Supreme Court Justice warns Americans: "The president is now a king".
“The president is now a king”: The most blistering lines from dissents in the Trump immunity case
Can the current king please decree that we’re a democracy?
He can do that by officially assassinating the conservative SC justices, nominating new ones, and then having armed marines inside the senate comittees to ensure they are confirmed immediately.
There's probably a few more steps, but this would get us back on track. He would have to be willing to give up his powers at a certain point, which means installing the legal apparatus (in the form of government officials) with the will to strip those powers.
Justice: “Don’t kill me, it’s illegal!”
Assassin: “I’m on orders from the president.”
Justice: “Oh, well, go ahead then.”
The next steps would be ordering the justice department to prosecute him, going to court, and appealing all the way to the new Supreme Court so they can overturn the precedent. Which would require either moving very quickly or preventing the other side from taking power, one way or the other.
Of course, by then pandora's box is open. As long as someone is willing to follow those kinds of orders, nothing would prevent the next president from doing the same thing. It's a slippery slope not unlike the one that caused Rome to go from being a republic that viewed regicide as a fundamental virtue to an empire that would persecute groups for denying the divinity of the emperor.
What's most worrying is that this hasn't happened yet. Once Trump gets elected, it's all over, folks. Time to pack it in.
People are getting this all wrong.
They haven't crowned the POTUS as king. They were very clear that non-official acts are not covered. They've crowned themselves, the ones who get to determine what is and what is not an "official act" the kings.
Did you read the fucking dissent? That's a sitting SC Justice saying that quote, not some arm chair IANAL basement dweller:
“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” Sotomayor wrote.
If one of the dissenting justices thinks it likely, we better pay attention. The whole "They were very clear that non-official acts are not covered." is a pillar built on sinking sand - what defines non-official becomes subjective real fast. Biden could assassinate every conservative justice on SCOTUS and get his own in there to make it all legal. Threats of the same to any in congress who won't play ball.
And if someone can't imagine Biden doing it (I can't), I'm thinking that there are quite a few citizens who believe Trump abso-fucking-lutely would pull that shit. With a majority on SCOTUS already he could just start going after political rivals and keep SCOTUS themselves in check with threats of the same. If SCOTUS has done anything they've painted themselves in a corner and only Congress can unfuck us with impeachment (as unlikely as that seems!)
Question for you: was this ruling incorrect? If so, how do you square that with the majority of justices ruling that way? Or do you as a fellow armchair ianal basement dweller get special privileges when it comes to your legal opinions vs that if scotus judges?
All I'm saying is that if I'm POTUS and I'm considering a questionable "official act" i know who I'm going to to clear it first.
Strong incentive to not step down if you can just keep being a crook. Watch how quick the republicans start to argue over what is “official” and what isn’t depending on who is president.
fascism has never been reasonable, or it's self consistent.
And they're going to quickly find out how much that illusion of power is worth when they try to contain or cross whatever right-wing fascist they help empower.
These idiots think their power structure isn't going to be gutted like some kind of Mortal Combat move as soon as it is convenient for the king of the US to do so. They have no enforcement of their own, the other branches barely have to listen to them as it is, and by the time whatever CIA maga thug clubs them to death in their bed it's going to be too late for them to render a judgement on whether it's an official act. They'll be dead and replaced with someone who values their life more.
So the POTUS gets to pick his jury, which Trump did.
So let's say, hypothetically.
The president thought that people shouldn't eat chocolate ice cream. It's anti-american.
And "for the good of the country" anyone who eats chocolate ice cream has to be isolated from the rest of society.
That's not an official act. It's not really on the periphery of official acts.
But because definitionally anything that, at the president's sole discretion, is "in the best interest of the United States" is now argued as an official act.
Biden likes vanilla ice cream.
But he isn't going to detain you for unamerican activities if you prefer chocolate ice cream.
Choose freedom! Choose chocolate ice cream!
Here's your bumper sticker..
No Kings, Vote Biden
Well to be fair, it'd be King Biden.
Just a far less scary king who might even work to unking himself.
Or something idk.
This shits scary.
Exactly this. It’s critically important that we prevent trump and his fascist goons from getting control of this power. But that in itself doesn’t address the really big problem here. Living at the whim of a benevolent king is still living under a king. I honestly think this is it. The constitutional republic is over in every meaningful way beyond window dressing. Given the authority of the Supreme Court, I don’t see a legal fix for this. This is dark AF.
I don't know. Something tells me that they don't have the integrity left to hold their own rulings true for the group of people that they don't personally support.
I'm getting more of a "rules for thee but not for me" vibe but from the supreme Court
It's not in human nature to limit your own power. I'm voting for Biden, for his appointments and admin, I have nothing against him, but my experience is that no one relinquishes power. Once the office has the power, no one's going to let it go.
Vote King Joe I
I mean, who has a better story than Biden?
