Well, fellow Americans. This experiment with democracy was fun while it lasted. Every significant goal of the founding fathers has been systematically thwarted by these Christofascists. We once again have a de-facto monarch.
The consequences of this decision will be dire, and unpredictable. Every law, every right, every freedom can now be undone by an official wave of the president’s hand. Rights to privacy? Gone. Due process? Gone. Bill of Rights? Gone.
No one—democrat or republican—should be happy about this. The right to bear arms is now on the chopping block right along with LGBTQ+ and abortion rights.
Hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m misreading the situation. But it sure sounds like every right that previously defined us as American people now hinges on the benevolence of our president. Americans can no longer brag about “American freedom.”
And Europe’s next. Another far right puppet of Putin will be elected to run a European country in the next few weeks. Just shows that Europe follows the US in lockstep with a 5 year delay.
The sad thing is that you’re completely correct.
It’s over. This is the beginning of the true end. The end has been in sight for a while now, but it was always over the horizon.
Now we can actually see it.
There is not a way for us to legally come back from this.
In retrospect, I guess that we should have seen it coming that the Supreme Court of lifelong, unelected officials would be our undoing.
It’s pretty sad that we’re all taking this lying down with all of our Second Amendment talk.
Wouldn’t this mean a president has an obligation to kill his political opponents if they’re seen as a threat to the United States, and as an official act, it would be completely legal? Effectively making one man above the law.
Even if it’s not seen as an official act, you can’t charge the president while they’re in the office, and with that power and a loyal justice department, you could eliminate anyone who might try to argue the legality of your actions.
Good luck convincing anyone to bring a case against the guy who keeps making people disappear when they investigate him.
This + project 2025 & a trump presidency is the end of US democracy. I don’t even wanna start thinking about the impacts globally…
Trump could now argue he, as sitting president, was threatened in his functioning by the new president elect, and it was an official act to block the transfer of power as long as the sitting president has concerns about the validity of the votes. (Ofcourse he always has those concerns)
And now with the coming elections he will claim the same and as a bonus he officially and in the open has the republicans refuse to certify a losing vote because that also threatens his position and impedes his functioning.
If the lower courts now claim his acts were not official he will just appeal that back to the Supreme Court, thereby still delaying any closure of the case well after the elections.
Biden should just pass an official law that SCOTUS must be evenly split between major parties.
This couldn’t be illegal to do anymore, as Biden will be immune, as it’ll be an official act.
Biden can’t pass laws, Congress does that.
Are you saying it might be a crime for a President to unilaterally invent a new law and make the federal government enforce it? Well, you see…
No just unconstitutional which is what the scotus exists to make judgments about. They just take it upon themselves to judge everything else too…
You are confusing the United States that existed until this decision with the United States that exists after this decision. As long as it’s an official act, the president can now do whatever it wants. If the supremes court objects, the president and threaten or assassinate the justices as long as it’s an official act. The President is now effectively a king. Read Sotomayor’s dissent in this decision. She explicitly states this.
That’s the thing, for the executive branch, passing laws is not an official act. It’s outside that branch of government. That’s what the Legislative branch does.
It would be like Biden overturning a court ruling. That’s the Judicial branch, not your dance.
I get it. This is how government functions according to the constitution. Please understand however, under this new interpretation there is no effective legal check on the executive doing anything at all. Yes, it’s not official for the president to do that, but there is no enforcement mechanism, and the president now has authority to coerce anyone or any institution. I know it is difficult to grasp the implications of that, but that is in fact what the Supreme Court did today.
That’s the plan right, that’s part of Project 2025, to instantiate Unitary Executive Theory to make everything they do legal regardless of courts and impeachment trials.
The Constitution as we knew it is null and void.
So in your opinion, did they just reaffirm something like the presumption of innocence but it’s tailored for someone who’s job it is to sometimes order the deaths of people? So he has “The presumption of immunity” when making otherwise illegal orders, until it’s otherwise determined by a court case, or impeachment hearing? Is that what’s going on?
