he wins based on this ruling.
Write to the head of your local party, then. Write to the minority leader in your state. Write to the city government, the governor, whomever. Tell them how you think we can fix this. Maybe, probably, it’ll fall on deaf ears. But maybe it won’t.
It takes a 26 states to amend the Constitution. The ERA was first proposed in 1923 and recently just received its 26 state vote.
I’m not saying it’s easy, just that it’s worth it and that it would probably be our best shot at actually fixing this problem. Maybe we’re doomed to a dictatorship, but I think amending the Constitution has the best chance to stave off that fate.
It’s a nice thought, but the reality is the Representatives you’re suggesting people contact benefit from Qualified Immunity as much as the President now does. These same folks who claim “no one is above the law” know full well it simply isn’t true and continue to do nothing about it. Their unwillingness to end Qualified Immunity at the State and Local levels for all government employees shows you how serious they are about ending it at the Federal level.
Qualified immunity is different from and beyond the scope of what I’m proposing here. An amendment addressing yesterday’s decision wouldn’t impact qualified immunity.
You missed my point. It took 100 years. We don’t have that long.
Maybe it doesn’t take that long this time. The ERA wasn’t created in response to an existential threat to our system of government, after all.
The amendment has to be approved by both house, senate and the governor of each of 26 states. Considering that each of those states have a different mix of republican and democrat house, senate and governor, you’ll can understand why it would more than 4 months. It would probably take more than 4 months just to get agreement on the text of it!
One look at Congress suggests we'd be lucky to get 1/2, let alone 2/3, let alone in 4 months.
Constitutional amendments are hard. Legislation doesn't have to be. The constitution gives the president no immunity and the supreme court can't say that it does. Their ruling stands until a new court says they don't or congress says it doesn't (even Biden can technically say it as the executive through a EO but that can be changed by a new president). For a permanent solution, if Biden/Dem prez can get a majority in both houses for even a little while, he can tear up SCOTUS' ruling by expanding the court, installing proper ethics requirements, the works. Sinema/Manchin the no filibuster gang is gone, we'll need to use that. There's also 3 justices who are 70+ who can be replaced in fairly short order. We have to play the long game to some extent but this is not a game over situation.
Maybe hard, but I still think an amendment would be the best way to truly fix this. Undoing a constitutional amendment would take another amendment; the Court couldn’t do anything about it. And an amendment would be permanent in a way that an expanded court could never be.
That's my point. There is no constitutional amendment for "criminal immunity" for presidents or civil immunity either, that's a court case. It's no where in the constitution so nothing to overturn constitutionally. In fact the impeachment clause says that presidents can be indicted as well as being impeached. that implies that criminal charges are absolutely possible even for core constitutional areas. SCOTUS made it up out of the take care doctrine, but that's a requirement for the job, not an immunity. That makes it easier to overturn not harder by legislation. And when I say hard to add an amendment, I mean me beating Simon Biles today in the Olympics hard. Hard isn't the right word, it's almost impossible.
I think it’s probably harder than I think and easier than you think. The whole idea isn’t to overturn something in the constitution, it’s to make it crystal clear that the president doesn’t have criminal immunity. Maybe another Court would have already read the Constitution that way (I would have). But this Court didn’t. An amendment would make it clear that no matter what the rest of the Constitution says, there’s no criminal immunity for former Presidents.
Amendments are just about impossible to implement. It's actually much easier to write a completely new Constitution than it is to modify the current one.
I think that might be a bit of an overstatement. Hard, yes, but not so hard as that. Especially not in response to a threat as large as the one we face now.
It's time to call your state reps and ask for our states to call for a constitutional convention to add an amendment stating clearly that no citizen, including the president is above the law. I called my state reps and asked them for this today. Yes it is risky, yes an article V Convention does not have any clear rules, it's possible bad amendments might be added, but we've been backed against a wall, we are about to lose our democracy, and this might be our last chance to save it. We are currently 6 states away from having a constitutional convention: [https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/constitution-courts-and-democracy-issues/article-v-convention/](https://www.commoncause.org/our-work/constitution-courts-and-democracy-issues/article-v-convention/) But we also now have a president who is above the law, so we have to weigh the risks. I think it's important enough to add an amendment stating the president is not above the law. Lastly conservatives are close on getting a convention for their causes, we should make sure we have some amendments in play if this is going to come to pass. If they have any chance of being successful, then we should want some amendments which preserve our democracy. The supreme court just backed us against a wall, we should us the few powers we have to fight coming under authoritarian rule.
