You Should Know

Great point.

We've passed the point that everything "could be on the table", everything is on the table as of that ruling.

Biden is right now absolutely unfettered by the Constitution, amendments, federal and state laws, according to the supreme Court.

Biden immediately made it clear that no American was above the law, but right now he is above the law and choosing not to take advantage of the now unrestricted power of his office.

Not likely to be a tradition in future presidents.

Yes, this is probably the real motive. “Arrest and execute my political opponents” cannot be ignored by the military without a coup or being in dereliction of duty. I think another nefarious change here is not that the actual power has changed but that the Supreme Court has given face value validity to illegal acts. The President has always has unmitigated pardon power for federal crimes. They could order the military to commit illegal acts and pardon them preemptively so that they were not punished. A reason why that hasn’t happened is that the optics of that are horrifying - the President and military must admit to a crime being committed to pardon that crime. With this ruling there is no admission, no face value legal wrongdoing, and plenty of plausible deniability.

SCOTUS knew precisely what they were doing. This is a significant expansion of presidential power, yes. But they know that the real issue is political. What they want is the President to be able to argue that illegal things are legal because the President did it, instead of arguing that illegal things are not punishable because the President pardoned the criminals.

The President can literally shoot someone in cold blood, in public, and as long as they can deem it an official act it is de jure legal.

You might be asking why the right isn’t worried that Biden will abuse this - the answer is because they know he doesn’t have the balls. The left still thinks we’re in 1968 fighting for rights with mostly peaceful protests. We’re in 1938 and we’ve already lost.

Wasn't trump firing a bunch of higher up and placing toadies trying to get the government to back him?

My fear now is that if military leadership falls into the wrong hands

Rome intensifies

Keep in mind the P2025 plan to turn fornerly career roles into appointments. How many of those were military?

Trump wanted to start wars, he assassinated an Iranian general cuz he wanted to… he knows now there is nothing to stop him

AP News: House Democrat is proposing a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court’s immunity decision

Whether it goes anywhere is a crapshoot.

There can be a fight, but it can be stopped at any point by the executive branch for any reason without restriction or consequence.

Plus, now there is a legal precedent for presidential immunity, so even if the best situation occurs and executive balance is restored, the next team of bandits can point to 2024 and say well look, the highest court in the land said their ruling supersedes the Constitution.

Fixing this will require some sort of comprehensive rewrite of either the Constitution to make its powers inviolate or better yet, to make the limitations on the branches inviolate.

Maybe increase the amendments by tenfold to elucidate exactly what is allowed and not allowed, because right now "reasonable judgment" is often invoked as a limitation on important legal rulings, but if you have a conservative majority refusing to honestly engage with "reasonable judgment" and willing to pwrjure themselvesto irritate harmful and unreasonable judgment, as the conservatives on the court are and have been willing to do for decades, then they can do things like violate or invalidate the Constitution.

The problem with all of these solutions is that the limitations on executive power are already very clear, and the supreme Court is objectively violating them.

I don't see a clear resolution at this point, although I'm so shocked by the end of the US government that I'm still working through the consequences and considering hopeful solutions.

Right now, the most hopeful solution I see is like when dumps asked pence to violate the Constitution and declare him president, pence refused.

So if another atrocity is now ordered, right now the only hope is that the person being ordered to do it will risk being executed for treason and not follow that order.

Relying on many someones like pence to all do the right thing is not exactly comforting.

Without legal consequence, yes.

That action could not be legally scrutinized or judged and Biden, as president, would be immune from prosecution.

Not even Putin is above the law according to any interpretation of the Russian constitution.

What is more interesting to me is he could have persons of interest detained and disappeared as per the still-active surveillance, national security and anti-terror states from the aughts and 2010s.

I would avoid doing anything to Trump directly as the US wouldn't want to martyr him but it would be delightfully ironic to detain the SCOTUS associate justices for sake of their own safety where they can stay at black sites within earshot of the screaming.

In the meantime there are Heritage Society members and other thinktank analysts who have been caught on hot mic or text discussing policies that would drastically change the character of the United States, that are contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States and parallel to the indictments in the Declaration of Independence.

So it would be entirely justified to introduce them to the US secret detention system and possibly to the enhanced interrogators to remind them what kinds of presidential power they endorsed in eras past.

I'm sure they plan to remind Trump of these resources when Trump wants to make someone sorry they were born.

Right I'm having a hard time not embracing my inner Magneto when I imagine being in Biden's shoes. After all, these guys made it very clear what they will do to me when they have half a chance.

Yes. He can order the military (seal team 6 or something) to put a bullet in his face. That's a presidential action. Whoever does it though could be charged. The president could then pardon (another presidential action) everyone involved.

