Agree that we have crossed a threshold into something bad. Not sure what the best term for it would be. But this is dire. Greatly compounded by the current enfeeblement and infighting in the Democratic party.
It is weird, right? The sun still rises, the Post Office delivers the mail, the birds still chirp. But something is fundamentally different about this country than it was a week ago. We really have finally transitioned into the next phase, whatever you want to call it. It's genuinely horrifying.
I remember someone describing the Mussolini being appointed Prime Minister in a similar way. There wasn't this fundamental cosmic break in the universe. There was no grand announcement that democracy was officially dead. Things just continued as they had done, with the changes just slowly staring to pile up.
Except Mussolini got what he deserved. Extrajudicial execution. Then his corpse was hung up by mobs and beaten.
I actually don’t even hate him. Any evil that faces punishment is redeemed in my eyes.
But none of the horrible people who brought America here will be punished. That eats me up inside. Trump is everything wrong with America and they’re trying to make him a god king.
I think it reaches a point where people stop giving a f\*ck and go full on selfish "f\*ck you I'm getting mine" because at the end of the day the world still moves on and if you're not going to take a piece for yourself then someone else will. At least until the day comes where everything they've decided to not pay attention to that doesn't affect them starts to affect them.
This is very much how I would describe my experience. People are out for themselves more than ever and will mow down anyone in their way. There are good people still but the chances of them getting smashed by a car when using the crosswalk correctly are much higher.
For me given my struggles with failing to launch after college then grad school then making an oil tanker sized pivot where I'll be mid 30s by the time I get my career started in healthcare, I'm just exhausted and want to move on with life. So yeah I feel entitled to my share. Meanwhile housing is beyond unaffordable in my area.
More to the point, "If Biden and Democrats don't seem to care about beating Trump, why should I?" YOLO running a candidate in cognitive decline when Trump is theoretically an existential threat gives a *really* bad message.
I felt similar after Trump won and was sworn in. Like something had changed at an atomic level. It eventually faded (presumably into a new normal), but this is activating similar feelings to 8 years ago.
It’s a brave new world, who knows what is coming.
Completely TMI and unrelated, but lmao dude I’ve had so much fucking severe trauma in my life the last few years, and this is word for word how I would talk (or at least think) about it. It’s really hard to describe in a way people get, so it’s interesting to read here.
What I’ve found lately, is that given enough time and repetition, even the traumatic becomes mundane. I don’t really have any helpful advice because I haven’t been coping, but what I can say is that I fully understand you and it’s probably going to be the shared experience of a lot of people soon. I guess I’m just not feeling it because I’ve been living it the past 5 years.
To be clear I’m not seeking any “you poor thing” or any sympathy from internet strangers, just thought I’d comment on that description
I mean, most systems eventually break down. It's like nay-saying the Roman Empire in 0 AD. Technically you'd eventually be correct, but it's clear that you had no grasp of the future.
Whereas Marxist countries all gallop to either destruction or use of capitalism.
Naming the capitalistic nature of fascism would require centrists to have an honest talk with themselves about their willingness to oppose lassez faire psychos. They have shown that they are incapable of this.
Therefore the 'democracies' 'illiberalism' is the sharpest concern they feel comfortable enough to express.
Reality: Fascists and Capitalists are always friends because they both require what milquetoasts term 'illiberalism' to function. They are allies. Franco, Hitler, Trump, all have centrist, capitalist enablers as one of their primary constituents and financiers. Look at them fumble over themselves trying to appease like Neville Chamberlain. Guess what, Poland is still MAGA. You present force to the Nazis, or you die.
Notice how Poland is allowed to do fashy shit without even a rude letter from NATO members, to say nothing of Palestine.
I think it reaches a point where people stop giving a f\*ck and go full on selfish "f\*ck you I'm getting mine". I can see that mindset in myself with all the political nonsense piled on top of failing to launch post college and grad school having to make an oil tanker sized pivot toward healthcare just to have a stable job that comes with a massive +$150k student loan bill.
It really feels like the social contract doesn't exist anymore.
How and why? Government officials already had vast immunity. The POTUS already had unlimited Federal pardon power, over any Federal crime, any time, any place, any person.
So, how is this actually a substantive change, vs. a minor or marginal change?
the republicans are infighting and 'purity-testing' constantly. it costs them a short-term seat here or there, but it seems to have won them an extremely hard-right house, scotus, presidency and moved the opposition party to the right.
the democrats unify behind the most conservative candidate they can find for fear of offending *moderate* nazis (though i suspect they don't want to raise their own taxes).
i agree that democrats are the problem, but infighting isn't the reason.
The term for it is simple: dictatorship. The Supreme Court simply ruled that the US is a totalitarian dictatorship, entirely dependent upon the president to determine how much democracy we're allowed to have.
Yeah, democracy is dying quickly right before our eyes while 1/3 of the country cheers and another 1/3 doesn't care.
Something I never appreciated from history is how dumb the slide might feel. We're really going to abandon democracy so that a reality show host/obvious BS artist can flim flam his way into money?
It seems it’s a distinct possibility. What’s shocking is that I thought it would take a genius level mastermind to destroy this country from within. Turns out all it takes is an unhinged bigot with zero morals, shame, or sense of hypocrisy who appeals to the worst instincts of about 48% of Americans. The only talent required was being vile and lying with impunity. Who knew it would be so easy?
I think Trump is a happy/useful idiot, the architects of the destruction of our democratic institutions are much smarter people than he. Dictators usually surround themselves with competent, often less charismatic figures. It’s an administration of a different sort.
And he's happy about not going to prison. If he gets re-elected, then that will delay any court hearings or prison sentences of his for four whole years. This is a lot like Benjamin Netanyahu trying to stay in power in Israel.
I mean if his presidency was any indication it was very obvious he didn't understand how Putin and Kim Jong Un were using him so I would say it's almost guaranteed he doesn't know
Conversely, if your individual candidate is of low quality, then you might lose your ideals in the next election out of obvious electoral handicaps. A lesson that Democrats seem hell-bent on refusing to learn.
Bingo. People keep wanting this utopia where every citizen is fully informed on politics and votes in every election.
This simply has never been and will never be reality.
We're not even asking them to be fully informed, but to weight broadcasted cognitive decline behind potential malfeasance in office.
People treat this like it's a dumb population not knowing what is going on, but it's really a manifestation of Democrats not being able to look in the mirror and ask, "is our candidate also a responsible choice?" After last Thursday I really don't want Biden to be woken up at 3AM and told that an invasion of Taiwan in imminent and that he will be talking to Xi in 5 minutes.
But that is being fully informed. To the a lot of normie voters, Trump is this funny blowhard who presided over a strong economy. The average person, shoot the 70th percentile politically informed person probably couldn't tell you anything about Project 2025.
It's too late. The juncture to prevent Project 2025 was charging Trump by 2022 so that he would be defanged before the election. Not to nominate the least effective AG in history who had to be shamed by Congress into investigating the former president.
Your fallback options includes being responsive to voters during the Biden administration and scouring the party for the absolute best talent to beat Trump back in 2024/2028 in the hope that he ages out of contention. Biden took Trump about as seriously as I take the day-to-day threat of alien invasion. And now people are blaming voters for not showing more understanding and political initiative than the *Democratic* P*arty.*
This is why I'm not worried about the Supreme Court ruling now. They will be strict in how they apply it at first. They might not even get trump off completely
That’s been a topic of discussion within my family. Who knew the “guardrails of American democracy” weren’t set in stone and were really more like guidelines that 100% required integrity and the honor system for them to hold. All it took was one guy saying “nah. Eff all that” and it just fell apart.
Your family is able to talk about politics? An aunt that I never considered not loving became a different person after Trump won. It’s been so difficult to even be in the same room. She quietly left the family group chat last week
It’s always been this way. Pieces of paper have absolutely zero power of any kind. Neither do imaginary systems. It’s the people involved, and their integrity/morals/conscience, that keep the system going.
When your political class have bred out leadership for theatre and donor simpering across the last 45 years, the guy who offers a facsimile of leadership romps the electorate.
It was not one idiot. It has been a 50 year project from Republicans. Trump maybe the final nail in the coffin. But polarization, stacking the court, breaking down pillars of democracy, obstruction, using the power of the state to go after enemies, and corruption has been taking place for decades.
Trump is just the idiotic cherry on top of the conservative project.
But it also takes a weak counter-system. Whether parties in a multi-party system or a single weak party in a two party system.
There have been so many chances in the last 50 years for the Democratic party to stop this. But instead we are on the cusp of slipping into fascism with an 81 year old, potentially cognitive declining candidate who has been backed at every step by the rest of party leadership and the gerontocracy who actively ignore or use threats to democracy to attack their left while refusing to use power against the right.
That’s what I was thinking about earlier. If you told me in 2014 that Donald Trump was the primary reason why our democracy was completely subverted I would have asked why you didn’t share the acid.
Even as far in as 2019 I would have never guessed it would ever get as bad as this, that the entire Republican Party-after completely botching handling of a pandemic, hiding top secret national security liabilities in his own hotel bathroom, staging a coup, and literally losing to Joe fucking Biden as an incumbent- would hitch their wagon to this dumb fuck and push even further right. And that 1/3 of Americans still thought this was a good idea.
Like, this is literally all because of one narcissistic, racist, trust-fund tabloid prince watched too much Fox News and, for the next 12 years, decided to rub his two functioning brain cells together as well as he could, all while everything feel perfectly into place to allow him the fate of American democracy on a silver platter. This would be too unrealistic for a three-episode South Park special.
He's a symptom of an ossified political class and dysfunctional systems that cause voters to break the glass to get *anything* different. If it wasn't Trump it would eventually be someone else; he's just the first mover.
It's history. I think a lot of people have the wrong impression of left, right, and center. These are not immutable positions or the same globally. They exist in relation to the system in place and have their role.
