Right-Wing Supreme Court Rules Trump Has 'Absolute Immunity' for Official Acts
Right-Wing Supreme Court Rules Trump Has 'Absolute Immunity' for Official Acts
"In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law," warned Justice Sonia Sotomayor. "With fear for our democracy, I dissent."
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17119069
"In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law," warned Justice Sonia Sotomayor. "With fear for our democracy, I dissent."
Cool, Biden should use those new get out of jail free cards to do a lot of shit to improve the lives of Americans and probibit Project 2025.
The party about of rule of law just got told it's rule of law to just do whatever as president, so go nuts. Pack the court. Forcibly remove the supreme Court. Ignore it.
Hell the constitution never even said the Court has the right to interpret and block laws, that was due to the Court expanding its own power. We just went with it because Jefferson had his own Xanatos Gambit played on him.
Come on Biden do something really cool with this, make them regret it.
Have the GoP and the traitors on the supreme court taste the death penalty. Then repeal all this crap they put in place (no way to override the GoP all being dead after the fact. I'd go with banishment or any other number of things if it was guaranteed to work, but the only thing that can't potentially be lifted after the fact is death)
So, open season for Biden to get some Supreme Court justices an "early retirement" then?
Be sure that everyone knows it's official and then sleep easy.
Yes, but in classic dem fashion he’ll do absolutely nothing with this new power, and also do nothing to stop its use. Then will continue running a dogshit campaign to get trump re-elected come November. We are well and truly fucked.
I was genuinely not expecting this. As little reason as this Supreme Court has given to inspire confidence, I thought this was a bridge too. I feel sick to my stomach.
It's absolutely sickening. The fact they took up the case to begin with was sickening. We need Biden to take hold of this decision and make some official acts that can restore democracy. Biden can be the first president since Washington to do what Washington did, heal our nation and then surrender power back to We the People. Dead King Geoge III is laughing at us and the blood of the American Revolution groans in disgust at these Injustices!
"We can go lower."
-SCOTUS
I had felt the same way, until they ruled that partisan gerrymandering is constitutionally protected, that racial gerrymandering can only be unconstitutional if it doesn't provide a partisan advantage to one side, and that the court must assume that legislators are acting in good faith because their need to not be embarrassed outweighs the constitutional rights of the people and the need for honest elections. I read that decision and said "shit, they're gonna rule that Trump's immune."
I never thought the Court would put out a decision that could rival Dred Scott for worst in history, but these asshole's have put out multiple contenders for that title in a single term.
You’d still have to beat Citizens United.
Plus it’s kinda John Roberts’ whole jam, taking away voting rights
Unfortunately they strongly signalled this move in the oral questioning bit. It was pretty much expected. Now bonking a porn star will become classed as an official act.
The act the con man committed was before being elected. That one will be a poo stain on him for much longer.
Is it wrong to wish that Biden would immediately drone strike the justices that are in the majority for this decision?
Trump and his MAGA cult are a clear and present danger to our democracy and its citizens.
The SCOTUS is majority controlled by corrupt federalists openly colluding with lower courts and federalist donors to bypass our elected lawmakers (congress/senate/potus) to effectively unilaterally write policy. This is a clear and present danger to our democracy.
Biden has justification to clean house under official pretext.
Morally, maybe? Legally, no. It's very explicitly ok.
As long as those drone strikes are officially official, then sure, he has immunity.
This is oversimplifying it. They did not define "official acts", obviously, but goose and gander. Biden is now available to use these new powers, and should.
In her dissent, Sotomayor made it pretty clear that that doesn’t matter.
"When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution," Sotomayor wrote. "Orders the Navy's SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
"In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law," the justice added.
The dissent is not the prevailing ruling though. The other MAGA dip shits on the court just left the door open to anything for the next 6 months. All horrific derivatives of this timeline, sure. But they can't stop the current administration apparently from doing the same shit without immunity until the next ruling. They're just banking on the fact that Biden isn't a gigantic piece of shit and will never pull the trigger on using any of these options.
I guarantee his team is sitting in a room right now coming up with ideas.
If Biden does the exact same thing as the orange turd, the packed courts will rule that Biden's actions were not official but the angry orange's were.
The decision is entirely a power grab that will be abused by conservatives and not by anyone with morals. That is what these fascists are counting on.
Biden could unpack those courts as an official act and pack it with his own judges, who would rule on the outcome.
This is obviously what Trump would do in the same position. But it's highly doubtful that Biden will.
It would set an insanely dangerous precedent. But if he doesn't, Republicans will the next time they hold the presidency.
Biden for King 2024! Vote blue! Brought to you by conservative Chief Justice Roberts.
They'll never do it, but they left that door open in some sense.
Sooo strip trump of his citizenship, and remove the Supreme court members that are in his pocket, reestablish new judges via voting. Create new ammendment that the president can and will be held accountable for breaking the law
Replace SCOTUS with an equal amount of democrats and Republicans.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
We're setting up for an extremely dark period in American history. Buckle up fuckleheads
Well, fellow Americans. This experiment with democracy was fun while it lasted. Every significant goal of the founding fathers has been systematically thwarted by these Christofascists. We once again have a de-facto monarch.
