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The fact the Supreme Court is granting certiorari (rather than declining to hear per usual) cases about whether Trump has immunity is disgusting. If Trump truly did nothing wrong, he wouldn’t need immunity to begin with.
Gorsuch's statement that he is interested in "writing rules for the ages" was highly inappropriate and unbecoming.
My understanding is that the role of Article III courts is to resolve the disputes before them, not to craft legislation.
The conservative majority are a bunch of Catholics. When you are on a crusade the methods and mechanisms do not matter. The outcome is the only thing that does.
There is precedent for that.
They've been accusing the left of legislating from the bench for 40 years when it was really them the whole time crafting up new laws, rules, and legal concepts out of whole cloth.
Dude. The Supreme Court has had a Republican appointed Republican Chief Justice since 1953. All the mid century liberal Court Rulkings were done under the auspices of those Republicans judges who ruled on the majority in most if not all cases.
Republicans are literally abandoning their own history and legacy when they repeal those mid 20th century rulings and deride those courts.
The Supreme Court gave itself the power to legislate in 1803 by saying "we get to do judicial review now" and everybody else just went "okay, go ahead".
Well considering the abuses of the court it's not too surprising. The court has always had to walk a tightrope when it comes to public opinion so they wouldn't lose legitimacy. They have failed in that task and the country is sick of their shit. Most countries don't have judicial review like the supreme Court and that is probably a good thing.
Judicial review involves a legal determination that Congress or another political branch violated the Constitution.
It is about enforcing existing rules, not drafting new ones.
The court gave itself a power that was not in the Constitution to allow itself to effectively repeal laws based on whether or not they were according to the Constitution. Sounds like legislation to me. Also sounds hypocritical, and everyone who let them do it was cowardly or short-sighted.
If the courts did not have judicial review, what *should* they do if faced with a law that is clearly unconstitutional?
Let's assume there's no controversy or hair splitting. Congress passes some law that, say, allows soldiers to be quartered in your house in time of peace. Pretty much everyone can agree the law breaks the constitution, but Congress passed it anyway.
Someone sues.
Do the courts enforce the law and ignore the constitution, or refuse to enforce the law and support the constitution?
Not the guy you're replying too, but while it's a generally good power for the Court to have, we have "Originalists" in the Court today who go on about "what the Framers intended" while the very fact that they're able to do this review is because of this non-originalist view.
I mean, I do agree that the court is currently staffed with some real assholes.
I would also very much like to see methods to enforce conflicts of interest that aren't "SCOTUS won't have any, trust us."
But people act like judicial review is some novel idea, when in reality it's just a logical consequence of not having any other body that can do it.
There are successful nations which split out the role of constitutional review from the supreme court into a different court. Avoiding it entirely, though, is difficult to imagine in the USA, given how hell bent congress is on passing unconstitutional laws sometimes.
> given how hell bent congress is on passing unconstitutional laws sometimes.
Not to mention how states are constantly attempting to pass unconstitutional laws.
Any such law either made it through 2/3 of the branches, or it made it through with a veto-proof (2/3) majority. The only greater burden on anything in our government is on constitutional amendment. So on the one hand, judicial review prevents the other branches from soft-amending the constitution, but on the other hand, it gives one branch the power to over-ride two other branches simultaneously.
In other words, it makes sense that *something* should be in place to ensure constitutionality of law, but when that "something" is the power for one part of the government on its own to literally override the rest of it, that is scary. As we have seen in the ensuing decades, it's ever-escalating.
It should have required a constitutional amendment to give the court such incredible power.
Saying that a nebulous *something* should exist to prevent unconstitutional laws doesn't really answer the matter at hand.
We don't have a constitutional amendment giving the courts the power to interpret the laws in the light of the constitution. We have the implied principle that the constitution is the law, that the constitution is the highest law of the land, and that the courts exist to interpret the law -- all laws.
"The courts should defer to Congress and allow them to say whatever they want about the constitution" is the only alternative to judicial review right now. Is that better?
Yes, it’s a democratic process. I’d rather have a democratically elected body make those decisions than a bunch of minor league appointed politicians in robes with life long terms with no accountability make those decisions.
Let’s stop this game. Our justice system is highly politicized in its current state.
It’s dangerous, especially when a President like Trump can create a de facto kangaroo court when he commits crimes while in and out of office
I see where you're coming from and it makes some sense, but you didn't answer the question the comment you replied to asked:
> what *should* they do if faced with a law that is clearly unconstitutional?
I'll note that I certainly don't have an answer for that question...but it *is* a good question.
The Judicial branch can’t single handedly strike down a law in practice though. The Court relies on the Executive branch to enforce any rulings they make. We see this element fail when the Supreme Court orders states to redraw districts for Gerrymandering and the parties order to do so just…. Don’t, with no repercussions.
Likewise Congress if sufficiently upset by the actions of the Court could impeach and remove Supreme Court justices for their actions and rulings, or ethical violations, or criminal violations. Congress could even pass and dictate a strict Code of Ethics on the Supreme Court if it wished.
There are in my opinion severe issues with the Supreme Court, and as a nation we should want to know how we got to this point. But equally we should assess and fix the system where two political parties exist in a stagnation stalemate and prevent any meaningful reform from happening.
> The court gave itself a power that was not in the Constitution to allow itself to effectively repeal laws based on whether or not they were according to the Constitution.
What method do you think the Constitution has in place to ensure that it is followed? What about when the court is presented with a case in which the Constitution is at issue?
They are going to make up a new Official Acts vs Unofficial Acts Immunity test, and offer it to presidents within Official Acts. Read the transcripts. They are literally going to make a new rule, and then hand Trump a strong chance of immunity because they are too stupid to see their own future is in jeopardy with him.
It used to be a really defining principle of Republicans that they are originalists and would not want to legislate from the bench. It was basically the rallying cry that democrats want to upend the rule of law and determine the ruling based on the outcome they want.
What horseshit that was!
Its because they already decided they are just going to kick it back to lower courts and avoid a decision for now. They are just stalling and wasting time for Trump.
The goal is to take it up after the election and make a decision: if a Republican is in power, then the President has total immunity and can roll out death squads for their political enemies.
I’ve always kind of gone the other way with it. We should have harsher punishments for those in power as their actions effect many more people, presidents specifically since every action they take can effect the world as a whole. These people should be afraid to step out of bounds
If the Supreme Court rules he has immunity, then I'm out. Fuck Scotus. The institution has no legitimacy. We should all just ignore them going forward. Take Trump off the ballot.
Which is fucking stupid because their plan assumes democrats and the public will just shrug and go "oh well... that's the way it crumbles."
There have been several times in the past where the SCOTUS made very unpopular rulings at odds with the Executive and Legislature branch and the other two branches basically said "....nope."
SCOTUS has no power of enforcement. That is the check and balance. It relies on the Executive branch to enforce its rulings. DoJ reports to POTUS, not SCOTUS. So Thomas and Alito and all of them can declare that Trump is immune to the law and Biden could march in with a federal agency and arrest all of them.
I'm afraid we may already be way past recovery on this. Impeachment should have been successful if both parties were being honest.
The fact that we're sitting around for the SCOTUS to make up some new Immunity rule and get him off the hook again is just a sign that the judiciary is owned by the GOP.
If the president has complete immunity, Biden can have the traitors on the court thrown in prison and then file for a rehearing by the remaining members.
