Sorry if this is not the proper community for this question. Please let me know if I should post this question elsewhere.
So like, I’m not trying to be hyperbolic or jump on some conspiracy theory crap, but this seems like very troubling news to me. My entire life, I’ve been under the impression that no one is technically/officially above the law in the US, especially the president. I thought that was a hard consensus among Americans regardless of party. Now, SCOTUS just made the POTUS immune to criminal liability.
The president can personally violate any law without legal consequences. They also already have the ability to pardon anyone else for federal violations. The POTUS can literally threaten anyone now. They can assassinate anyone. They can order anyone to assassinate anyone, then pardon them. It may even grant complete immunity from state laws because if anyone tries to hold the POTUS accountable, then they can be assassinated too. This is some Putin-level dictator stuff.
I feel like this is unbelievable and acknowledge that I may be wayyy off. Am I misunderstanding something?? Do I need to calm down?
The Republican party is engaged in another coup
This isn’t a Democrat vs Republican issue. Obama drone strike killed an American without due process. This is an authoritarian vs libertarian issue.
Stop it. Now is not the time. You’re intentionally failing to recognize that we are, in a very real and imminent sense, staring the possible collapse of democracy in the US in the face.
This is absolutely a GOP issue. They’re the ones doing all of this and also the only ones pushing to go further. The example you used isn’t even close to the same league as what’s being discussed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki
Was it fucked up the kid got killed by a CIA-ordered air strike? Absolutely. But it’s not nearly as black and white as you make it out to be and is a far cry different than what is now possible for a US president to do based on the SCOTUS ruling last week.
That’s my point. If it isn’t good when this power is available to the president if you don’t like then (or anyone in government for that matter) then they shouldn’t have that power. This is absolutely about removing power from the authorities.
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Possibly. The SCOTUS ruling essentially kicked it down to lower courts to decide what’s an official act or not. Trump installed a ton of judges across the country to various federal courts. It could easily backfire on Biden if he tried anything.
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Your first sentence was right. This ISN’T democrat vs republican issue.
But the rest of your message is straight hot garbage.
This is a “united states as it always has operated, republican or democrat, or other parties that existed in the past” vs “united states becoming facist” issue.
Ah yes, totally comparable to a president assassinating his political rival on US soil. Great comment!
Political rival doesn’t mean anything. This ruling means any president will get away with it and we’ll likely need a constitutional amendment to fix. Hopefully ending qualified immunity would eliminate it.
Any president can get away with it, but only one party’s candidates will actually do it.
The party that put these fascist judges on the bench will do it, in case that wasn’t obvious.
If you think it’s the Democrats that’ll fix it, I have a bridge to sell you.
I feel like if Trump wins the election, my trans ass is going to end up in a concentration camp. Kinda hope I die before that happens.
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So all bets are off? If violence is inevitable and the alternative is a de facto dictatorship, maybe the liberal Americans should strike first while they still can, e.g., assassinating orange man and other conservative leaders.
I know it’s wrong, but doesn’t it feel so right?
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No, it can be done “legally.” Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2:
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
If President Biden suspended habeas corpus as allowed by the Constitution as required to protect public safety from seditionists who, remember, have made public threats of violence, and rounded them up, that would be an official act and he would be immune from charges. Furthermore, there would no longer be the votes in the House to impeach him.
ETA: Scare quotes. This would buy quite a lot of time as the issue worked its way through the courts. It might even incite open rebellion, then the question would be essentially moot.
Historically assassination doesn’t really work out well, and I’d imagine that’s doubly so here, where the president’s really just a sock puppet for the billionaire class.
I’ve never wanted a Death Note more than I do now.
They took a torch to your constitution. All for the sake of a very, very evil man.
The heritage foundation has been working on this long before the angry orange was a viable candidate. He is just the current face because he is belligerent enough to follow through on what they want to do and does a bang up job of riling up the conservative base.
If he was out of the picture they would be doing the same things with someone else who wouldn’t be nearly as effective, but they would still be going down the same road.
That’s one of the things that really gets me about all this. This didn’t happen suddenly, but there has never been any actual effort by the opposition party to counter it. They never address the trend in any organized way, and never really raise awareness of it. The closest they get is to fundraise off the threats, but it never translates into action or progress. If anything, they organize to ostracize the few members of their party that do speak forcefully about it.
It’s horribly depressing, but the only people around to fight the actually evil people are slightly less evil people.
