President Joe Biden delivered a scathing rebuke of the Supreme Court on Monday, condemning their ruling granting presidents absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts. In a somber address from the White House, Biden warned of dire consequences should former President Donald Trump secure a ...
“(With) today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all practical purposes, there are virtually no limits on what the president can do. It’s a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law even including the supreme court of the United States.”
Throughout his address, Biden underscored the gravity of the moment, emphasizing that the only barrier to the president’s authority now lies in the personal restraint of the officeholder. He warned vehemently against the prospect of Trump returning to power, painting a stark picture of the dangers such an outcome could pose.
Since we're talking about a SCOTUS ruling, it would be on Congress to pass legislation.
And to follow up on @[email protected]'s comment, the Democratic National Committee is a private party organization that supports Democratic candidates in elections. They have nothing to do with passing legislation.
No, Congress cannot pass legislation on this matter. The ruling says that the Constitution itself grants the President immunity, so it would take a Constitutional amendment to change it.
Still. The DNC has systems in place to decide who to back in elections to pass legislation. Their messaging since 2015 has been embarrassing. They keep courting moderate conservatives that don't exist and ignoring unrepresented potential voters who do. They talk about how they win elections when there's good turn out without ever analyzing which candidates encourage high turnout. Americans want to feel represented in politics and we don't. The Democrats need to do something that would weaken the democrat party but would weaken the Republican party more: they need to actively begin dismantling the two party system. We want election reform. We want the police to not be a hostile force against the general populace. We want the society we live in to benefit everyone and not just the kinds of people who can afford to finance an election campaign.
The polling exists. We all know that neither party represents or enacts what the people want do. The Democrats refuse to look around and see what's happening, preferring to rearrange the deck chairs as the ship sinks because that's the only thing they know to do. And you know? I can't really blame them. We the people have also been rearranging the deck chairs. We live in a country that only benefits the top but we all still show up to do our duties without looking at what's going on in other countries where the people are standing up to their authoritarian oppressors.
The worst part is the fascists know what they're doing. They know to decay the structure by raising the temperature because we've become too complacent. We need to stand up to fascism in a way that we haven't ever since McArthyism.
This is an interpretation of the constitution, so what congress needs to do it to amend the constitution to explicitly state the president is not immune, and good luck getting that through
The point of the party is supposed to be long-term strategy and putting the platform over any one person.
When people talk about what the DNC should be doing, it's not some "gotchya" to point out that they're not doing their job and leadership needs replaced.
I would love to see him detain every scotus justice and stash em in a safe house for their protection/national security. Give them no freedom of movement or agency over their lives... see if they change their tune.
You apparently want him to do illegal things because he can now get away with it?
edit: are basic norms being downvoted here because if republicans are corrupt af, we should not have any standards either?
Edit 2: you're not teaching me anything by telling me the Republicans did something more fucked up first. Do you people honestly think Biden would/could murder political opponents. He obviously won't. He shouldn't. Jfc
Edit 3: yup I'm totally saying let's do nothing about this. You people are brilliant.
No, I want him to call their bluff and rise to the challenge of meeting this constitutional crisis. The top court in the land has gone off the rails, and seemingly in collusion with a concerted effort to destroy the rule of law.
Blithely waiting until the election to “let the people defeat Trump” is dereliction. This ruling may be curated in deference for Trump, but unless it is challenged forcefully it will not just go away on January 7th 2024 if Trump loses again. Because when the question of “What are ‘official acts’ v ‘private acts’ then?” comes up, it’ll go right back to the SCotUS the Heritage Foundation and their interpretations.
The Judiciary has decided that the Executive must not be beholden to neither the Legislative nor the Judiciary. This is terrible, because it breaks the separation of powers. Now, if only the Executive wasn't beholden to any of the other powers to force the Judiciary to go back to reason... Oh, wait.
Irony aside: no, this isn't a matter of not having standards, this is a matter of making sure that democracy is capable of perpetuating itself. If the organism gets infected by a virus that intends to mutate the whole thing into a degenerated parody of itself, it must send its antibodies. Not doing so means letting the last line of defense fall all by itself, which is even against the very spirit of the law.
We know for a fact Trump will use this to abuse his power as much as possible. The high road isn't sitting down and taking it, it's using the power that was just handed to you to do something about it. There practically is no such thing as "illegal" now when it comes to the president. Biden doesn't need to commit murder to make a difference. He could, for example, expand the Supreme Court so the conservatives no longer have the advantage, or cancel student debt to get more supporters, or do anything other than cry about it.