Biden is the current God King and apart from a 2 minute speech he ain't doing much about it
Well we’d better not miss then
Oh, indeed.
Biden should just have the justices arrested as an official act.
*assassinated
Whilst technically immune now, assassinating them is still extremely polarising and likely to make martyrs, forever. And they won't be able to justify the consequences of their decisions.
Re-arresting them constantly however, from the oval office, interfering with their civil liberties... They themselves would have to describe how it's not an official act, and why the president shouldn't be immune.
The moment they make a ruling... destroy their property, seize their assets, etc... Make their lives a living hell.
It's still polarising, but makes them feel the consequences of their actions. And they'll have to justify it in the public court of opinion for everyone to see to why this is a good thing.
It would be a valuable teaching moment.
Not that I would ever suggest it, but I bet the moment a president even attempted to abuse this official power against these six conservative traitors to democracy, they'd desperately try to walk this decision back - they only care for the potential of abuse when it negatively affects them
They wouldn’t even need to actually abuse power at all.
Just order the secret service to take over their personal security details, and attach members of the seal teams to each detail…. “As advisors”.
It would be an implicit threat, sure, but also, a totally legal one, and they could hardly argue that “ensuring their safety and wellbeing” is not an official act,
I'm not advocating for violence. But I'll put it this way. If I ended up on a jury for a murder trial for someone who killed one of the justices that decided for this. I would dedicate my life to nullifying that jury so hard. Not advocating. Just saying.
What's the point of impeachment if the president is immune to everything anyways? This ruling makes no sense
The argument, such as it is, is that impeachment is the remedy for a Mad King Trump situation, rather than the courts. In fairness, this is not a completely unreasonable reading of the Constitution, but the framers' intent is almost completely irrelevant to the reality of our current political system. As originally written, the federal government was basically designed to be a vaguely-representative oligarchy, with states free to appoint senators and presidential electors however their legislatures saw fit -- the majority of states did not consistently hold a popular Presidential vote until the 1820s, for example. Impeachment by 2/3rds vote is not an unreasonable bar to set when it's assumed that everybody in government is going the part of the class and social structure, and the President acting as a class traitor would put all of Congress into uproar. The founders did not anticipate more direct democracy, the two-party system, or the vulnerability to demagoguery that those things would introduce into the system.
So here we are now, with a nakedly partisan Supreme Court majority holding that the only way to interpret the law is to ignore the world as it is and instead imagine things are still as they were at the end of the 18th century (mostly because that philosophy plays into the hands of the right wing) and pretending that a 2/3rds vote in the Senate is still a reasonable bar, when in fact the present political reality is that you will never peel 12+ sycophantic Senators away from a dangerous demagogue's camp for long enough for an impeachment process to succeed in removing him from power. Of course that's by design, but textualism and originalism paved the road to this ruling.
At this point I'm not even ironically suggesting that Biden should call their bluff and start offing prominent right wingers. The Roberts court is clearly working in the assumption that Democrats won't play dirty with the tools they're laying out for their incipient god-king, and it's looking increasingly like the only way to keep those tools out of their hands is to strike first.
The founders did anticipate direct democracy, the two-party system, and demagoguery. These were much discussed. They weren't able to provide perfectly for these eventualities, which also was well understood at the time.
The constitution clearly doesn't allow a president to be removed from office by a prosecution, but it just as clearly doesn't offer any immunity to a prosecution for presidents and not to mention ex-presidents. There's never been a presidency, including Donny's, where a criminal charge was even contemplated that would have impinged on a president's legitimate duties.
Well said.
You can remove court justices via impeachment. They're not impeaching the president, they're impeaching the Supreme Court justices. They're nominated by presidents and confirmed by congress, so it falls on congress to remove them.
SCOTUS has been trying to hump democracy to death since 2001. The fuckers have just about finally managed it, and we're all screwed.
The next official act of president Biden should be to drone strike a terrorist at Mar-a-Lago
King Joe (crowned by his new subject, John Roberts) acts officially by not negotiating with terrorists.
I hope Biden will take this opportunity as the new king and show Republicans that this is a two-way street.
Biden hasn't even parsed the news yet most likely, let alone magically grown a spine.
Well dark Brandon should go ahead and just pull trigger then, since he gets a free pass.
God I wish
Hey say that with more respect, okay?
That's His Majesty, King Dark Brandon to you!
Not American, so excuse the silly question.
What is stopping the President from dissolving the Supreme Court?
It's not within his powers to do so. But he could have the secret service assassinate them. Pardon the perpetrators and then assign whomever he wants the position with threats against the lives of the senate and congress as a whole for all who would vote against assigning this person. Elimate them and have the vote.
Considering that an ex-president who invaded a country under a proven false pretext and in violation of international law and has a million Iraqi civilians on his conscience is still painting his little pictures in Texas, perhaps the Supreme Court decision is not as big a break as some seem to think?