The only reason democrats, as a whole, are a better alternative to republicans is because they chose a different portion of the population to pander to in order to gain power.
It really fucking sucks.
The worst part is that those who do not understand this will tell you you are insane, catastrophizing, should just focus on your own life, and will get angry at you for really caring… while the ones who do understand, generally just get depressed.
Meanwhile, our political system implodes as we have passed the climate threshold. Rivers in Alaska are running orange as a result of permafrost thawing. That means we are releasing methane now, means its only going to get worse faster.
Thank god I have never wanted and do not have children.
If it’s close at all I don’t see how MAGA and the GOP don’t just steal the election. I really think Biden is going to need at least 2020 electoral numbers to win safely.
Biden won the 2020 election by 50,000 votes.
That’s a funny way to misspell 7 million.
Hell, Clinton won the popular vote by over 3 million.
If the popular vote won the election you’d have a point.
Is that how American presidential elections are won? Or did a small lead in voters in a few counties tip the swing states?
The argument I saw for this was that a president shouldn’t have to second guess every action they take while in office. That if they are held liable for everything they do, they may be paralyzed to make changes to the government.
I kinda thought that was kinda what the founders wanted to happen…
I’ve long held that the independent executive is an inherently authoritarian device of state and government.
This is the final confirmation. Wherever the leader of the country can be safe from the direct intervention and punishment of the representatives of the people and regional leaders, they will inherently come to view the restraints and accountability of their position as burdensome limitations.
The united states presidency was built to incentivize chasing dictatorship. We need to dismantle it in favor of parliamentary style leadership.
I’m more worried about them making being homeless illegal, which pretty much guarantees slavery via for-profit prisons.
Every prison is for-profit.
how?
Police unions. Less than ten percent of federal prisons are private. Who do you think lobbies more: 10% of prisons or the unions for 90% of federal prison employees?
The public ones still give out contracts for all of the services performed.
oh i see, you mean every US prison. couldn’t think of a reason why any prison would be for profit this side of the pond
I mean the UK put a dude in prison for four months for having a miniature Master Sword on a street alone thanks to CCTV.
yes but i seem to be missing the for-profit bit of that arrest
This is intentional to make the US dictatorship ready. What do you think will happen if Trump gets elected?
Yes. Be concerned. Be very concerned.
I ain’t readin’ all that, Free Palestine
I for one have not read the original text of the actual ruling. To be clear, nor would I understand the legalese wording if I had.
I think we are just waiting to be told how to feel about it, by people who actually know stuff. And they are probably afraid of getting killed (literally) at this point.
Like Biden has known about the Supreme Court’s bent for awhile now, and the Heritage Foundation too, but what does he do about it all? I mean… did you see the last debate? Regardless of that, how does his excuse hold water that he was jet lagged from traveling, when that was literally weeks ago in the past? This is our white knight savior who we all look to in order to save us all, with no effort required on our parts, except maybe to go vote, not even as often as once a year?
Similar to climate change, whatever is going to happen, I suspect it already has, possibly up to or more than a decade ago. And that’s about all I can guess at. Note that I’m not trying to be fatalistic, but if this attempt at realism appears similar to that, perhaps there’s a reason.
You’re not misunderstanding, but calm down, anyway.
Is anybody NOT concerned?
From the lack of reaction to how big this change is, too many are not concerned IMO.
Fascists and their sheep that trying to turn the US into a dictatorship…
I don’t know why people care. Obama dronestriked an American citizen and nothing happened. Snowden revealed that we are all under mass surveillance and nothing happened. Biden withheld funds from Ukraine to halt an investigation into his son and nothing happened. This ruling just reflects reality.
Wtf is that third thing? Are you confusing it with the thing Trump did, refusing to give them funds until they make up dirt on Biden? Because what you said was weird and untrue. The first two things were.
Biden withheld funds from Ukraine to halt an investigation into his son and nothing happened.
Bit of a refresher as it’s so hard to keep all of the lies straight: Republicans claimed that an FBI informant said that Hunter Biden took a position on the board of Burisma, and the Bidens took a bribe, in return for Joe pressuring Ukraine to fire the government official investigating Burisma. Nobody can produce the evidence, and said government official wasn’t investigating Burisma, after all.
Pres. Trump threatened to withhold funds from Ukraine unless Zelenskyy dug up kompromat on Trump’s political opponents. He was impeached over it. So that happened.
You don’t think this series of events is indicative of corruption?