He needs to act to safeguard our democracy, because others will not have the same hangups in doing the opposite. Acting with the power they have granted him in order to prevent future issues is not corruption.
The precedent shouldn't be "they go low, we go high", but "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". He probably wouldn't do anything because the aforementioned issue, but should just send an assassination squad on the 6 supreme court judges alongside with other politicians.
The only thing you're interested in is showing how much of a bigger person you are on the internet. What we're doing is speaking about all the ways this is fucked up and hypotheticals about how it can go wrong. For a lot of us, this isn't new. I my political life time alone, I saw 8 years of rights being eroded by the Bush II administration with no real push back and once Obama got in under the promise of fixing things, a whole lot of inaction on rolling back any of the rights violations.
The powers that be are taking advantage of how distributed the responsibilities of government are. If it's so easy to lose rights, why is it so hard to gain them back. There's always someone else to point at for why that is the case. In Nazi Germany, that was called The Banality of Evil. I see that everyday when some injustice is hand waved away as being too ingrained to do anything about. Police Reform? Too hard. Effective Climate Action? It would hurt the economy. The SC is eroding our rights? Have to wait for someone to die or retired(lol).
They are literally not illegal anymore. He can declare Trump to be a danger and send seal team six to execute him. He can forgive half of all student debt and transfer the other half to an unlucky dude in Oklahoma. He can forbid to be called Joseph to everybody else. He can cancel the elections. Very legal and very cool.
Biden fucking dumbass going blast no kings well I can promise you if Trump wins exactly how he will act. He will take Full of advantage of this ruling.
Best thing Biden can do but he want is take advantage of it to in helping out the American people.
Dumbass and spineless Biden and Democrats. The supreme court literally just started that America had a king but this dumbass party would rather take some stupid fucking high road bullshit instead of playing the game to ensure the fascist fuck around and find out.
They don't even have to resort to assassinations, they could really tell the IRS to audit 501(c) and remove their status from the churches and bullshit Republican charities, or tell the justice department to focus on domestic terrorism and corruption to fuck over Republican groups and representatives, or tell the FDA to allow the sale of raw milk.
Play the god damn game and be the fucking king if these corrupt justice says there's a king.
I'm not gonna say that the chances are good, but if they refuse, and win, and then walk back the changes, maybe fascism can be averted.
If they walk into using these tools and normalise them even more, then when the other party gets the government again, you get a republican fascist, and if the other party never gets the government again, it's because you got a "democrat" fascist.
No, you use the fascist power granted by fascists to abuse the fascists who granted it in the first place. Power is the only thing that stops fascists. Start with a few nights in a black site for the justices who thought granting absolute power to the president was OK. If scotus already accepts fascism from their team it's already too late for your plan to work.
I honestly don't know why anyone is strategising as if they're on the same side as dems or any politician. I'm not even convinced we have a common enemy in Trump, because they don't seem serious about beating him.
The question you should ask when voting is "Who is my preferred enemy?" Biden won't abuse the carte blanche immunity from criminal prosecution? Great, sounds like he's the weaker enemy, so vote for him. Force him to keep the position he clearly doesn't want. Force him to disappoint his base for another four years.
While he's doing that, get to work building alternatives that meet people's needs from the bottom up and wean them off of this criminal system, to undermine it and prepare people to thrive as it crumbles.
The great thing about this political theory of change is that it's the same regardless of who's in power. It decouples you from the capricious, disempowering shifts of electoral politics.
they could really tell the IRS to audit 501(c) and remove their status from the churches and bullshit Republican charities
That would be juuuuuust about the dumbest thing they could possibly do. It would mobilize gigantic swaths of voters who are heavily invested in rhetoric over fact-checking.
Doing away with Roe mobilized many of those voters who could be considered to be fence sitters towards the left. Removing church tax exemptions would move them right back and it would do NOTHING to solve the problem, because while the actual big offenders are happily USING the hell out of that tax exemption, they're rich enough that they'll get along fine without it.
It WOULD hurt a whole lot of TINY churches that employ 1-50 people per church and actually do community work, though. All of those would go away. That's a LOT of rural food shelves.
I'm largely against the religious tax exemption, but that's a problem we should worry about AFTER we can replace the nationwide infrastructure we'd be dismantling by doing so with something at least as effective as what's there now.
Ok Biden, time to do something about these fascists. They just gave you everything you need to squash the threat, on a silver platter fit for a king. It’s time to process the new information, understand the powers granted to you, and act - are you up to this task? Please don’t let America down, because you have asserted yourself as the only one who can now do anything about it.
Never mind the entire United States political system right? Let's just ignore how our judicial system is set up, because, some liberals and democrats are mad that things aren't going their way!