It protects any official action.
So, for example, the notorious drone strikes that Obama ordered which killed a bunch of innocent people.
As commander in chief, that’s an official act, he would have immunity.
Bush and Abu Ghraib torture? Same.
Bear in mind that the drone strikes are less attributed to Trump because he revoked or ignored accountability rules and authorized the CIA and defense department to conduct drone strikes without seeking authorization from the White House.
It’s easy to assume that Trump was ‘better’, but nope. He was much, much worse. He just hid the evidence and delegated the crime to others.
Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama’s numbers – Chicago Sun-Times
No, he can just order members of Congress to be executed until they pass the law he wants.
I would rather he just pack the bench to 50 seats, one for each state, fast track nominations, and force congress to stay in session until a full court is appointed by putting hoteling them in the vicinity and only allowing them movement between hotels and congressional chambers. This would be in his power and immune as official acts after all.
Well that’s true! :)
That’s…not how it works. Like where your heart is, but this makes no sense.
That’s not how it worked. Past tense!
We all know it’s not how it works, but that’s precisely what Trump et al will try to do. This is just malicious compliance.
Presidents can’t pass laws any more then you or I can. Even Trump isn’t insane enough to think he can.
Well now you’re just speaking out your ass
Yes.
Okay.
Biden should officially execute half the Court with no trial.
Joe Biden is ABSOLUTELY IMMUNE if he decides to Assassinate a Supreme Court Justice according to the Supreme Court Justices!
But he won’t, and neither will any Dem presidents, which is what the right wing SCOTUS is counting on.
Lord Trump the first won’t have such qualms…
You know as well as I do that this ruling will only apply to Trump. They’ll have some other bullshit to come up with if Biden wants to do literally anything, but Trump will have absolute immunity.
Trump IS going to win and with this ruling we just created a king…
Who’s gonna apply it?
60% of the house and 51% of Congress
He doesn’t even have to assassinate 1 or 2. Thomas committed tax fraud on his RV deal and Alito probably did on his bribes. Joe Biden apparently has dictatorial powers over the IRS and DOJ. Start arresting people and when Trump supporters act up, use emergency powers to drone strike Mar-a-Lago. Those are all official acts.
Biden doesn’t have the balls to do this. It would be cool as heck if he did.
No. No, it would not. The cooler thing would be to deny SCOTUS in this. Their interpretation of this is far and away the wrong decision. Playing by the new rule only legitimizes it. Pull an Andrew Jackson, deny SCOTUS their ruling and continue as though nothing happened. Same with the end of Chevron deference and Roe.
Ah, right, certainly the next President will also behave the same way…
This feels terribly naive. It would be one thing if we could cement into the Constitution that the President does not have immunity, but Congress can barely pass a funding bill, let alone an amendment. But failing to use the power granted to try and set the country on a better path just ensures that a dictator will rise who does not care about keeping the status quo. And Trump will have a rubber-stamp SC that will say any act he seems to be official is.
Make it nice and official though!
Wild response
The idea od suggesting following any prior tactics of Andrew Jackson is revolting, as cool as your response is
Andrew Jackson was a racist pursuing genocide, but he was right that the court doesn’t have any inherent power to enforce its edicts. That was explicitly outlined in the Federalist Papers as a reason giving court “ultimate decider” powers wasn’t a problem.
I admire your intelligence.
Maybe not. But Dark Brandon does…
If there were ever a time for Dark Brandon to emerge, this would be it!
So americans, now you can show if you actually mean it when you say this is what you have the 2nd for.
Unfortunately the ones who say that about 2A are on the side of the nationalists.
I’m clairvoyant and I can see the future: They won’t. It’s always been all bark and no bite when it comes to armed revolution here in the states.
Well I suppose not always. We did have a revolutionary war and a civil war.
But anybody alive today? Less bite than a newborn.
Also the Whiskey rebellion and Union/county wars, but nobody remembers them because they were relatively small. Also a lot of Rednecks especially Boomers and Gen X ended up being fucken bootlickers, sure there are some of us within Gen Z who are trying to revers the damage but well culture rarely moves fast.