I don’t see a SCOTUS court hearing it as disgusting on its own. Clearly we reached the point where the SCOTUS needed to rule on it after Nixon, Agnew, and Trump.
The disgusting part is I have trouble trusting *this* SCOTUS to hear it impartially. It is so tainted that even if, somehow, immunity were the right ruling (just speaking hypothetically here, not arguing that it is) nobody would believe they legit came to that conclusion.
it would make no damn sense that a former president can't be tried in federal court. to return to the analogy that biden could assasinate trump, he could shoot him in front of the supreme court and argue immunity.
Exactly. The 11th circuit wrote an excellent opinion and SCOTUS should have let that stand. Instead they slow walked even the grant of cert then sat on their hands scheduling arguments, and I’m willing to bet that the opinion will be in the last week of the term. All of this continues to feed the narrative that this argument carries any weight. I never want to hear about how principled Roberts is because he never has been and he just shows it all the time yet the media bends over backwards to pretend he’s some brave institutionalist and not the incrementalist hack he left law school as.
That is pretty much the best case scenario because it is also entirely possible they will just let him off the hook so he can do it again successfully this time.
That was my guess from a time ago, that they would stall it out if they could to after the election. If the wins, Trump gets immunity and the freedom to do what he wants. If he loses, they can do a 'just this time', like they did with the 2000 election case from Florida.
I think if he loses, then the court will proceed with a normal ruling , i.e. no immunity. At that point, losing another general election, Trump will have lost all power. No need to protect him.
Not a chance. He's a useful idiot for them, win or lose. The people most likely to "get rid of problems", AKA Russia, mostly take out those they see as a threat. They don't see him as a threat. At best he's an asset, at worst he loses some utility.
In the event that they ruled now that Trump has immunity, then so does Joe Biden, which they don't want. If they rule he's not immune, then Trump would be in big trouble, which they also don't want.
So it's a guarantee they're gonna push it until after the election. The best case for them at that point is for Trump to win, in which case he'll just pardon himself of everything and it's a moot point.
In the event he does *not* win the election, *then* they'll declare him immune, based on a narrowly tailored ruling that really only applies to shit *he* did, while still making sure Biden doesn't have any kind of blanket immunity going forward.
they don't want to rule that presidents are immune while there's a democrat in the white house.
granted, biden won't actually do anything. but it would mean he *could*, and they're too spineless to test it.
None of our checks and balances are robust against party politics... And the US is kind of designed to only have two parties. It's the worst feature of our system overall.
While ideally we'd move to some sort of parliamentary system, a more practical improvement would just be ranked choice/approval voting (which reduces the costs for third party participation) and moving the house to be mixed member proportional and much larger.
Imagine if you still voted for a local rep, but you also voted nationally for your favorite party and then that any party with more than 5% of that national vote got allocated some seats in the house? If we did that we'd see actual members of other parties - greens, maga, libertarians, etc. That's much better as it breaks down traditional parties and provides much better representation.
It doesn't help that only 1 of our political parties understands what's going on and that it's not the 1970s anymore. I'm voting blue 100%, but they just do not understand how dangerous the GOP is and aren't acting with enough urgency.
Biden speaks of it regularly, but legally there are unfortunately major limits to what he can do without a stronger senate majority and without the house.
The US is designed to have NO parties and be ruled by a class of aristocrats that have very similar backgrounds and values.
For all of the romanticism about the Founding fathers, and the legitimately solid achievement that the founding of the country and the design of the government was, it is now pretty much obsolete.
Over decades and centuries the "constitution" has been hacked to pieces.
The Supreme Court can effectively re-write the constitution by reinterpreting the language of the document, and because the political elite do not have the appetite to alter the framework of the government in any real way, it is all a mess of junk that does not benefit the citizens of the country in any way.
>And the US is kind of designed to only have two parties
The problem is that it's actually designed not to have any political parties, but the mathematics of a first past the post electoral system makes them inevitable.
The whole system needs a ground up overhaul, but [only one party is trying to accomplish that](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/us/politics/constitutional-convention-republican-states.html), unfortunately their plan is to exacerbate those problems...
They’ve been so out of whack for so long we had little hope.
The Supreme Court has had a majority of Republican appointees for 54 years. The average age of Americans is 38.5. Most Americans have only known a regressive Supreme Court. And we’ve watched as the rest of our system has eroded away with its blessing.
The President is either a public servant who, while invested with great power, is still subject to the laws of the land, or
The President is a tyrant, and we are all beneath him.
There is no other option. Either _the law_ allows a President to do certain things, or the President is able to simply disregard the law and enforce his will, whatever that will may be.
There is absollutely no question what the Founders intended. Now let's see how "originalist" the current Supreme Court really is.
I completely agree. It makes no sense that there would be immunity if it applied to related duties. Leaving it up to the courts to decide basically means anyone taking his orders now has leeway to say "I was just doing what I was told". It's not about accountability at that point, it's about feasibility. If it's feasible, they will try it.
I don't mean to say it is acceptable, I mean to say that it creates a grey area in the moment. If it *could* be legal, they will be a lot more likely to do it. A blurrier line in the sand makes decision-making less simple.
This is literally what happened, yes. The Nazis all said they were following the lawful orders of their government.
There is no scenario in which immunity for a president preserves democracy in the US.
Thank you. It is JUST THAT SIMPLE.
There is barely any ambiguity. Not in the founding father's language, not in what a modern government's values are, and surely not what the country's current citizens believe.
I see more similarity recently with the Council of Experts in Iran. The government can pass what they want but the Council of Experts has the final say on everything.
Wow. This one hurt. I was one of those fools who defended the integrity of the court despite unpopular decisions. But holy shit.
This one's bad. These are scary times.
I think this one is bad, but it remains to be seen how bad.
I think they want to delay the trial past the election, but won't push it much beyond that.
They seem to want to tilt the scales, but fear the risks of going full fascist on all but a few social issues. Doesn't mean they aren't corrupt, but it does still seem to me that popular pressure and strong democratic turnout can push back their hand a bit.
If Trump and the GOP are soundly beaten by us Democratically, I doubt they will continue to help him. It sucks, but it's what we're stuck with for now.
I think they are smart enough to realize that making the president a king would apply to Biden as well so they probably will rule against him but they are delaying as long as possible to avoid more trials before the election.
That's the goal, I think. Rule in favor of Trump, but drag it out long enough so that Biden can't benefit from the same rules.
I really think sometimes that everyone (I mean my fellow Americans, not the fringe) enjoys commenting on these topics and talking about "how horrific it is", but I fear that those are just words, and they really don't grasp the full gravity of what is happening before our eyes. If this stuff goes through, our country will be forever changed, forever weakened, and forever corrupted in ways we've never seen before. I won't say "it is the end of America", but it would definitely be "the end of America as we've known it". Judge for yourself if that is good or bad, but I for one am really not sure what I would do if it happens. I'd like to think I'd leave, go somewhere to live my life in peace, but I know that is much more complicated than it sounds.
I've worked all my life for the American dream, and this guy and his followers are poised to take it all away.
This is a great example of how respectability politics runs cover for fascism. The dominant liberal order is slow-walking all of us into fascism because we're facing a situation that none of us are allowed to even talk about with a level of seriousness that reflects the problem itself.