Well republican fascism isn't being stopped by the normal way of doing things since they don't even take the law into consideration and keep fighting dirty. Seems to me that someone needs to fight dirty against them. As long as the rule of law and checks and balances can be continued afterwards then we're good but currently, we're heading into christofascism.
Yes, because he actually cares about what the Constitution stands for, not just some adversarial power game. Claim the paradox of tolerance all you want, but fighting fire with fire here is just participating in the same race to the bottom that's destroying our democracy here in the USA.
Preemptive strikes exist. Law does not need to apply after the fact if the law is allowed preventive measures.
And arguing about if one should take such a preventive strike, yes they should since the perp has already declared threatening intentions to cause immediate harm.
If he has practicality no limits what's preventing him from getting the decision undone and making it so that the president could never have such power?
If he has all the power in the world he should also have power to undo that power.
because he actually cares about what the Constitution stands for
I think you're just projecting your own beliefs onto him. I seriously doubt any politician at this level gives two shits about anything but themselves and their power.
Alternative take: letting Republicans do whatever they want and not fighting back or taking actions to prevent it, is what is destroying your democracy.
I am fairly certain "pussy" is slang for pusillanimous. Can it be used misogynisticly, yes. Was that the intent here, I don't think so based off the context.
What is to stop Biden from cancelling the upcoming election?
Being now his powers are effectively unchecked, couldn't he just call off the election as an official act. Rather than stupid shit like ordering assassination or deploying the military, just say "I'm cancelling the election until such time this ruling is overturned and a constitutional amendment is enacted that states that the president is not immune from criminal prosecution"
He doesn't need to cancel the elections. He just needs to wait until after the conventions, when congress and the supreme court are in recess. And then he issues an executive order barring convicted felons from holding federal office.
This protects him from prosecution but doesn't require other officials to help him break the law. States don't need the president's approval to run elections, and Congress doesn't need his approval to certify the votes of electors in the presidential election specifically.
I like how every single one of these comments are blaming Biden and the Democrats for a supreme court ruling that the conservatives and Republicans enacted. How about we put the blame on the people who are actually doing the terrible things?
This is why the Republicans keep winning btw, because they're united.
Watched the debate, this is a verbatim quote I pulled from the transcript, Biden: "And if I’m elected, I’m going to restore Roe v. Wade." Why does he have to wait for re-election?
I expect Reps. to strip rights and will always blame them for that. The flip side of that is I expect Dems. to restore them, which isn't happening and so they should be criticized. It's just always "we'll fix it in the future" which is why I put the biden quote in.
Because the Republicans control Congress, and at this point only an act of Congress can restore it.
It comes down to this: a Republican president would veto any abortion protection law, but a Democratic president would pass it. But the law has to get to his desk first.
Only congress can do something and they tried and failed because we didn't have enough of a majority. Vote down-ticket blue to get as much control as possible.
The party that wants to strip rights are the democrats. They would love nothing more than to disarm every single American. The only "right" they would make sure women had was the "right" to kill babies.
Biden is such a hypocrite. He is claiming Trump would abuse immunity, yet he states he would directly violate the Supreme Court by restoring roe v. wade.
Also, presidents have always had immunity while in office, the Supreme's just upheld that fact. And immunity hasn't change by this ruling. A president can't commit murder and claim immunity.
We're not talking about a diseased animal, we're talking about people who are making conscious decisions knowing what the results will be. I can and so absolutely blame people for that.
Your metaphor insinuates that Republicans are unable to control their actions. If that were the case, that's all the more reason to vote and get them out of positions of power.
This is what I'm talking about. Maybe you should stop reacting with fear and spite to everyone who's trying to help you and actually contribute to defeating the fascists instead of sitting around complaining about losing all the time.
Sorta. It's a democracy with the voting and all that at this time. Since the person holding presidency is now above the law, then as long as the current president decides that we get to continue to have a republic, then we're a republic. The moment a US president decides that it needs to be an official act to end voting, or just stall on voting indefinitely, then we stop being a republic. Basically, we're living on borrowed time until the "by the people" part of the US nation is taken away by whomever we voted in as president last.
President Biden has the idea that he should respect the Constitution. He's unlikely to decide to end the republic. If he gets reelected (and the conservatives don't just kick off a civil war trying to end the election like they failed to do back in 2020), then we buy at least a few more years. Then... we go into a cycle where if benevolent dictators keep getting elected we stay afloat. The moment a populist gets elected president who also doesn't personally decide to not take over as dictator, the republic ends.
There's a very important difference here. If you're fascist and rich, things can be done about your crimes. They are still crimes. Just nothing will be done.
