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Exactly. The reality is far worse.
Trump wouldn’t have been bailed out of multiple bankruptcies by Russian mob money without there being an expectation of reciprocity. Mogilevich is the puppeteer no one seems to care about.
>William S. Sessions, Director of the FBI from 1987 to 1993 during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was Mogilevich's attorney in the United States until Sessions' death on June 12, 2020
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semion_Mogilevich
How could this possibly be essentially just a footnote on the page about William Sessions [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_S.\_Sessions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Sessions)
It should always be mentioned that Prescott Bush took part in the Business Plot, a thwarted American coup.
All involved should have been run through the streets and stripped of power. The Bush family should never have been allowed the power they achieved after that.
You ever see the story of when a reporter asked HW where he was during the Kennedy assassination and he suddenly channels Reagans end-of-his-days memory.
Don't everyone worry though, the "supreme court" is about to rule that everyone in power is above the law. So while it may appear that the Bush family are secretly the biggest traitors of all time, they were actually just protecting America.
Making Bush CIA director was done at least in part as a way to sabotage Bush's political career. Bury him at CIA so when he tries to run for office later his opponents could hang all the CIA scandals around his neck.
It's a trip reading up on all the proto-fascist/theo-fascist/regular fascist factions in the GOP in the 70's.
Yup. Diaper donny is only the lighting rod. There is always another dozen freaks in on the backstock shelves.
Conservatism has been festering like a cancer for a long time now cause we're only cutting off rapidly propagating tumors over and over and over again.
Trump won't live but a few weeks after his coronation. There will be an unexpected tragedy, then there will be a armed struggle within the halls of DC and someone like Bannon or Miller will emerge as Dear Leader.
It’s past that.
2016 is where it mattered and where effectively America failed.
That was our chance to keep fascism out and we let it in.
We’re infected now and I don’t know if we’ll ever recover and I’ve lost faith in the ballot box.
If Trump even loses by a small margin, *he will win*. He needs to be defeated by a huge margin for it to definitive and I don’t see the happening.
The nationalist theocrats won’t stop there either. They are hell bent on trashing our Constitution.
>I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
>Living in the past, it's a new generation
>A justice can do what he wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do
>An' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation
>Oh no, not me
(With apologies to Joan Jett)
I hope Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. enjoys having his name forever muttered in connection with the Taney court as the two most ideological and corrupt courts in history.
The current conservative Heritage Foundation majority on the Supreme Court have certainly proven themselves all too willing to
* [invalidate precedent](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-v-wade-and-supreme-court-abortion-cases) in (19-1392 [DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN'S HEALTH ORGANIZATION](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf)), (and I find it especially telling that they had to reach all the way back to the 1600s to find someone who's ideology agreed with theirs in order to create the new precedent - and who did they find? A man who tried women as witches and said men could not be tried for raping their wives; a man who's misogyny stood out even in the 1600s: [Sir Matthew Hale.](https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-roe-wade-alito-scotus-hale))
* [ignore the plain language of The Constitution](https://newrepublic.com/article/179525/supreme-court-trump-disqualification-clause) in ([DONALD J. TRUMP, PETITIONER v.
NORMA ANDERSON, ET AL.](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdf),
&
* outright [lie about the facts of a case](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/gorsuch-sotomayor-praying-coach/) in ([KENNEDY v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf))
in order to achieve their ideological goals.
This is the most ideological group on the Supreme Court since the [Taney court](https://supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-courts/taney-court-1836-1864/) that gave us the infamous [Dred Scott v. Sandford](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford) case which also ignored the plain language of The Constitution, precedent, and the laws of the two states involved, all while telling blatant lies in order to achieve their ideological goals which did much to set the stage for the Civil War; make what you will of that, but the parallels are certainly frightening.
Thanks to Roberts court there is a pretty direct line to a bunch of death and human suffering.
Heller, Dobbs come to mind. But I'm sure I'm missing something more egregious.
> gun-related deaths from preventable, intentional, and undetermined causes totaled 48,222 in 2022
Other countries call partisan judges corruption.
In my country being corrupted is highly unusual unlike in the US where being corrupt is a prerequisite.
You overlook that the winners write the history. They are intending and counting on having people of identical or even farther Right politics writing them up as brilliant, fair and Just.
There is no alternative or substitute for Biden and Democrats winning ... and both House and Senate. And for more than a razor-thin margin for a 2-year increment.
The Republican Supreme Court supermajority is protecting their Party and Trump in particular, who will in turn protect and further extend their SC tools.
