Is anyone else highly concerned with the SCOTUS ruling that the POTUS is immune from criminal liability?
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?
I've seen dozens of people, including myself, wondering why there's no one in the streets over this, it's a long weekend for a lot of people too.
Honestly, DC is a 10 hour drive for me. If I didn't think I'd be the lone idiot protesting I'd be on my way because I'm off until Monday.
But there's safety in numbers. One person in the street will get arrested and end up as a footnote in the local papers, a million people might make them notice.
I've had plenty of days where i wondered of it was worth my kids living without me to live without him.
I think about this all the time: people commit suicide by gun every day. So they want to die and they have a gun. Even if 99% of them are too depressed to do anything but die, I really think there should have been several attempts on Trump by now. I mean, hit or miss, shoot yourself like you were going to anyway right?
I'm not advocating murder or suicide. I'm just surprised it hasn't happened.
I'm shocked there haven't been attempts!
I think it epitomizes our cultural complacency nowadays. It’s the same reason why we don’t have mass protests right now. People are too comfortable to give a fuck. Assassins are the seven sigma outliers of the distribution but the whole distribution has shifted so far to the complacent side that we just don’t have any anymore.
The fact that rational people might decide that stochastic terrorism is the most logical choice on both sides should terrify the FBI and Secret Service. Imagine standing in the middle of that?
Every fucking day
The king of Sweden has a similar exemption from the law, but he also doesn’t hold any political power. I also don’t know how waterproof his status is if he did something heinous enough.
Trump already has done heinous stuff.
Trump has already been convicted of felonies.
But SCOTUS just made a ruling which states that some of the evidence used to convict him is inadmissible.
Just because he made those comments while in office. Because somehow lying about paying off porn stars to win a second term is protecting the American people and thus part of his official duties. Go figure.
US justice system is f*cked.
Boggles the mind how one can be a convicted felon and still be in the race, but if you're in prison you can't vote.
I think prisoners and excons should be able to vote. But it's definitely important to have people be able to run from prison. See Eugene Debs, Nelson Mandela, and others.
I would love for prisoners to be able to vote actually. I mean aside from the part time slavery they endure they've got pretty much nothing but time. Time they could study the candidates and think about the issues.
This is a fair point I hadn't considered!
The king of Sweden doesn't control the most powerful military in the world.
He doesn't control much of anything, actually!
Yup! There's also the fact that kings usually tend to at least care about their country's welfare somewhat. Republicans don't give a shit about anything but money, power, and theocracy.
Theocracy is a mean to money and power.
True, but there are true believers in there that actually believe Jesus is coming back and such.
I suppose some do, sometimes I wish they were right and that they would j just get raptured already. No need for a new Kingdom and tons of massacre, just come and take them.
Capitalists. Capitalists are bipartisan, and that's why Biden is doing this big nothing.
What about if the president wants to be a naughty boy, but doesn't want any of those pesky consequences?
I definitely don't support the ruling but Obama has ordered drone strikes that killed children. Does that mean Obama should stand trial for murder? I think the idea is that the president is given the authority to do things most people can't, and because of that, they can't be held to the same standard as other people, at least while using that authority.
There really aught to be a line though. There can't be blanket Immunity on every single presidental act no matter what. Ordering the assassination of the al-Qaeda leader and ordering the assassination of the Democrat leader should not be considered equal actions under the law. Trump is already arguing that his conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results was an official action of the president. There's no way that should be considered valid.
I'd say Biden doing something official to null and void this decision would be good. He won't, obviously, but it's an example.
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.
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 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.
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.
No, it can be done "legally." Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2:
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.
I've never wanted a Death Note more than I do now.
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 know it's wrong, but doesn't it feel so right?
It is extremely concerning. We no longer have three separate branches of government acting as a system of checks and balances.
Especially with Project 2025 (day one after the election of the next GOP candidate). The executive branch will no longer be controllable by the other two branches. Also, Schedule F will allow all "policy-related" government workers to be rescheduled as fireable employees, allowing the Prez to install loyalists throughout the entire government. It's definitely time to freak the fuck out.
Anyone who wants to see it https://www.project2025.org/
If you read the PDF that they gave it's terrifying. Talking about applying to be a Loyalist and only they get federal appointments...and replacing real people in the government.
Textbook step by step fascism.
Let's pretend to be loyalists and seed their administration with leftists from lemmy.
They have an interview process that combs over, not sure actually...
We know how good they are at combing-over.
Disclaimer: someone calm me and op down.
I couldn't believe that every post wasn't about this ruling all day
No, you shouldn't calm down, this decision is absolutely cataclysmic for the US should a dangerous person be elected or the ruling not overturned.
I've been saying the states are okay despite all SCOTUS' stripping of civil rights and everything else wrong with that country because as long as there were checks and balances, voting had relevance.
With this ruling,I can't see that it will continue to.
A president can order their political opponents murdered.
They can order that all civil rights be suspended indefinitely.
They can order a suspension or abolition of term limits.
They can abolish voting altogether in a hundred different ways and nothing can be legally done to halt that president from continuing to abolish voting until it sticks.
If anyone does manage to legally stop the president, the president can kill them or cut off their fingers and remove their voice box.
Literally anything is now legal, fair game.
Biden has spoken out against that kind of power and he has it right now, so VOTE for BIDEN to buy yourselves some time.
Whoever comes after this term or the next likely won't have the same scruples.
This is far and away the most dangerous and harmful decision SCOTUS has ever made, which is saying a LOT.
It is the antithesis of the line in the Constitution explicitly stating that no elected official (like the president) has legal immunity.
The decision to grant an entire branch of the government absolute(it is absolute, anything can become "official") legal immunity could very rapidly destroy the country as it is and turn it into a true authoritarian state within a week.
It takes some time to write, print and sign the executive orders or I'd say a day.
I have to read up on it more because I haven't read or heard enough yet to convince me that this decision is not utterly catastrophic.
I'm shocked the dollar hasn't collapsed, any further international faith in US stability is misplaced.
Antiquated.
Nope. Too busy losing my goddamn shit over this insane, dictator-making, Enabling Act 2.0 garbage.
Article II, Section 3 - the president must take care to execute the laws faithfully. No president meeting the requirements of the office could issue an illegal official order. If the president orders something illegal, it's necessarily against the oath of office and should not be considered official.
My feeling is that this ruling means any cases brought against the president would need to establish that an act was unofficial before criminal proceedings could proceed. Thay seems fine to me to adjudicate in each case.
Unfortunately I think you’re missing something here. The court ruled that the president has immunity. Like the kind of immunity diplomats get in foreign countries that enables them to run over people in their cars. Immunity as a concept only makes sense if the action performed is actually illegal. Nobody can be prosecuted for legal actions. The president is now unprosecutable for both legal AND illegal actions.