A president can now do what he wants and nothing CAN be done about it, period, barring an actual act of Congress.
What Biden needs to do, like right fucking now, is pack the courts. AOC trying with a token effort to get them impeached is cute, but will ultimately fail because Republicans won't turn on their own. The Senate is tied (if you count Bernie as one of the dems) and Harris has the tiebreaker. The house is controlled by the Republicans, but only 7 individuals need to break from their party in order to get a simple majority to save the future of America.
Biden could expand the SCOTUS from 9 seats to 13 and immediately submit 4 liberal justices for confirmation to be seated. Expanding the court doesn't require congressional approval, so Biden could do this unilaterally and as long as he is able to get butts in those seats, they're there to stay even if Trump squeaks his way back in. They could then challenge and overturn the immunity ruling, as well as all the other dogshit rulings that have come out in the last couple of years like Dobbs.
He threatened to do it before. He needs to actually pull the trigger.
This is all assuming that most of this isn't political theater, and I'm really starting to wonder how much of United States politics is actually genuine. So often the Democrats have had the opportunity to do something drastic, if less drastic then that frequently done by Republicans, to counteract the erosion of personal freedom and democracy. Yet they always seem to find a reason not to, typically with the justification that they don't want to push the envelope like the Republicans do, despite the fact the Republicans will continue to push the envelope to their benefit when back in power.
Expanding the court doesn't require congressional approval
That is incorrect. Changing the size of the Court is understood to be a power that Congress has because of the Necessary and Proper clause, and not a power of the Executive.
For an act changing the size of the Court to pass the Senate, you first need 60 Senators to break the filibuster. This means that 10 Republican Senators need to vote for increasing the size of the Court for any such legislation to pass. That’s not going to happen.
Imagine expanding the court by 4 seats, 4 months before the election and thinking that Republicans in Congress are going to let a single one squeak by before January 6, 2025.
The Senate is currently divided in a way that makes passing such a significant change a monumental task. Even with a Democratic majority, the margins are slim, and not all Democratic senators are on board with the idea. Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have expressed reservations about court-packing, making it highly unlikely that this is something Biden could just do.
So, obviously he could just [redacted] the supreme court justices he doesn't like, appoint new ones, and then the only thing congress could do would be to expand the court or whatever, right? but then why couldn't he also just keep killing people in official acts until he gets a bunch of people that are like "yup, that was official and you don't need to do anything about it"? I know that's probably a slippery slope, right and would probably get him a shit ton of public pushback, especially after a certain point, from both conservatives, who predominantly make up the military, and economic power structures, to liberals who would prize decorum and "fair play" above all else (but I repeat myself), and so maybe that leads to a dissolution of society, which maybe leads to an even worse society as the people who control the levers of power are already the most horrible people, but, yadda yadda.
But, I dunno, how many congress people does he have to make go away, before the rest of them start to get the picture and then start to behave in their own self-interest, as they've always behaved? How many people do you really have to threaten in a system where the people who climb to the top are only going to be there out of their own extreme self-interest?
Not so much, it would more be along the lines of a standard military coup, which doesn't necessarily have to originate from a fascist. Those can and do come from all sides of the political spectrum.
I don't think biden would ever do that, and probably if he did, he'd be the worst president dictator of all time with only the mild upside that he could maybe only do so for the rest of his probably not long lifespan, or for the next couple months as they run another election, which he would probably do since he seems like kind of a sap.
But, if he were replaced by a person I actually liked, or there was someone who's policy I agreed with in that position, I'd pretty much be fine with it, and I get the feeling that most people would be fine with it too, as in, a majority of the population. The levers of power might freak out though, and that might put a damper on things.
Kagan has sided with conservatives way too many times with the "look, their conclusion is poorly reasoned and unconstitutional, but you can technically get to the conclusion constitutionally from a liberal perspective if..." and then she sides with the conservatives.
Poking around in legal details can be fun, but she can be a professor while we get someone taking action on the court instead of siding with employer-imposed religious mandates over employee bodily autonomy (hobby lobby), supporting the "Muslim ban"(trump via Hawaii), and crippling contract law so that class action lawsuits can't be brought against corporations over faulty or illegal contracts. (American Express versus Italian colors).
Kagan is not helping people, get someone on there who wants to help people.
Biden no longer has the moral high ground to pretend this would be illegal.
Surpreme Court just literally said he can do whatever he wants. Everything he does is legal.
So use those powers to actually want to "save Democracy" if you believe it's truly in danger. Or would that make your carrot disappear of forcing people to vote for you?