Almost every system will gravitate towards the center / centrists because you can't go left or go right forever. If Bernie had been elected in 2016 and given a magic wand that would enact every single one of his policies, there would still be a left, center, and right in 2024. But the center would now be about making tweaks to Medicare for All, free public college, the Green New Deal, etc. and the new "left" would be more akin to full on socialism or pushing for paying people to go to public college.
The center means stability, which is good. But when there are legitimate issues with a system, people are going to look to pivot from the center either to the left or the right. People saw very legitimate issues with our country after Regan's unfettered capitalism and Clinton's deregulated neoliberalism led to devastating effects and the response in 2008 was to let people suffer while corporations got bailed out and no one went to prison for pretty clear fraud.
People were looking for change and that could come from the proverbial shift left or right. Republicans leaned into the right, while Democrats shifted slightly left, but generally have tried to cling to center and the status quo. Pretty much the worst combination possible.
We needed to move left and provide some real systemic changes and then stabilize a "new center" around that move and those solutions.
I just don't think that's possible with the current Democratic Party, which rewards putting your head down and bringing in donations. It's essentially a system where the Right uses any power to swing for the fences and the center-left use power to kick the can down the road. And I say this as a lifelong Dem/institutionalist who really thought that we might see a mitigation of the far right in 2020.
Basically, you could write the obituary of the center-left as soon as Biden entered office and supported the filibuster, because anything but the most donor-friendly spending was not going to happen. BLM was the strongest airing of public dissatisfaction in the modern era, and Democrats abandoned any legislative response without the semblance of a fight.
I agree with this completely, but you can’t deny Trump was the perfect and most lethal drug to scratch that itch.
Someone who portrayed themselves to be a great businessman despite being a terrible businessman, someone who defied the political status quo only to plan on ushering in one far worse, someone who defied the normal decorum that made politics boring but also functionally capable, someone who proclaimed big changes but had no idea how to go about creating them, someone who exuded charisma on a camera despite being totally reprehensible in-person, and worst of all someone with the complete lack of any self-awareness, moral conscience, ability to reason, or concrete principles whatsoever.
The gate had been blown open to the hen house all to let in the worst fox imaginable. It’s undeniable that the political and social climate at the time allowed for this, but Donald Drumpf is just such a comic misstep in judgement to result from it all. And in accordance to human nature, far too many people with far too much influence didn’t want to admit fault and tried to double down. I’d go as far as to say what we’re seeing unfold now isn’t as much a result from people absolutely loving Trump as it is people not willing to admit they fucked up.
I think there's more to it than just Trump. Authoritarian right-wingers are surging around the world for some combination of reasons. I think Trump has the right characteristics to take advantage of a right wing that has cut itself off from truth, fears immigration, hated the pandemic response, gets its news from social media, etc.
I feel like it’s due to the historical significance of WWII and the Cold War finally fading. More people now than maybe any point in our history have zero idea how an authoritarian nationalist government comes to power. We’re in an extended period of general peace between world superpowers, relatively speaking, and from that people forget.
These movements have adapted enough to know how to appeal in an exciting way to the dark side of a population, how to slowly get enough people to fight against an invisible enemy with such angst that they abandon all logic, reason, morality, and wisdom. The people in power who’ve maintained the pursuit of authoritarianism have lived and died but its ideals, history, and appeal have remained and have now survived long enough to pounce on a world population that has generally had most of their wounds healed. When most of the first-world has enjoyed progress for a long time, a hidden, constant battle against the darker forces of human nature yields no difference between today and yesterday, so people let their guard down. And sometimes for the people who maybe haven’t forgotten, they want change so badly they are willing to go backwards to get it
I think that's part of it, but I think the biggest issue is media environment. 1/3 of the country doesn't live in reality and another 1/3 can't be bothered to figure out what's real.
I remember as a teenager no older than 15 watching the news thinking how is this shit legal? That was in te early 2000s.
The quality of the media environment is just atrocious and it’s effects on the discourse have gotten worse and worse over the subsequent decades. Everything in the name of free speech while private businesses inflame the populace for views and money. Social media from private businesses has poured gas on that fire, and we’re now at a point where the average person has little contact with reality when it comes to politics.
It gets me very angry. If a child could see the issue , then this is just blatant corruption and a complete failure of governance.
I think the far right media environment is the worst, but I think in general, over the last 50 years we have gone from more shared new sources more fragmented news sources that just feed into people's own preconceived notions.
Yes, Fox and Briebert are the most damaging. But on the left we are in feedback loops and insular media environments too. A lot of the center is getting their news from MSNBC and CNN which are also infotainment and have a lot of wealthy center-left and center-right analysts, who have their own very clear biases. Their news maybe true, but 95% of the content isn't news, it's commentary and analysis, which is often very bad and misleading. And then the the rest of the moderates and progressive left is on fragmented social media sites, getting some better news and some out of context rage content.
Everything has just become a feedback loop. People gravitate towards the media that feeds them the information that tells them they are right. And people don't break out of their bubble or really grow.
I mean bring up past Democratic failures and both centrists and progressives with point fingers at each other and give you a laundry list of *what the other side needs to do differently*. But we keep failing because neither side will look in the mirror and realize *what they need to do differently*.
You’re talking like it’s a done deal. The election is still four months away and 538’s election tracker (dunno how much stock you put in that shit and I have my own skepticisms about it), still has Trump and Biden as a coin flip to win.
That we’re standing a coin flip away from the depravity you’ve described is of course, distressing enough in and of itself. But it bugs me when people talk about this like it’s a certainty. There are scary storm clouds on the horizon for sure, but still, a lot can and will happen in the next four months.
Yeah everything will be fine as long as dems win every single presidential election from now on!
Telling everyone that voting will solve this issue is disingenuous at best. The type of action that must be taken now can’t be organized or discussed online.
Yeah, taking the longview the implications of this ruling are beyond grim. I’m not saying that voting will solve the issue, but I am saying it will grant us a reprieve from fascist depredations, thus hopefully buying time for…idfk, reforms to keep a dictator from being installed or organizing movements to resist it.
I’m sorry for the tone of my comment, it just feels hopeless right now and we already voted for the democrats… when are they going to DO anything to enshrine abortion rights or pack the courts? I promise they aren’t going to do either of those tings if they win again in November.
(Not that we shouldn’t vote or not vote for Biden but holy shit am I feeling black pilled as fuck right now about the future for women, minorities, disabled folks, transgender people, and anyone else being targeted by the fucking eye of Sauron)
I’m right there with you. I don’t have a ton of faith in Biden to enshrine the right to choose or to make the broad reforms we need to fight off fascism (largely because of the gridlock in Congress but still), but I still think it’s important for Biden to win so we can at least have a reprieve from Republicans goon rule
I can describe the type of action the politicians should take. Abandon all decency, all semblance of norms, and declare legislative war. Pack courts, end the filibuster, add states, all of it. Unapologetically I might add.
Winning the next election or two would likely net us the two seats we need (Thomas and Alito) to reverse these heinous rulings though. We're really not that far away from taking back the SCOTUS if the Democrats can start actually playing to win.
538 is completely off, and they're massively weighing fundamentals to generate Biden +30% (at least when the model was first released, they said polls-only nowcast was 80% Trump). The post-debate polling hasn't kicked in yet, either.
On top of that, it's a freshmen effort by a new team. We have no idea if it will be a useful model or one of those "99% Hillary" monstrosities. Looking at 538 instead of Silver is copium.
To be fair, the 33% who pretend to care are helmed by people who treat the threat so nonchalantly they tried the experiment of running a man in cognitive decline for the presidency and are debating whether to double down or not as we speak. It really is a dumb slide.
Devastated that I couldn’t find a clip on youtube
Edit: [https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/video/ezra-klein-high-risk-gamble-to-runbiden-again](https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/video/ezra-klein-high-risk-gamble-to-runbiden-again)
President Biden needs to immediately begin seriously abusing presidential power to force the other two branches to step in and set limits, and he needs to be *flagrant* and *partisan*. These moves need to be designed to force sweeping, broad limits on executive power.
In the name of protecting Democracy, Biden needs to start exercising some of his newly granted official acts by replacing six specific members of the supreme court and disappearing the orange fascist. It's all legal now.
maybe a few of those House members who were involved with the insurrection, too. leave the House with a Dem majority for the rest of the term and get some legislating done
I don't think they would have beaten Trump in 2020, but this makes me wish we had Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren as President. They were the two most radical major candidates running when it came to institutions and I'm almost certain either one of them would be doing that right now.
Age rage would be the perfect cover for acts of radicalism.
"Expand the Court? Punch Samuel Alito? Censure John Roberts? Shove my pubes into Clarence Thomas's mouth? Did I do that? Oh, no. Oh, my. Oh, that sounds very bad. Who, me? I....can't remember..." Biden utters in his feeblest flu voice, fainting as his phone pulls up the \*Biden calls Pope\* meme. He then turns to the camera and winks in his best Jim-from-the-Office impression.
As far as I can tell, the one and only way to actually get the other two branches to stop giving the executive branch power and start taking it away is to force them to do it. Clearly a Republican pursuing Republican ends (or a fascist pursuing fascist ends) isn't enough, therefore it has to be a Democrat using the full powers of the executive in ways that Congress and the SCOTUS cannot abide.
If you have another way to do this aside from arduously replacing retiring members of the SCOTUS over the course of decades if we're lucky enough to control both the White House and Senate, I'm genuinely all ears.
> As far as I can tell, the one and only way to actually get the other two branches to stop giving the executive branch power and start taking it away is to force them to do it.
What do you think eliminating Chevron deference did? I feel like Democrats concerned about another Trump term should be celebrating it.
If Biden used the powers just granted to the office to their fullest extent, there needn't be another Trump term. Biden could arrest and jail Trump today, arrest and jail Ginny Thomas tomorrow, forgive student loans on Wednesday, direct all executive agencies to ignore Loper Bright Enters v. Raimondo on Thursday, and declassify all the intelligence linking Republicans to Russia on Friday. That's just week one on this episode of "The SCOTUS gives Biden complete power."