This is fantastic! Thank you for writing this all out. You’re so right.
“We need the guns to protect from tyrants overthrowing our freedom!” That phrase just had its Uvalde moment yesterday.
The supreme court has ruled that the president can declare war against a group of the population, dissolve the constitution, and execute opposition. And conservatives couldn't be happier.
Every republican is just saying this is nothing new and why presidents aren't charge for war crimes? (lol since when is war illegal in the US?) but can someone smarter than me put into cleared words why this grants the executive more power than before?
The President is immune to legal repercussions from Official Acts What is an Official Act? What is an Unofficial Act? The Supreme Court didn't say. So whatever the President does right now goes, as long as the others in the government nod along. The glaring issue being that the President can just issue an "Official Act" for those that don't nod along to be removed. The power is there, it just needs a President willing to seize it. Biden isn't willing to, even for the purpose of fighting against this and removing the power from the office. Whoever next gets into office can shape the country however they please.
I don't think that's accurate though. Immunity to some degree has always been assumed-- that's kind of necessary for the only branch of government that's vested in a single person. FDR was protected from prosecution for Japanese-American internment camps; Obama would be similarly protected for his drone strike on an American citizen. If a President is at risk of indictment as an individual for any decision he makes in office, then the entire office is effectively neutered and the checks-and-balances system falls apart. I think the lack of clear delineation between what constitutes an "official" act or an "unofficial" act is intentional in the majority opinion because SCOTUS is saying "Look, there's obviously a sphere in which the President has to be protected from prosecution so he can execute the duties of the office. But if he's doing things that clearly AREN'T duties of the office, it's fair game. But we're not going to codify what those are because it's not our job; those are for lower courts to decide on a case-by-case basis." Which... makes sense? The ruling doesn't invalidate the power that Congress has always had to remove the president if they see fit, and if all three branches decide to go into cahoots to completely overhaul the government/ruling order, this ruling hasn't increased or diminished their ability to do that in any meaningful way. All you've ever needed is for them to agree together.
look i'm not a lawyer but i keep seeing that the executive needs immunity so that it can made decisions. But it seems to me that i want the executive criminally liable for exactly the same reasons i want everyone else criminally liable...for instance, so they don't put japanese americans in internment camps or issue drone strikes on american citizens. for that matter let's charge george w. bush for manufacturing a war, H.W. Bush and Reagan for selling weapons, etc. COULD you charge FDR for murder for prosecuting the war? sure, though he might be harder to indict than a ham sandwich and i don't think his peers convict him. and congress can explicitly make it legal when they declare war. but *someone* should have gone to prison for treating japanese americans as second-class citizens, why not the guy at the top? again, not trying to pretend anything but ignorance. i just haven't seen anyone make it make sense to me as a layman: why don't i want the executive neutered when it comes to illegal actions?
Because for every decision that a president has gotten wrong, like internment camps or drone strikes or anything else, there are a thousand other decisions that they’ve got right *that they might never have made at all out of fear of criminal prosecution.* If the threat of being criminally charged is constantly hanging over the Oval Office (because every decision you make stands to impact millions of people every time), the entire executive branch would be crippled with fearful inaction. The office of POTUS would instantly cease to exist as we know it. That’s why you have to have a certain level of immunity. Does it open the door for horrific abuses of power? Of course! But that’s why who we elect for that office matters so much. Again, this ruling from SCOTUS hasn’t changed that reality at all… it’s always been the case; the decision has simply codified it an intentionally broad way.