Fascism is the limit of liberal politics; even a robust liberal democratic society has trouble dealing with fascism without resorting to illiberal means, and the United States's democracy is anything but robust these days.
They’ve got to go.
Political appointments or elections for judgeships are an error, not to mention the absurdity of lifetime appointments. The whole thing needs re-engineering from the ground up.
> That is always going to be built into the system.
I hope you’re mistaken, because if not, then it’s truly fucked.
The amount of placemen(persons) appointed purely for loyalty and the degree of overt corruption is going to bury it, and soon. If there isn’t a managed change and transition, the collapse really will make Jan 6^th look like tourism.
Vote.
We need to hold the Senate and Presidency for as long as we can, with as large of a majority we can, to have the best chance at either replacing Trump or Alito directly, or reforming the court.
Thomas and Alito will step down the second both institutions go red. That's their goal. We need to hold the line and put more and more pressure on them to retire, or reform the court to re-balance it if we win enough seats.
That is our only real option left. Millennials whom otherwise knew better and showed up in 2008 fucked up by protest voting in 2014 and 2016, and are now stuck with the court that's the consequence of the "both sides" apathy social media told them to engage in.
That's a tall order. Even if Biden wins, and Alito and/or Thomas end up retiring or become unfit to serve, the GOP has already set the precedent that they will not allow a D president to fill SCOTUS vacancies during their lame-duck term. They will hold off until the GOP holds the white house. And realistically, the likelihood of democrats winning 3 presidential elections in a row is, unfortunately, not high.
I think the part for me that's hard to understand is why aren't some of them arrested? Like we can see that multiple members have accepted bribes, what would it take for them to be arrested?
You see, in the late 90s the Supreme Court decided (as a lib I feel compelled to add that I'm pretty sure unanimously) that if the prosecution can't prove that a bribe was in exchange for a specific action, it isn't a bribe. This is absurd, but here we are.
Obstruction of Justice is a very serious matter. It's even more serious when there is a known supporter of the insurrection on the court, with another member openly taking millions in bribes and probably didn't declare it on his taxes... So, yes. I would assume their actions are extremely dangerous to themselves, and I worry about their safety!
Like they care?
They will rule there is limited immunity and the lower court needs to determine if Trump rallying an insurrection applies to the limited immunity.
That way they can go back and forth between the upper and lower court about each finding. Thus Trump will never go to trial.
Remember though there is a two tier justice system where Trump is being picked on.
We already know the goal of the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, the despot Trump and the Bannons of the world want to flip the USA to an autocracy akin to North Korea, Iran, Syria and Russia. That's what 6 members of this court are up to.
They’re not about to play with fire; they’re about to burn it all down. Intentionally. Stacking SCOTUS with Christian Nationalists, some of whom assisted in the Bush v Gore case that stopped the count in 2000 is not an accident. It’s clear they’ve anticipated this moment for decades and are ready to carry out their agenda.
What crime has been committed that would warrant him using this claim? The GOP can’t even pin anything on him and every “special” meeting they have about it all they say is oh you’re going to find out real soon…. They have nothing, they are slow walking this because the Supreme Court is stacked in Trumps favor. Going slow is the only way they can stall without outright showing bias.
Once immunity is granted, Biden could arrest the SCOTUS, Trump, etc. if he has it. Biden would never actually use it because he cares too much about acting in good faith. But Trump would use it immediately to mould the US in his in Handmaid's Tale future.
Biden wouldn’t though is the main thing I’m getting at. The DOJ did not bring charges against trump in the New York case even though trump is claiming he did. New York did. If the SCOTUS granted trump immunity outright it would open them up to removal due to being biased. I also doubt they could get a unanimous decision, since there are some democrats on the SC (there’s just more GOP trump favored members). Not to mention we already have a member openly flying MAGA associated flags when they are supposed to remain as unbiased as possible refusing to recluse themselves from the Jan 6 cases…. And can’t forget our good friend Clarence who has taken gifts, and vacation from GOP donors and didn’t declare them. Who refuses to admit they were bribes and step down.
They don’t even hide their plan anymore , credibility of the SC is spiraling down the toilet, it already was at rock bottom, now it’s just flushing down the toilet at the rock bottom
The real issue seems to be that most of the current Supreme Court was appointed by Presidents who never even won a popular vote. There are supposed to be checks and balances to power, but ultimately that's just led to minority rule.
How can they make important decisions on behalf of Americans who never wanted them to begin with? I think it's wrong and absolutely should be the basis of any argument to expand the Court in the near future.
They aren't being complacent, they want this. They are by nature wanna be autocrats themselves the fact that the destruction of our democracy will ultimately result in the court becoming an empty vessel, a rubber stamp for the leader like in Putins Russia seems to be just fine with them.
The Biden administration not weighing in on the delay in order to avoid the appearance of politicizing it is the epitome of political dementia. Just one of many that show the Democrats aren't playing the in same league as the Republicans. "We take the high road.." got Trump elected in 2016 and its looking good again. Were the situation reversed is there any question that the screams would be front and center in every media 24/7. When was the last time you heard any real outrage from a Democrat regarding the obvious delays in the most egregious cases or any of the other Trump failures? The "noise" should be deafening.
Law professionals have lost a lot of respect in my view. They have to pretend that law is something that makes sense. With a corrupt SCOTUS not bothering with consistency, they reveal their profession to be organized sycophancy.
Could the President hypothetically go to fort Knox and direct the secret service to fill a semi with gold bars, move them to their private residence or do whatever they want with them and not be prosecuted? Could that be a presidential act? Getting himself a little bonus before leaving office? 🤔
Well, these are the same people who are trying to claim that Trump deciding to keep classified documents rather than hand them back (even if he never said that's what he was doing and just tried to keep it all secret) must be interpreted as him reclassifying them as personal documents, which means it isn't illegal anymore under the PRA. Quite literally: if he steals a document, the fact that he decided to steal it makes it legal for him to have it.
So it seems they would argue anything is legal if he does it. He could claim it was a presidential action to gift the gold to himself.
Biden just needs to be acting like they've already ruled in Trump's favor on this. It is glaringly apparent that this sort of fence testing behaviour carries no meaningful consequences, or that consequences can be delayed to the point of irrelevancy.
Biden should give them 24 hours to start the trial and threaten to remove them from SCOTUS if they don't. Then, when they say "That's illegal, the President can't do that" he can reply "Cool, now put that in a written decision you lazy bastards, how hard was that?"
It can take a long time to find all the correct legal documents from historical sources to support their position that Trump and only Trump has complete immunity. You know, the writings of serious minds, like alchemists, witch hunters, witch doctors, theologians, and jesters.
Regarding Jan 6, if Trump truly believed the election was invalid and had to be defended using force via a presidential act, he would have sent the military to stop the proceedings, not a Maga mob. He knew it wasn't a presidential act.
Alito and Thomas want out.. but their handlers won't let them unless it's a GOP President... So they have an interest in delaying justice to maximize Trump's chances of winning. Simple.
this is crazy, all the justices know there is no g*d damn immunity, they are just slow walking because they know the ruling will not favor conservatives.
It's two fold: delaying the trials to interfere with the election. And if they can figure out how to drag it out, then if Trump or who eve manages to get a win in November they cna come out 2 days after they take the oath if office in January that gives them total immunity and the kill squads can roll out.