After Nixon resigned, he was pardoned before he was even charged so...

He shouldn't kill him, that's too devisive. Maybe strap him to the top of a rocket and send him to low earth orbit? And leave him there?

It's definitely the latter, corruption.

There's no way the conservative justices could have drawn many of their conclusions with any consistent interpretation of the constitution and the enumerated rights.

The court conservatives are clearly advancing corporate and political partisan interests and interpreting identical constitutional amendments and passages different ways on different decisions.

Thomas has explicitly said that all he wants to do is hurt liberals, and accepted gifts from wealthy donors with connections to cases he oversees.

I'm sure he's not the only one.

[Clutches beer can]

Two salient points:

This has not already happened in Russia.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin does not legally have absolute immunity.

China would have been a better example, since the Communist party is above the law and xi did abolish term limits for himself.

In the US, a president could not pardon themselves for state crimes, and the president murdering someone would have been a prosecutable state crime until this decision.

Not so anymore.

I happen to be moving to Europe for unrelated reasons, unironically you should consider something similar if you can. Fuck this place.

And I hope we all do, all while living our best life

Absolute immunity is exactly how genocide and civil wars are facilitated.

I doubt it will get as far Rwanda better of societal complexity, but if someone awful is elected and they decide to execute trans, or arab, or left handed people, or decides to murder anyone themselves, there's no reason why they should consider the legal allowance of or consequences of their actions before taking action and no way outside of specific new amendments to scrutinize, prosecute or guard against that action in the future.

The states now have to rely on the personal judgments and courage of everyone under the commander in chief, which is everyone, to refuse to carry out atrocities.

Yyyup.

Even when dumps was elected or roe was overturned, I was very disappointed but rationalized that voting could turn it around, even with a crappy voting system like the US has.

But granting absolute legal immunity to the most powerful branch of government is so broad and so reckless that I no longer clearly recognize any more safeguards on what can happen overnight to the US government.

Counterargument: The US dollar hasn't budged since the ruling, so for some reason nobody else is worried yet.

I don't really understand that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ordering mass executions seems to be barely in the presumptive immunity area, and also would be political suicide. There would be serious repercussions

Bro. The last US president tried to overthrow the government, and the repercussions now are that they give him immunity...

Mass executions being "barely in" the scope of presidential immunity means that even by your interpretation, mass executions are covered by Presidential immunity

Individual interpretation is the problem.

The president thinks to themselves "yea, that's barely in" and then it's official and covered.

Political suicide? Could be. Maybe not.

At the least, mass executions will be part of the official US presidential record. If they are carried out those people are dead and civil erupts, and if they aren't the president is immune and the person(s) who disobeyed him is subject to execution for treason.

Say the president signs an executive order explicitly stating that any act is considered a presidential duty during the day in which a president conducts a minimum of one official act.

Then literally everything is official no matter what.

Although that's unnecessary with how the supreme Court has defended official presidential immunity:

On page 30-31 of the SC decision, the supreme Court makes it known that because they have decided the US president is entitled to immunity and specifically cannot "be held criminally liable" for "certain official acts"(interpreted however broadly one would like), examining an unofficial act related to an official act, like legally examining whether or not dumps knew inciting a violent coup was illegal, "would permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he cannot do directly- invite the jury to examine acts for which a president is immune from prosecution"

This means that any unofficial part of any official conduct, both interpreted however you see fit, cannot be legally scrutinized as scrutiny of an "unofficial act" could result in the legal scrutiny of an "official act" for which the supreme Court has decided there can be no legal scrutiny or prosecution anymore.

So, "hey, drowning that bag of puppies doesn't seem very official".

"Yea, too bad we can't do anything about it since he has to sign a bill into law this afternoon".

Unofficial duties especially are not discreetly outlined or prohibited, so anything the US president does during an official act becomes an official act That cannot be legally scrutinized or prosecuted.

The president is commander-in-chief of the US military.

So ordering the US Navy to bomb Seattle is an official, legal act.

The president receives ambassadors. If they decide to shoot someone while waiting for an ambassador to arrive, or set a wildfire in a field of horses while on a "brainstorming jog" for that meeting, that shooting or arson is part of their official duty.

The State of the Union is an official act, so the president burning the flag while garroting an orphan on national television is now an official, legal act immune from legal liability.

The supreme court left it kind of vague in their ruling. The courts are supposed to decide, but for something like this no matter what the lower courts decide, any ruling would almost certainly get appealed up all the way up to the supreme court. So what is or isn't an official act is basically boils to whatever the supreme court decides it to be.