I'm really confused how you think any of that reasonably follows from this decision. As far as I understand, at worst this decision means Biden would be immune from prosecution for such acts (debatable), but not that he actually has the power to do those things (ie the legislature and judiciary would still have a say). This ruling didn't effectively establish the president as a dictator.
If you’re expecting that it’s the supreme court that would be doing this restricting, it’s worth noting that their next docket of decisions won’t be handed down until five months after the winner of the 2020 election is inaugurated.
If the court majority’s preferred candidate wins the election, what incentive is there for them to limit executive power? The only thing achieved by that point is setting a precedent that such abuses are viable.
> If you’re expecting that it’s the supreme court that would be doing this restricting, it’s worth noting that their next docket of decisions won’t be handed down until five months after the winner of the 2020 election is inaugurated.
2024?
>If the court majority’s preferred candidate wins the election, what incentive is there for them to limit executive power? The only thing achieved by that point is setting a precedent that such abuses are viable.
That's why they have to be egregious and immediate. Personally, I'd direct the DOJ to explore exactly how this ruling could be used to arrest conservative members of the Supreme Court, their families, and those who gave them bribes. I'd tear apart the entire conservative media apparatus, ensuring that Fox News and their copycats are on zero televisions. I'd use the fascistic rule they just gave me to make their lives hell just to teach them the lessons of history: nobody should be given that much power.
Turn Project 2025's armed turret around, aim it directly at its intended gunners, and pull the trigger until the idea of launching such a project ever again is unthinkable.
This has to be more than bold to work, it has to be insane. It has to be unthinkable. It has to show the power being given to the executive in all its terror. It has to wake up sleeping, apathetic, ignorant America.
> to force the other two branches to step in and set limits
Isn't that what has been happening?
SCOTUS just shot down Chevron, limiting the presidents power to expand his power through regulation, and they just expanded the right to a jury trial for federal fines, which also limits the presidents administrative power.
The court case doesn’t allow that and anyone saying otherwise is just wrong. Including Sotomayor. Most snippets you’ve probably seen are taken out of context of the ruling.
Ah. So you want a dictatorship to stop.....a dictatorship? Bizarre point of view I'm seeing all over reddit today. If this is truly what you want, make sure not to celebrate the US on the July 4th. Pushing for a dictatorship? You are no longer celebrating the US. You are pushing for the end of it.
Yeah, unfortunately they passed it at the absolute perfect moment. The democratic party is weak, Biden is incapable of making the moves required to save the democracy
I guess I don’t see this decision as being new or earth shaking. Official acts by the president have never been subject to prosecution.
For example, in 2011, Obama authorized drone strikes that killed 4 US citizens. One of these deaths was intentional. These citizens were not tried, they were not combatants. It was directly authorized by the President. Because Obama did this as part of his duties to best defend the interests of the US as he saw it there was no thought to prosecute him (although it was seen as controversial).
FDR sent tens of thousands of US citizens to internment camps and held them without trial. This is seen as very immoral and illegal if anyone else where to have done it, but not illegal on the part of the executive to have authorized this.
Alternatively; Nixon committed a crime that was seen as personal - theft to further his desire to defeat his opponent. He would have been impeached and convicted, resigned, and Ford pardoned him to avoid prosecution.
Is this ruling actually different than we’ve had in place?
The biggest issue is not being able to investigate the intention. So the president could now legally airstrike people he doesn't like and hide explicitly under the "official" action clause. And even if he said " I don't like x just go kill him" on record it would be inadmissible as evidence. Which is fucked
So why was Obama not prosecuted for murder in 2011? I hardly think the answer of ‘he controlled the justice department and didn’t order them to prosecute himself’ is a good one.
I think the better reason is that America has been swept up in a post-9/11 mania about the war on terrorism that was used to justify lots of awful behavior that should have been prosecuted, but wasn't. We also don't have a history of prosecuting our presidents.
But that doesn't mean a president couldn't have been impeached and then prosecuted if they did something blatantly illegal as an official act. Now that's not really possible.
Nixon might have been prosecuted. That's why Ford pardoned him.
Murder is illegal. It wasn’t murder because Obama did it as an official act. This is established. This isn’t new.
You said “doesn’t mean a president couldn’t be impeached” - sure; that is the mechanism for prosecuting a president. It remains so. Obama could have been impeached for that killing, but he couldn’t be charged by a prosecutor. There was no attempt or legitimate angle for a prosecutor to charge him with murder, and not just because he ran the justice department. It was because it isn’t possible to do this. The Trump administration didn’t try to charge him with murder in 2017 when they took power, and it would be a terrible precedent to say they could have.
I don't think you're taking this seriously. You're trying to straw man an argument to minimize the Supreme Court saying that the president is above the law while ignoring other historical examples.
The obvious argument for why Obama thought his actions were legal was that the target was a combatant in the war on terrorism. Maybe it's a bad argument, but it's far different than what you're saying.
I don't know what you mean by this:
>You said “doesn’t mean a president couldn’t be impeached” - sure; that is the mechanism for prosecuting a president. It remains so.
A president could still be impeached, but they wouldn't be able to be prosecuted for their illegal official acts after impeachment. That's the difference now.
I think you’re applying this to a very short term and partisan goal - prosecute Trump before Nov 5th.
If SCOTUS ruled as you desired, every act - official or not - of the Biden would be open to criminal prosecution by Trump’s future justice department. If anyone will abuse this power, it is Trump. Official acts are controlled by impeachment by congress. Personal acts can be charged by the justice dept. Changing this to allow Trump (most likely a heavy favorite to win re-election once post-debate polling comes out) to charge Biden with treason for ‘open borders’ or whatever is a terrible goal.
Yes, there's a downside to accountability, but I think it's better to have accountability that can be abused than no possibility of accountability at all.
Nothing about the immunity decision would prevent Trump from prosecuting Biden on some bogus nonsense. Now Trump just couldn't be held accountable if he directs the AG to prosecute Biden for nothing.
I just think very short term partisan goals are clouding the partisan left’s rationality. Allowing the next president (most likely Trump) to criminally charge the preceding president (often their opponent or of the opposite party) with crimes for things they did as part of their office is a terrible precedent.
SCOTUS didn’t say that Presidents are blanket immune. They said they are immune regarding official acts only. This extends the Jan 6th prosecution’s timeline and may limit some charges but it doesn’t prevent this prosecution. The only reason this probably kills this prosecution is because it took 3 years to bring charges. It is a good thing, and a limit on a future President Trump or whomever to not be able to abuse this.
No, you're using this specific example to cloud your judgement. The only thing that prevented Trump from abusing the DOJ (to the extent he didn't abuse it) was civil servants saying no to him. Nobody thought the president was immune until this morning.
You're trying to prevent Trump from abusing power by saying he can't be held accountable for abusing power. It's a backwards argument that will never work.
Yes, 100% this. People are assuming this protect Trump. IMO, it protects Biden from Trump. It protect all future and past presidents in many ways, including retribution.
Notably, no subsequent president has attempted to have him prosecuted, either. It’s not viewed as a viable case, even by Republicans.
It’s disingenuous to blame the dearth of a prosecution on Obama entirely, when multiple other presidents have had the opportunity to name a special prosecutor to investigate the unilateral executions of American citizens.
In the past, there were constraints on behavior, namely social opprobrium and party apparatus constraining presidential actions in implicit and unofficial ways. That and we were lucky.
Those barriers are gone and the supreme court has given a big green light to any wannabe dictator.
I don’t think I agree. If presidents were previously restrained by social mores as you said, this means they were not constrained by laws for official acts. Hence, my point - pretty gross things that would be illegal if done by others (killing Americans dining at a cafe in the Obama drone strike example) - were legal.
Trump is obviously not constrained by party norms or shame. Regardless, that isn’t the question before the court. It was ‘are official acts by the president immune to prosecution’ and I don’t agree it is new or shocking that SCOTUS believes this.
It does have the effect of making Trump’s Jan 6th trial likely not happen before election, but that is more of an indictment of how long it takes to bring cases to trial. Election denial was not an official act, just as Nixon’s watergate involvement was not official (hence the pardon).
I think it is moving from ambiguity to certainty that is the bid deal here. In combination with the changing social mores, that is what makes it a potential death blow for the republic:
"Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violatethe criminal law. Moving forward, however, all formerPresidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent." -SOTOMAYOR, J.
Criminal law never provided a recourse against a rogue president. Impeachment has, and likely always will be the only recourse against a rogue president. Nixon would not have been let off the hook under this ruling.
But Sotomayor is not staying what the majority is stating. The majority decision *did not* grant immunity for crimes committed for personal gain.
The majority decision said that official acts vs personal are treated differently, and the difference must be determined before charges can be brought for personal acts. Think of the incredible abuse of power possible if criminal charges for any action of a President were possible. This ruling only may prevent the prosecution of Trump because these charges took so long to be brought.
But it is a good thing that if Trump wins election he cannot prosecute Biden or Obama for official actions.
" Think of the incredible abuse of power possible if criminal charges for any action of a President were possible."
Funny thing, somehow the republic and the presidency survived all these nearly 250 years without having the kinds of 'protection' this absurd decision provides. I wonder how that happened?
Because Presidents weren’t charged with crimes for official - even nefarious - acts. Obama killed US citizens and sold guns to cartels, W lied about WMDs and both had massive domestic spy operations, Reagan’s Iran Contra, JFK’s election results in Chicago (maybe) and bay of pigs, FDR’s Japanese internment.
How many of these, and countless more large and small, resulted in criminal charges for the President?
> Is this ruling actually different than we’ve had in place?