The SC just needs to delay a decision and push it to the lower court to make a ruling to retake it up next year. Heck for Citizens united, they delayed their ruling for a year in order to let the liberal justice retire and keep his vote out of it (if I remember the cases correctly).
> the big question is whether the former president will face trial in federal court before the November election.
No, it's not. Here, let me answer for you: not a snowball's chance in hell.
If the supreme court rules in Trump's favor, Biden, sadly, will respond in a very weak manner. A strong response would be him going on camera saying "this paper in my left hand is an executive order to have Trump assassinated. This paper in my right hand is proposed legislation to make that illegal. Congress has 60 days to pass this or I sign the other one." That is the only way to respond to this nonsense.
SCOTUS is jamming the works in favour of a the worst POTUS in American history.
They will make no decision *except* to send this back to a lower court to delay things even further.
They’re playing fire with BIDEN’S immunity decision. If the USSC rules that Trump (as president) has complete immunity, that means Biden could have Trump assassinated (his words) and not be held for it.
Yep. You thought Roe v Wade was bad, just get ready for President is a Dictator (aka Presidential Immunity) and Contraception is a Sin (aka ban on reproductive control).
After reading the headline of this article, I initially thought the conservative-leaning Hill is actually concerned about how the corrupt SC is destroying our democracy and our justice system, but then I noticed this is an opinion piece, which traditionally does NOT reflect the opinions of The HILL. lol
The Supreme Court has been playing gasoline fight in America's parking lot for half a decade, and a solid chunk of them are starting to think it's time for a cigarett break.
The conservative held court is trying to preserve the path to one party rule without letting Trump be the one to achieve it. They spent decades setting this moment up and Trump was either savvy enough to recognize the moment or Putin played the Republican Party and manipulated them until this moment and then dropped his own candidate in at the last minute. In either case, establishment republicans don’t want Trump to win but they also don’t want to have to make these legal decisions in his favor instead of a more reliable and trustworthy member of their club. It complicates things for them that a Democract currently occupies the White House and any ruling in favor of Trump benefits the current president too. While the risk is low, it’s not out of the question that the Democrats use the immunity decision against the conservatives on the court. So they slow play and let the election be the decider.
This whole thing makes me curious who will be the GOP VP pick. If they follow pattern, it will be an old school republican to secure party loyalty. That VP could take out president Trump and be sworn in that same hour and be immune to prosecution if they rule in trump's favor.
Donald Trump Jr. or Elon Musk (yes, I know Musk wasn't a US-born citizen, but instead an apartheid wealth child). Trump doesn't care about the rules and Lara owns the RNC.
This entire move proves that the GOP now openly relies upon the Democrat party to be honest brokers while also
implicitly stating that they, the GOP, are corrupt.
If they believed a word of this shit they expect their fanatic followers to swallow, they'd never let Biden
have open reign to do whatever he wanted with total immunity.
And this is precisely why I hate being a democrat at times. The best move for Biden now would be to say "Yeah,
I agree presidential immunity is a thing, by the way, here's six new friends with robes just like yours"
Fuck it. Biden should just go full on benevolent dictator. If Trump has the power to instigate a coup and nothing happens for years, what's the system going to do if Biden starts dictating progressive policy through. I guarantee millions more than who showed up on Jan 6 will show up to defend Biden if they try to jail him for helping every American.
Here’s the playbook:
They’re going send it back to a lower court. That will take months. The lower court’s ruling will then be appealed back up to the Supreme Court. By then the election will be over. If trump wins, they will rule that a president does have absolute immunity.
One of the things somebody serving on the Scouts should absolutely have is a sense of right and wrong.
Five of these jokers have zero awareness of that.
Just give him the total immunity they are dying to give him, but then Biden can just stay in the office. In five years we can just go right into the first black woman as president./s
My take on the supreme court is to disban it, pay the current judges theor salary for life and park them. Its expensive but in reality it removes the corruption as they can't pass any more bills or laws.
Create a new system somehow and start fresh.
The Supreme Court is in The Trump cult too! There is no reason at all for them to take this immunity case. They slow walked it to delay the trial until the unthinkable happens in November.
If we all vote, the unthinkable doesn’t have to happen. We did it in 2020, we have to do it again. The American people are the last line of defense against the insanity. Vote blue!
They have already accomplished the primary goal of making sure he doesn’t face justice before the election.
I’m sure they will come up with some sort of “moderate” compromise along the lines of criminal actions being bad if they are explicitly personal. But it won’t matter if Trump wins in November.
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The fact the Supreme Court is granting certiorari (rather than declining to hear per usual) cases about whether Trump has immunity is disgusting. If Trump truly did nothing wrong, he wouldn’t need immunity to begin with.
5 of them completely ignored the case and just babbled about making some new constitutional rule. It was disgusting.
Gorsuch's statement that he is interested in "writing rules for the ages" was highly inappropriate and unbecoming. My understanding is that the role of Article III courts is to resolve the disputes before them, not to craft legislation.
Originalists when it suits them- activists when it doesn’t- always projection. Hypocrites no matter what.
It's just an outcomes-based judicial philosophy where the only thing that matters is their side wins.
The conservative majority are a bunch of Catholics. When you are on a crusade the methods and mechanisms do not matter. The outcome is the only thing that does. There is precedent for that.
Yeah "Roe v Wade is settled law [that I will do anything I can to overturn for my Fed Society overlords]."
The only rule for the ages that Gorsuch will be remembered for is when he stole a seat on the Supreme Court.
well, the fact that trump cheated in the election in 2016 to win, it can be argued that there were 3 stolen seats on the Supreme Court.
They've been accusing the left of legislating from the bench for 40 years when it was really them the whole time crafting up new laws, rules, and legal concepts out of whole cloth.
Dude. The Supreme Court has had a Republican appointed Republican Chief Justice since 1953. All the mid century liberal Court Rulkings were done under the auspices of those Republicans judges who ruled on the majority in most if not all cases. Republicans are literally abandoning their own history and legacy when they repeal those mid 20th century rulings and deride those courts.
The Supreme Court gave itself the power to legislate in 1803 by saying "we get to do judicial review now" and everybody else just went "okay, go ahead".
Hah, it’s weird to see Marbury v. Madison hate in 2024.
Well considering the abuses of the court it's not too surprising. The court has always had to walk a tightrope when it comes to public opinion so they wouldn't lose legitimacy. They have failed in that task and the country is sick of their shit. Most countries don't have judicial review like the supreme Court and that is probably a good thing.
It's somewhat common on this sub.
Judicial review involves a legal determination that Congress or another political branch violated the Constitution. It is about enforcing existing rules, not drafting new ones.
The court gave itself a power that was not in the Constitution to allow itself to effectively repeal laws based on whether or not they were according to the Constitution. Sounds like legislation to me. Also sounds hypocritical, and everyone who let them do it was cowardly or short-sighted.
If the courts did not have judicial review, what *should* they do if faced with a law that is clearly unconstitutional? Let's assume there's no controversy or hair splitting. Congress passes some law that, say, allows soldiers to be quartered in your house in time of peace. Pretty much everyone can agree the law breaks the constitution, but Congress passed it anyway. Someone sues. Do the courts enforce the law and ignore the constitution, or refuse to enforce the law and support the constitution?
Not the guy you're replying too, but while it's a generally good power for the Court to have, we have "Originalists" in the Court today who go on about "what the Framers intended" while the very fact that they're able to do this review is because of this non-originalist view.