Hey now, don’t besmirch the name Redneck with those sad sods. The Rednecks fought the good fight at the Battle of Blair Mountain, only to be put down by the US military backing robber barons.
Oh no I agree, I was moreso opining the damage done to Redneck culture as a whole. I may be of the Southern Californian variety and have little to no relations to those fine sons of bitches in the Appalachians but I have nothing but respect for mine distant kin. No I was simply stating that the bootlickers in who were taken advantage of through several points of cultural weakness did a shit tonne of damage. I have had the pleasure of talking to Rednecks of the Greatest generation and Silent generation, theyre no shits given savagery is something I wish I could muster but given the fact at least one of them car bombed one of his bosses and smuggled guns to the IRA I can say that I will never match up. But im still doing better than the Boomers.
Lol yeah right.
2A has been toothless for awhile. What good is stock modded AR15 supposed to do against tanks and fighters jets.
20 years of war, 2,459 US lives, plus about 3 months.
When a group of American freedom fighters go to take over a U.S.A. military base and hesitant soldiers aren’t sure if they should follow a traitorous president or their oath to the Constitution, the American freedom fighters being well-armed will make the difference.
We could probably mount a pretty decent resistance with what we have available. look what happened in iraq during the occupation. insurgency would be the way to go in a rebellion against the us govt.
Exactly why I think americans who say the 2A needs to stay to overthrow a fascist government is full of shit. I would love to be proven wrong though
cough Vietnam cough
And that’s why they didn’t bother with guns in Iraq. Defeating the Americans was hopeless; mission accomplished.
This response is so weird I can’t quite tell what your point is. Are you suggesting that the Iraqis resisted with small arms fire? Because that’s not the case.
More US citizens die each year in the US from guns than US soldiers died in the entirety of the Iraq war. And it’s not a small difference either - each year 4-5x as many citizens die from gun violence. Not including suicides (which would more than double the number)
So was your post trying to say the small arms resistance in Iraq was effective?
To be fair, the fighting would be guerilla warfare which the us hasn’t been that great at dealing with.
might have a tough time as a guerilla when your maga neighbors are informing on you
remember what we used to do with collaborators during the french resistance?
I’m a pacifist and don’t want to glorify violence at all but, the 'RA also was very effective at dealing with collaborators and informers. Minority rule cannot sustain itself in the long-term.
I used to be a pacifist too. But apparently, peaceful protests can be too easily ignored.
Takes all kinds.
It’s still good enough to shoot people who accidentally step on your lawn, or the teachers and co-students you had a disagreement with.
Did they just make it legal for the president to be officially crooked?
Yup
Citizens United was the first step to make it blatantly legal by being able to hide donations in a way that makes make it easy to give money directly to candidates from any source, foreign and domestic.
Then that “it was a gratuity, not a bribe” ruling last week means anyone can just buy off politicians in the open.
So as of this morning it is legal for a foreign country to bribe the president to have someone assassinated.
Very legal and very cool
Maybe. But Biden still has time for it to not be so cool for Trump.
Yes
God, we’re so fucked. SCOTUS is turning the Presidency into an autocracy, Biden refusing to get out of the way for a capable candidate…that judge sentencing Trump to jail time in the Stormy Daniels case is basically the only thing that can save us from a right-wing theocracy at this point.
Surely Trump just appeals to the SCOTUS and they free him in line with today’s ruling?
Wouldn’t be that simple. The Stormy Daniels case was about things that happened before he became president. Sure reimbursing Cohen might have occurred at least in part while Trump was president, but Cohen was never part of the administration. They were disguising the reimbursement as paying Cohen in his capacity as Trump’s personal lawyer. So there’s pretty much nothing that this ruling does to hamper this case.
That said, I have no doubts that they’d find some way to rule in his favor if an appeal managed to land in front of them. But I think he’d have to go through normal appeals first, he can’t just go straight to SCOTUS.
