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?
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.
Do I think the average citizen should be worried about the President signing their death warrant? No.
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.
Nope. Nobody is concerned. Did you know that a new episode of One Piece is coming out this week?
ಠ_ಠ
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They took a torch to your constitution. All for the sake of a very, very evil man.
The heritage foundation has been working on this long before the angry orange was a viable candidate. He is just the current face because he is belligerent enough to follow through on what they want to do and does a bang up job of riling up the conservative base.
If he was out of the picture they would be doing the same things with someone else who wouldn’t be nearly as effective, but they would still be going down the same road.
That’s one of the things that really gets me about all this. This didn’t happen suddenly, but there has never been any actual effort by the opposition party to counter it. They never address the trend in any organized way, and never really raise awareness of it. The closest they get is to fundraise off the threats, but it never translates into action or progress. If anything, they organize to ostracize the few members of their party that do speak forcefully about it.
It’s horribly depressing, but the only people around to fight the actually evil people are slightly less evil people.
The only reason democrats, as a whole, are a better alternative to republicans is because they chose a different portion of the population to pander to in order to gain power.
It really fucking sucks.
The worst part is that those who do not understand this will tell you you are insane, catastrophizing, should just focus on your own life, and will get angry at you for really caring… while the ones who do understand, generally just get depressed.
Meanwhile, our political system implodes as we have passed the climate threshold. Rivers in Alaska are running orange as a result of permafrost thawing. That means we are releasing methane now, means its only going to get worse faster.
Thank god I have never wanted and do not have children.
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.
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No, it can be done “legally.” Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2:
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
If President Biden suspended habeas corpus as allowed by the Constitution as required to protect public safety from seditionists who, remember, have made public threats of violence, and rounded them up, that would be an official act and he would be immune from charges. Furthermore, there would no longer be the votes in the House to impeach him.
ETA: Scare quotes. This would buy quite a lot of time as the issue worked its way through the courts. It might even incite open rebellion, then the question would be essentially moot.
I know it’s wrong, but doesn’t it feel so right?
Historically assassination doesn’t really work out well, and I’d imagine that’s doubly so here, where the president’s really just a sock puppet for the billionaire class.
I’ve never wanted a Death Note more than I do now.
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?
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.
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.
Textbook step by step fascism.
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Nah man, this is very concerning. You don’t need to calm down; I think everyone else is too fuckin calm about it.
What I want from anyone supporting this decision is a single example of a situation where the President would need to break the law in an official capacity. I want just one. I’ll not get it, but I’m gonna keep demanding it.
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.
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.They are not in the streets because they are endless scrolling on their phones.
You underestimate current military weapons. Clusterbombs from drones would could kill hundreds of thousands of packed civilians. And don’t think a Dictator wouldn’t use them to stay in power.
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.
It’ll take something personally affecting too many people, like relatives being shipped off to internment camps, or to for-profit prisons for being homeless, or gay, or debt, or being to mouthy…
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
What about if the president wants to be a naughty boy, but doesn’t want any of those pesky consequences?
a single example of a situation where the President would need to break the law in an official capacity.
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.
What laws of our land were broken? Which statute? Has Obama been charged with anything and if so what? Because he didn’t have immunity from criminal prosecution, remember, so if this is your example you’re going to need to show that a former president a) had to break the law, b) couldn’t have accomplished the thing with existing powers, and c) faced criminal prosecution for that “official act” when they shouldn’t have, as a result of not having this immunity.
And this is my point exactly. Obama hasn’t been prosecuted for those drone strikes, nor for the operation that killed Bin Laden; and he won’t be, because those acts did not break United States law. When the President needs to do something most people can’t, they use powers imparted under existing law - the president already has quite a lot of power, you know. In the few cases the President has needed more than that, they’ve had to go justify it and get the other branches on board, at least nominally (looking at you, Bush Jr, and sending the Guard to the middle east to get around needing Congress to send the regular Army ಠ_ಠ). This is the way the system was designed, with checks and balances on each branch.
Long story short I’m sorry to say I find your example lacking and my challenge remains unmet. I very much appreciate you engaging in good faith though, so thanks!
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.
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.
Capitalists. Capitalists are bipartisan, and that’s why Biden is doing this big nothing.
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.
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!
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.
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.
But Biden could open a can of whoop-ass right now if he wanted to.
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.
Who cares? Let ‘em all have it! They certainly don’t care.
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.
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.
Your first sentence was right. This ISN’T democrat vs republican issue.
But the rest of your message is straight hot garbage.
This is a “united states as it always has operated, republican or democrat, or other parties that existed in the past” vs “united states becoming facist” issue.
Ah yes, totally comparable to a president assassinating his political rival on US soil. Great comment!
Political rival doesn’t mean anything. This ruling means any president will get away with it and we’ll likely need a constitutional amendment to fix. Hopefully ending qualified immunity would eliminate it.
Any president can get away with it, but only one party’s candidates will actually do it.
The party that put these fascist judges on the bench will do it, in case that wasn’t obvious.
If you think it’s the Democrats that’ll fix it, I have a bridge to sell you.
I’m deeply concerned about that.
I’m more concerned that there’s literally no one in the streets over 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.
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.
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.
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
💀
Yes, duh.
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
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
Isn’t that part of the plan for the GOP’s Project 2025?
Forget amendments, this is gonna take a whole new document.
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.
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.
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.