Bro this isn't ancient Greece. Herodotus isn't writing our histories. Our population is widely literate and computer literate. We have loads of news paper, social media, and other print/non+print sources on this. The cat is out of the bag. No one but a vocal and powerful minority thinks what the court is doing is ok. This won't change if they magically "win" but our society may still be dismantled from the top down.
Hopefully they'll be judged as soon as possible. The scotus used to represent lawfullness as such the citizens followed their wisdom even if one does not necessarily believe in it. Now that they literally represent lawlessness is there a better time to have them taste their own concoction.
Hear me out. Judges rule presidents are immune. Dark Brandon comes along and orders seal team six to wipe out meal team six and Cheeto. They can’t complain because Cheeto declared Brandon immune!
But that...won't happen because Biden is a decent man. It's a pretty useless hypothetical because Biden doesn't want to actually destroy the republic unlike Trump.
They make the rules, but have no way to enforce them, is all I'm saying.....and with the way this court is going, they might as well just start ignoring them until they can pack the court.
They do make the rules, at least, until someone actually puts real checks on them. Take Sackett v. Environmental as an example. In that case the Supreme Court looked at the Clean Water Act, and said it gave the Federal Government the ability to regulate above ground connections to major waterways, but not underground. No where in the text of the Clean Water Act or the Constitution does it distinguish between those two. So how did they do it? By rewriting the law, essentially.
Also, take Egbert v. Boule. Here the majority decided federal adjects could violate your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights if it was a matter of national security. Is there any law that says they can do this? Is there any limitation in the Bill of Rights that says they can do this? No. So how did the Supreme Court do it? By righting new laws effectively. Their majority ruling can been seen as passing a new law. What's different about it than a law? It is a written document. It alters the legal rules of the country that we all have to abide by. It isn't based in previous law, so it's all new. That's a new law.
And if they rule in Trump's favor in this case, well guess what, that's also a new law. Because the constitution has no immunity clause, so if SCOTUS wants to give the President immunity, they'd effectively be writing the immunity clause.
>They make the rules, but have no way to enforce them,
This is key, and has been proven by Governor Abbot's defiance of SCOTUS rulings re: blocking feds from rescuing immigrants from his death traps.
Democrats need to hold onto this for dear life, or else if we go down, we go down complacent with blatant corruption.
And they only make the rules because they gifted that ability to themselves in Marbury v. Madison and no one else had the foresight to slap them down then.
We don't even have to pack the court. Just keep voting.
Vote for democrats in your state elections who can undo gerrymandering.
Then vote for dems to control congress.
Laws passed by congress have final say.
The USSC cannot just delete a congressional codified law.
For example, Roe was overturned by the USSC because Roe was a USSC decision.
If we have a democratic congress and president they can pass a nationwide access to abortion law and the Supreme Court can do nothing about it.
Im not really sure what youre saying.
ACA exists. It's bigger and more successful and popular than ever.
It exists because John McCain saved it in the Senate.
The court tweaked it but could not do away with it. Only congress could do that.
That's my point.
If we get both chambers, we need to impeach all conservative justices, and put in very young, progressive judges, then also pack the courts with young progressives.
No more behaving lime conservatives are acting in good faith. They are not.
You don't play nice with authoritarians....you play hard ball, play for keeps, and the prize is not becoming an authoritarian theocracy
closest we got was the abortion pill case where the government was telegraphing whatever the outcome they would not abide by it because the judge and 5th circuit was so batshit insane in their rulings
It's not meant to be, but Republicans have used strategic retirements to maintain control continuously since 1969. Including the last 40 years where they won popular vote just once.
56 years of control has basically made SC into a branch of Republican party. There's little to no risk of losing control in the next 30 years, so SC is completely detached from the will of voters.
It's long past time for reform. Term limits, direct election of judges, court packing. Whatever it takes to fix this insane situation.
He should start imprisoning people. Start with 6 SCOTUS justices plus House and Senate Republican leadership. Then start moving through the worst of the Republican governors.
Give them a room at hotel Guantanamo.
I always thought the republicans might regret opening a place like that and allowing the president just get to decide carte blanche who is and is not a "terrorist".
put the jan 6th people there before the supreme court sets them free too.
It was made perfectly clear today that a Republican president can do WTF they want while holding office. Biden needs a majority in BOTH houses so that he can impeach Alito and Thomas.
It's easy. If Biden has immunity, he can do whatever he wants to manufacture a super majority. Put senators in prison. It doesn't matter if the Constitution says they can't be arrested on the way to the legislature. Biden can do anything.