It’s a nonsensical and horrifying ruling. The fact that the president would be violating his oath of office doesn’t cancel out the immunity, it just makes the crime that much more disgusting, and the impossibility of justice that much more galling.
Please back this up with some quotes from the ruling or something because this is not how I read it.
The reason the president is immune for official acts is to protect people like Obama who ordered extrajudicial killings of American citizens. That is a very grey offical act - these were US citizens in a war zone fighting for the other side. I may not fully agree that that should be protected, but I understand the reasoning around a president feeling free to act (legally) in the best interests of the nation without fear that their actions would lead to legal jeopardy after they leave office.
(To be clear: I would be ok with a trial to decide if Obama's actions were official, for instance. And if they were deemed not, then he could be tried for those assassinations. Also, to be clear: I am a progressive who would vote for Obama over Trump in a heartbeat.)
It’s all over the Syllabus section, but here’s a specific quote:
Personally I am ok with courts not being able to deem something unofficial based on allegations rather than on a decision.
So how do they prosecute then? If the president commits a crime, let’s say he accepts a bribe for a pardon, you aren’t allowed to bring a prosecution unless a court deems the act unofficial. And the court isn’t permitted to find that the act was unofficial because the bribery is merely an allegation and hasn’t been proved. And you can’t prove the allegation because you can’t prosecute a president for official acts.
The trial court is supposed to determine if there is sufficient evidence such that is not a mere allegation?
The US President now has legal immunity from executing those laws faithfully.
Incorrect. Breaking the law is never an official act of the office, and therefore, cannot be protected.
You are not considering the part where we can't use relevant testimony or documents to prove that what the President does is illegal in the first place. The President can just say whatever illegal things they did were official acts, and all the evidence that might prove otherwise is off-limits. It relies on other people in the administration to not follow the illegal order, but of course that is a weak protection and the President can fire them or do something illegal to them without consequence too.
If you follow an illegal order, guess what you just did: broke the law.
Please, fhis strident unreality being pushed is JUST LIKE the fear mongering on the right.
This decision is by no means great, it may totally delay trials for Trump until after the election, that's horeshit in my opinion. But I also don't beleive this bullshit about this ruling making the president a king. Stop FUDing for them. Trump STILL HAS TO FOLLOW THE LAW IF HE IS ELECTED. Please STOP REINFORCING THE IDEA THAT HE DOES NOT.
Did you even read Sotomayor' dissent? I did.
Yes, and I sadly had to agree with John Roberts, not a good place to be.
The doomerism is just ridiculous to me.
How can you have immunity from following the law? The only immunity is from breaking it; any law broken in a president's effort to execute their core official acts cannot be prosecuted or even investigated, according to this decision.
I appreciate this response. It makes me feel a little better. I still think we should be concerned about SCOTUS probably getting to make some of these decisions of what's official or not. Seems more corrupt on the judicial branch side of things rather than executive. Overall not great.
I mean, it's definitely not great. This court is a sham that never should have had this makeup.
And this absolutely makes it harder to bring Trump to trial before the election.
This is not great.
But it is not "the president can assasinate people!!!"
At least, not to this layman. I would hope supreme court justices know better, but even the dissent seems a little unhinged to me, a progressive who thinks the rule of law should AND STILL DOES apply to everyone. (I am also not willing to just give up and say "yeah, guess assassination is legal now" - I think that junk is counterproductive and maybe being propagandized against us by unfriendly foreign governments.)
The president absolutely can assassinate people according to this. They can have someone picked up on any charge (execution of laws and giving orders to the military are part of their "official acts"), taken to a federal facility, and executed (espionage, national defense, exigent circumstances, whatever), then pardon everyone involved, and no evidence could even be brought up because it is all tied to an official act and investigating it would be impossible because any evidence tied to the official act is prohibited (giving orders to the military, directing federal law enforcement) and the investigation would burden the president's ability to execute their core responsibilities.
I'm not reading this. Your first sentence is incorrect.
Bull. The president giving orders to the military is a core responsibility, and he has full immunity in that regard. That plus a pardon for the military members involved means he can have anyone assassinated and nobody would face consequences. Period.
Legal orders. The president is bound by Article II, Section 3.
Yes, it scares the shit out of me. Even if we manage to never elect Trump before he dies, the next time any Republican makes it to the presidency, the American Experiment is over.
I think it's silly to assume that this can't and won't be abused by Democrats as well, given time. The worst thing we could do in this situation is make it partisan.
No president should have this power.
Not to defend the democrats too much but even if they do it, the SCOTUS is heavily biased against them which means that they would get heavily punished.
Also at the least the liberal wing of the SCOTUS voted against this, unlike the republican appointed judges.
So there’s clearly one side pushing for this and one trying to prevent it.
It could be abused by Democrats as well. If we get to that point, all hope is lost anyway.
Actually I think it is far worse than you may…
They ruled that the president is immune from prosecution for official acts they would get to rule on what that means.
So if Biden does X; they could rule it not official; but if Trump were to do that same thing, I’ve no doubt they would rule the other way
I have not read the ruling but if this is how it goes then it feels like a slow burn coup by the SCOTUS. The fate of every decision of the president is in the hands of these justices. They now control what is 'official' and what is not. They now control the president in some way.
or maybe (hopefully) I'm wrong.
Very similar to Nazis path to power, a lot of provocative action, violence, and people stop giving a shit that they are constantly doing this, an attempt at a violent coup, it dosen't work, then the people in power create legal pretexts to allow a seemingly legal way to dictatorship.
Says right in the ruling it's up to the trails court to determine what is official.
That's only a delay tactic since it'll eventually come back to SCROTUS
The fact that Clarence Thomas has his name on this ruling really helps illustrate how easy and often cheap it is to simply buy rulings.
I wonder, what do you think the ruling changed? What can the president do now that the president wasn't able to do before?
Did you read the dissenting judges statements on the ruling? Sitting Supreme Court Justices have publicly given their legal opinion on what the ruling means.
Did you read it?
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.
Good time to remind people that a higher proportion of millennials and gen z voted in mid-term elections than baby boomers or baby boomer babies (gen x) did at equivalent ages.
Millennials voted in the last presidential election at a rate that represents the highest level of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. Gen Z seems poised to do something similar, as this will be the first presidential election where a majority of Gen Z will be old enough to vote.
Additionally, gen x is the only generational cohort that voted LESS in the last mid term elections than the one before it, i.e., participation in elections declined for that cohort. I guess they were too busy... idk, doing whatever gen x does instead of voting.