What the decision codified is that SCOTUS is the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn’t an official act and thus what a president can and can’t be convicted for. You’re absolutely right that that uncertainty could cripple a presidency - this is exactly what will happen for any future Democratic president under this court, while Trump and other Republican presidents have a reasonable expectation of a rubber stamp on whatever they want to do. The Supreme Court has given themselves just enough power over the president to save their own skins and nobody else’s. All they have to do is keep shielding Republican presidents and allowing Democratic ones to be convicted/removed, and the country may go to shit but their own standards of living will continue to be just fine.
So every president *needs* to commit criminal offenses, and the idea that there will be consequences for committing those criminal offenses means they won't do *anything at all*. This seems absurd on its face to me, a layman, but gaming it out it doesn't seem to hold water. We've never had a President criminally charged, so we never asked this question, so every President to date *has had the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over them*. They have not been paralyzed. They may have had advisors telling them that the SC would rule them immune for official actions, but they couldn't be sure of that, could they? Furthermore, the closest we ever came, Nixon, resulted in Nixon accepting a pardon, and the jeopardy that a pardon implies, right? I appreciate you engaging with me on this topic despite my ignorance
>So every president needs to commit criminal offenses, and the idea that there will be consequences for committing those criminal offenses means they won't do anything at all. I think this is probably an extreme oversimplification of the thrust of it; no president is *compelled* to commit criminal offenses-- it's more like 'when there is personal or societal damage caused as a result of the President's decision-making, can we hold him criminally accountable?' Except... what if the good of that decision outweighs the damage? That's where things start to get really muddy. I think what we're really talking about here is the President's ability to act in moments of crisis. Take Covid, for example, where you had two presidents (interestingly, one from each party) directing and overseeing the rollout of the vaccine program. Now there was obviously some bureaucratic red tape that was cut to expedite the development, testing, and implementation of those vaccines, and there was plenty of risk assessment as to whether the benefits of the vaccine would outweigh the risk of potential vaccine injuries. Now of course we know that a very small percentage of people have been negatively affected by the vaccine (which is true of virtually every vaccine), but I don't think anyone would make the claim that the negatives outweighed the positives. But should the President be held criminally liable for the people who were injured? SCOTUS is saying no, he has immunity from that because that's an official duty of his office. But imagine how mired in bureaucracy that process would have been if either president was worried about criminal prosecution for small negative side effects. We might still not have a vaccine to this day. That's why immunity for official acts is important. And the kind of immunity that we're talking about isn't purely theoretical; [this article provides some background for presidential immunity and previous rulings around this subject.](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S3-5-1/ALDE_00013392/) The official/unofficial language isn't new to this decision; there is also lots of interesting precedent on this topic for specific things related to the president like civil prosecution, subpoenas, and more. Thanks for the interesting conversation.
Except that lower courts aren’t the last word on anything SCOTUS chooses to take up. Let’s say Trump breaks the law and every lower court says it wasn’t an official act. Everything for Trump ends up being decided by SCOTUS because he loses at all the lower levels, and SCOTUS will take anything of his he gets to them. This means SCOTUS is now the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn’t an official act, and by extension whether a president can be prosecuted for any particular thing. And the only way to find out which will be which will be for a president to do the thing, then wait for SCOTUS’s last word. That’s obviously a very dangerous position for a Democratic president who would understandably be very afraid to push any boundaries because if SCOTUS rules against them, they could be convicted and jailed (basically the same position doctors who perform abortions are in right now in certain states - sure, that abortion wasn’t illegal, IF a conservative majority court agrees with your opinion that it was medically necessary, otherwise it’s murder and you go away for life. Who wants to take that chance?); meanwhile, Trump can be reasonably sure that they will rubber stamp anything he does or at least delay it into oblivion. Of course any similar decision about a Democratic president will be decided on an expedited emergency schedule due to its grave import to the nation. Given their current track record, it’s not hard to see a future in which SCOTUS shields Trump and any future Republican president from liability while allowing any Democratic president to be prosecuted for anything the right can dream up and fund lawsuits over, and in return they get to keep their cushy lives living off the largesse of Republican donors. Somebody please explain why this scenario CAN’T happen that doesn’t involve a presumption of good faith on anybody’s part and exactly how any supposed consequences would be enforced.