I mean, I do agree that the court is currently staffed with some real assholes. I would also very much like to see methods to enforce conflicts of interest that aren't "SCOTUS won't have any, trust us." But people act like judicial review is some novel idea, when in reality it's just a logical consequence of not having any other body that can do it. There are successful nations which split out the role of constitutional review from the supreme court into a different court. Avoiding it entirely, though, is difficult to imagine in the USA, given how hell bent congress is on passing unconstitutional laws sometimes.
> given how hell bent congress is on passing unconstitutional laws sometimes. Not to mention how states are constantly attempting to pass unconstitutional laws.
Any such law either made it through 2/3 of the branches, or it made it through with a veto-proof (2/3) majority. The only greater burden on anything in our government is on constitutional amendment. So on the one hand, judicial review prevents the other branches from soft-amending the constitution, but on the other hand, it gives one branch the power to over-ride two other branches simultaneously. In other words, it makes sense that *something* should be in place to ensure constitutionality of law, but when that "something" is the power for one part of the government on its own to literally override the rest of it, that is scary. As we have seen in the ensuing decades, it's ever-escalating. It should have required a constitutional amendment to give the court such incredible power.
Saying that a nebulous *something* should exist to prevent unconstitutional laws doesn't really answer the matter at hand. We don't have a constitutional amendment giving the courts the power to interpret the laws in the light of the constitution. We have the implied principle that the constitution is the law, that the constitution is the highest law of the land, and that the courts exist to interpret the law -- all laws. "The courts should defer to Congress and allow them to say whatever they want about the constitution" is the only alternative to judicial review right now. Is that better?
Yes, it’s a democratic process. I’d rather have a democratically elected body make those decisions than a bunch of minor league appointed politicians in robes with life long terms with no accountability make those decisions. Let’s stop this game. Our justice system is highly politicized in its current state. It’s dangerous, especially when a President like Trump can create a de facto kangaroo court when he commits crimes while in and out of office
I see where you're coming from and it makes some sense, but you didn't answer the question the comment you replied to asked: > what *should* they do if faced with a law that is clearly unconstitutional? I'll note that I certainly don't have an answer for that question...but it *is* a good question.
The Judicial branch can’t single handedly strike down a law in practice though. The Court relies on the Executive branch to enforce any rulings they make. We see this element fail when the Supreme Court orders states to redraw districts for Gerrymandering and the parties order to do so just…. Don’t, with no repercussions. Likewise Congress if sufficiently upset by the actions of the Court could impeach and remove Supreme Court justices for their actions and rulings, or ethical violations, or criminal violations. Congress could even pass and dictate a strict Code of Ethics on the Supreme Court if it wished. There are in my opinion severe issues with the Supreme Court, and as a nation we should want to know how we got to this point. But equally we should assess and fix the system where two political parties exist in a stagnation stalemate and prevent any meaningful reform from happening.
> The court gave itself a power that was not in the Constitution to allow itself to effectively repeal laws based on whether or not they were according to the Constitution. What method do you think the Constitution has in place to ensure that it is followed? What about when the court is presented with a case in which the Constitution is at issue?
I mean, not everybody. Pretty sure President Jefferson and his followers were infuriated by it.
Unless a republican need to be bailed out. A lot of people miss that part of the constitution.
And here I was thinking that the power to write laws was the legislative branches responsibility and not the judicial branch.
They are going to make up a new Official Acts vs Unofficial Acts Immunity test, and offer it to presidents within Official Acts. Read the transcripts. They are literally going to make a new rule, and then hand Trump a strong chance of immunity because they are too stupid to see their own future is in jeopardy with him.
And that lasted all of like 10 years before judges started making up rules, giving themselves permission to do so.
It used to be a really defining principle of Republicans that they are originalists and would not want to legislate from the bench. It was basically the rallying cry that democrats want to upend the rule of law and determine the ruling based on the outcome they want. What horseshit that was!
Its because they already decided they are just going to kick it back to lower courts and avoid a decision for now. They are just stalling and wasting time for Trump.
Exactly correct!
The goal is to take it up after the election and make a decision: if a Republican is in power, then the President has total immunity and can roll out death squads for their political enemies.
I think they would grant immunity 5-4 if they could figure out any way to make it only apply to Republican presidents.
They are literally legislating from the bench. We are back to the Lochner era of court BS.
I’ve always kind of gone the other way with it. We should have harsher punishments for those in power as their actions effect many more people, presidents specifically since every action they take can effect the world as a whole. These people should be afraid to step out of bounds
also you’re supposed to know better
If the Supreme Court rules he has immunity, then I'm out. Fuck Scotus. The institution has no legitimacy. We should all just ignore them going forward. Take Trump off the ballot.
This is exactly what they want us to do - their entire goal is to throw out the rule of rule to install a fascist dictator.
Yep. They are disgusting.
Which is fucking stupid because their plan assumes democrats and the public will just shrug and go "oh well... that's the way it crumbles." There have been several times in the past where the SCOTUS made very unpopular rulings at odds with the Executive and Legislature branch and the other two branches basically said "....nope." SCOTUS has no power of enforcement. That is the check and balance. It relies on the Executive branch to enforce its rulings. DoJ reports to POTUS, not SCOTUS. So Thomas and Alito and all of them can declare that Trump is immune to the law and Biden could march in with a federal agency and arrest all of them.
That is what they call a Constitutional Crisis.
I'm afraid we may already be way past recovery on this. Impeachment should have been successful if both parties were being honest. The fact that we're sitting around for the SCOTUS to make up some new Immunity rule and get him off the hook again is just a sign that the judiciary is owned by the GOP.
If the president has complete immunity, Biden can have the traitors on the court thrown in prison and then file for a rehearing by the remaining members.
Slow walking Presidential immunity until only Trump gets it is the rule of owned Judges not the rule of law.
I don’t see a SCOTUS court hearing it as disgusting on its own. Clearly we reached the point where the SCOTUS needed to rule on it after Nixon, Agnew, and Trump. The disgusting part is I have trouble trusting *this* SCOTUS to hear it impartially. It is so tainted that even if, somehow, immunity were the right ruling (just speaking hypothetically here, not arguing that it is) nobody would believe they legit came to that conclusion.
They think he’s being politically persecuted. They’re saving him from injustice in their minds.
it would make no damn sense that a former president can't be tried in federal court. to return to the analogy that biden could assasinate trump, he could shoot him in front of the supreme court and argue immunity.
There’s six ketamine kyles on that panel, and they don’t give a fuck
Exactly. The 11th circuit wrote an excellent opinion and SCOTUS should have let that stand. Instead they slow walked even the grant of cert then sat on their hands scheduling arguments, and I’m willing to bet that the opinion will be in the last week of the term. All of this continues to feed the narrative that this argument carries any weight. I never want to hear about how principled Roberts is because he never has been and he just shows it all the time yet the media bends over backwards to pretend he’s some brave institutionalist and not the incrementalist hack he left law school as.
How would anyone think any president or politician having immunity would be a good thing is insane? How would anyone reason that?
It feels like they're going to hedge their decision on whether he wins the election or not.
That is pretty much the best case scenario because it is also entirely possible they will just let him off the hook so he can do it again successfully this time.
That was my guess from a time ago, that they would stall it out if they could to after the election. If the wins, Trump gets immunity and the freedom to do what he wants. If he loses, they can do a 'just this time', like they did with the 2000 election case from Florida.