This whole post is just one long "the kids are the problem because of their phones and video games," but I'm pretty sure the most politically active youth generations in modern history aren't ruining democracy by playing video games.
Anyway. Basically what I'm saying is: ok boomer. Oh well, whatever, nevermind, right?
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.
...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.
Yep. I'm so over American politics and I think the nation is headed in the wrong direction. I feel that the people are powerless against changing our trajectory. I had been considering doing a PhD abroad and this is really pushing that decision now.
Do it. Do it now. You know what kind of person lived a life knowing they made the right decision?
Everyone that left Germany in 1932.
Let's say the best possible thing happens. Biden crushes Trump, the Republicans lose so many seats Team Not Fascists can push through Constitutional Amendments.
What would Democrats actually change for the better?
Do you think that is likely?
Or will you be spending the rest of your life wondering if this is the election year that starts a civil war in one of the the most militarised nations on the planet? Do you want to be in a major nuclear power where one side specifically hates cities when it has a civil war?
Even if things go relatively well, this bullshit isn't ending without one. As a best outcome! The other is no one even doing that! Every two fucking years you're going to be watching which Congressional seats fall to fascism because one team has just chosen to abandon reality and democracy.
See Canada
See Norway
Do like them.
That's about 20 years of reform.
The democrats are not even left enough to be a centrist party in Canada. They will not reform.
While you might be generally correct, some of the legislation passed during Biden's term is genuinely better than what even Europe could come up with.
More likely they'll have a party and slap each other on the back for not needing to court the union vote anymore.
You're right that they could.
Now look at their past legislation. Will they?
Just know that you’re not the only one that sees it this way. There are a lot of us, but not nearly enough.
All this shit is literally straight out of the Putin playbook. Take control of the courts, take control of what is legal, take control of elections. Republicans were always too dumb and incompetent to be anything but pawns of a better organized evil.
Fascism isn't some genius-brained thing, it's just how authoritarians operate, and Putin didn't invent it.
US politics has always been deeply corrupt, and now it is losing even more of its veneer of legitimacy, which means it's crumbled that much more.
The Russians aren't the cause of your woes. Actually if you look at what happened with the neoliberal shock doctrine and the fall of the USSR, the US is way more responsible for Putin than the other way around.
That's correct, and it doesn't discount that authoritarianism is authoritarianism. Notwithstanding, people are so indoctrinated with American exceptionalism and USA most free country in the world, we don't even bother to learn about what Greg Palast termed vulture capitalism and tactics used. Operation Paperclip is heavily whitewashed as "the best and brightest," leaving out the noun being described, Nazis.
We're in real trouble and the only ones who can save us from ourselves is ourselves. It will be interesting to see if it will be done before the climate extinction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.aclu.org/video/aclu-ccr-lawsuit-american-boy-killed-us-drone-strike
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.
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.
Beau of the Fifth Column on Youtube: https://youtu.be/vNzFQ10uSfU https://youtu.be/0Y-C1fWx37g
"This is now the most important election issue; it has to supersede all of the other ones. The American people now are no longer no longer choosing between two candidates that they really don't like as many of the previous election cycles have been. They're trying to make a determination which one is less likely to become a tyrant."
The only problem I have with this quote is that a large portion of the electorate want the tyrant.
It sincerely feel absolutely insane. Completely beyond any party line bullshit - I'm almost as concerned with what Obama would do with this as what Trump would do with this.
This sort of ruling has no place in a democratic society. It is beyond reprehensible, it is utterly absurd.
The fact that it has been basically accepted by the general public - no riots, no large-scale outcry - sends a dire fucking message.
"May you live in interesting times", indeed.
Democrats don't like riots, if leftists protest too hard liberals are the first to tell them they're hurting the cause.
You must simply VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO!!!! every few years, that's the extent of political action requested and allowed by liberals
Don’t forget, when voting fails and the candidate loses, it’s the left’s ( and young people’s) fault, not the candidate.
The riots are coming.
I an not even American and even I am pissed at that dumb ruling.
And what is even more annoying is that I read that what is considered an official act is not clear, so a court will need to decide if an act was official or not, and that court will be the SCOTUS.
So they could easily decide that acts Biden performed was not official, but the same acts performed by Trump was official, and invent some crap about context being different in som complex way, so with this ruling they have moved the power from the POTUS to the SCOTUS while POTUS stays the fall guy.
I get the feeling that what Trump did to earn his felonies isn't exactly covered. Mainly because there is no way that could be considered an official act
Didnt they just say, that it was an official act?
I believe they did.
And they're not even good pamphlets! They're trite bullshit!
It's not stupidity, it's loyalty to the level of irrationality.
You'll understand the current American right if you assume that they have no attachment to the meaning of their words, and the prime axiom they operate by is: "My team is always right".
They use words as weapons to convince those who can be swayed by them, but they themselves are immune to being swayed by words, and largely indifferent to their literal meaning - only their emotional content.
This is not to deify the left, they have their own problems.
When he went to Miami to be indicted he was disappointed because not a single person showed up. Hard to square with all these supposed super fans. Grateful Dead or Phish had more loyal fans.
The polls, they are the issue atm. Truly It’ll all come down to the election.
I believe that most of it is a bluff. There will be minimal actual Trump supporters taking up arms. We saw that at the 1/6 joke. There will be some violence but it will be stamped out. These people had children die in Afghanistan fighting religious fundamentalist. It’ll look like most of their protests where only 4-6 people actually show up. We are a nation of over 300 million.
Humans, Americans especially, have become too domesticated for unnecessary slaughter. 99% of the population have never even killed their food.
I had "The USA becomes a Failed State" pencilled in my calendar for November, not for July.
Yes.
This is a fuckin five alarm fire. It's time to leave the building. Don't grab your shit, don't put your shoes on first, fuckin worry about your safety first and foremost because this is an emergency.
I don't know what to do, to be honest. I feel like if you just went to DC near the physical location of the Supreme Court at any point in the next week you would see at least a decent number of people carrying signs and yelling. I thought about traveling there and finding them and talking to them about who they're with and how I can join. I don't know that that will solve the problem, but I think it would probably put you in touch with people who are at least doing fuckin something about it.
It will be good to have allies, learn what people are trying to do, maybe some of it will be productive, and then if the real bad shit starts roughly one year from now, at least you have some allies in place. But yes. It's a fuckin emergency. It's real, real bad.
Socialist Rifle Association wouldn't be a bad place to start if you're not in Trumpland like me.
Buy ammo now. Prices and supply are going to be nuts very soon.
After I posted earlier tonight I looked at my options online and talked to a couple people about getting a hardy AK. Will definitely get plenty of 7.62
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.