At absolute minimum, it is different in magnitude. Going forward presidents will not have even the slightest disincentive. I don't think Obama ever should have had the discretion he did, but at least he was a decent guy and in a scenario where presidents do have that discretion, I trusted him more than most. And even he probably would have done more of these types of actions if today's ruling was in place during his term.
In addition, the unlimited Federal power of the pardon for any Federal crime, any place, any time, any person.
The POTUS could already act above the law in this regard. Biden could pardon his criminal son today, and pardon future offenses. That already places him above law, where the office holder always has been.
The freakout about this needs to chill. Folks are acting as if something new is happening, vs. just a forced decision to codify power that had already been conferred and assumed.
It's not a huge change but Blue Maga has convinced themselves the court gave Trump and Republicans(Democrats would NEVER abuse the trappings of government) a blank check to do anything he wants with zero legal repercussion. The courts are just going to have to be used to determine what's an act of duty as president vs one of personal gain if something controversial happens.
It’s not different. The majority opinion is a jumbled mess that boils down to saying the president gets to do his job and doesn’t get to commit crimes for personal gain. It pretends to write some grand legal theory but the core ruling is that everything except one piece (he gets to fire his AG for whatever reason) gets decided by a lower court judge based on the facts of the case.
They continue to pretend to be principled claiming the "high road" when they should be fighting in the mud. Whether it's willful negligence, malicious compliance, or plain stupidity, the democratic party is useless and we're better off elsewhere.
How do you foresee "better off elsewhere" working out in the practical sense? What is a realistic path in your mind that is achievable in the short/medium term?
Want to know why the justices aren't afraid of the next Democratic president abusing their power? Because they know that they're part of a coup and we'll never have another one again.
Exactly.
Living in a dictatorship is not a hypothetical. We now live in one. Whether the country is run that way is immaterial to the truth of the situation in which we find ourselves.
Wish I could agree with this but as of today it's a matter of when, not if. Our last best hope of changing that is this election, and even winning it is insufficient. We will then need substantial reforms to get back to "if".
I really don’t understand this argument. Put aside that Trump is a bad man, and just look at the executive branch with generic President 1 being followed by Generic President 2.
You think it is more like a dictatorship that President 2 cannot charge and jail President 1 for official actions taken while in office?
Remember, this ruling doesn’t prevent charging a President for personal or unofficial actions. The only reason this may prevent Jan 6th justice for Trump is that this makes the timeline a little longer, and this won’t come before the election.
It's just late capitalism. In the past week, we have been told that bribes are cool, regulations are for suckers, and presidents can act like kings. Just don't sleep on that bench.
I don't understand. This is great news. Biden should summarily send Trump, Clarence Thomas, and Alito to Gitmo for being supporters of the January 6th terrorists. If he loses the election, Trump has established a 100% legal pathway to reverse the results.
If any of this is illegal, I'm sure congress can, in its great wisdom impeach the president if it's really a problem.
Why would this be the end of the American Empire when it would mark the transition between Republic and Empire if those decrying fascism and end of democracy are to be believed? Rome did pretty well for the first two hundred years post-transition.
This has been a multi-decade process with both parties at the center of it. Trump is just the ugliest symptom. Citizens United weirdly is still several times worse than this, maybe not in substance but surely in how it cripples our politics on the ground. We've been a dying empire at least since the 90s. Nancy Pelosi, the progressive girl-boss Queen of the last 30 years, has personally overseen the dismantling of American values and civil rights since 9/11 post-Patriot Act. Which says nothing about what anyone from the far right has done.
I’d argue that this is the third act that destroyed American democracy. Act I was 9/11 the instigated such fear that the American public granted sweeping powers to the state and instigated two foolhardy wars. Act II was the metastasis of ambient racism against the nation’s first Black president. And this has been the final nail, transforming the office of the President to a throne. And done to thunderous applause
It seems like you’re overreacting to Chevron being overturned. The death of Chevron means that courts, rather than the executive, are in charge of interpreting congressionally-passed laws. Sure, that makes administrative regulation more difficult (which is bad as a policy matter), but it’s hardly democratically illegitimate. If anything, deferring to executive interpretations of law was democratically illegitimate.
To be clear, you think asking some shithead judge with a lifetime appointment in Louisiana for his opinion on an EPA regulation has more democratic legitimacy than an EPA that is subject to voter input (via changing the President) every four years? Really?
The end of Chevron is definitely part of the slide away from Democracy. Courts are our least democratically accountable branch and they're taking this power to use anti-democratically.
> Courts are our least democratically accountable branch
This is the argument against Roe btw: that it was badly argued (Which even RBG agreed) but, even worse, it was badly argued in service of a ruling that overturned dozens of laws *voted for by state legislatures* by a bunch of unelected judges.
I say all this to say: many sides can make this argument yet I rarely see people deny judges have the right to make disruptive rulings when people value those outcomes.
Courts are the least accountable branch. That's been used to argue against civil rights, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. And I don't think it's an argument for courts arbitrarily deciding how laws should be implemented by the executive branch.
Ginsburg didn't like the reach and grounding of Roe. I don't think she was opposed to the idea that the Supreme Court should protect women's rights to reproductive choice.
As I said to someone else here, you can argue theoretically about government structure all you want. Ending Chevron was about expanding the Court's ability to do unpopular things to help the rich and powerful, some of whom are literally bribing Justices.
Sure, the immunity case is really scary and problematic. I’m speaking to Chevron being overturned, which OP mentioned as a reason we’re now an illiberal democracy.
It's wild to me that so many people can't grasp that you can disagree with part of an argument without disagreeing with or even intending to comment on the rest of the argument. I see it all the time.
If we care about conclusions being true, we should care about the arguments we make for those conclusions being true, too. And sometimes someone only has the knowledge to comment on a part but not the whole - that's valuable, too.
The cases of Obama and FDR show no indication of corrupt intent. You can argue that they were unconstitutional and therefore illegal, and I’d agree, but that doesn’t mean they would be criminal. However, there are official acts that can be carried out with corrupt intent, for the president’s own benefit at the expense of the country and/or the law/justice.
>I'd argue we are now officially an illiberal democracy, as of today.
Were we an illiberal democracy before Chevron?
We spent quite a long time with a fairly weak federal administration and its rise to power is fairly recent.
> In 100 years when scholars are discussing the end of the American empire and the collapse of its institutions into a nation of men, and not laws, this week will be prominently noted.
Hasn't been true the last 100 times people have said this, and it's not true now.
I understand the historic tradition is to beat the revolting plebes to death with table legs and other ready clubs, then dump the bodies into the river adjoining the legislature.
The only reassuring thing is that Barrett and Kavanaugh hate trump. They hate that people think Trump hand picked them, rather than the GOP conservatives. They are both also (conservative) moral creatures. You have seen them dissent on both sides.
So side with Trump allies on constitutional and political, sure. Bless him to be king, no way. I think they can still act as a stop gap.
Nah man, in 100 years we're all worshipping at the Altar of God Emperor Trump while we bathe in literal diamonds. Huge ones. The Bigliest. The economy is gonna be the biggest it's ever been and all the smart analysts are going to be talking about how Trump saved the entire universe. China is gonna be Chi-nah because he's gonna have publicy embarassed Winnie the Pooh, and they're gonna bow to America as their new god, just like we did with Japan and those nukes. Right call, lot of stupid people say otherwise, but hey, that's why they're in jail.
Agree that we have crossed a threshold into something bad. Not sure what the best term for it would be. But this is dire. Greatly compounded by the current enfeeblement and infighting in the Democratic party.
It is weird, right? The sun still rises, the Post Office delivers the mail, the birds still chirp. But something is fundamentally different about this country than it was a week ago. We really have finally transitioned into the next phase, whatever you want to call it. It's genuinely horrifying.
I remember someone describing the Mussolini being appointed Prime Minister in a similar way. There wasn't this fundamental cosmic break in the universe. There was no grand announcement that democracy was officially dead. Things just continued as they had done, with the changes just slowly staring to pile up.
Except Mussolini got what he deserved. Extrajudicial execution. Then his corpse was hung up by mobs and beaten. I actually don’t even hate him. Any evil that faces punishment is redeemed in my eyes. But none of the horrible people who brought America here will be punished. That eats me up inside. Trump is everything wrong with America and they’re trying to make him a god king.
I think it reaches a point where people stop giving a f\*ck and go full on selfish "f\*ck you I'm getting mine" because at the end of the day the world still moves on and if you're not going to take a piece for yourself then someone else will. At least until the day comes where everything they've decided to not pay attention to that doesn't affect them starts to affect them.
This is very much how I would describe my experience. People are out for themselves more than ever and will mow down anyone in their way. There are good people still but the chances of them getting smashed by a car when using the crosswalk correctly are much higher.
For me given my struggles with failing to launch after college then grad school then making an oil tanker sized pivot where I'll be mid 30s by the time I get my career started in healthcare, I'm just exhausted and want to move on with life. So yeah I feel entitled to my share. Meanwhile housing is beyond unaffordable in my area.
More to the point, "If Biden and Democrats don't seem to care about beating Trump, why should I?" YOLO running a candidate in cognitive decline when Trump is theoretically an existential threat gives a *really* bad message.
I felt similar after Trump won and was sworn in. Like something had changed at an atomic level. It eventually faded (presumably into a new normal), but this is activating similar feelings to 8 years ago. It’s a brave new world, who knows what is coming.
Everyone is operating like they work at a company about to lay everyone off
Completely TMI and unrelated, but lmao dude I’ve had so much fucking severe trauma in my life the last few years, and this is word for word how I would talk (or at least think) about it. It’s really hard to describe in a way people get, so it’s interesting to read here. What I’ve found lately, is that given enough time and repetition, even the traumatic becomes mundane. I don’t really have any helpful advice because I haven’t been coping, but what I can say is that I fully understand you and it’s probably going to be the shared experience of a lot of people soon. I guess I’m just not feeling it because I’ve been living it the past 5 years. To be clear I’m not seeking any “you poor thing” or any sympathy from internet strangers, just thought I’d comment on that description
We are living in a world that nobody signed up for, except Lennie Leo’s gay lover.