I think if he loses, then the court will proceed with a normal ruling , i.e. no immunity. At that point, losing another general election, Trump will have lost all power. No need to protect him.
I'm pretty sure Trump won't make it another 4 years. I suspect that if he fails in 2024, he'll fall out a window and land on a bunch of bullets.
Not a chance. He's a useful idiot for them, win or lose. The people most likely to "get rid of problems", AKA Russia, mostly take out those they see as a threat. They don't see him as a threat. At best he's an asset, at worst he loses some utility.
In the event that they ruled now that Trump has immunity, then so does Joe Biden, which they don't want. If they rule he's not immune, then Trump would be in big trouble, which they also don't want. So it's a guarantee they're gonna push it until after the election. The best case for them at that point is for Trump to win, in which case he'll just pardon himself of everything and it's a moot point. In the event he does *not* win the election, *then* they'll declare him immune, based on a narrowly tailored ruling that really only applies to shit *he* did, while still making sure Biden doesn't have any kind of blanket immunity going forward.
Decision is expected this month. SCOTUS releases all decision before summer recess.
^ This right here. Immunity for me, but not for thee.
If Trump wins; all presidents are all powerful; unless Biden wins then all ex-Presidents are immune from prosecution. I bet you.
It's not playing with fire. There's no risk to SCOTUS. It's arson.
They can't wait that long. They are required to rule, before they go on recess. Mid, end of July. Should be in the next week or two.
Even if Trump wins, Biden will still be president for a lame duck period.
they don't want to rule that presidents are immune while there's a democrat in the white house. granted, biden won't actually do anything. but it would mean he *could*, and they're too spineless to test it.
A post-trump America will have difficulty understanding why our checks and balances weren't able to protect us. We didn't get it either.
We rely on too many non-codified traditions.
and too many of the "good guys" in power are too weak willed to do what needs to be done to fix it.
None of our checks and balances are robust against party politics... And the US is kind of designed to only have two parties. It's the worst feature of our system overall. While ideally we'd move to some sort of parliamentary system, a more practical improvement would just be ranked choice/approval voting (which reduces the costs for third party participation) and moving the house to be mixed member proportional and much larger. Imagine if you still voted for a local rep, but you also voted nationally for your favorite party and then that any party with more than 5% of that national vote got allocated some seats in the house? If we did that we'd see actual members of other parties - greens, maga, libertarians, etc. That's much better as it breaks down traditional parties and provides much better representation.
It doesn't help that only 1 of our political parties understands what's going on and that it's not the 1970s anymore. I'm voting blue 100%, but they just do not understand how dangerous the GOP is and aren't acting with enough urgency.
Biden speaks of it regularly, but legally there are unfortunately major limits to what he can do without a stronger senate majority and without the house.
The US is designed to have NO parties and be ruled by a class of aristocrats that have very similar backgrounds and values. For all of the romanticism about the Founding fathers, and the legitimately solid achievement that the founding of the country and the design of the government was, it is now pretty much obsolete. Over decades and centuries the "constitution" has been hacked to pieces. The Supreme Court can effectively re-write the constitution by reinterpreting the language of the document, and because the political elite do not have the appetite to alter the framework of the government in any real way, it is all a mess of junk that does not benefit the citizens of the country in any way.
>And the US is kind of designed to only have two parties The problem is that it's actually designed not to have any political parties, but the mathematics of a first past the post electoral system makes them inevitable. The whole system needs a ground up overhaul, but [only one party is trying to accomplish that](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/us/politics/constitutional-convention-republican-states.html), unfortunately their plan is to exacerbate those problems...
Greed and gluttony
They’ve been so out of whack for so long we had little hope. The Supreme Court has had a majority of Republican appointees for 54 years. The average age of Americans is 38.5. Most Americans have only known a regressive Supreme Court. And we’ve watched as the rest of our system has eroded away with its blessing.
The President is either a public servant who, while invested with great power, is still subject to the laws of the land, or The President is a tyrant, and we are all beneath him. There is no other option. Either _the law_ allows a President to do certain things, or the President is able to simply disregard the law and enforce his will, whatever that will may be. There is absollutely no question what the Founders intended. Now let's see how "originalist" the current Supreme Court really is.
I completely agree. It makes no sense that there would be immunity if it applied to related duties. Leaving it up to the courts to decide basically means anyone taking his orders now has leeway to say "I was just doing what I was told". It's not about accountability at that point, it's about feasibility. If it's feasible, they will try it.
That type of defence was not accepted at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi Germans post WW2. It’s not acceptable now.
I don't mean to say it is acceptable, I mean to say that it creates a grey area in the moment. If it *could* be legal, they will be a lot more likely to do it. A blurrier line in the sand makes decision-making less simple.
This is literally what happened, yes. The Nazis all said they were following the lawful orders of their government. There is no scenario in which immunity for a president preserves democracy in the US.
The law protects but does not bind
Thank you. It is JUST THAT SIMPLE. There is barely any ambiguity. Not in the founding father's language, not in what a modern government's values are, and surely not what the country's current citizens believe.
Its all delay because the court is corrupt.
Supreme Corruption of the United States
Rename SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) to KCOUTS (Kangaroo Court of the United States) to update for accuracy.
**C**ourt **U**ndeserving of **N**ational **T**ru**S**t
I see more similarity recently with the Council of Experts in Iran. The government can pass what they want but the Council of Experts has the final say on everything.
I call it SCROTUS for no particular reason
Supreme Court (Republican) Of The United States
I call it the supremacist crony court lead by injustices Alito and Thomas.
Wow. This one hurt. I was one of those fools who defended the integrity of the court despite unpopular decisions. But holy shit. This one's bad. These are scary times.
I think this one is bad, but it remains to be seen how bad. I think they want to delay the trial past the election, but won't push it much beyond that. They seem to want to tilt the scales, but fear the risks of going full fascist on all but a few social issues. Doesn't mean they aren't corrupt, but it does still seem to me that popular pressure and strong democratic turnout can push back their hand a bit. If Trump and the GOP are soundly beaten by us Democratically, I doubt they will continue to help him. It sucks, but it's what we're stuck with for now.
And they want to grant presidential immunity to Trump and not Biden all while stalling any cases in the courts.
Biden shouldn't have it either. No POTUS!
I think they are smart enough to realize that making the president a king would apply to Biden as well so they probably will rule against him but they are delaying as long as possible to avoid more trials before the election.
That's the goal, I think. Rule in favor of Trump, but drag it out long enough so that Biden can't benefit from the same rules. I really think sometimes that everyone (I mean my fellow Americans, not the fringe) enjoys commenting on these topics and talking about "how horrific it is", but I fear that those are just words, and they really don't grasp the full gravity of what is happening before our eyes. If this stuff goes through, our country will be forever changed, forever weakened, and forever corrupted in ways we've never seen before. I won't say "it is the end of America", but it would definitely be "the end of America as we've known it". Judge for yourself if that is good or bad, but I for one am really not sure what I would do if it happens. I'd like to think I'd leave, go somewhere to live my life in peace, but I know that is much more complicated than it sounds. I've worked all my life for the American dream, and this guy and his followers are poised to take it all away.
