I just want to point out that no matter how much authority the US government gets, it never gets absolute power, because of our guns.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Then ... Maybe do sth?
That's a vaguely optimistic way to think about civil war, but I'm doubtful that
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people perpetually scared enough to find owning guns in urban environments necessary are going to disagree with the fear-mongering rhetoric a president-king invokes.
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owning guns translates into any sort of effective resistance
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it was worth killing children and civilians for decades in the hopes of an eventual opportunity to fight something
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civilians with their own guns won't be choosing their own targets
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a sliver of power finally used to destroy a country is more important than the peaceful maintenance of representative democracy.
Here is a great article explaining the extent of the immunity.
The 119-page decision affords the executive immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” in two layers—core constitutional acts that are absolutely protected, and presumptive immunity for official acts that are not core that can be overcome only if the government can show that applying a criminal prohibition on that act wouldn’t encroach on the functions of the executive branch. Unofficial acts are not protected.
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 if any president ordered the excecution of any innocent American.
I'm curious about your source of information about the restrictions on what evidence can be presented to the jury. I hadn't heard that before, and I'd like to learn more.
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".
I was wondering, this rules for immunity in presidents' "official duties". What bad things could a president do that fall under an official duty?
Please inform me, as I've been out of the loop, and I'm kinda stupid.
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.
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.
"Roe was legislating from the bench!"
...goes on to carve unlimited executive power out of thin air...
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.
The bigger picture is always missing in these posts.
And that is that everything that's happening has already happened in Russia. It's how Putin got power - through the courts.
All a Republican president has to do now is make an official act that they are president for life, the supreme court agrees, and that's that.
The second is that while only the president has immunity (meaning anyone killing people under their official order would still be illegal), the president can also pardon people. So it's a loophole - anyone can kill under their official order, and then the president can just pardon them.
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.
As a trans woman, cool. Real fuckin’ cool.
My worst fears got written down by someone else.
I don’t wanna get shot.
I wanna die of old age.
And I hope we all do, all while living our best life
I happen to be moving to Europe for unrelated reasons, unironically you should consider something similar if you can. Fuck this place.
Fascism is spreading there as well unfortunately.
And will continue to do so as long as corporations have and continue gaining power to rival your governments. Manipulating public opinion is easy when you own all sources of information dissemination.
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.
TL;DR the president is a goddamn king and our regulatory bodies that have been defanged over the years has now been all but beheaded
Early in the morning of July 8, 2025. Seal team 6 begins operation Orange Julius. At the same time, all around the country, under executive orders, sovereign citizens are rounded up and placed in immigration detention centers (you know why).
Maga Americans were swift to respond, but were no match for the US military, Joe Biden declared martial law, and made it a crime to wear red hats or raise the front of your truck only, even listening to Toby Keith could land you in prison.
...it could happen, to you
[Clutches beer can]
I realized today, by giving the president protection from the law, the opinion also implies the court system, including SCOTUS is too incompetent to adjudicate.
In another country where we had actual jurists on the bench representing the highest council for 320,000,000 people, I'd expect them to be more than capable and willing to wade through the delicate nuances of any presidental action, and determine if criminal acts were justified in the service of the state. But Roberts essentially is admitting he and his associates are either too inept or too corrupt, and either way are not up to the task.
If the US democracy is to survive, we will not just need a constitutional amendment, but a complete judicial overhaul, and a federal election reform to restore power to elections and thus, to the people. Until all this happens, we are governed at gunpoint, rather than by consent.
So put away your fireworks. The nation is too unwell to be celebrated.
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.
I think the most realistic way of undoing this ruling is for Biden to step down and Harris or someone else to take over. They would very likely win, and if the turnout is strong enough, they could use a legislative majority to either pack the courts or impeach/replace a few Republican Justices. The now majority liberal court could contrive some excuse to make a new ruling on presidential immunity and overturn the previous one.
It requires a lot of things to go fairly well and for the Democrats to be more organized and competent than they've ever been, but it is Possible, unlike a constitutional amendment imo.
Replacing the major candidate who already passed significant democratic legislation for 4 years is unlikely to result in greater Democratic faith or voter galvanization.
Harris certainly does not have that kind of momentum or support.
Any sort of candidate scramble now is all but forfeiting the 2024 election to trump.
Democrats already functionally control the Senate and have for biden's four presidential years; I can't see how nervously replacing Biden wins them any more seats, even optimistically.
That said, by the numbers, keeping the house majority and packing the court is more likely than a complete constitutional rewrite, a strategy I used as an example to show just how bleak the chance of restoring the us balance of executive power is.
He's polling worse than "generic Democrat" and he can barely form a coherent sentence. Fundamentally, I just don't believe there is a person who would vote for Biden, but not Harris or Whittmer or whoever, but there's lots of people who lack confidence in Biden and would be more likely to vote if someone else was nominated.
Presidential polls are absurd propaganda at this point, and I guess you're referring to the same two clips fox news hasn't stopped running since the debate rather than to his obvious first term track record of "being old and still reliably and actively passing progressive legislation".
He already won against trump, he regularly passes progressives legislation, you vote for Biden and get Harris anyway if you want a backup.
I can't imagine how abandoning a proven candidate who beat trump before inspires political confidence if you haven't been successfully manipulated to trust in the reliability of conservative media instead of years of reality.
The leaked internal DNC poll is what I'm referencing here. Why would the poll conducted under the direct supervision of the DNC for their own personal use be exaggerating Biden's weakness?
Likely the same reason you believe replacing a successful incumbent with "generic Democrat" is politically advantageous: manipulated faith in popular conservative media.
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