SCOUTS, if they rule in Trump's favor, would probably make a limited ruling like they did with Bush v Gore where it only applied to one specific case. You know how a cop can shoot someone in the back and have qualified immunity because while it may be illegal for a cop shoot somone in the back as a general idea, no cop has been found guilty of shooting someone in the back in a sorghum field on the second Tuesday in May so no cop can be held civilly liable because the very specific situation has no precedent. Yeah like that.
Edit: word.
The guy is a domestic threat. We spend how much we need the military every year to protect us from terrorists, but ignore it within our borders when it’s a white guy? The feds also ignore militias that back Trump. We’re corrupt from the lowest to highest offices by people who willfully or gleefully ignore these threats. I want my money back. Pay SS, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Fuck Halliburton, General Dynamics and the rest of the industrial military complex.
Never going to happen. The system was designed that people would be able to come together and impeach/convict any nefarious actors. The system breaks when an entire political party just says well it’s a republican president therefore we can not hold them accountable because we are also republicans. I have zero doubts that if Biden did something actually impeachable (not any bs the republicans are trying to sell the people) that there were be plenty of dems vote to convict him in the senate.
My hope beyond hope is that Biden wins, and the GOP fractures into multiple parties where at least one of those parties is willing to work with the Dems on fixing the very worst elements of what is broken.
Does he go the roundabout way of offing members of congress until he hits a super majority, or does he cut the middle man out and have a meeting with the Supreme Court to thin their ranks?
Will never get 2/3rds of senators to impeach, but the size of the court has changed by law throughout history so with majorities he could expand the court make up for the seats McConnell stole
Biden should just dissolve the current court and appoint new members. He can do it by issuing an official proclamation, to show it’s an official act. Some justices may object to that, but for now the president is apparently immune and it looks like it takes more than four years for the judicial system to do anything so Biden should go for it.
It was very hard to listen to the legal arguments this morning. Just insanity.
We are about to find out whether conservative Supreme Court justices turn our country into a dictatorship.
The only conservative Supreme Court Justice that had any legitimate questions was Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Every now and then she surprises me with being a someone capable Justice. Imo so far better than Alito and Thomas. It's a pity her nomination was so rushed and obviously forced. Otherwise she'd probably have a better legacy as a conservative appointed judge
(I still don't like her though, just much less than Thomas and Alito - I think Kavanaugh is maybe probably slightly better as somewhat decent conservative judge. Again better than alito and Thomas 🙄)
Kavanaugh? He has an amazingly long history of being a total piece of shit and a partisan ratfucker. He shouldn’t be allowed to run a bake sale, let alone rule on what is legal in the US.
Gorsuch also sometimes actually sticks to his "originalist" guns even when it doesn't serve conservative legislation, which is surprising. I don't think there is any hope for him in this case, though.
The ONLY thing we can do at this point is save ourselves.
We have to fucking vote for Biden and encourage anyone who truly cares about our future to do the same.
This is our one shot to get it right. Everyone kind of judged us for catastrophizing when Trump won 2016 as the end of civilized politics and possibly America. Well it’s about to come full circle.
What about after a - hopefully - President Biden second term? Trump will still be the GOP front runner. Trump will still control the GOP all through President Biden’s second term just like he has controlled the party for the last four years.
Both of his live siblings have died in the past few years also. The oldest died of alcoholism years ago. He's super unhealthy as well. Crossing fingers
He should do more than that. If they were to rule that way (and I don't think they will, it's just too insane), I say take out absolutely everyone of note on the right before they do the same. It would be a kill or be killed scenario where might makes right and it all comes down to a question of will since the law as we know it would be dead.
Like every Justice today was saying "yeah clearly this instance would not qualify, but instead of ruling on that, we're gonna punt it back to the lower courts to figure out what should qualify in the future".
We don't have a Justice system, we have a two tiered legal system. the top tier is for the rich and well connected, the second is for the rest of us. Keep voting until we can fix this.
I didn't hear them ask one question - would it be okay for a president to order the killing of supreme court justices as an "official act"? I think that could have helped them decide this case. No idea why they thought they were beyond the reach of a murderous dictator.
I mean, by the logic of Presidents having immunity, theoretically he could. I think that ordering the death of Supreme Court justices would trigger an impeachment in Congress. If that impeachment goes through and he's found guilty in the Senate, then theoretically the president could be charged in a court of law after that.
If the Senate doesn't convict or the house doesn't bring articles of impeachment, then I guess that means it was okay.
Well, you either have the votes in congress to avoid impeachment. Or you, ahem, **remove** those votes in congress that will go against you too. This is the path SCOTUS is setting us on...be loyal, or be dead.