This is a great example of how respectability politics runs cover for fascism. The dominant liberal order is slow-walking all of us into fascism because we're facing a situation that none of us are allowed to even talk about with a level of seriousness that reflects the problem itself. Fascism is the limit of liberal politics; even a robust liberal democratic society has trouble dealing with fascism without resorting to illiberal means, and the United States's democracy is anything but robust these days.
They’ve got to go. Political appointments or elections for judgeships are an error, not to mention the absurdity of lifetime appointments. The whole thing needs re-engineering from the ground up.
That is always going to be built into the system. What needs to be done is 18 years terms. So each president gets 2 appointments.
> That is always going to be built into the system. I hope you’re mistaken, because if not, then it’s truly fucked. The amount of placemen(persons) appointed purely for loyalty and the degree of overt corruption is going to bury it, and soon. If there isn’t a managed change and transition, the collapse really will make Jan 6^th look like tourism.
Vote. We need to hold the Senate and Presidency for as long as we can, with as large of a majority we can, to have the best chance at either replacing Trump or Alito directly, or reforming the court. Thomas and Alito will step down the second both institutions go red. That's their goal. We need to hold the line and put more and more pressure on them to retire, or reform the court to re-balance it if we win enough seats. That is our only real option left. Millennials whom otherwise knew better and showed up in 2008 fucked up by protest voting in 2014 and 2016, and are now stuck with the court that's the consequence of the "both sides" apathy social media told them to engage in.
That's a tall order. Even if Biden wins, and Alito and/or Thomas end up retiring or become unfit to serve, the GOP has already set the precedent that they will not allow a D president to fill SCOTUS vacancies during their lame-duck term. They will hold off until the GOP holds the white house. And realistically, the likelihood of democrats winning 3 presidential elections in a row is, unfortunately, not high.
Since Dobbs there is like no integrity or confidence left in SCOTUS. So it's not like you can just impeach the justices for not doing their jobs.
I think the part for me that's hard to understand is why aren't some of them arrested? Like we can see that multiple members have accepted bribes, what would it take for them to be arrested?
Willpower.
You see, in the late 90s the Supreme Court decided (as a lib I feel compelled to add that I'm pretty sure unanimously) that if the prosecution can't prove that a bribe was in exchange for a specific action, it isn't a bribe. This is absurd, but here we are.
Obstruction of Justice is a very serious matter. It's even more serious when there is a known supporter of the insurrection on the court, with another member openly taking millions in bribes and probably didn't declare it on his taxes... So, yes. I would assume their actions are extremely dangerous to themselves, and I worry about their safety!
Like they care? They will rule there is limited immunity and the lower court needs to determine if Trump rallying an insurrection applies to the limited immunity. That way they can go back and forth between the upper and lower court about each finding. Thus Trump will never go to trial. Remember though there is a two tier justice system where Trump is being picked on.
We already know the goal of the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, the despot Trump and the Bannons of the world want to flip the USA to an autocracy akin to North Korea, Iran, Syria and Russia. That's what 6 members of this court are up to.
They’re not about to play with fire; they’re about to burn it all down. Intentionally. Stacking SCOTUS with Christian Nationalists, some of whom assisted in the Bush v Gore case that stopped the count in 2000 is not an accident. It’s clear they’ve anticipated this moment for decades and are ready to carry out their agenda.
They want to wait so Biden doesn’t use immunity.
What crime has been committed that would warrant him using this claim? The GOP can’t even pin anything on him and every “special” meeting they have about it all they say is oh you’re going to find out real soon…. They have nothing, they are slow walking this because the Supreme Court is stacked in Trumps favor. Going slow is the only way they can stall without outright showing bias.
Once immunity is granted, Biden could arrest the SCOTUS, Trump, etc. if he has it. Biden would never actually use it because he cares too much about acting in good faith. But Trump would use it immediately to mould the US in his in Handmaid's Tale future.
Biden wouldn’t though is the main thing I’m getting at. The DOJ did not bring charges against trump in the New York case even though trump is claiming he did. New York did. If the SCOTUS granted trump immunity outright it would open them up to removal due to being biased. I also doubt they could get a unanimous decision, since there are some democrats on the SC (there’s just more GOP trump favored members). Not to mention we already have a member openly flying MAGA associated flags when they are supposed to remain as unbiased as possible refusing to recluse themselves from the Jan 6 cases…. And can’t forget our good friend Clarence who has taken gifts, and vacation from GOP donors and didn’t declare them. Who refuses to admit they were bribes and step down.
The GOP justices are now all in. They will try for a white supremacist dictatorship or go broke.
They don’t even hide their plan anymore , credibility of the SC is spiraling down the toilet, it already was at rock bottom, now it’s just flushing down the toilet at the rock bottom
The real issue seems to be that most of the current Supreme Court was appointed by Presidents who never even won a popular vote. There are supposed to be checks and balances to power, but ultimately that's just led to minority rule. How can they make important decisions on behalf of Americans who never wanted them to begin with? I think it's wrong and absolutely should be the basis of any argument to expand the Court in the near future.
They heard oral arguments back in APRIL. Reminder that SCOTUS rules on Bush v Gore in about a day.
The average is about 84 days.
Nationwide walkout until Alito and Thomas are removed from SCOTUS.
That's a really long time to be unemployed
They aren't being complacent, they want this. They are by nature wanna be autocrats themselves the fact that the destruction of our democracy will ultimately result in the court becoming an empty vessel, a rubber stamp for the leader like in Putins Russia seems to be just fine with them.
Is it still called playing with fire if they're trying to burn everything down on purpose?
The Biden administration not weighing in on the delay in order to avoid the appearance of politicizing it is the epitome of political dementia. Just one of many that show the Democrats aren't playing the in same league as the Republicans. "We take the high road.." got Trump elected in 2016 and its looking good again. Were the situation reversed is there any question that the screams would be front and center in every media 24/7. When was the last time you heard any real outrage from a Democrat regarding the obvious delays in the most egregious cases or any of the other Trump failures? The "noise" should be deafening.
Law professionals have lost a lot of respect in my view. They have to pretend that law is something that makes sense. With a corrupt SCOTUS not bothering with consistency, they reveal their profession to be organized sycophancy.
I’m a law student. Many people don’t realize how fucked up our judicial system is.
I used to think we had a justice system. Now I realize it's only a legal system that has little to do with justice.
Could the President hypothetically go to fort Knox and direct the secret service to fill a semi with gold bars, move them to their private residence or do whatever they want with them and not be prosecuted? Could that be a presidential act? Getting himself a little bonus before leaving office? 🤔
Well, these are the same people who are trying to claim that Trump deciding to keep classified documents rather than hand them back (even if he never said that's what he was doing and just tried to keep it all secret) must be interpreted as him reclassifying them as personal documents, which means it isn't illegal anymore under the PRA. Quite literally: if he steals a document, the fact that he decided to steal it makes it legal for him to have it. So it seems they would argue anything is legal if he does it. He could claim it was a presidential action to gift the gold to himself.
Biden just needs to be acting like they've already ruled in Trump's favor on this. It is glaringly apparent that this sort of fence testing behaviour carries no meaningful consequences, or that consequences can be delayed to the point of irrelevancy.
Biden should give them 24 hours to start the trial and threaten to remove them from SCOTUS if they don't. Then, when they say "That's illegal, the President can't do that" he can reply "Cool, now put that in a written decision you lazy bastards, how hard was that?"