The CIA also censored references to Shokins book on twitter.
Unrelated but the same people censored the Hunter Biden laptop story and called it Russian disinfo during peak election season. It turned out to be true. 🤔
That is indeed a series of events. Did they ever come up with any evidence linking them in a causal way?
Well is there any evidence?!
The title of the article is literally about the oversight committee demanding communication records as recently as last fall.
Biden is a uniparty member and for all of this smoke he was never properly investigated by the justice department at home or abroad. Every inquiry is some anemic posturing.
Special counsel David Weiss let Hunter Biden’s most egregious financial crimes elapse past the statute of limitations – convenient. Hunter was making millions overseas in Ukraine and moving it through Romania and China. He wasn’t investigated for years until he ended up picking up a gun charge.
Why would an energy company in Ukraine pay Hunter Biden, a crack smoking drug addict, 50-80k a month if not for political access or a quid-pro-quo? Who is “the big guy” in Hunter Bidens email? Why were they trying to give him a plea deal that would absolve him of everything last July? If this were anyone that was not a member of the privileged class they wouldn’t be able to move due to all the investigation instead you are labeled as crazy for thinking this is old fashioned political corruption.
Wikipedia dismisses it as a Russian disinfo conspiracy theory. Where have we heard that before? 🤔
It goes back to my original point these people are above the law.
So… no.
Lol good one it’s like you missed the entire point of my post.
I get the intent of such posts: To confuse and demoralize people with a “both sides” or “they’re all bad” message. I object because they discourage participation in the democratic process and serve authoritarian interests, and in the abstract, truth matters.
So say two obvious and proven things then throw a third one in there as if it were similarly sure to have happened. Fuck Biden and all but I love the truth.
No. Because they specifically said this is not the case.
The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts.
They’re essentially protecting a president from flagrant lawsuits that could be brought for unfounded accusations. The constitution outlines a handful of constitutional duties (such as pardoning) which are by definition the law not prosecutable. There’s a presumption of immunity for their official acts. Anything they do outside of official acts is not immune.
Nothing has really changed. It’s only made it more clear how difficult the process is to indict a president. The Fourth section of Article II still exists.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
So, let’s say, not for the first time ever, a president orders an assassination and congress wants to hold them accountable for this action. It will need to be determined if this act was part of their official duties. The issue SCOTUS has presented is that it’s very, very difficult for congress to obtain the motivation for such an act. Such a case would be dependent on the specific circumstances. I mean, if the president orders the assassination of a foreign leader, no one’s going to, nor have the ever, question that. If they order the assassination of a congressional leader, don’t imagine they’re going to get away with that.
They’re essentially protecting a president from flagrant lawsuits that could be brought for unfounded accusations.
Usually i see strawmen making things sound worse than they are, but this is the complete opposite. Lawsuits is strawman, unfounded is strawman, accusations is strawman. This is for criminal cases, not civil, its actual prosecution, not accusations, and no requirement that they be unfounded for this immunity to apply. You are trying extremely hard to downplay this and cant have good intentions for this. Other justices have already claimed this includes political assassinations, and Trumps own legal team has already made the argument assassinating a political opponent can be an official act as president.
The president already was protected from all civil lawsuits due to previous rulings. This ruling was only about criminal prosecutions.
He has absolute immunity for any use, for any reason, of his core presidential powers include anything listed in article 2 (the military, pardons, firing or hiring officials within the executive department). There is no determining if those are an official act or not. Anything the president does with an article 2 power is an official act with absolute immunity now. Motives or reason for using that power or the outcome of that cannot be questioned. It is legal to bribe the president to pardon someone right now. The fact that it happened couldn’t even be mentioned in court.
Only when the president is doing something not listed in the constitution can it be determined if it’s an official or unofficial act by the courts and should be immune. And again it’s the action, not the motive or the result or purpose of the action, that determines whether it is official. The only example they gave was talking to justice department officials is official. So if he is talking to justice department officials to arrange a bribe or plan a coup? Legal, immune, can’t even be used as evidence against him. It doesn’t matter why he was talking to the justice department, the fact that he was makes him immune from any laws he breaks in the process of doing so. They aren’t determining if a bribe or coup is an official act, they’re determining if talking to justice department officials in general is. It doesn’t matter what he’s actually doing it for, arranging a coup? That’s perfectly okay. Oh someone found out, pardon everyone else involved in the conspiracy who wasn’t already immune. Now it can’t even be brought up in court.