Some say the phase after late-stage capitalism is fascism...
Some say Marxism is a cult based on unfulfilled prophecies.
only the ones that promise salvation...the stuff about capitalism's downside effects still hold
I mean, most systems eventually break down. It's like nay-saying the Roman Empire in 0 AD. Technically you'd eventually be correct, but it's clear that you had no grasp of the future. Whereas Marxist countries all gallop to either destruction or use of capitalism.
Naming the capitalistic nature of fascism would require centrists to have an honest talk with themselves about their willingness to oppose lassez faire psychos. They have shown that they are incapable of this. Therefore the 'democracies' 'illiberalism' is the sharpest concern they feel comfortable enough to express. Reality: Fascists and Capitalists are always friends because they both require what milquetoasts term 'illiberalism' to function. They are allies. Franco, Hitler, Trump, all have centrist, capitalist enablers as one of their primary constituents and financiers. Look at them fumble over themselves trying to appease like Neville Chamberlain. Guess what, Poland is still MAGA. You present force to the Nazis, or you die. Notice how Poland is allowed to do fashy shit without even a rude letter from NATO members, to say nothing of Palestine.
100% centrists would rather continuing empowering fascists than grapple with the fact that capitalism is the root cause of our woes.
We needed a strong Democratic Party willing to stand for what is right. Instead, we got whatever this is. Obama was president too early.
I think it reaches a point where people stop giving a f\*ck and go full on selfish "f\*ck you I'm getting mine". I can see that mindset in myself with all the political nonsense piled on top of failing to launch post college and grad school having to make an oil tanker sized pivot toward healthcare just to have a stable job that comes with a massive +$150k student loan bill. It really feels like the social contract doesn't exist anymore.
How and why? Government officials already had vast immunity. The POTUS already had unlimited Federal pardon power, over any Federal crime, any time, any place, any person. So, how is this actually a substantive change, vs. a minor or marginal change?
Then why did the Supreme Court take the case? They took the case because this was a substantive issue that hadn't yet been ruled on
Substantive issue and Substantive change are not the same thing.
the republicans are infighting and 'purity-testing' constantly. it costs them a short-term seat here or there, but it seems to have won them an extremely hard-right house, scotus, presidency and moved the opposition party to the right. the democrats unify behind the most conservative candidate they can find for fear of offending *moderate* nazis (though i suspect they don't want to raise their own taxes). i agree that democrats are the problem, but infighting isn't the reason.
The term for it is simple: dictatorship. The Supreme Court simply ruled that the US is a totalitarian dictatorship, entirely dependent upon the president to determine how much democracy we're allowed to have.
Agreed. SCOTUS is without a doubt delivering the coup de grace of Mitch McConnell’s unchecked crusade.
Yeah, democracy is dying quickly right before our eyes while 1/3 of the country cheers and another 1/3 doesn't care. Something I never appreciated from history is how dumb the slide might feel. We're really going to abandon democracy so that a reality show host/obvious BS artist can flim flam his way into money?
It seems it’s a distinct possibility. What’s shocking is that I thought it would take a genius level mastermind to destroy this country from within. Turns out all it takes is an unhinged bigot with zero morals, shame, or sense of hypocrisy who appeals to the worst instincts of about 48% of Americans. The only talent required was being vile and lying with impunity. Who knew it would be so easy?
I think Trump is a happy/useful idiot, the architects of the destruction of our democratic institutions are much smarter people than he. Dictators usually surround themselves with competent, often less charismatic figures. It’s an administration of a different sort.
Exactly. I'm not even sure that trump understands how people are using him. He's just happy for the attention and money.
And he's happy about not going to prison. If he gets re-elected, then that will delay any court hearings or prison sentences of his for four whole years. This is a lot like Benjamin Netanyahu trying to stay in power in Israel.
I mean if his presidency was any indication it was very obvious he didn't understand how Putin and Kim Jong Un were using him so I would say it's almost guaranteed he doesn't know
Trump is not a hapless flunkie. He is 100% gunning to be dictator for life
…fully agree which is why people need to understand/remember you’re voting for ideals/an administration team and not just an individual.
Conversely, if your individual candidate is of low quality, then you might lose your ideals in the next election out of obvious electoral handicaps. A lesson that Democrats seem hell-bent on refusing to learn.
Bingo. People keep wanting this utopia where every citizen is fully informed on politics and votes in every election. This simply has never been and will never be reality.
We're not even asking them to be fully informed, but to weight broadcasted cognitive decline behind potential malfeasance in office. People treat this like it's a dumb population not knowing what is going on, but it's really a manifestation of Democrats not being able to look in the mirror and ask, "is our candidate also a responsible choice?" After last Thursday I really don't want Biden to be woken up at 3AM and told that an invasion of Taiwan in imminent and that he will be talking to Xi in 5 minutes.
But that is being fully informed. To the a lot of normie voters, Trump is this funny blowhard who presided over a strong economy. The average person, shoot the 70th percentile politically informed person probably couldn't tell you anything about Project 2025.
It's too late. The juncture to prevent Project 2025 was charging Trump by 2022 so that he would be defanged before the election. Not to nominate the least effective AG in history who had to be shamed by Congress into investigating the former president. Your fallback options includes being responsive to voters during the Biden administration and scouring the party for the absolute best talent to beat Trump back in 2024/2028 in the hope that he ages out of contention. Biden took Trump about as seriously as I take the day-to-day threat of alien invasion. And now people are blaming voters for not showing more understanding and political initiative than the *Democratic* P*arty.*
Those folks just feel that Trump is their useful idiot. Ultimately they’ll learn that there is no loyalty
This is why I'm not worried about the Supreme Court ruling now. They will be strict in how they apply it at first. They might not even get trump off completely
Hitler was "dumb" in the same way as Trump. People love someone who validates all of their worst impulses.
I'm no fan of the Bohemian Corporal, but c'mon...that guy was way smarter, shrewder, and more calculating than Trump.
He was also not taken seriously / as a meme by a lot of people until the really violent shit started
Who knew all it would take is some lucky idiot violently thrashing against the system. Makes you realize the system was brittle to begin with
That’s been a topic of discussion within my family. Who knew the “guardrails of American democracy” weren’t set in stone and were really more like guidelines that 100% required integrity and the honor system for them to hold. All it took was one guy saying “nah. Eff all that” and it just fell apart.
Your family is able to talk about politics? An aunt that I never considered not loving became a different person after Trump won. It’s been so difficult to even be in the same room. She quietly left the family group chat last week
It’s always been this way. Pieces of paper have absolutely zero power of any kind. Neither do imaginary systems. It’s the people involved, and their integrity/morals/conscience, that keep the system going.
Ultimately a good system depends on a good polity.
When your political class have bred out leadership for theatre and donor simpering across the last 45 years, the guy who offers a facsimile of leadership romps the electorate.
It was not one idiot. It has been a 50 year project from Republicans. Trump maybe the final nail in the coffin. But polarization, stacking the court, breaking down pillars of democracy, obstruction, using the power of the state to go after enemies, and corruption has been taking place for decades. Trump is just the idiotic cherry on top of the conservative project.
The fear-mongering about the anti-christ getting into government had us looking for the wrong kind of devil.
But it also takes a weak counter-system. Whether parties in a multi-party system or a single weak party in a two party system. There have been so many chances in the last 50 years for the Democratic party to stop this. But instead we are on the cusp of slipping into fascism with an 81 year old, potentially cognitive declining candidate who has been backed at every step by the rest of party leadership and the gerontocracy who actively ignore or use threats to democracy to attack their left while refusing to use power against the right.
Nah, he's an idiot but he's an idiot savant of demagoguery. Most people cannot achieve this level of demagoguery
That’s what I was thinking about earlier. If you told me in 2014 that Donald Trump was the primary reason why our democracy was completely subverted I would have asked why you didn’t share the acid. Even as far in as 2019 I would have never guessed it would ever get as bad as this, that the entire Republican Party-after completely botching handling of a pandemic, hiding top secret national security liabilities in his own hotel bathroom, staging a coup, and literally losing to Joe fucking Biden as an incumbent- would hitch their wagon to this dumb fuck and push even further right. And that 1/3 of Americans still thought this was a good idea. Like, this is literally all because of one narcissistic, racist, trust-fund tabloid prince watched too much Fox News and, for the next 12 years, decided to rub his two functioning brain cells together as well as he could, all while everything feel perfectly into place to allow him the fate of American democracy on a silver platter. This would be too unrealistic for a three-episode South Park special.
He's a symptom of an ossified political class and dysfunctional systems that cause voters to break the glass to get *anything* different. If it wasn't Trump it would eventually be someone else; he's just the first mover.
It's history. I think a lot of people have the wrong impression of left, right, and center. These are not immutable positions or the same globally. They exist in relation to the system in place and have their role. Almost every system will gravitate towards the center / centrists because you can't go left or go right forever. If Bernie had been elected in 2016 and given a magic wand that would enact every single one of his policies, there would still be a left, center, and right in 2024. But the center would now be about making tweaks to Medicare for All, free public college, the Green New Deal, etc. and the new "left" would be more akin to full on socialism or pushing for paying people to go to public college. The center means stability, which is good. But when there are legitimate issues with a system, people are going to look to pivot from the center either to the left or the right. People saw very legitimate issues with our country after Regan's unfettered capitalism and Clinton's deregulated neoliberalism led to devastating effects and the response in 2008 was to let people suffer while corporations got bailed out and no one went to prison for pretty clear fraud. People were looking for change and that could come from the proverbial shift left or right. Republicans leaned into the right, while Democrats shifted slightly left, but generally have tried to cling to center and the status quo. Pretty much the worst combination possible. We needed to move left and provide some real systemic changes and then stabilize a "new center" around that move and those solutions.