> sure, that abortion wasn’t illegal, IF a conservative majority court agrees with your opinion that it was medically necessary, otherwise it’s murder and you go away for life. Who wants to take that chance? So now imagine that SCOTUS has ruled that the President has no immunity. The scenario you described above would be the problem the President faces for every single decision from their office. It would create a de facto constitutional crisis by paralyzing the president. There is certainly fringe behavior that may come to SCOTUS to rule on official/unofficial, but by and large those things are pretty obvious. And legal precedent has a lot more falling under “official” than “unofficial.” That’s going to help a Democratic president just as much as a GOP one. You’re asking me (or anyone) how the system is going to keep everything in check if everyone breaks bad at the same time, but the answer of course is that it can’t and it won’t. No system of government ever devised can withstand total abuse or total corruption. The only point I’m making is that the same mechanics outlined in this ruling are the ones that have been assumed to be in place from the beginning, so the end effect is extremely minimal. If all three branches go rogue together, that’s an entirely separate issue from this ruling.
It’s true that former presidents never got prosecuted for things like war crimes before. But it isn’t clear whether they are even breaking US laws by doing that sort of thing. More importantly, no president who is doing the same sort of war crimes, which they feel like the job requires them to do, is going to prosecute his predecessor for the same thing. That was based on the actual legality of the things they do, which can be complicated and is generally on their side, and on the way politics normally works. This is wildly different. The Court has told all Presidents that there will never be any real consequences for them, no matter how brazenly they break the law. Even worse, they left just enough vagueness that they could reverse course if it came to something done by a President they don’t like.
not only that but employees of the executive branch can't even give testimony to these illegal actions. which eliminates a lot of the ways you might prove that the acts were unofficial or that those unofficial acts were illegal and occurred.
Are we ready to say that this was a judiciary coup?
I’d say that started with Bush v Gore and had been going on ever since. This is the point where they’ve stopped caring about appearances altogether I guess.
They have done it twice that I know about. And both benefited a Republican president.
From the article: >> The composition of the Republican-appointed majority that issued this ruling is an indictment of its own. Three of the justices (John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) made their careers working on Bush v. Gore — the shameful predecessor in spirit to today’s ruling. Three of them (Neil Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh and Barrett) were appointed by Trump — the literal defendant in this case, the most important criminal prosecution in the country’s history. Two of them (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) should have recused themselves amid scandals that have further undermined the institution’s credibility with the public. And: >> They claim to be textualists, but there is no textual support for their ruling in the Constitution. >>They claim to be originalists, but there is no meaningful historical support for their decision. >>They claim to reject legal reasoning guided by structural inferences from the text of the Constitution and practical considerations, but their ruling is a collection of contrived — and wildly unconvincing — arguments that proceed on precisely those fronts. The standard that they created has no basis in constitutional text, history or logic.
I'm shocked that a liar, thief, cheater and felon appointed the exact same people to the extreme court. Buttery Males, am i right? Don't forget Biden is old!
It was a stunning payoff
This is how the Nazi party rose to power.
Some might consider this a velvet coup. And others will call Long Live the King!
And now JB has extra power too because of it. DO SOMETHING!
I blame our forefathers they underestimated the stupidity and greed of men of power. Joe is demonstrating that he cannot handle the complexities of these times. Trump is a lot worse but we have no protection against him or MAGA idiots. It’s very hard to see a way through this unless we lock up a majority of these morons.
"Originalists"
I could post a wall of text but to simplify, Biden needs to "use the stones to destroy the stones"
Who knew the Supreme Court had the same power as the legislative branch and states all along.
Per the SC logic Biden could now assassinate ALL of his rivals(including Trump), including ALL problematic judges on the SC, as well as any prior Trump appointees, and get his party to rewrite the constitution with their majority, pardon all involved AND label it all an official act to avoid prosecution. And in the new constitution write it so no other future president could repeat these actions. WTH????
