Comment by axus
1 year ago
The Supreme Court literally said that Trump has absolute immunity for criminal use of presidential power. Combined with the statistical impossibility of a 2/3 senate majority for impeachment, this is a license to grab as much power as that same court will allow.
What's kind of fascinating is the way they've introduced things like the Major Questions Doctrine (MQD), which asserted the importance (really, necessity, in their view) of Congress's explicit delegation powers, as a way to curtail agency actions. But then faced with something like this EO, they seem quite obviously faced with something that runs up against the fact the Congress gave explicit statutes for how and what they should do. As far as I'm aware, the statues creating these agencies don't explicitly give the president this power...which raises a clear MQD consistency issue for the supreme court.
It’s not fascinating in any way, it’s completely habitual for fascists to use every means at their disposal to prevent their opponents from doing anything only to ignore all roadblocks when in power.
The GOP has been ramping up their support of unitary executive theory since the 80s yet no democratic president has been able to take a piss without cries of tyranny.
There are three branches. Just three. If you are a federal employee, you either work for congress, the courts, or the president. A2S1 invests the president with all executive power. All of it. It doesn’t carve out exceptions for the SEC or the Federal Reserve or USAID.
If you’ve put yourself in a place where this arrangement is literally fascism, prepare to be disappointed by the courts.
10 replies →
> It’s not fascinating in any way, it’s completely habitual for fascists to use…
This is a tiring way to speak to other reasonable people.
yes but if the executive just pretends there is no issue does it matter
part of the supreme court hasn't exactly been known to defend the constitution in word and spirit but find excuses to reinterpret it
and worse by giving themself the right to authoritative misinterpreted law they can prevent any such cases ever appearing in front of the supreme court and/or very effectively blackmail people into not making or dismissing cases
and Trump abusing power to blackmail people to get changes in of court related proceeding (to ironically black mail someone else to force them to fall in line or a court case against them gets reopend/not dismissed) did already happen, openly in public just a few days ago
Republican Senators want this. It's not about statistics. They believe in this stupid Unitary Executive thing (aka, we should have a King).
They don’t actually believe in unitary executive theory, as can plainly be seen any time a democrat is elected president.
I'm curious how do we know this? I don't plainly see this it all.
8 replies →
Perfect timing when he's just tweeted out that he is The King
Just because it took me a while to find the reference: The full quote on Truth Social and Twitter is "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140320828992...
They created the circumstances where this could happen. It's a long term project. Supreme court picks, disenfranchisement, propaganda, refusing to hold Trump accountable for his crimes.
Disbanding of both the legislature and judiciary would be on any dictator's playbook from the last N centuries. I can't imagine either of those bodies would be ok with getting shuttered but it seems they are both pushing for it. Why?
Many would be adjacent to the new ruler. The startup shutters but the VP of Engineering is already starting something new with his old reports.
They get something out of it and lack of scruples? Money, influence, seeing their religious views pushed on others, who knows what else.
I don’t think that’s an accurate description of the decision. I think that it stated that when the President exercises core constitutional power (e.g. the pardon power, or the veto power) then the exercise itself cannot be illegal. I’m not sure if the decision of the Court left open the possibility that the conduct around the exercise of such power can be illegal. If so, then this could be a distinction without much difference: for example, issuing a pardon may not itself ever be criminal, but taking a bribe to issue a pardon is separate from issuing the pardon itself. To some extent, I think that some of this does flow from the structure of the Constitution itself, but I’m not convinced that phrasing it in terms of immunity is particularly helpful.
Then there’s a rebuttable presumption of immunity for more conduct. I don’t see that this flows from the Constitution, but perhaps it flows from judicial decisions over the past two centuries? ‘When the President does something official, he probably is immune, but maybe he’s not, and he could still be prosecuted from crimes he commits around the immune act’ doesn’t seem terribly meaningful.
It sounds a bit to me like saying that a citizen is immune from prosecution for his vote, but not for selling it or whatever. But I’m not a lawyer, and I could be wrong.
It 100% was written with the explicit purpose of giving Trump the power to do whatever he wants. Including ignoring the Supreme Court hilariously enough.
Anyway, the whole discussion is moot because Trump is turning America into a authoritarian state, so rules and laws and elections soon don’t matter anymore.