🎶 it's the end of the world as we know it, and I have crippling anxiety 🎶
This ruling was made for trump.
Think of how much trump has done, legally, questionably legal, and illegal, while in office.
Now remove accountability for any of it while ignoring the virtually Sisyphean task already faced to prosecute what he’s (and those surrounding him have) already done, and we have yet to see any sufficiently deterrent sentence being passed.
Now also imagine the arguing over what constitutes “official” acts, you bet your ass that one side is going to be perfectly happy to “officially” let trump shoot someone on 5th avenue.
This strips trump and those like him of the merest inconvenience of facing charges when they leave office. If they leave office.
It’s potentially disastrous on multiple levels.
It is absolutely highly concerning. That said, there's way too many people who haven't read the official ruling who are panicking instead of advocating for people to vote to keep Biden in office and prepare another viable candidate for that office once his second term is up. Because the only way to get these idiots off the SCOTUS is to elect non-conservative presidents who can win. And that only happens if people both vote and lobby for what they want. We need better electoral college regulations. We need ranked voting. We need the people to lobby to further limit the government because obviously this is what happens when we don't.
This ruling, coupled with the whole "Biden is too old, he should step down" BS is exactly the kind of propaganda concoction that will lead to Trump being re-elected in November if we don't do something.
Do I think this is a way for a President to sanction and enact the murder of political rivals? Under certain circumstances, yes. Do I think the average citizen should be worried about the President signing their death warrant? No.
You have to understand that we've had alphabet agencies for a long time and the President literally could use certain pretexts to kill a person if they wanted so long as they did it a specific way. That has not changed just because of this ruling and that's a big factor people should look at. There's a reason former Presidents haven't been prosecuted for drone strikes. Technically they could have been held accountable in a court of law before that. But we've known for a long time that in all actuality the law only works that way if you're poor or if you're going up against someone else who's independently wealthy. That's why Epstein is dead after all. Not because he trafficked young girls. But because his imprisonment put other rich people in danger. Sam Bankmanfried isn't in prison because he stole money. He's in prison because he stole from other rich people. Same with Elizabeth Holmes.
When Trump was in office, I need you to understand that the government (the people who guard national secrets) actually considerered him a threat and limited his ability to do damage by not telling him things. We would have been much worse off if they hadn't.
As a result, the apparatus of the government is not a monolith, just like the apparatus of the military or even just the US as a whole. It's made up of people. And we've limped along this far because we could rely on them not to do certain things. But what Trump was able to get away with by being elected and being in office? This is the fallout of that.
Your statement that the president can "personally" violate any law without criminal liability isn't correct. Here's a direct quote from the ruling "Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts."
"As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Clinton, 520 U. S., at 694, and n. 19. The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President’s unofficial acts."
On its face this ruling admits there is a such thing as an unofficial act. The problem is that the SCOTUS should not be allowed to make this decision without checks or balances in place. I.e. if they are making the deduction that a President has immunity, they must cede the determination of such acts that have immunity vs those that don't to another regulatory body. That's the disturbing part to me.
This also makes me question what the point is of the impeachment process specifically because of this passage from the same ruling:
"When the President exercises such author ity, Congress cannot act on, and courts cannot examine, the President’s actions. It follows that an Act of Congress—either a specific one targeted at the President or a generally applicable one—may not criminalize the President’s actions within his exclusive constitutional power. Neither may the courts adjudicate a criminal prosecution that examines such Presidential actions."
Technically an impeachment is not a criminal trial. But that passage doesn't specify the scope. So it could be used to argue that impeachment (while not a criminal proceeding) is an examination of the Presidents actions that potentially would not be allowed. And since the impeachment process is a check and balance for the presidential office, that's not okay.
That's not what anybody is worried about, but rather that this is the vanguard of a movement whose followers will happily kill us for any number of out-group reasons, take away bodily autonomy, labor rights, civil rights, and regulatory protections, and then, okay, yes, have the President sign our death warrants should we decide to protest all of this.
As one of the candidates has openly advocated and said he'd do.
I'm trans and I'm legitimately worried the President will try to cure my ADHD by sending me to a camp that specializes in "concentration" if you catch my cold
Those things are already happening and will get worse if we don't lobby and vote. This has been the vendetta of the conservative party in this country for several decades. They have been taking small chunks out of every regulatory legislative government branch and agency for literal decades with the intent that eventually they could undermine the government process enough to get what they want.
The reason I said "citizens worried about the President signing their death warrant" is because that's literally what headlines have been saying and I see a lot of those same headlines parotted both on Lemmy in these discussion threads, and in other web forums in relation to the topic of criminal charges being brought against a sitting or former president.
We should have always been worried about our rights. We should have always been lobbying to further limit the government in what it can do against the people. Instead we haven't made a new amendment to the constitution since '92, and we are leery of doing so and keeping it a living document because we fear all the things the other side will do, and they're doing them anyway.
I see what you're saying, and I can wholeheartedly agree that we should have been worrying about our rights for years. I'm not here trying to say that this latest ruling suddenly changes everything, but that it's incrementally worse.
I guess I do have to defend those headlines a little bit. It's not that we worry that the President is going to murder us, personally, but that it's abominable that he could, and not be prosecuted. But, then, I was complaining about that when Obama had al Awlaki killed based on ersatz due process that he made up.
Very well thought out reply, thank you. I'm absolutely alarmed, zero people should be above the law, and I think this puts us on a very dangerous path, but if we all collect our heads we can still keep our current president, and maybe work some stuff out from there.
I'm absolutely annoyed with the Biden talk, like no he isn't my favorite candidate. He's just not openly calling for overthrowing democracy, so that's my choice. I don't worship my leaders, and in a 2 party system I just choose the least worst. He's the least worst.
I keep thinking back to Carlin. He called it in the 90s. "We don't have leaders, we have owners, they own you." Two big things keep me from panic attacks right now. One is that the true owners of the country right now are corporations, and they want stability and you to keep paying, which is oddly comforting in terms of what's going to happen. The second is that it's not over yet, we just need to all go out and vote for the least horrible candidate we have! Huzzah!
I'm a bit bothered that people aren't going to the web to read the ruling in full. They're relying heavily on dissenting SCOTUS member's statements and the media. I'm also disheartened at the number of people who don't know their rights, don't understand the government's functions in society, and don't understand that the constitution is meant to be a living document that restricts what the government can do, not what its citizens can. Of course the number of people who don't know what's in the constitution and its amendments is also very high.
It wasn't that terribly long ago that we didn't have presidential term limits. There's absolutely a way forward with further amendments to the constitution which is something we as a people should also lobby for.