The consequences of this decision will be dire, and unpredictable. Every law, every right, every freedom can now be undone by an official wave of the president’s hand. Rights to privacy? Gone. Due process? Gone. Bill of Rights? Gone.
No one—democrat or republican—should be happy about this. The right to bear arms is now on the chopping block right along with LGBTQ+ and abortion rights.
Hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m misreading the situation. But it sure sounds like every right that previously defined us as American people now hinges on the benevolence of our president. Americans can no longer brag about “American freedom.”
This experiment with democracy
I agree with the thrust of your comment, but I think it's an overstatement to say the US was ever a democracy.
Our country is an imperial power that was built ontop of a genocide, by slaves, to support white male property owners. It was always designed as an oligarchy with features like the electoral college to make sure the will of the people could never compete with the will of the powerful. Policy outcomes haven't reflected public opinion on any major issues since the 70s.
I'd say what's going on is moving from a broad oligarchy to a narrower more centralized oligarchy. Which is still moving in the wrong direction and will definitely make life worse for most Americans.
Well, European cousins, hope you got more room in those countries of yours. 😬
Sorry, right wing fascist racist lying assholes have fucked everything up over here and made immigration illegal.
I don’t think you’re wrong.
The six conservative SCOTUS members have just openly told everyone that they are fascists who want to destroy democracy. There is a detailed solution to this kind of tyranny.
So Biden could just seal team 6 half the Supreme Court plus Trump, and it would be legal as long as he officially says he did it afterward?
It's important to remember that Republicans are committed to ending democracy because the majority of people do not support their brutal white supremacist vision for the country.
If they had majority support they wouldn't be illegally seizing and destroying the institutions of governance.
In years past, your comment might sound like hyperbole. But not so these days: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-wa-gop-put-it-in-writing-that-theyre-not-into-democracy/
You guys haven't seen shit yet.
Biden is going to "win" the 2024 election, Trump will sue & SCotUS will hand him the crown.
#KingBiden must act to restore our #Democracy.
Liberals will still use such an event as a means to punch left and blame the coup on actual leftist not voting hard enough for biden.
I vote for #PremierBiden, but can be swayed.
I want this statement to become false.
The devolution will not be televised.
Very true, very real.
So Biden could order the army to attack the USSC? He just has to declare it officially like Michael Scott?
I joke, but it's a dark, dark day for this country and the rule of law.
Usually they'd have to refuse an illegal order, but as any official act of the president is explicitly legal, such things no longer exist.
It does appear to be legal now, until the lower court hears arguments, and it goes back to the Supreme Court for a final decision. This ruling seems to be a delay, so that Trump can take office, at which point this ruling doesn’t matter.
In other news, everything GOP presidents do is official and everything DEM presidents do is private.
This decision so blatantly ignores the constitution, history, tradition, case law, and all available evidence, that I have to question why they even bothered writing such a long decision. They might as well have just said "Fuck it, we say Trump is immune. Eat shit America, we can do whatever we want."
Even discussing this ruling is pointless, because words no longer have legal meaning. Even if he was so inclined, Biden wouldn't be allowed to take advantage of this concept of immunity. We're just making up whatever shit we want and calling it Law.
Pretty much. The reality that this is has always been the case is finally smacking everyone upside the head. If there is no consistent application of the law, laws become meaningless. Might then makes right, and bedlam follows. America has been on a dangerous path for decades, this ruling is the the turn. Conservatives are displaying that they want Trump as dictator, and will do everything in their power to make that happen.
I was thinking Pres Biden does all the stuff we seem to want him to, resigns and Pres Harris pardons him.
The ruling actually said the president "is entitled to at least *presumptive * immunity from prosecution for all his official acts." Absolute immunity was reserved for "conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority." I'm not defending this ruling, but we don't need to misquote it.
Has anyone read the fine print? Are there any limits to this? Why can't Biden just eliminate Trump and claim immunity?
Just like Trump will once elected...
Isn’t that written in the constitution clearly? Isn’t that what Impeachment for, the only way to prosecute a president over his acts during the presidency?
Impeachment is a process for determining wrongdoing, which isn't the same as determining legal guilt.
Or to phrase it differently: there are things you could do that would get you fired from your job, but aren't illegal.
He was impeached but not convicted for this insurrection act. This case is to determine if, now that he is a civilian again, he can be held accountable for the insurrection.
Previously, by Justice Department custom, the president was immune from prosecution while in office. That was just an internal stance and didn't make him immune from prosecution indefinitely, just that you can't arrest the president in the Oval Office. It could be seen as a pragmatic stance that we shouldn't tie the president up in court battles while he's supposed to be doing the job of presidenting or that he'd just obviously order his Justice Department not to arrest him so don't try to do irrelevant things.
Now he's immune forever, even after he's no longer in control of the people who would be prosecuting him and he has no critical role to play in society. And it's officially declared by the Supreme Court, not just custom.
Nope. Impeachment is part of a process to remove a president. Conviction in the senate only results in the president being removed. Crimes are prosecuted in a court of law. Not by a political process.