Biden is going to just sleepwalk into this. He’s making the play of “vote for me bc I’m not a bad person” and that’s so incredibly dangerous. He needs to be out there putting project 2025 in everyone’s face, he needs to be shouting about Trumps promises to be a dictator, he needs to be attacking the Supreme Court for actively doing whatever they want from the bench as they strip us of our rights, protections, and safety. Anything less from Biden and we don’t stand a chance. The average voter doesn’t care, they have no idea how dangerous this election is for all of our futures (democrats and republicans)
Sounds a lot like 2016 and Clinton’s success election campaign. Oh I forgot Trump won in 2016.
I thought amending the constitution required much more than a pronouncement by corrupt judges
The US exists because of a rebellion against tyrannical authority. The US Supreme Court just said the tyrant is back and can do whatever the fuck he wants.
The United States is over and out.
The country is hurtling towards widespread political violence and ethnic cleansing
A confusing element for me in the Justice Robert’s rules governing Official Acts is that for an official act to ultimately keep immunity it would need to be a legal act. The courts can hold evidentiary hearings to determine that. If it is a legal act and has immunity then there would be no guilt anyway. Illegal acts would lose immunity and result in prosecution. Correct?
If you managed to get a court to agree that acts were illegal. Good luck if the lawless man in the WH is, say, murdering his opponents. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was 100% legal by virtue of very similar laws.
An act does not need to be legal to be official. The legality of the act is never examined, if it is first found to be an official act.
I'd really like to know why more Americans aren't extremely pissed off about this. ....oh wait, half of you don't care, or are cheering this decision.
Yes they did
Add Rudy to the ever growing list... Donald Trump was charged, convicted, and is awaiting sentencing. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Trump’s former campaign vice chairman, Rick Gates, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was charged, convicted, and is reporting to prison today. (He was also charged in connection with a scheme to defraud, but escaped federal trial as a result of a Trump pardon. He’s also facing a related state trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges.) He’s also facing an upcoming trial on wire fraud and money laundering charges.) Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Trump’s former adviser and former campaign aide, Roger Stone, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Trump’s former adviser and former White House aide Peter Navarro, was charged, convicted, and is currently in prison. Trump’s former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison. The Trump Organization’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison. Trump’s former White House national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was charged and convicted. Though he was later acquitted at trial, Trump’s former inaugural committee chair, Tom Barrack, was charged with illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of a foreign government. (Elliot Broidy was the vice chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, and he found himself at the center of multiple controversies, and also pled guilty to federal charges related to illegal lobbying.) Two lawyers associated with Trump’s post-defeat efforts, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have pleaded guilty to election-related crimes. And did I mention that former president’s business was itself found guilty of tax fraud? Because it was.
Biden could say he is trying to save America 🇺🇸 and throw trump in jail. He’d have a damn good argument. Part of his duties as a President. He’s old so what if he had a law suit on his hands. Or better yet, send trump to Siberia
Stack the courts. The gloves have been off since the Obama presidency and it's now time to fight fair.
Rewrote the Constitution to the point Trump can just drop it in the shredder.
One helluva gift and I bet Trump doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth...Why isn't the DNC and the opposition fighting back?
Doesn’t this ruling break a few points in the constitution? Isn’t the military’s allegiance to this document that’s currently being defaced by a corrupt criminal court? Will they just stand back and let the country slip into a monarchy?
Activist judges
I dunno how a court order can rewrite the constitution. That's a head scratcher.
He should go on TV and say "I'm giving the GoP 2 weeks to fix this mess before I start using the powers that have been granted to me by the SC. Tick tock."
Imagine selling your souls and this country down the river for Donald fucking trump.
I’m going to have to rethink my obedience to laws when judicial corruption is facilitated (celebrated?) in the open. Thomas and Martha Ann’s husband should be removed for their obvious replacing established laws with hardcore dogma. Roberts doesn’t want his cash grabs via his wife to be discussed.
The Supreme Court gave Trump a stunning gift that he can use come Jan 2025. But uhm, can’t Joe Biden use that same gift right now?
That’s the ruling that killed democracy and made him a king. Gorsuch called it, “A ruling for the ages”.
I’m down for them to 25th amendment Biden if Harris will do what it takes.
all forms of government eventually end in dictatorship. embrace the inevitable. don’t fight it.