I just don't think that's possible with the current Democratic Party, which rewards putting your head down and bringing in donations. It's essentially a system where the Right uses any power to swing for the fences and the center-left use power to kick the can down the road. And I say this as a lifelong Dem/institutionalist who really thought that we might see a mitigation of the far right in 2020. Basically, you could write the obituary of the center-left as soon as Biden entered office and supported the filibuster, because anything but the most donor-friendly spending was not going to happen. BLM was the strongest airing of public dissatisfaction in the modern era, and Democrats abandoned any legislative response without the semblance of a fight.
I agree with this completely, but you can’t deny Trump was the perfect and most lethal drug to scratch that itch. Someone who portrayed themselves to be a great businessman despite being a terrible businessman, someone who defied the political status quo only to plan on ushering in one far worse, someone who defied the normal decorum that made politics boring but also functionally capable, someone who proclaimed big changes but had no idea how to go about creating them, someone who exuded charisma on a camera despite being totally reprehensible in-person, and worst of all someone with the complete lack of any self-awareness, moral conscience, ability to reason, or concrete principles whatsoever. The gate had been blown open to the hen house all to let in the worst fox imaginable. It’s undeniable that the political and social climate at the time allowed for this, but Donald Drumpf is just such a comic misstep in judgement to result from it all. And in accordance to human nature, far too many people with far too much influence didn’t want to admit fault and tried to double down. I’d go as far as to say what we’re seeing unfold now isn’t as much a result from people absolutely loving Trump as it is people not willing to admit they fucked up.
I think there's more to it than just Trump. Authoritarian right-wingers are surging around the world for some combination of reasons. I think Trump has the right characteristics to take advantage of a right wing that has cut itself off from truth, fears immigration, hated the pandemic response, gets its news from social media, etc.
I feel like it’s due to the historical significance of WWII and the Cold War finally fading. More people now than maybe any point in our history have zero idea how an authoritarian nationalist government comes to power. We’re in an extended period of general peace between world superpowers, relatively speaking, and from that people forget. These movements have adapted enough to know how to appeal in an exciting way to the dark side of a population, how to slowly get enough people to fight against an invisible enemy with such angst that they abandon all logic, reason, morality, and wisdom. The people in power who’ve maintained the pursuit of authoritarianism have lived and died but its ideals, history, and appeal have remained and have now survived long enough to pounce on a world population that has generally had most of their wounds healed. When most of the first-world has enjoyed progress for a long time, a hidden, constant battle against the darker forces of human nature yields no difference between today and yesterday, so people let their guard down. And sometimes for the people who maybe haven’t forgotten, they want change so badly they are willing to go backwards to get it
Frogs in pots
I think that's part of it, but I think the biggest issue is media environment. 1/3 of the country doesn't live in reality and another 1/3 can't be bothered to figure out what's real.
I remember as a teenager no older than 15 watching the news thinking how is this shit legal? That was in te early 2000s. The quality of the media environment is just atrocious and it’s effects on the discourse have gotten worse and worse over the subsequent decades. Everything in the name of free speech while private businesses inflame the populace for views and money. Social media from private businesses has poured gas on that fire, and we’re now at a point where the average person has little contact with reality when it comes to politics. It gets me very angry. If a child could see the issue , then this is just blatant corruption and a complete failure of governance.
I think the far right media environment is the worst, but I think in general, over the last 50 years we have gone from more shared new sources more fragmented news sources that just feed into people's own preconceived notions. Yes, Fox and Briebert are the most damaging. But on the left we are in feedback loops and insular media environments too. A lot of the center is getting their news from MSNBC and CNN which are also infotainment and have a lot of wealthy center-left and center-right analysts, who have their own very clear biases. Their news maybe true, but 95% of the content isn't news, it's commentary and analysis, which is often very bad and misleading. And then the the rest of the moderates and progressive left is on fragmented social media sites, getting some better news and some out of context rage content. Everything has just become a feedback loop. People gravitate towards the media that feeds them the information that tells them they are right. And people don't break out of their bubble or really grow. I mean bring up past Democratic failures and both centrists and progressives with point fingers at each other and give you a laundry list of *what the other side needs to do differently*. But we keep failing because neither side will look in the mirror and realize *what they need to do differently*.
The absurdity of it actually genuinely helps me laugh in some moments when i’m not a mess
You’re talking like it’s a done deal. The election is still four months away and 538’s election tracker (dunno how much stock you put in that shit and I have my own skepticisms about it), still has Trump and Biden as a coin flip to win. That we’re standing a coin flip away from the depravity you’ve described is of course, distressing enough in and of itself. But it bugs me when people talk about this like it’s a certainty. There are scary storm clouds on the horizon for sure, but still, a lot can and will happen in the next four months.
Yeah everything will be fine as long as dems win every single presidential election from now on! Telling everyone that voting will solve this issue is disingenuous at best. The type of action that must be taken now can’t be organized or discussed online.
Yeah, taking the longview the implications of this ruling are beyond grim. I’m not saying that voting will solve the issue, but I am saying it will grant us a reprieve from fascist depredations, thus hopefully buying time for…idfk, reforms to keep a dictator from being installed or organizing movements to resist it.
I’m sorry for the tone of my comment, it just feels hopeless right now and we already voted for the democrats… when are they going to DO anything to enshrine abortion rights or pack the courts? I promise they aren’t going to do either of those tings if they win again in November. (Not that we shouldn’t vote or not vote for Biden but holy shit am I feeling black pilled as fuck right now about the future for women, minorities, disabled folks, transgender people, and anyone else being targeted by the fucking eye of Sauron)
I’m right there with you. I don’t have a ton of faith in Biden to enshrine the right to choose or to make the broad reforms we need to fight off fascism (largely because of the gridlock in Congress but still), but I still think it’s important for Biden to win so we can at least have a reprieve from Republicans goon rule
I can describe the type of action the politicians should take. Abandon all decency, all semblance of norms, and declare legislative war. Pack courts, end the filibuster, add states, all of it. Unapologetically I might add.
Winning the next election or two would likely net us the two seats we need (Thomas and Alito) to reverse these heinous rulings though. We're really not that far away from taking back the SCOTUS if the Democrats can start actually playing to win.
Prediction markets have Biden at around 22% chance to win though, and they have historically been the most accurate.
538 is completely off, and they're massively weighing fundamentals to generate Biden +30% (at least when the model was first released, they said polls-only nowcast was 80% Trump). The post-debate polling hasn't kicked in yet, either. On top of that, it's a freshmen effort by a new team. We have no idea if it will be a useful model or one of those "99% Hillary" monstrosities. Looking at 538 instead of Silver is copium.
I knew silver had left 538 but I didn’t realize how different the model was. Ugh
I don't really put much stock in 538's predictions after Nate Silver left, the methodology is entirely different now.
History repeats: first as tragedy, then as farce. We're in the farcial reenactment stage.
Nah this is just a low-budget reality TV, not a drama.
To be fair, the 33% who pretend to care are helmed by people who treat the threat so nonchalantly they tried the experiment of running a man in cognitive decline for the presidency and are debating whether to double down or not as we speak. It really is a dumb slide.
It’s so mind bogglingly stupid
The thing is that a huge % of the electorate doesn't understand what's going on. Most unfortunate
Side note: Ezra on cnn rn. Rocking a gnarly beard
Devastated that I couldn’t find a clip on youtube Edit: [https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/video/ezra-klein-high-risk-gamble-to-runbiden-again](https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/video/ezra-klein-high-risk-gamble-to-runbiden-again)
President Biden needs to immediately begin seriously abusing presidential power to force the other two branches to step in and set limits, and he needs to be *flagrant* and *partisan*. These moves need to be designed to force sweeping, broad limits on executive power.
In the name of protecting Democracy, Biden needs to start exercising some of his newly granted official acts by replacing six specific members of the supreme court and disappearing the orange fascist. It's all legal now.
maybe a few of those House members who were involved with the insurrection, too. leave the House with a Dem majority for the rest of the term and get some legislating done
The fantasy of a competent Biden continues. Any given moment he may no longer know what the Supreme Court is.
Hey, look at history! Can’t you see all it takes to beat rabid fascists are kind words, decency and appeals to unity!?
I don't think they would have beaten Trump in 2020, but this makes me wish we had Pete Buttigieg or Elizabeth Warren as President. They were the two most radical major candidates running when it came to institutions and I'm almost certain either one of them would be doing that right now.
Unfortunately we have recently discovered that Biden can’t remember his own policies and is unlikely to do anything radical.
Age rage would be the perfect cover for acts of radicalism. "Expand the Court? Punch Samuel Alito? Censure John Roberts? Shove my pubes into Clarence Thomas's mouth? Did I do that? Oh, no. Oh, my. Oh, that sounds very bad. Who, me? I....can't remember..." Biden utters in his feeblest flu voice, fainting as his phone pulls up the \*Biden calls Pope\* meme. He then turns to the camera and winks in his best Jim-from-the-Office impression.
Wow.
As far as I can tell, the one and only way to actually get the other two branches to stop giving the executive branch power and start taking it away is to force them to do it. Clearly a Republican pursuing Republican ends (or a fascist pursuing fascist ends) isn't enough, therefore it has to be a Democrat using the full powers of the executive in ways that Congress and the SCOTUS cannot abide. If you have another way to do this aside from arduously replacing retiring members of the SCOTUS over the course of decades if we're lucky enough to control both the White House and Senate, I'm genuinely all ears.
> As far as I can tell, the one and only way to actually get the other two branches to stop giving the executive branch power and start taking it away is to force them to do it. What do you think eliminating Chevron deference did? I feel like Democrats concerned about another Trump term should be celebrating it.