In the example you gave of ordering an assassination, if it used the military to do the assassination that is a core power, cannot be questioned. The supreme court ruling placed no limits on what can be done with his article 2 powers. Only a nebulous official vs not official test for things not listed in article 2. There’s also a very worrying vague phrase about “ensuring laws are faithfully executed” that even Barrett thought was too much in her concurrence.
Impeachment is the only recourse now as you say, but even if impeached and removed from office by some miracle, they still wouldn’t be able to be held criminally liable afterwards for that.
Everyone panicking in this thread is right to do so.
Why do you imagine that a President wouldn’t get away with assassination of a Congressional leader? Say, for example, that Pres. Trump tells special ops forces that he has ironclad intelligence that Rep. Hakim Jeffries is a Chinese agent orchestrating an imminent attack on the U.S., and orders him killed on an overseas trip. That’s a legal order from the commander in chief, on the face of it. (I mean, the track record of the military refusing orders is extremely thin on the ground, and it won’t really matter if they install loyalists like Project 2025 calls for.) We’ve already established the precedent that the President has immense discretion to handle immediate threats.
And maybe it was a lie, but that’s irrelevant. He has absolute immunity in the exercise of his Article 2 duties. End of story. The only possible remedy is impeachment, and, well, who’s going to do that?
Trump was president for four years, enjoyed all of this immunity already, and not one politician was murdered. Pretty sure we’ll be alright.
Not one politician was murdered, but funny story about January 6, 2021…
There is a group of individuals who are attempting to gain control of Congress who would allow a certain person, if elected president carte blanche to do anything as “an official act”. A good portion buys the line that this former president declassified documents just by thinking so.
There is another set of 5 or 6 individuals that have happily shown they will prioritize their own beliefs and views over judicial principles their country had maintained over the last couple centuries.
We have already seen Congress try to hold a criminal President to account. It hasn’t worked yet and these rulings make it even less likely to.
You’re not wrong, and if anything it’s actually worse than it at first seems. This is a radically new and expansive interpretation of the powers of the presidency that effectively say, there is no difference between use and abuse of executive power. Any use of the power is by definition legitimate and cannot be an abuse.
Consider bribery, one of the few crimes explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Say the President of China writes a personal check to the President of the United States in exchange for using any one of his constitutional powers, like a pardon, or sending in seal team 6, or appointing that person attorney general, or to a cabinet position.
First, The president’s motive can never be considered or investigated. Now think about that. There is no criminal prosecution in history that hasn’t included some investigation of motive. It is key to describing quid pro quo. But because the president is absolutely immune in all of their official acts, their motive for using the official act cannot be entered into evidence.
Secondly, the official act itself cannot be used as evidence in any investigation even of a non-official act. So you could never say in an indictment or in a court of law, " and then the president issued the pardon", or " and then the president sent in seal team 6", you could only say in the indictment that person x gave the president some money. That’s it.
Then there’s Justice Thomas’s opinion which, not to get in the weeds, but says that appointing a special prosecutor for the case in Georgia is a gross abuse of power. And unconstitutional.
So it is essential for the functioning of the executive branch that the President’s right to stage a military coup of the United States be protected, but appointing a special prosecutor is a tyrannical act and gross abuse of power.
Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for attempting to overthrow the government, but Joe Biden is a tyrant for assigning an independent investigator to investigate him.
It is impossible to look at this supreme Court 's decisions and not see that their interpretation of the Constitution differs greatly depending on which party is in power.
The podcasters at 5-4 called this a Dred v Scott-type decision. Dred v Scott was the decision that held in the 1800s that slaves were property and could not Free themselves, and which led directly to the civil war.
We’ll have to live with this decision for several years whether we like it or not, until at least two and probably three supreme Court justices leave the court and are replaced by non-conservative kooks. It may be the law of the land for the rest of our lifetime. It certainly will be the law of the land for the next decade and there is really nothing that the president or Congress can do about it as far as we know.
Oh and if Trump is elected, All of the oldest supreme Court justices could resign in order to allow Trump to appoint much younger arch conservative justices who will live longer and ensure that a conservative dominated Court controls us for many more years.
For 248 years, presidents were required to uphold the rule of law, otherwise there was an understanding that we would indict your ass the second you left office. The supreme Court has determined that is unconstitutional, and in order to uphold the rule of law, the supreme executive with the most power of any person in the world, must have a free hand to violate practically any law and cannot be prosecuted for it ever.