Edit: Speak of the devil: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4750735-joe-morelle-amendment-supreme-court-immunity-ruling/
The real problem isn't what this does right now, it's how vague and open it is to interpretation. Official acts aren't described anywhere in it, and they're explicitly allowing other courts to decide rather than call out things that are obviously wrong for someone with that much power to do. Rather than cracking the door and opening it when needed, they swung the door wide open, and it will be up to courts to close it later. That vagueness is the terrifying part, who knows what acts will be "justified" later.
They aren't though. They say in the document that they are the final word on what is within the scope of official acts. So it's not even a separate regulating body purpose built for that. It's lower courts making a decision and the SCOTUS deciding if it is right and wrong and having the final say.
If you trust the courts, that works fine, but they have proven all year how the court is definitely partisan and corrupt now. The court shouldn't swing in either direction - they should be only beholden to the constitution, and justices who take money are no longer just listening to the constitution
Yes. And to be clear I don't think this is a good thing. I'm actually very much against the courts deciding the purview of what is lawful conduct for the president within his duties to the Constitution and what is not.
Yeah I see it as left open so it can swing either way depending on the election, and that worries me. As a kid I was naive, I thought we had the perfect uncorruptable government, and here we are proving even the nine people who are supposed to be the least corrupted people - are some of the most.
This one, including all text from the justices (including dissents) is over a hundred pages. That's doable for many people, though not all, and it should be important enough to prioritize for those who can. But I think this one falls into the category of sticking my head up a bull's ass while most people will just see what the butcher has to say.
Reading even the first few pages would be preferable to the fear mongering and panic in my opinion. If you're getting a pared down version from Cornell law, fine. If it's coming from fox news or vox media, I don't think that should be the end of anyone's endeavours to understand what is going on.
It makes me very uncomfy from a fundamental perspective. Ignoring the fact that it goes against the founding principles of the US.
It provides rather wide and sweeping immunity, and even presumed immunity.
Although to be clear, the immunity act does not cover any private acts of the president, so if they were to for example,personally murder someone, it shouldn't apply, even remotely.
Now to be clear, the likelihood that a government official uses this to kill people is incredibly small because otherwise the precedent that it would set would literally push us into civil war. Will trump do it ? Good question.
Definition of Private Acts can be fluid.
anything where there is a non strict determination leaves it to be pretty fluid unfortunately.
You're right, using this ruling in the way people fear it can be used would provoke a civil war.
Now, remind me, was there a large fraction of the US population frothing at the mouth at the idea of a civil war? Perhaps one with a complex the size of Alaska with regards to the previous US civil war? Hmm..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=isCh4kCeNYU two spoken quotes highly relevant.
Biden has no balls. He should take one for the team and order the execution of SCOTUS. Either he gets prosecuted or he'll put an end to this nonsense by force. Even if he gets prosecuted he's old as fuck he'll never see prison.
They basically just performed a coup for whoever becomes the next Republican president. It may not be Trump in 2024, but it doesnt matter, as soon as a Republican president is voted in it is over.
The profound importance of your comment can not be overestimated, imo. The American people need to wake up quickly and learn about soft coup and especially Operation Condor. History is repeating, and I get the feeling the soft coups shepherded by the USA abroad were test runs.
I don't understand why a democrat president wouldn't abuse this. In fact, why doesn't the person who tells Biden what to do order Trump executed right now? I'm sure an accident with reasonable doubt could be arranged.
because it relies on the.. i don't remember the name of their position but they're the top judges, it relies on them to actually say that it counts as an official act, and since the majority of them are corrupt republicans they'll just find a way to say "well actually what biden did wasn't an official act".
It's just a farce to make people think the country still has a functional legal system and government when in fact they pulled out the life support years ago..
not easy to describe because the intricacies of political operation in the dnc and the strategic policy considerations that evaluate optics and the public opinion's effect on future elections would require esoteric political science terminology to say democrats are pussies
If you aren't GQP-brainwashed, you are concerned.
Inspired by the Warren court, I used to think the supreme court was a noble institution, today I believe it has been corrupted by Republican Christofascist shills who want power at all costs, even if it means betraying the constitution to install an unelected king. We're on our way to Gilead unless something is done.
Is anybody NOT concerned?
Fascists and their sheep that trying to turn the US into a dictatorship...
From the lack of reaction to how big this change is, too many are not concerned IMO.
Can't Biden just have a reaper drone fire a hellfire missile at Trump? Or am I missing something?
imo, nothing feels more deep state than scotus serving a different america.
also, i just saw some lemmy post a twitter pic saying said scotus ruling is unconstitutional. since the judicial branch is the one responsible with interpreting the law, we can probably tell what they are going to interpret "unconstitutional" as at this point.
The SCOTUS has decided that precedent is no longer the basis of the American legal system and is throwing out existing settled law willy nilly. The legal syatem is fully broken at this point.
The SCOTUS has decided that the constitution and separation of powers that forms the foundation of (relatively) safe government that we’ve depended on up until this point, is no longer the basis of the American legal system.
If it was just precedent, it still wouldn’t be good, but it would still be quite a bit safer and less seditionous than what they did.
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.
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.
Can the current president hunt the former president for sport now?
You are right to be concerned. If this is not reversed soon and with a bang, the USA would either be in a civil war or start WWIII in the next 5 years
As with the lowest posts in this thread, this will not be popular, but I'll say it anyway.
I'm not concerned. Not because I think everything is fine. It's because it's not been fine for a long long time. Now the curtain is being pulled back and everyone can see the reality that's always been there. Privilege just means private law, and the president is the most privileged person in the US. As time moves forward the window dressing is removed and we can see reality for what it really is. It reminds me of This Vicious Cabaret:
But the backdrop's peel and the sets give way and the cast gets eaten by the play / There's a murderer at the Matinee, there are dead men in the aisles / And the patrons and actors too are uncertain if the show is through / And with side-long looks await their cue but the frozen mask just smiles.
Well, that's one way to look at it, but too, keep in mind Hemingway's famous description of how somebody goes broke: Slowly, then all at once.
This ruling is only possible and accepted because the current political climate allows for that, true. Things haven't been fine for a while. But this is a sign that they keep getting worse.
I vehemently disagree with the idea that it's a good thing to have "the curtain pulled back". Realpolitik is and has been true forever - but public perception and acceptance matters a huge amount. These popular illusions and ideals are a part of the calculation of realpolitik.
Society should be idealistic, it should expect better - because those expectations shape the actions of politicians. Our society losing its ideals shouldn't be applauded, it should be mourned.
I'm deeply concerned about that.
I'm more concerned that there's literally no one in the streets over it.
Every social media except for the fascist safe-spaces will censor and ban people advocating for violence even in self-defense, including this one. On top of that, the FBI continues to actively infiltrate and suppress left-wing protest movements. Is it any wonder that the public's ability to organize against fascism has been effectively neutered?