I wonder how long now until the north and south separate. I'm semi facetious, I don't see how this situation can be resolved from this point. The Supreme Court has to go or else this ends one of 2 ways.
If Biden overturned the decision that gave Donald Trump immunity, then the southern republican states would almost certainly rebel. If Donald Trump takes power as a king in January, then the northern Democratic states will almost certainly rebel.
We keep saying that. But if you told me a decade ago that roe v wade would be overturned and an open fascist would be the likely next president and scotus also just ruled that presidents are literally not beholden to any laws then I'd have said the same thing.
"In my view, we need a strong Republican Party. We need a Republican Party that’s united."
-Joe Biden (~2011)
The man is just incompetent and nostalgic for the "good old days" when Dems and Republicans would play grab ass together and hoodwink the public together to protect the status quo and grow the wealth divide. This whole fascism thing, though clearly signaled decades ago, has him scratching his head. He simply doesn't get it and is too mentally calcified to keep up with the paradigm shift in politics.
Another issue is in 2128 AD or whatever when we've totally forgotten Biden and Trump except in niche history lessons, and Throckmorton Cacadoodoo, the newest demagogue takes the presidency, like I know it's "slippery slope" but man it feels like this downward incline is becoming more lubricated.
I like you optimism that it wiuld take that long instead of the more likely scenario of the next Republican president.
The GOP has been working up to this point for four decades, they aren't going to wait now that they have the powers set up. They also don't need to fear the Dems abusing the power because the Dems proved they can't even get rid of the filibuster the GOP undermined to stack the courts.
It will be the next Republican president, not just the angry orange.
At this rate American Presidents will be immune from prosecution on humanitarian grounds, same reason 80+ year old prisoners are often released to die free.
That's even more reason for Biden to do something but sadly Democrats have learned helplessness.
At this point, I think we just need to have civil war 2.0 and get it over with. It will be horrific, but unfortunately, they fucked up reconstruction after the first go around. I really don't see another way out of this.
There’s a simpler way, someone may need to perish. The vacuum left will eventually take care of itself as there’s no players strong enough to fill the void.
Biden needs to exercise his expanded rights as President to save America by removing agents from all branches of the government who have been working to undermine America. Congress members, Supreme Court Justices, and Presidential candidates with ties to Russia or far-right nationalists should be removed by any means necessary. We’re essentially at war with Russia and we’ve been allowing foreign agents to work against us from inside our country. Take the gloves off and remove those people, they’re trash people who will do it first if/when they get into power next. They’re pretty clearly broadcasting their plans to turn the US into a dictatorship and the SCOTUS just handed them the power to do it the next time they win an election.
Not really.... It's not that anything he says instantly becomes law, it's only that he can't be charged with committing a crime. It's not a cheat code that lets him create or modify any law because the change or new law just won't be recognized by the government. It isn't a crime, per se, it just gets ignored. Or it gets voted on and the GOP squashes it.
If only Biden was in power right now. And he could abuse his kingly powers to remove the kingly powers and restore Democracy.
But of course this is an amazing carrot to keep everyone voting for Genocide Joe. Just like how Obama refused to encode Roe v Wade to use it as a carrot in the elections.
President Joe Biden on Monday sought to reassure Jewish voters that he stands firmly with Israel, calling for the full defeat of Hamas and denouncing the International Criminal Court’s assertion that Israel’s leaders are guilty of war crimes for their campaign in Gaza.
My point is the right and the left keep going to extremes. And the pendulum is actually an axe blade and all the citizens of this country are strapped to the table beneath that pendulum.
He says that, but has no problem issuing pardons, which is about as king-like as it gets. It circumvents the legal and judicial structure of the entire nation, and he can do so on a whim. It's true that, unlike Trump, he's only pardoned people deserving of pardons, but that's not really the fuckin' point, is it?
Holding back from using his newly granted power to demolish the terrorist party and their supporters would definately make me sweat. Other solutions would be much easier.
This is silly. If this was Obama or Clinton that pushed for this, Democrats would not care. The Left is doing anything and everything to make it sound like Trump is some evil human who does NOT deserve some kind of immunity. They're doing this simply to scare people into voting for them (which both sides are guilty of despite what the Left will tell you...) .For fucks sake, we're talking about the POTUS, what's the purpose of holding the most important job in the world, if you constantly have to worry about going to prison? Ridiculous.
what's the purpose of holding the most important job in the world, if you constantly have to worry about going to prison? Ridiculous.
Big yikes there. The purpose is to serve the American people.
The President is not the King of America, and its easy to not have to worry about going to prison - just don't commit crimes. Before Trump, the question wasn't even relevant.