Well, yes, that's how the system works: a determined President can, in fact, grab as much power as the Supreme Court will allow. That's literally what the Supreme Court is there for.
The president can arguably pack the court and with his majorities nobody will stop him
If you believe the Supreme Court is an effective guardrail against tyranny then you're deeply mistaken. The only true safeguard against tyranny is the American people refusing to comply and responding with force of arms if pushed.
I don't care if you're a 3%er or a John Brown Gun Club fan, this is an absurd fantasy.
2 replies →
Assuming the US military remains loyal to the president... if you really think that the Proud Boys and their ilk, plus a bunch of random disorganized people with guns, have even the remotest chance of winning a war with the US military, well... I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
And if the US military doesn't remain loyal to the president, then on top of a fascist dictator seizing power, then we'll have a military coup.
3 replies →
Yeah nearly all the discussion here seems circular…
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how legal immunity equates to legal authority.
If you are a government employee and Trump orders you to do something that exceeds his authority, can't you still say no? It seems like the Supreme Court only said that Trump can't get in trouble for asking. I don't think the court said that you have to answer yes.
I'm not trying to say that we're in a great position here or that immunity doesn't have some very destructive effects. But I am saying that we shouldn't act as if he has powers that the Supreme Court hasn't given him.
At this point your working assumption should be that the target operating model is similar to Russia.
A competent Joe Biden would've taken that ruling, said "thank you very much" and "cleaned house" with Seal Team Six of select judges and politicians and then pardoned everyone involved.
The fact that SCOTUS wasn't even slightly concerned about that happening belies the problem: the Democrats are ineffectual by design. They knew Biden would throw his hands up citing "norms" and "institutions" as an excuse to do absolutely nothing.
SCOTUS completely invented a concept of presidential immunity out of thin air to derail the criminal prosecutions. They also deliberaly took their time. Remember when Jack Smith tried to appeal directly to SCOTUS because everyone knew it was going to end up there? Instead, SCOTUS put everything on hold for another 6 months as a delaying tactic.
Even then, the opinion is rushed and haphazard and not at all well thought out. Some in the conservative supermajority allegedly wanted to punt the issue to the next term.
The presidential immunity decision is so brazenly political. The Roberts court will go down in history for the kinds of awful decisions in the 1840s and 1850s that led up to the Civil War.
> the Democrats are ineffectual by design.
The Democrats are people who believe in the rule of law, and they act like it. When pitted against people who have no qualms to win at all costs, even it means breaking the law and destroying the constitution, Democrats lose; if you value those things you can't preserve them by destroying them yourself. We are where we are because Republicans convinced themselves they deserved the power they have taken. The people who voted for them were convinced as well. That's the only failure we should be talking about right now. The Democrats, flawed as they are, did the right thing.
That said, they will not be the people to lead us out of this. They know how to fundraise, campaign, and maintain the status quo. They're not built for this, so it's time to just look for someone new rather than try to reform people who are clearly not made for this moment.
> the Democrats are ineffectual by design
In many situations, those who have morals and scruples will be ineffectual when faced with an adversary who has none. Biden didn't "clean house" because he believes in the rule of law, and believes that if he'd done that, he should go to jail, even if he wouldn't.
Not everyone has an ethical code that only exists because they're afraid they'll go to jail if they break it. Some people just don't think it's ok to do the wrong thing.
Put another way: if you become the monster you're trying to fight, that's often not materially different from the monster winning in the first place.
Having said that, I do think that Democrats should fight a little dirtier sometimes. I think that would be possible to do without becoming that monster.
Your courts and judiciary don't have any power - he'll just write an EO to release people. Senate and Congress likewise - meaningless talking shops.
Not even that. Trump controls federal law enforcement. If Congress or a federal court says "arrest cabinet member XYZ for contempt", Trump can just say "no".
Congress does have some law enforcement personnel, but I doubt they'd be interested in getting in a standoff with the Secret Service.
“Criminal use of presidential power” is a bit of an oxymoron, which is why people are getting wrapped up in knots here.
The Supreme Court said, if the Constitution authorizes the President to do it, then he can’t be criminally prosecuted. That doesn’t mean blanket immunity!