I don't disagree at all, and in fact I think those are a great few reasons why we're not organizing.
But, I feel like right now, all it would take was knowing other people were there and more people would start to show up.
We should digitally tar and feather anyone who tries to suppress advocating for violence. Arming yourself is self-defense at this point.
Arming yourself is a far cry from actively doing violence. Go buy a gun, take classes, get hours in at the range to practice your aim. Be ready when the time comes. Don't make the time come.
Bring your gun to protests. Fire on the police if they try to disable you.
Possibly the calm before the storm. I'm worried that it won't be protests that comes next, but armed violence. But who knows, Americans have been made docile and apathetic as fuck. Even if they protested and took to the streets, it's barely had an impact in the last 20 years. Look at the explosive reaction after George Floyd and all the resulted from that was some minor reform in some places.
Then maybe it is time to stop being peaceful about it. It obviously doesn't work, so maybe they'll listen if we start breaking shit.
Breaking shit is the only thing that has ever worked.
Even the civil rights movement, which The Powers That Be try to credit "nonviolent" MLK with in retrospect, only actually succeeded because the alternative was Malcolm X and The Powers That Be fucking knew it.
Part of the problem there is that those streets aren't well kept to be used as protest avenues.
Plus they're so spread out a national effort is VERY hard to get off the ground.
The french are so known for protests mostly because they have a highly centralized transit system that malcontents can easily use to gather in the biggest city that's also the capitol and also, especially recently, decently pedestrianized.
Yes, have you browsed Lemmy or the general internet the past few days??? How can you still be asking "is anyone else" at this point?
Mhm as a Canadian, the entire last week of SCOTUS rulings spells doom for your country if the people of the US allow Trump and any other federal Republican to attain power again. Lots of cause to be alarmed.
Roe v Wade from before this week was absolutely terrible. Snyder v Grants Pass was downright awful, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is going to have awful consequences for years to come. Trump v. USA to me is the cherry on top of this shit ruling sundae.
The best thing you can do is disseminate each of these rulings, and why they are bad to every person you know. The message for Roe is clear, as most non-crazies would rather have state governments not mess with the business in your genitals. Try and figure out a good way to explain each of the others as they are just as horrible.
As Canadians, this should alarm us as well. The U.S is our biggest trading partner, we share the largest land border in the world, our political climate is directly impacted by what goes on to the south, and we have our own growing alt-right movement which the CP is pandering to - taking direct inspiration, if not outright manipulation, from the same elements at play in the U.S.
We are not immune to any of this. The deeper the U.S. gets into the shit, the more dire the implications for Canadians become. If Project 2025 comes to be, and our government doesn't play ball with their approach to international relations, we're fucked. If we DO play ball, we're probably also fucked in different ways.
I'm very stressed about it, but I don't know what to do other than doomscroll.
Vote and get younger people to vote is a start. Our republic requires civic participation and this is a direct result of people not showing up to the polls for decade after decade. This could not have happened without voter apathy.
I think the really interesting part is how it goes down when something from his past from before he was president sticks and they declare him immune ex post facto/retroactively covering his pre-presidential shenanigans (looking at NY charges) and also how his civil judgements play out
💀
I’m very concerned. The US has been increasingly authoritarian for a long time. But I really hate how people are only seeing “oh shit that’s authoritarian now”
I mean, let’s be real, we live in a fucking authoritarian police state, and this isn’t something that suddenly happened with Trump or the SCOTUS, they are just showing some of the terminal symptoms. Our police force is above the law, mass surveillance is normal, corporate surveillance is a profitable business that doesn’t shirk from getting profit from the Govt, and our democratic system is feeling pretty autocratic.
The oppressive arms of the next authoritarian on the throne of the oval office have been set up over many decades, accelerating recently. But now that the throne has been polished, people are starting to notice.
This system is fucked.
edit: autocorrect fucked me
Hopefully this is a wake up call. We've got military bases all around the world, the only country like that. That's weird, right? We're the world government stomping around the world, deciding what countries are part of the modern world and which ones aren't depending not on whether you're a dictatorship or not, but whether we like you and if your economic policies are beneficial to us. And that authoritarianism and imperialism is finally coming home to roost domestically. I hate to see it, because I live here, but it makes sense with what we've been as a country since we killed off all the natives for their land.
Bringing up imperialism is a good call, you're absolutely right. Although I left it out in my comment, the techniques used abroad always come back home on Foucault's imperial boomerang.
The technology we use on our borders will be used to oppress activists and protesters in the city. The techniques used to stomp on indigenous people abroad will stomp on our queers and PoC back at home. Old military equipment will be sold to the military we turn on our civilians: cops.
Not from US, deeply concerned anyway.
Pretty much every democrat is indeed highly concerned... Along with plenty of moderate Rs. It's the far right fascists and their moronic blind followers that are rejoicing and the remaining people just don't have the time or intelligence to care.
To be fair, the president can and does already assassinate people extrajudicially.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_the_United_States
I mean yeah. We all knew Robert's wasn't going to encourage Biden to prosecute Bush and Obama for drone strikes.
Doesn't make it not a war crime.
Dude, this is straight terrifying.
I haven't seen anyone defend it. Closest to that was someone saying it seems vague in a few places. I think it's a pretty good heuristic that if you can't find anyone to argue the negative, the positive is probably true.
That said I didn't look so hard because I'm not American and got other shit to do. Good luck you crazy bastards.
we've discovered the corruption of the Supreme Court and they're getting as much done as they can before anybody tries to do anything about it. it's literally going to take amendments to the Constitution to fix this shit I think, and the people with the money to fund the politicians have no reason to push for it
Forget amendments, this is gonna take a whole new document.
Isn't that part of the plan for the GOP's Project 2025?
I’m going to add my “it’s very fucking concerning and we should be out in the streets protesting” comment. Tell me to be there this weekend, and I will.
Be there this weekend.
If you feel strongly enough about this - or anything, really - trust your instinct and give yourself permission to act without asking it of strangers. Said sympathetically, I'm not immune to this phenomenon either.
Yes I'm terrified! Honestly I'm thinking about moving to Vietnam. One it's socialist and check with my username I'm into that lol. Also like America is the world hegemon if it starts going after everybody or World War 3 breaks out I can't think of a safer place to be the Vietnam.
This may seem dramatic and hopefully it is but I don't think it is. Democrats won't use this power it or actually curtail it and as soon as another republican wins office this country will go full mask off fascist so fast. Honestly the mask might be off now. This frogs been boiled so long she's not sure if she's dead yet.
Yes, duh.