It’ll be interesting to see how stiffing your lawyer is an official act
You’re right, but I’m confident he’ll get there in the end.
Yeah. The Roberts Court has been nothing if not the Court of Post-Hoc Justification. They’re great at concocting the most batshit crazy of legal theories to reach the outcome they want after shopping for the perfect cases to do so. I’m absolutely positive that if/when he gets an appeal to reach SCOTUS they’ll give him exactly what he wants even if they have to tie themselves in logical pretzels or even directly contradict themselves to do it.
They ruled on a goddamn hypothetical. 6-3.
None of the conservative judges are qualified to do anything except take leaves.
They’ve pulled that one a lot recently, haven’t they? I seem to recall one of the other recent rulings, I think it was against the EPA basically being a hypothetical about a proposed rule they hadn’t even actually passed yet?
SCOTUS can’t do shit for state charges. Doesn’t mean they won’t try.
However, His legal team will argue literally any punishment is too harsh and appeal the NY state charges, which will be granted because he was a president and has money. Then it will be delayed past the election and not matter anyway because this system is not made to resist willful destruction by those entrusted to protect it.
Edit: Turns out they can. The NY prosecution has agreed to postpone charges less than a day after the ruling. Trump’s team asserts that the criminal activities occurred before he was president, but since the evidence was gathered during, he can not be prosecuted. Apparently concealing evidence unrelated to the presidency is an official act…
They cannot currently cancel state charges, but the GOP is trying to change that. It is one of a raft of measures underway. Some are truely frightening, such as using Red State National Guard troops against non-compliant Blue States. Check out Project 2025 - the Republicans are even trying to hide their planned dictatorship.
There’s move afoot by the GOP to get any state charges against the president to be elevated to the Federal court.
Guess who can pardon himself or have federal charges dropped?
That’s not how Federalism works. The President is not a member of any state government, and has no immunity from state crimes. There’s no way to move this case from state court to federal.
Unless you change the laws to say you can! Which was the point of the above comment.
The Constitution can’t be changed that easily. There’s no reason for the State of New York to give up the case, even if it were possible to do. And there’s no way to compel it, considering the issue is NY State law.
They’re already trying it on appeal, though. Sure, they’re applying federal precedent to a state case, but why would Trump’s team let stop them?
He was not President at the time of these acts, but I doubt that would stop them.
Did you read the article? The scope of this ruling is pretty narrow.
Not that narrow. They are saying fomenting an attack on Congress and conspiring to subvert the electoral college are official acts.
Where are you getting that? That question wasn’t put to SCOTUS.
Trump was charged. Trump claimed he had “absolute immunity”, and didn’t have to face charges. Court rules against him in this issue; he appealed. Appellate court ruled against him, sending the case back to the trial court. He appealed to SCOTUS. SCOTUS said he doesn’t have absolute immunity, and that the limit of his immunity is on his “official acts”. SCOTUS then sent the case back to the trial court. The trial court will have to determine whether his actions were “official” or “unofficial”.
From the decision:
Whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official re- sponsibilities, they engage in official conduct. Presiding over the Jan- uary 6 certification proceeding at which Members of Congress count the electoral votes is a constitutional and statutory duty of the Vice President. Art. II, §1, cl. 3; Amdt. 12; 3 U. S. C. §15. The indictment’s allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification pro- ceeding thus involve official conduct, and Trump is at least presump- tively immune from prosecution for such conduct.
What part of that statement is about attacking Congress or subverting the electoral college?
It is certainly within the president’s and vice president’s responsibilities to determine whether to certify the count. They have to be able to say “no, this should not be certified”.
Saying “no” can still be used as evidence of another crime, it’s just not a crime in and of itself.
Trying to convince the VP to fraudulently say no to the EC count is the crime. The president and the vice president don’t get to pick the next president. The electoral college does. The only legitimate reason the VP could say no to the EC count is if for some reason the count itself were wrong, in which case the VP and Senate should correct it and move on.