The only remedy is impeachment and removal from office. 2/3 of the Senate need to agree to impeachment in order to remove a president from office, and the President has such sweeping powers and immunity that it will be, especially in this divided era, impossible to reach that threshold.
So nobody is exaggerating when they call this an invitation to Donald Trump to become an autocrat. Roberts, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett have destroyed The credibility of their court and set the table for The greatest threat to the existence of the United States as a democracy since the civil war.
The start of Imperialist fascism in the United States. This is late stage Capitalism. This warning has been documented by the likes of Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.
It’s one more piece of Project 2025.
Trump is the side-show. Stop getting distracted by his fat orange ass. The disorganized, played more golf and gave more bad speeches than any President before him is just a side show. Most of the executive branch jobs that go with the administration each election were left empty in 2016.
Project 2025 is an organized, focused Trump term where the machinery runs for him. Where the mechanics of what to do have been thought out and planned for since 2020. Where he can sit on a gold toilet and truly let other people handle the day to day.
And just sign it all with presidential immunity.
So unless cardiovascular disease does it’s fucking job in the next 4 months (yeah, that’s right, the self imposed I don’t want to deal with it time warp you’re in let you forget that it’s just 4 months away), and bad COVID comes back and hits the SCOTUS hard, it’ll be SCOTUS 2.0 for the entire executive branch of the government come 2025. And like a SCOTUS vote, that 2:1 vote in our entire government will be in favor of authoritarian Christian nationalism. That’s what the the SCOTUS vote on immunity is. It’s not about Trump. It’s about authoritarianism going forward.
High odds on Project 2025 because I know you fuckers under 40 won’t be voting in the numbers boomers or GenX do. You’ll stock up on the steam summer sale, maybe get a Costco crate of cool ranch, tuck in, and try to pretend it’s not happening instead.
Yea, it sucks, but the vote is basically Kamala or Trump. No or yes on Project 2025. And if project 2025 goes in, America really is dead and shit is going to get violent.
Not sure another play through of Mass Effect Legendary or BG3 is going to be able to block that out this time.
OK boomer
Millenials are old now. We’re not “the youth”, we’re like mid-30s to early 40s.
Four years ago, when the last presidential election occurred, the millennial age range was 24-39. Beyond that, I’m comparing generational participation in elections at particular ages.
Further, not all of Gen Z will be of voting age for this election, so the youngest generational cohort where all members of that cohort are able to vote is still millennials, i.e., millennials are the youngest generation able to fully participate in elections.
I’m not saying millennials are all “young,” I’m saying that in terms of electoral participation statistics, they’re the youngest generation able to fully participate, and that compared to when Gen X and Boomers were going, Gen Z and Millennials participate (and have participated) at higher rates than the generations above them.
This is contrary to the subtext of the Boomer Lite (Gen X) poster to which I’m responding that implies younger generations are too busy distracting themselves with their phones and video games to participate in politics.
It seemed really obvious to me that he was talking about actual youth, ie Zoomers. But you started throwing a bunch of statistics about millenials.
Millenials are a politically active generation. The fear is that Zoomers are not. That was the point I got from his comment.
As I said, Gen Z has, so far, participated in the elections they’ve been eligible for at higher rates than any previous generation since the age of voting was made 18, including millennials.
The youngest of Gen Z is currently about 12 years old, so they’ve had less elections to participate in with a smaller percentage of their generational cohort able to participate. Nevertheless, so far, a higher percentage of eligible Gen Z voters have voted in elections than Millennials, Boomers, and Boomers Lite.
The youngest generational cohort that are all above the voting age are millennials, which have also voted at higher rates than Boomers and Boomers Lite at similar ages.
Nevertheless, so far, a higher percentage of eligible Gen Z voters have voted in elections than Millennials, Boomers, and Boomers Lite.
…compared to previous generations at that age.
Youth turnout is still abysmal, it’s just less abysmal than previous generations.
K
Lol, not a boomer.
All I hear is I can’t vote for this asshole because Israel. Or, I’m not doing this (Trump and Biden) again.
And games are everyone these days. From boomers to high schoolers. Granted, I think the number of boomers is likely less than all the rest. I’m sure Steam is doing a hefty sales level from GenX on down.
And there absolutely is a time warp of avoidance in general. Even the media has less energy for the election crap of late.
Oh, bonus, sentencing for trump is being delayed until after the election.