I'm not worried about it from now until January. And in November I'll know if I need to worry in January, or in 2029.
But it IS worrying that at some point we'll have a republican president, trump or otherwise, and then all bets are off.
Qualified immunity was bad enough, fuck yeah I'm worried. Politicians should have fewer protections, not more. This is supposed to be a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" and this is not that.
Pretty sure we all are at least a little ticked off about it. Except for maybe all the fat oranges magats out there
SCOTUS
POTUS
FLOTUS
Only positive thing that could theoretically come out of this, for me as a European, is that some US representatives will finally stop going around saying that you are the greatest democracy on this planet. Problem is, the US nationals who usually utter such BS are not the ones able to realize how anti-democratic this is. As a US citizen with a working brain, I would be in DC now.
This is the worst you got to, up to now, going full circle from colony of a monarchy to monarchy.
It is time to distance ourselves until you get your shit together.
Enjoy your King, fellow subjects.
More and more signs of converting the United States into a Greek democracy. Ruling Despots, some 'free man' and voters and 96% rest incl. women, peasants, worksmen, merchants and slaves, not to forget bout slaves.
Any concern about it had by anyone not in an authoritative position is impotent.
No dude, it's only the most talked about things right now.
I'm pissed that Biden isn't calling their bluff and breaking a ton of laws right now.
This could easily lead to not firing the public servants that are not loyal enough, but outright assassinating them at best, or just Trump keeping the presidency (dictatorship) until the end of his life instead of holding elections at worst.
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.
No it doesn’t concern me. I have no illusions that the top of society is full of people with unfair power over me. And it’s relieving that the law finally reflects the reality of the situation.
The only thing worse than a nightmare is a nightmare with lipstick on.
He is only immune from acts that fall within his job description. If you want to criminally charge the president for one of his actions, you will have to convince a judge that the act was outside his job description.
SCOTUS didn't grant his immunity requests. They sent the case back to the trial court and told them "make sure you specify that this action was outside the scope of his official duties before you make your ruling".
That's it. SCOTUS didn't do him any favors.
Hey so there's some echo-chambery stuff going on in Lemmy right now, so I want to provide some clarification:
The court decision did not create a new law. It provided clarity on laws already in place. Presidential immunity is not a new thing. It's a well established power. See: Clinton v. Jones (1997), United States v. Nixon (1974), United States v. Burr (1807), Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952)
The court decision does not expand on the law either, it clarifies that:
The President has some immunity for official acts to allow them to perform their duties without undue interference. However, this immunity does not cover:
Unofficial acts or personal behavior.
Criminal acts, (to include assassination).
The decision reaffirms that the President can be held accountable for actions outside the scope of their official duties. It does not grant blanket immunity for all actions or allow the President to act as a dictator.
People who are giving opinions based on what they read on Lemmy instead of going and reading the supreme court opinion that is totally online and right here for you to reference are spreading misinformation and fear.
But notably, it does shield them from prosecution for crimes which are tangentially related to their official duties. For example, granting a presidential pardon is an official duty. Taking a bribe in exchange for that pardon would be a crime. But now the president is allowed to openly and blatantly take that bribe, because the bribe is tangential to their official duty, and they are therefore shielded from prosecution.
Many experts disagree with the second half of your sentence, because ordering an assassination could easily be argued to be an official duty; After all, the POTUS is the commander in chief of the military. According to this ruling, ordering it illegally would be protected, because the illegality is tied to the official duty.
Not at all. While granting a pardon is an official duty, taking a bribe in exchange for a pardon is a criminal act. The decision does not shield the President from prosecution for such criminal conduct. Criminal acts are just as prosecutable as there were prior.
Excerpt from the ruling:
“As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. The principles we set out in Clinton v. Jones confirm as much. When Paula Jones brought a civil lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton for acts he allegedly committed prior to his Presidency, we rejected his argument that he enjoyed temporary immunity from the lawsuit while serving as President. 520 U. S., at 684. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct. Id., at 694, and n. 19.”
Unofficial conduct includes taking bribes.
"Many experts" isn't someone I can talk with or argue against. They're just weasel words.
Ordering an assassination is illegal. It violates the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the constitution (as they deprive persons of "life, liberty, or property" without fair legal procedures and protections). as well as Executive Order 12333 in which assassination is explicitly deemed illegal.
The court concluded that the POTUS has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts--those that fall within in the outer perimeter of his duties-- or acts is that are "not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority."
The court goes on to say that if the government wants to prosecute the POTUS for a crime, they have the burden of proving that the prosecution would "pose no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Such a ruling seriously hamstrings any effort to hold a criminal POTUS accountable since much of the evidence for criminal conduct is going to involve interactions with government officials.
It is just wrong to say that this ruling does not immunize the POTUS from criminal acts, that is exactly what it does. As it stands now, the president can order parts of the executive branch to engage in criminal behavior, like murdering political rivals or seizing voting machines, and he would be immune from prosecution because his actions (giving an order to executive officers) are "not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority." All he would need to do, as the law stands now, is come up with some argument about how his prosecution for a crime interferes with executive function. An extremely low bar.
Also, this is new law. Most of the cites you give deal with civil immunity, not criminal immunity, this law immunizes the POTUS from crimes.
Taken directly from the supreme court ruling.
That's not from the supreme court ruling. That's an opinion piece. It holds no meaning over the ruling. Political fear mongering.
It is from the link you provided, it was written by a supreme court justice.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf Page 29
Doesn't the ruling say that if the president takes a bribe to give someone an official appointment, that the person was appointed is not admissable as evidence in court?
That's both new, and stupid. But what Roberts wrote in the majority ruling.
Edit: It also states that Trump putting pressure on Pence to change the election results may or may not be an official act, and whether it can be prosecuted is unclear (and whether it can be discussed in law needs an investigation and a ruling, rather than deciding it in a court of law).
Edit II: Romer below said it all far better than me. https://lemmy.autism.place/comment/224475
This is exactly why i'm asking people to read the ruling that I linked for your convenience It doesn't even talk about bribery. At all. People are just saying things without doing any effort to source/reference/research what they're talking about.
You're right, the bribery talk is the logical extrapolation of the ruling that is laid out in the dissenting opinion. (and also in a minor dissent from one of the 6 judges who made the ruling.)
Edit: and unfortunately I live in a place where the US supreme Court website does not allow access so I can't read the conveniently shared link. I have tried to find it online and read as much of it as I can. I would like to read the full thing, maybe you could share the image on a Lemmy instance and link to that? You could do the same with the dissenting opinion, too, for completion's sake.