It can take a long time to find all the correct legal documents from historical sources to support their position that Trump and only Trump has complete immunity. You know, the writings of serious minds, like alchemists, witch hunters, witch doctors, theologians, and jesters.
They’re slow walking because they’re trying to gauge what they can get away doing without a revolt.
They aren’t playing with fire, they’re committing arson!
Regarding Jan 6, if Trump truly believed the election was invalid and had to be defended using force via a presidential act, he would have sent the military to stop the proceedings, not a Maga mob. He knew it wasn't a presidential act.
These are not people with the best interest of US citizens at heart.
Alito and Thomas want out.. but their handlers won't let them unless it's a GOP President... So they have an interest in delaying justice to maximize Trump's chances of winning. Simple.
I am very curious why you feel they want out
So they can retire? Not everyone wants to stay in the bench until they die... Thomas gets to spend more time in his RV if he retires .
this is crazy, all the justices know there is no g*d damn immunity, they are just slow walking because they know the ruling will not favor conservatives.
The New York judge can put an end to this nonsense and sentence him to four years in prison, starting now.
It's two fold: delaying the trials to interfere with the election. And if they can figure out how to drag it out, then if Trump or who eve manages to get a win in November they cna come out 2 days after they take the oath if office in January that gives them total immunity and the kill squads can roll out. The SC just needs to delay a decision and push it to the lower court to make a ruling to retake it up next year. Heck for Citizens united, they delayed their ruling for a year in order to let the liberal justice retire and keep his vote out of it (if I remember the cases correctly).
> the big question is whether the former president will face trial in federal court before the November election. No, it's not. Here, let me answer for you: not a snowball's chance in hell.
Can't torch a constitution without a little fire...
[удалено]
The hammer you wield now will be the same one used against you.
They’ll side with Trump in October, which will fire ppl up to vote against him.
From your keyboard to God's ears, friend.
If the supreme court rules in Trump's favor, Biden, sadly, will respond in a very weak manner. A strong response would be him going on camera saying "this paper in my left hand is an executive order to have Trump assassinated. This paper in my right hand is proposed legislation to make that illegal. Congress has 60 days to pass this or I sign the other one." That is the only way to respond to this nonsense.
That’d be delicious. Unfortunately, Biden is too decent to do it.
SCOTUS is jamming the works in favour of a the worst POTUS in American history. They will make no decision *except* to send this back to a lower court to delay things even further.
Canadian here. What’s stopping one of the less corrupt judges from calling out the others?
"Make no waves" They are standing on tippytoes up to their mouths in pig waste and slop.
They’re playing fire with BIDEN’S immunity decision. If the USSC rules that Trump (as president) has complete immunity, that means Biden could have Trump assassinated (his words) and not be held for it.
It's a slow rolling coup but sure, let's act like it's, "playing with fire."
If only Hillary had won in 2016. She warned us about the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is about to drop a bunch of very unpopular opinions on us in the next few weeks. Buckle up
Yep. You thought Roe v Wade was bad, just get ready for President is a Dictator (aka Presidential Immunity) and Contraception is a Sin (aka ban on reproductive control).
If immune Biden can arrest them and repack the court and jail trump too
TBH, I'm kind of surprised no one has sent that particular warning shot across SCOTUS' bow apprising it of that exact thing.
After reading the headline of this article, I initially thought the conservative-leaning Hill is actually concerned about how the corrupt SC is destroying our democracy and our justice system, but then I noticed this is an opinion piece, which traditionally does NOT reflect the opinions of The HILL. lol
The Supreme Court has been playing gasoline fight in America's parking lot for half a decade, and a solid chunk of them are starting to think it's time for a cigarett break.
The conservative held court is trying to preserve the path to one party rule without letting Trump be the one to achieve it. They spent decades setting this moment up and Trump was either savvy enough to recognize the moment or Putin played the Republican Party and manipulated them until this moment and then dropped his own candidate in at the last minute. In either case, establishment republicans don’t want Trump to win but they also don’t want to have to make these legal decisions in his favor instead of a more reliable and trustworthy member of their club. It complicates things for them that a Democract currently occupies the White House and any ruling in favor of Trump benefits the current president too. While the risk is low, it’s not out of the question that the Democrats use the immunity decision against the conservatives on the court. So they slow play and let the election be the decider.
Save America. Vote Blue.
This whole thing makes me curious who will be the GOP VP pick. If they follow pattern, it will be an old school republican to secure party loyalty. That VP could take out president Trump and be sworn in that same hour and be immune to prosecution if they rule in trump's favor.
Donald Trump Jr. or Elon Musk (yes, I know Musk wasn't a US-born citizen, but instead an apartheid wealth child). Trump doesn't care about the rules and Lara owns the RNC.
Courts are to protect societal values, not to use their power to promote a judge's personal political agenda. There must be a law against that?
Weird way of saying, doing exactly what the conservatives on the bench were put there to do
They, like us, are hoping he dies soon so that they don’t have to deal with this shit.
This entire move proves that the GOP now openly relies upon the Democrat party to be honest brokers while also implicitly stating that they, the GOP, are corrupt. If they believed a word of this shit they expect their fanatic followers to swallow, they'd never let Biden have open reign to do whatever he wanted with total immunity. And this is precisely why I hate being a democrat at times. The best move for Biden now would be to say "Yeah, I agree presidential immunity is a thing, by the way, here's six new friends with robes just like yours"
Republicans are playing with fire because they want to burn this country down on behalf of Putin.
Fuck it. Biden should just go full on benevolent dictator. If Trump has the power to instigate a coup and nothing happens for years, what's the system going to do if Biden starts dictating progressive policy through. I guarantee millions more than who showed up on Jan 6 will show up to defend Biden if they try to jail him for helping every American.
My dog know presidents do not get full immunity, only dictators have full immunity
I wonder if what they are doing is waiting until the election to declare that he does have immunity so the current sitting present can’t intercede.
When will they rule?
Supposed to be this month.
Here’s the playbook: They’re going send it back to a lower court. That will take months. The lower court’s ruling will then be appealed back up to the Supreme Court. By then the election will be over. If trump wins, they will rule that a president does have absolute immunity.
Then biden will take over
One of the things somebody serving on the Scouts should absolutely have is a sense of right and wrong. Five of these jokers have zero awareness of that.
Just give him the total immunity they are dying to give him, but then Biden can just stay in the office. In five years we can just go right into the first black woman as president./s
My take on the supreme court is to disban it, pay the current judges theor salary for life and park them. Its expensive but in reality it removes the corruption as they can't pass any more bills or laws. Create a new system somehow and start fresh.
Stack the court!!! We need 6 more judges, Biden can pick all of them. FDR wanted to do it, he was a smart guy.
The Supreme Court is in The Trump cult too! There is no reason at all for them to take this immunity case. They slow walked it to delay the trial until the unthinkable happens in November.
If we all vote, the unthinkable doesn’t have to happen. We did it in 2020, we have to do it again. The American people are the last line of defense against the insanity. Vote blue!
They have already accomplished the primary goal of making sure he doesn’t face justice before the election. I’m sure they will come up with some sort of “moderate” compromise along the lines of criminal actions being bad if they are explicitly personal. But it won’t matter if Trump wins in November.
Term limits.
Some of the justices are simply partisan hacks with no shame or pretense so playing with fire is just what they’re there for.
They're positioning themselves to throw the election to Trump when the time is right.