That, of course, wasn’t the basis for the discussion. Trump was trying to get his fake electors counted, or to at least have Pence declare that he couldn’t tell which electors were real.
Trying to convince the VP to fraudulently say no to the EC count is the crime
Knowingly making a false statement to the VP would, indeed, be a criminal fraud, but the passage you cited does not contemplate such an act.
Trump was trying to get his fake electors counted
That, too, is not contemplated in the passage you cited.
BTW, my Lemmy instance isn’t showing replies to your comment, including my own reply, so if it didn’t come across, I’m sorry but I don’t know what else to try.
Are the Dems gonna do anything or is America as we know it just going to die, “get out and vote” isn’t going to cut it when they can just say it doesn’t count
If we get enough Dems to be able to pack the court then the “they” changes.
Why bother, the president can just make an official act to suspend the elections as the country is being “invaded” by the southern border, and call it treason for anyone to oppose it. A lower court would do what? Say it is wrong and commit treason? Can arrest them faster than judges can have required cases.
At this point I’ll take what I can get.
The fix was in a long time ago. I’ve said it before… America is a shithole.
Happy cakeday.
Thanks!
You sure do get what you pay for.
The coup marches on.
The thing that bugs me is how any order given to subordinates is a use of executive power, right? So that’s immune. But say the subordinate considered refusing an unlawful order. Why, then would they decide to refuse the order when the president could also choose to pardon them for any crimes they committed during the execution of the unlawful order?
Biden can now legally shoot Trump on stage during the next debate. Gotcha.
I don’t think having a raspy voice will be the biggest talking point in the aftermath this time.
And if anyone raises a stink and somehow manages to prove that this was illegal anyway, I’m sure it’s the same people who have claimed that he’s senile, ergo not fit to stand trial.
Biden could, but he won’t. We’re just going to get more finger wagging and muttering at him about being a scoundrel and shit.
Correct. He’s still trying to Chamberlain when it’s long overdue that he goes full Kubiš & Gabčík.
“The only way to solve this is by voting harder.” They leave out the “for the next 30 years, continuously, until the court is rebalanced through natural causes and decides to undo what is now ‘precedent’”.
If anyone ever doubted that the DNC and the GOP weren’t on the same team, just watch as the DNC let this opportunity slip right through their fingers. Access to the greatest political, strategical, minds and they will let this opening wash away into a river of fascism.
It’s a play, we are watching theatre. Meant to keep you distracted. Meant to keep you oppressed.
Meant to keep you distracted
From what?
We could all collectively decide to chop the heads off of the elite. We don’t need to argue about which capitalist is better every 4 years. There’s nothing physically stopping 90% of the country from just overthrowing the other 10% if we really tried together
Just make a balance of what the governments of the last 40 years did. Would the us be worse or better off if those changes had not been made? My opinion is that government is unnecessary. There are enough laws already. If anything really needs to be changed it can be done by referendum. Abolish the government!
Edit: government is the biggest illusion of them all
1000% this. If the DNC wanted to stop this, they could have.
How?
For starters, by spending the last 4 years training a different candidate to beat trump this year.
But failing that, they could absolutely have prevented that disaster on the debate. They knew full well how the rest of America will react to seeing Biden look like that, and I find it no coincidence that it happened directly before The Supreme Court ruled to overturn Chevron and Grant immunity to Trump.
While that is interesting, you realize before the 4 years you mentioned, Trump did everything he’s in trouble for doing. He also established the supreme court we have. If Biden randomly died his first 5 months, we still would be in a similar (if not the same) situation. Every person who made this happen, would still have their previously established power. Training someone new would not have stopped this inevitability.
It wouldn’t have, that’s true. I just feel that it would have been a better circumstance than that we have now. But I think honestly I’m just reaching for copium right now. This entire week was a dark week in our country.
Surely if something he does is unconstitutional, it is not within his official capacity or power!?
But somehow I have a feeling I’m being extremely naive just thinking that.The SCOTUS majority just decided that nothing the president does is illegal, at least in a way that can ever be prosecuted.