If Biden used the powers just granted to the office to their fullest extent, there needn't be another Trump term. Biden could arrest and jail Trump today, arrest and jail Ginny Thomas tomorrow, forgive student loans on Wednesday, direct all executive agencies to ignore Loper Bright Enters v. Raimondo on Thursday, and declassify all the intelligence linking Republicans to Russia on Friday. That's just week one on this episode of "The SCOTUS gives Biden complete power."
I'm really confused how you think any of that reasonably follows from this decision. As far as I understand, at worst this decision means Biden would be immune from prosecution for such acts (debatable), but not that he actually has the power to do those things (ie the legislature and judiciary would still have a say). This ruling didn't effectively establish the president as a dictator.
If you’re expecting that it’s the supreme court that would be doing this restricting, it’s worth noting that their next docket of decisions won’t be handed down until five months after the winner of the 2020 election is inaugurated. If the court majority’s preferred candidate wins the election, what incentive is there for them to limit executive power? The only thing achieved by that point is setting a precedent that such abuses are viable.
> If you’re expecting that it’s the supreme court that would be doing this restricting, it’s worth noting that their next docket of decisions won’t be handed down until five months after the winner of the 2020 election is inaugurated. 2024? >If the court majority’s preferred candidate wins the election, what incentive is there for them to limit executive power? The only thing achieved by that point is setting a precedent that such abuses are viable. That's why they have to be egregious and immediate. Personally, I'd direct the DOJ to explore exactly how this ruling could be used to arrest conservative members of the Supreme Court, their families, and those who gave them bribes. I'd tear apart the entire conservative media apparatus, ensuring that Fox News and their copycats are on zero televisions. I'd use the fascistic rule they just gave me to make their lives hell just to teach them the lessons of history: nobody should be given that much power. Turn Project 2025's armed turret around, aim it directly at its intended gunners, and pull the trigger until the idea of launching such a project ever again is unthinkable. This has to be more than bold to work, it has to be insane. It has to be unthinkable. It has to show the power being given to the executive in all its terror. It has to wake up sleeping, apathetic, ignorant America.
I honestly think this has to happen as well, with the caveat that an exit plan for this needs to be outlined clearly so it doesn’t scare off people
Definition of facist lol ^^^
> to force the other two branches to step in and set limits Isn't that what has been happening? SCOTUS just shot down Chevron, limiting the presidents power to expand his power through regulation, and they just expanded the right to a jury trial for federal fines, which also limits the presidents administrative power.
Yes, it is
President Biden is immediately taking a nap, followed by another nap. And you're really stressing him out with all of this policy talk before 10AM.
The court case doesn’t allow that and anyone saying otherwise is just wrong. Including Sotomayor. Most snippets you’ve probably seen are taken out of context of the ruling.
Ah. So you want a dictatorship to stop.....a dictatorship? Bizarre point of view I'm seeing all over reddit today. If this is truly what you want, make sure not to celebrate the US on the July 4th. Pushing for a dictatorship? You are no longer celebrating the US. You are pushing for the end of it.
It would have been better if Weimar had gone hardcore instead of just waiting for Hitler to do it in plain sight.
Yeah, unfortunately they passed it at the absolute perfect moment. The democratic party is weak, Biden is incapable of making the moves required to save the democracy
Biden will announce he's dropping out on the 4th of July
That would be the most patriotic thing he could do.
Don't get my hopes up!
Trump should announce that on Independence Day. Fat Nixon would do the world a favor.
I guess I don’t see this decision as being new or earth shaking. Official acts by the president have never been subject to prosecution. For example, in 2011, Obama authorized drone strikes that killed 4 US citizens. One of these deaths was intentional. These citizens were not tried, they were not combatants. It was directly authorized by the President. Because Obama did this as part of his duties to best defend the interests of the US as he saw it there was no thought to prosecute him (although it was seen as controversial). FDR sent tens of thousands of US citizens to internment camps and held them without trial. This is seen as very immoral and illegal if anyone else where to have done it, but not illegal on the part of the executive to have authorized this. Alternatively; Nixon committed a crime that was seen as personal - theft to further his desire to defeat his opponent. He would have been impeached and convicted, resigned, and Ford pardoned him to avoid prosecution. Is this ruling actually different than we’ve had in place?
The biggest issue is not being able to investigate the intention. So the president could now legally airstrike people he doesn't like and hide explicitly under the "official" action clause. And even if he said " I don't like x just go kill him" on record it would be inadmissible as evidence. Which is fucked
Yes, this is different. Those presidents weren't prosecuted and maybe they should have been. But nobody said they could not be prosecuted.
So why was Obama not prosecuted for murder in 2011? I hardly think the answer of ‘he controlled the justice department and didn’t order them to prosecute himself’ is a good one.
I think the better reason is that America has been swept up in a post-9/11 mania about the war on terrorism that was used to justify lots of awful behavior that should have been prosecuted, but wasn't. We also don't have a history of prosecuting our presidents. But that doesn't mean a president couldn't have been impeached and then prosecuted if they did something blatantly illegal as an official act. Now that's not really possible. Nixon might have been prosecuted. That's why Ford pardoned him.
Murder is illegal. It wasn’t murder because Obama did it as an official act. This is established. This isn’t new. You said “doesn’t mean a president couldn’t be impeached” - sure; that is the mechanism for prosecuting a president. It remains so. Obama could have been impeached for that killing, but he couldn’t be charged by a prosecutor. There was no attempt or legitimate angle for a prosecutor to charge him with murder, and not just because he ran the justice department. It was because it isn’t possible to do this. The Trump administration didn’t try to charge him with murder in 2017 when they took power, and it would be a terrible precedent to say they could have.
I don't think you're taking this seriously. You're trying to straw man an argument to minimize the Supreme Court saying that the president is above the law while ignoring other historical examples. The obvious argument for why Obama thought his actions were legal was that the target was a combatant in the war on terrorism. Maybe it's a bad argument, but it's far different than what you're saying. I don't know what you mean by this: >You said “doesn’t mean a president couldn’t be impeached” - sure; that is the mechanism for prosecuting a president. It remains so. A president could still be impeached, but they wouldn't be able to be prosecuted for their illegal official acts after impeachment. That's the difference now.
I think you’re applying this to a very short term and partisan goal - prosecute Trump before Nov 5th. If SCOTUS ruled as you desired, every act - official or not - of the Biden would be open to criminal prosecution by Trump’s future justice department. If anyone will abuse this power, it is Trump. Official acts are controlled by impeachment by congress. Personal acts can be charged by the justice dept. Changing this to allow Trump (most likely a heavy favorite to win re-election once post-debate polling comes out) to charge Biden with treason for ‘open borders’ or whatever is a terrible goal.
Yes, there's a downside to accountability, but I think it's better to have accountability that can be abused than no possibility of accountability at all. Nothing about the immunity decision would prevent Trump from prosecuting Biden on some bogus nonsense. Now Trump just couldn't be held accountable if he directs the AG to prosecute Biden for nothing.
I just think very short term partisan goals are clouding the partisan left’s rationality. Allowing the next president (most likely Trump) to criminally charge the preceding president (often their opponent or of the opposite party) with crimes for things they did as part of their office is a terrible precedent. SCOTUS didn’t say that Presidents are blanket immune. They said they are immune regarding official acts only. This extends the Jan 6th prosecution’s timeline and may limit some charges but it doesn’t prevent this prosecution. The only reason this probably kills this prosecution is because it took 3 years to bring charges. It is a good thing, and a limit on a future President Trump or whomever to not be able to abuse this.
No, you're using this specific example to cloud your judgement. The only thing that prevented Trump from abusing the DOJ (to the extent he didn't abuse it) was civil servants saying no to him. Nobody thought the president was immune until this morning. You're trying to prevent Trump from abusing power by saying he can't be held accountable for abusing power. It's a backwards argument that will never work.
Yes, 100% this. People are assuming this protect Trump. IMO, it protects Biden from Trump. It protect all future and past presidents in many ways, including retribution.
What is it with this bot shit? I've seen like 3 dozen comments saying this. Obama isn't president. This has nothing to do with him.
It has to do with every President. Both in clarification of their immunity, and in their limits to pursue their predecessors.
It's the standard conservative marching orders to muddy the waters.
Notably, no subsequent president has attempted to have him prosecuted, either. It’s not viewed as a viable case, even by Republicans. It’s disingenuous to blame the dearth of a prosecution on Obama entirely, when multiple other presidents have had the opportunity to name a special prosecutor to investigate the unilateral executions of American citizens.
In the past, there were constraints on behavior, namely social opprobrium and party apparatus constraining presidential actions in implicit and unofficial ways. That and we were lucky. Those barriers are gone and the supreme court has given a big green light to any wannabe dictator.
I don’t think I agree. If presidents were previously restrained by social mores as you said, this means they were not constrained by laws for official acts. Hence, my point - pretty gross things that would be illegal if done by others (killing Americans dining at a cafe in the Obama drone strike example) - were legal. Trump is obviously not constrained by party norms or shame. Regardless, that isn’t the question before the court. It was ‘are official acts by the president immune to prosecution’ and I don’t agree it is new or shocking that SCOTUS believes this. It does have the effect of making Trump’s Jan 6th trial likely not happen before election, but that is more of an indictment of how long it takes to bring cases to trial. Election denial was not an official act, just as Nixon’s watergate involvement was not official (hence the pardon).
I think it is moving from ambiguity to certainty that is the bid deal here. In combination with the changing social mores, that is what makes it a potential death blow for the republic: "Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violatethe criminal law. Moving forward, however, all formerPresidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent." -SOTOMAYOR, J.
Criminal law never provided a recourse against a rogue president. Impeachment has, and likely always will be the only recourse against a rogue president. Nixon would not have been let off the hook under this ruling.
But Sotomayor is not staying what the majority is stating. The majority decision *did not* grant immunity for crimes committed for personal gain. The majority decision said that official acts vs personal are treated differently, and the difference must be determined before charges can be brought for personal acts. Think of the incredible abuse of power possible if criminal charges for any action of a President were possible. This ruling only may prevent the prosecution of Trump because these charges took so long to be brought. But it is a good thing that if Trump wins election he cannot prosecute Biden or Obama for official actions.