What I can find from the reports and snippets I can find is that the ruling that Roberts wrote talks about not only immunity for official acts, but not using official acts as evidence for prosecuting a US president. This then becomes the talk of bribery as making an appointment is very much an official act, and where that one conservative justice breaks line with the other five, as she maintains that official acts should be eligible as evidence when prosecuting unofficial acts.
The distinction between official and unofficial acts is largely guided by precedents set by the Supreme Court. Cases like Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982) and Clinton v. Jones (1997) provide frameworks for understanding the scope of presidential immunity and the nature of official duties. It's not just something they drum up out of nowhere. Judicial review and precedent are used for building out what constitutes official duties.
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...
People are freaking out that the president can legally kill people now but that was essentially already the case, de facto. Obama did it via drone strikes, for example, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was involved with the Taliban but never given due process, and later his 16 year old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was never even accused of terrorism - both American citizens. Of course, Bush also set up a completely illegal system of detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay, which also included American citizens and which continued long after his term. There was also of course the illegal mass surveillance program that began under Bush and continued through Obama, Trump, and Biden, with the only legal action being against the person who exposed the crime.
In all of those cases, the Justice department simply chose not to investigate or press charges, as is within their power to do. If the president straight up shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, it would be up to the Justice department to decide whether or not to prosecute, and if they say no, that's that (though it would also be possible for congress to act via the impeachment process, which would require a majority of the house and 2/3 of the senate to be on board).
This ruling doesn't give the president a blank check, but rather, it gives the court an easy legal argument to give the president a pass on any case they hear. The court can still rule that something wasn't an official act. Practically speaking, before they still could have still found the president innocent for whatever bullshit reason they could come up with, but they're now saying that they don't even have to pretend to have a reason.
Of course, if the president wanted to start killing Supreme Court justices or other political opponents, a piece of paper was never going to be the thing that stopped that. Whether the president can order the military to gun down congress is just a question of whether the military decides to listen to them and whether anyone manages to stop them. It was always the case that if you can kill anyone who could find you guilty, you can do whatever you want. On the other side of that, even if the ruling did authorize the president to kill all of his political opponents on some technicality, he would still face the same obstacles if he tried to do it.
What the law says only matters insofar as it can be enforced, and ultimately laws represent threats made by the powerful towards the rest of us, and among the powerful the way of settling disputes is power, with legal power being but one of many forms that can take.
Nope. Nobody is concerned. Did you know that a new episode of One Piece is coming out this week?
ಠ_ಠ
I am not important enough to be targeted but privileged enough to be noticed if I was disappeared.
I'm not American and so am not in touch with American politics, but I have an American friend who doesn't seem to be bothered by it. I assume he knows better than me, so I'm trying not to worry about it.
But if I were to worry about it, I can see the whole Trump situation leading to another civil war for you guys...
Despite the alarm, it's nothing new though. International diplomats cite immunity to prosecution to get out of paying for speeding tickets on a daily basis.
This may not be new for other countries, but this is absolutely new to the US and a huge alarm.
International diplomats don't often get immunity for treason.
No, but a president is higher in status than a diplomat, who in the US don't have to face minor consequences either. I'm not saying this to support presidents being immune to the law (in fact, you could say it goes against campaign promises to claim you'll be a civil governor and then be authoritarian), I'm just saying this has been on the drawing board for a while and was far from something that was just recently whipped out. Even state governors (and mayors as well) have gotten away with some awful things by swerving the powers that be, the governor of New York a few years ago systemically killed the elderly during covid and the main concern was not that but his affairs like was the case with Bill Clinton.
You're not misunderstanding, but calm down, anyway.
I wonder who killed JFK. Yeah it was Bush Senior and his ilk. Those responsible for the business (biznuss) plot by fascist scum in the 30s to coup d'etat the American government then. If it was not for Smedley Butler being the person they tried to get to lead this failed coup, and him going to congress instead to lead their army of hundreds of thousands... history would be VERY different.
This link is a link to one of Americas greatest heroes, in my opinion. I hope he rests in peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
This link has a picture of the most ruthless killers in history all together cozy as a family, being two faced little biatches & fleecing the American people with wedge issue politics where people morally feel they need to choose a side (abortion, gun control, social issues like LGBTQ rights etc), instead of the American people uh, focusing on the economic side of things . https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/the-story-of-the-viral-photo-of-the-presidential-families.html
A president can't claim immunity. The president has always had immunity for acts that the constitution provides the office.
The president has inferred immunity for powers shared with Congress.
The president enjoys no immunity for acts as a private citizen.
These are important distinctions.
You or I cannot bomb another country. The president can.
You or I cannot kill a maid. The president cannot.
Only acts used with the power of the office are immune. You can't use presidential authority to sexually harass your staff. That's against the law.
The ruling didn't change anything, nor was anything given. SCOTUS doesn't create the law. We don't have a magical genie godking president all of a sudden.
Isn't the point that SCOTUS could decide that killing a maid was within the responsibilities of office.
No. The president could not personally kill their maid.
The maid was cleaning the presidents office. This was clearly presidential. Business. SCOTUS rules not guilty.
Do you believe that scenario is totally impossible?
Yes, because it doesn't fall within the powers granted to the president via the constitution. He cannot sexually harass her. He cannot kill her. He cannot take bribes from her. So on and so forth.
What if SCOTUS decide he can do all those things?
The Constitution bestows the power upon the presidential office onto the president. Not SCOTUS.
SCOTUS decides the limit (if it exists) of that power.
I am concerned if a replikkklown ever gets elected to presidency before we can have the tRump appointed judges either executed or removed from office and fix this dumbass shit.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
No. Because they specifically said this is not the case.
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.
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.
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 for the president to accept a bribe 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 core power in article 2 about "ensuring laws are faithfully executed" that even Barrett thought was too much in her concurrence as it could apply to seemingly anything. Basically, as long as the president is using the levers of government to commit crimes, legal now.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Lol imagine being so late to the discussion that it's already over, and your thoughts are little more than hindsight, that your newborn child is an unforseen consequence
Edit; incumbent idiots don't make the rest of us responsible for their mistakes. They fucking on they own, fucking simpasses.
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.
This isn't true.
They ruled that the President has criminal immunity for official acts in line with the constitutional rights and duties of the POTUS.
They also ruled that non-official acts, or acts taken in a personal capacity as a private citizen, are not immune to criminal prosecution, and that there's a large gray area in between the two where it needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The rules remained the same as it has for 200 years. The president is PRESUMED immunity for OFFICIAL acts. UNOFFICIAL acts have no immunity. This means there are still two angles of attack. Firstly you can say it that even though it was official, it was still unlawful. And second, you can say it wasnt an official act at all.
Nah you're missing it here. If it is deemed official it is lawful no matter if it were illegal for anyone else.