One could at least argue that the Iraq invasion was within what was generally understood to be the role of the president at the time, specifically leading the military as its commander in chief. No one expected throwing a coup to be within the normal role of the president, but apparently that's also covered according to this decision.
Would've been covered even under qualified immunity. Absolute immunity allows you to break laws you know you're breaking.
Kings and royalty are nowadays mostly entertainment. The king function is now called a dictator
Well the president is still limited in what powers he has, he just now has absolute immunity from legal repercussions to his actions and decisions.
The way I understand it, if he breaks those limitations in what powers he has, there are no consequences
Buy guns, buy bolt cutters, buy an angle grinder.
Gas masks too. Look to the Hong Kong umbrella protestors for inspiration on how to prepare and what to expect from a fascist crack down.
start saving your beer bottles, fill up the gas cans, buy styrofoam and shop rags
Buy a dozen roses, urine is stored in the balls, play odd at the roulettes
President Trump signed Executive Order 13823 which kept Gitmo open and declared that the USA can detain "persons captured in connection with an armed conflict for the duration of the conflict." That being stated in Trump's executive order makes it clear that detaining such a person would be an official act.
Trump and his MAGA supporters have made unproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen and they intended to overthrow the government and install him as President on Jan-6 despite his election loss. Trump and his supporters have made continuous threats of violence and committed numerous acts of violence since then. It is therefore clear that the violent conflict that started on Jan-6, 2021 has not yet concluded. Trump and members of his MAGA army can legally be detained, without charge, for the duration of this conflict if and when they are captured.
Now there may be some question about who would capture Trump and his criminal allies and where they would be detained. It's really quite simple. George W. Bush gave us extraordinary rendition. This program used agreements with about 50 other countries to abduct "terrorists" off the streets of those nations and hold and interrogate them indefinitely in CIA black sites. It is debatable on whether or not the CIA, NSA, or FBI could legally capture Trump or any of his terrorist allies, but that is not a problem. No doubt there are any number of foreign powers that would be happy to do so on our behalf for some diplomatic or financial consideration. Negotiating with other nations and arranging treaties and agreements is unarguably part of the Presidents job and therefore an official act.
Thanks to this ruling all Biden needs to do to save our democracy is to come to an agreement with one or more nations to capture the terrorist Trump and transport him to some black site in a foreign nation. There he can be held, and interrogated if need be, until such time as the conflict with his MAGA army is ended. If there are any legally questionable actions by Biden here, they in the nature of official acts, and he is therefore immune to prosecution now or in the future. Should anyone else involved be charged with a federal crime during the capture or detention, Biden can simply pardon them.
Thank you SCOTUS. You've given Biden the ability to save our nation with no legal risk to himself or anyone else involved in the process... Except, Biden would never do any of this because he is a decent human being. So what SCOTUS has really done is destroy our nation. This is the dumbest ruling ever made by this or any other SCOTUS in the history of this nation. The next Republican president will almost certainly not be a decent human being and will commit atrocities that he or she will never be prosecuted for and will tear down our democracy and will rebuild our nation as a Christian theocracy.
We are a nation of cowards and fools.
If you'll excuse me, I'm off to circus.
They missed their chance to give Trump a Burger King crown
Joe Biden should do what he can with these keys. If I were him I'd have them questioning their ruling 1 minute in.
So...couldn't now Biden have Trump killed or maybe just his brain fried and get away with it?
The Supreme Court not only made the president a king, they also overturned the Magna Carta.
Biden should officially 2/3 of Congress ASAP...or at least someone he will pardon, unlike Hunter.
Trump, if he gets in again, can no longer do anything to Biden since he just gave the President absolute immunity.
Biden's security after his presidency is probably not in the top #1000000 of the problems if Trump becomes a president.
What I don't get is what would stop Biden from ordering the assassinations of Trump and 1000 of his closest supporters if this gives total presidential immunity?
That immunity is for every president including Trump. Hell yes Trump can assassinate Bidens and be immune from prosecution.
If it was immunity for Biden alone, then and only then would Biden be safe.
Remember the First of July when it's time to vote.
The only thing left to do for Joe is to order Tromb
Why is there a picture of Trump?
He's not the president.
Edit:
Apparently some people just don't have the ability to pick up on the subtext that Trump isn't president at the moment and Biden could also use HIS shiny new presidential powers on Trump too.
See we use something called "context" to make sense of the things being explained as sometimes words can be interpreted differently or literally.
In this case, the "context" of the ruling surrounds actions that Donald Trump took while president. It's because of this "context" that he is, in fact, the one in the illustration.
It wouldn't really make sense for Biden to be here in the "context" of the article, but I'm sure that it wouldn't literally be incorrect.
Does that help?
He was the subject of the case at hand.
So far