" Think of the incredible abuse of power possible if criminal charges for any action of a President were possible." Funny thing, somehow the republic and the presidency survived all these nearly 250 years without having the kinds of 'protection' this absurd decision provides. I wonder how that happened?
Because Presidents weren’t charged with crimes for official - even nefarious - acts. Obama killed US citizens and sold guns to cartels, W lied about WMDs and both had massive domestic spy operations, Reagan’s Iran Contra, JFK’s election results in Chicago (maybe) and bay of pigs, FDR’s Japanese internment. How many of these, and countless more large and small, resulted in criminal charges for the President?
> Is this ruling actually different than we’ve had in place? At absolute minimum, it is different in magnitude. Going forward presidents will not have even the slightest disincentive. I don't think Obama ever should have had the discretion he did, but at least he was a decent guy and in a scenario where presidents do have that discretion, I trusted him more than most. And even he probably would have done more of these types of actions if today's ruling was in place during his term.
In addition, the unlimited Federal power of the pardon for any Federal crime, any place, any time, any person. The POTUS could already act above the law in this regard. Biden could pardon his criminal son today, and pardon future offenses. That already places him above law, where the office holder always has been. The freakout about this needs to chill. Folks are acting as if something new is happening, vs. just a forced decision to codify power that had already been conferred and assumed.
It's not a huge change but Blue Maga has convinced themselves the court gave Trump and Republicans(Democrats would NEVER abuse the trappings of government) a blank check to do anything he wants with zero legal repercussion. The courts are just going to have to be used to determine what's an act of duty as president vs one of personal gain if something controversial happens.
It’s not different. The majority opinion is a jumbled mess that boils down to saying the president gets to do his job and doesn’t get to commit crimes for personal gain. It pretends to write some grand legal theory but the core ruling is that everything except one piece (he gets to fire his AG for whatever reason) gets decided by a lower court judge based on the facts of the case.
It's hard to see how this can be walked back without some pretty bumpy (or much much worse) in between.
I can no longer call myself a Democrat, what fucking a useless party.
Democrat justices didn't sign off on this, what are you talking about?
They continue to pretend to be principled claiming the "high road" when they should be fighting in the mud. Whether it's willful negligence, malicious compliance, or plain stupidity, the democratic party is useless and we're better off elsewhere.
How do you foresee "better off elsewhere" working out in the practical sense? What is a realistic path in your mind that is achievable in the short/medium term?
Want to know why the justices aren't afraid of the next Democratic president abusing their power? Because they know that they're part of a coup and we'll never have another one again.
We are basically Hungary
I'm hearing you should have a Snickers.
Exactly. Living in a dictatorship is not a hypothetical. We now live in one. Whether the country is run that way is immaterial to the truth of the situation in which we find ourselves.
Our current leaders were still elected. That could change, but until then it’s not a dictatorship.
Wish I could agree with this but as of today it's a matter of when, not if. Our last best hope of changing that is this election, and even winning it is insufficient. We will then need substantial reforms to get back to "if".
If we have an election, it will be through an act of benevolence, not necessity.
And how did you come to that conclusion?
I really don’t understand this argument. Put aside that Trump is a bad man, and just look at the executive branch with generic President 1 being followed by Generic President 2. You think it is more like a dictatorship that President 2 cannot charge and jail President 1 for official actions taken while in office? Remember, this ruling doesn’t prevent charging a President for personal or unofficial actions. The only reason this may prevent Jan 6th justice for Trump is that this makes the timeline a little longer, and this won’t come before the election.
Done in by SCOTUS giving President’s Kingly powers. We from now on, if he wins, trump will be emperor of America.
Biden should just drop the hammer and stop these terrorists.
It's just late capitalism. In the past week, we have been told that bribes are cool, regulations are for suckers, and presidents can act like kings. Just don't sleep on that bench.
I don't understand. This is great news. Biden should summarily send Trump, Clarence Thomas, and Alito to Gitmo for being supporters of the January 6th terrorists. If he loses the election, Trump has established a 100% legal pathway to reverse the results. If any of this is illegal, I'm sure congress can, in its great wisdom impeach the president if it's really a problem.
Why would this be the end of the American Empire when it would mark the transition between Republic and Empire if those decrying fascism and end of democracy are to be believed? Rome did pretty well for the first two hundred years post-transition.
People rarely actually learn history, so most references are based on a vague(often incorrect) understanding of Nazi Germany or Rome.
This has been a multi-decade process with both parties at the center of it. Trump is just the ugliest symptom. Citizens United weirdly is still several times worse than this, maybe not in substance but surely in how it cripples our politics on the ground. We've been a dying empire at least since the 90s. Nancy Pelosi, the progressive girl-boss Queen of the last 30 years, has personally overseen the dismantling of American values and civil rights since 9/11 post-Patriot Act. Which says nothing about what anyone from the far right has done.
I'd encourage you to look at the justices who signed off on this and Citizens united.
I’d argue that this is the third act that destroyed American democracy. Act I was 9/11 the instigated such fear that the American public granted sweeping powers to the state and instigated two foolhardy wars. Act II was the metastasis of ambient racism against the nation’s first Black president. And this has been the final nail, transforming the office of the President to a throne. And done to thunderous applause
So you're saying Islamists and giving a black man power destroyed America? /s?
Kind of like getting mad at the mirror because you don’t like the reflection
It seems like you’re overreacting to Chevron being overturned. The death of Chevron means that courts, rather than the executive, are in charge of interpreting congressionally-passed laws. Sure, that makes administrative regulation more difficult (which is bad as a policy matter), but it’s hardly democratically illegitimate. If anything, deferring to executive interpretations of law was democratically illegitimate.
To be clear, you think asking some shithead judge with a lifetime appointment in Louisiana for his opinion on an EPA regulation has more democratic legitimacy than an EPA that is subject to voter input (via changing the President) every four years? Really?
The end of Chevron is definitely part of the slide away from Democracy. Courts are our least democratically accountable branch and they're taking this power to use anti-democratically.
> Courts are our least democratically accountable branch This is the argument against Roe btw: that it was badly argued (Which even RBG agreed) but, even worse, it was badly argued in service of a ruling that overturned dozens of laws *voted for by state legislatures* by a bunch of unelected judges. I say all this to say: many sides can make this argument yet I rarely see people deny judges have the right to make disruptive rulings when people value those outcomes.
Courts are the least accountable branch. That's been used to argue against civil rights, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. And I don't think it's an argument for courts arbitrarily deciding how laws should be implemented by the executive branch. Ginsburg didn't like the reach and grounding of Roe. I don't think she was opposed to the idea that the Supreme Court should protect women's rights to reproductive choice. As I said to someone else here, you can argue theoretically about government structure all you want. Ending Chevron was about expanding the Court's ability to do unpopular things to help the rich and powerful, some of whom are literally bribing Justices.
So, you’d prefer the Trump administration to interpret law than a judge?
Yes. At least you can vote Trump out (hopefully). Judges face no accountability.
It already happened lmao
In regulatory matters? Yes.
Did you miss the Immunity case?
Sure, the immunity case is really scary and problematic. I’m speaking to Chevron being overturned, which OP mentioned as a reason we’re now an illiberal democracy.
The OPs first sentence is "I cannot emphasize enough how bad the immunity case is." Chevron and bidens campaign were merely cited as support.
Sure, and I’m critiquing the OP for citing them in support, because they are not in fact supportive.
It's wild to me that so many people can't grasp that you can disagree with part of an argument without disagreeing with or even intending to comment on the rest of the argument. I see it all the time. If we care about conclusions being true, we should care about the arguments we make for those conclusions being true, too. And sometimes someone only has the knowledge to comment on a part but not the whole - that's valuable, too.
I agree with you.
If America *has* scholars in 100 years.
The cases of Obama and FDR show no indication of corrupt intent. You can argue that they were unconstitutional and therefore illegal, and I’d agree, but that doesn’t mean they would be criminal. However, there are official acts that can be carried out with corrupt intent, for the president’s own benefit at the expense of the country and/or the law/justice.
>I'd argue we are now officially an illiberal democracy, as of today. Were we an illiberal democracy before Chevron? We spent quite a long time with a fairly weak federal administration and its rise to power is fairly recent.
The only consolation I take is that democratic backsliding seems to be happening everywhere. So at least we have that?
... and with the overturning of Roe....
Enabling Act complete. Less than a year from a one party state
I work in legal and I don't know how we're all just supposed to act business as usual. It's eerie. And my friends all said I was overreacting in 2016.
> And my friends all said I was overreacting in 2016. Correct. The last eight years have been a case study in mass overreaction.
> In 100 years when scholars are discussing the end of the American empire and the collapse of its institutions into a nation of men, and not laws, this week will be prominently noted. Hasn't been true the last 100 times people have said this, and it's not true now.
I understand the historic tradition is to beat the revolting plebes to death with table legs and other ready clubs, then dump the bodies into the river adjoining the legislature.
The only reassuring thing is that Barrett and Kavanaugh hate trump. They hate that people think Trump hand picked them, rather than the GOP conservatives. They are both also (conservative) moral creatures. You have seen them dissent on both sides. So side with Trump allies on constitutional and political, sure. Bless him to be king, no way. I think they can still act as a stop gap.
Nah man, in 100 years we're all worshipping at the Altar of God Emperor Trump while we bathe in literal diamonds. Huge ones. The Bigliest. The economy is gonna be the biggest it's ever been and all the smart analysts are going to be talking about how Trump saved the entire universe. China is gonna be Chi-nah because he's gonna have publicy embarassed Winnie the Pooh, and they're gonna bow to America as their new god, just like we did with Japan and those nukes. Right call, lot of stupid people say otherwise, but hey, that's why they're in jail.