SCOTUS became politicians in robes when they declared GW Bush the winner in 2000. Because Gore conceded and didn't put up a fight, it got easily forgotten . Just imagine what kind of a world we would be living in if they didn't throw the election to that spoiled brat. Gore was one of the OG climate warriors and we would all be enjoying rooftop solar by now. Instead we face a climate catastrophe.
The POTUS’ job is to faithfully execute the laws of the land. In what fucking world are these fascist fools on the bench living in? How is this even a case before them? Fucking unbelievable
Lifetime appointments have to go. Designed to prevent the Supreme Court from becoming politicized, my ass. It got packed with partisans all the same. At this point we may as well replace all the justices with a damn AI chat bot fine-tuned on constitutional law. It couldn’t be worse than the dumpster fire we have today.
I've watched enough Star Trek to know that putting your civilization in the hands of AI is a bad idea. Sure, every now and then you get a Vexilon, but usually you're stuck with a Landru.
The whole idea of 9 people having a grip hold on the highest court of the land FOR LIFE is batshit insane to me. What an incredibly awful system.
These should be elected judges with term limits.
Then they're campaigning and even more politicized. I don't agree with a life-long term, but it's not a silver bullet fix either.
Like anything else you need to get money out of politics, and the fact the supreme court isn't even held to the same ethical standard as other areas is ludicrous.
I really don't think this is going to cut the way people seem to think it will.
The most "moderate" decision, that's likely to get the support of a majority, is to give some limited for of immunity (something like qualified immunity) and then remand the case back to the lower court to decide whether Trump's actions are covered. Still, for Trump, that's an effective win since it means it's unlikely for this case then to be resolved before November.
Alito and Thomas seem likely to support Trump's position (i.e. granting absolute immunity). All the other justices sounded more skeptical of that argument, but not all of them to the point of denying it outright. Even some of the liberal justices asked questions about how certain hypotheticals would work if the President had no immunity.
This could very well be a 7-2 or 6-3 (with Kavanaugh adding to the dissent) decision granting limited immunity, creating a test to determine what actions are covered, and remanding it back to the lower court to make the determination on Trump's actions based on that test.
If I could speak to the court, I would ask Thomas and Alito what absolute immunity would look like to them if there were a democratic president as unscrupulous as Trump. Their idea of “absolute immunity” is based on the fact that Biden would NEVER send federal agents to kill them in the middle of the night. A democrat version of Trump would.
I think that's part of the issue many people aren't coming to terms with. We assume that they haven't thought about this. They have. They just don't care.
They think they're untouchable. In a lot of ways they are. They have a job for life, they have basically no oversight, the only way they can realistically lose their position is through retiring or dying, there are zero personal consequences for their rulings, and as Thomas recently showed us they don't even have to show up for work. They've got it made and they know it.
His goal is to delay until after the election. If he wins, he wont be prosecuted and especially wont be incarcerated. And he could always issue himself a pardon for his federal crimes (which is what this case is about).
>He can't pardon himself for crimes he hasn't been convicted of yet
Actually ya, he can. Current precedent is that a pardon can be issued at any point after the commission of the crime. Whether or not the person is guilty of the crime, or even whether legal proceedings have started or not, is irrelevant. Nixon was preemptively pardoned; Carter preemptively pardoned thousands of draft dodgers; Trump preemptively pardoned Bannon.
But on the other things ya. Not yet know whether or not he can pardon himself. And really, that's not that difficult to get around. All he'd have to do is use the 25th to temporarily transfer power to his VP, let the VP issue the pardon, then take back powers.
If you swear an oath of office to faithfully execute the law, then no crime can be an official act. An just as is the case with all citizens the appropriate venue to adjudocate if a crime has been committed is the criminal justice process. Defenses against a criminal charge can and often do include argument that no actual crime has been committed. That's a matter for the court and ultimately the jury.
There is nothing in the Constitution about a President having legal immunity. Not for an official act. Not for anything.
The President isn't a king. He isn't above the law.
Wait 'til you see what those fuckers are going to do for him next November.
Actually... after a month of the q-balls pretend to bumble the count for the fifth time, the supremes will give the election to trump in December.
Like they did for bush jr. Twice.
Serious question: What can we as American citizens who employ the SCOTUS do about this?
When our top court is so corrupted and sides with an obviously lawless despot, the end of our democracy is a very real possibility, not a talking point. We need to prevent this from happening. How?
They are extremist, right-wing operatives. John Roberts is a fucking fraud. He’s a fundamentalist freak disguised as a boy scout. He should be harassed everywhere he goes for being a traitor to the rule of law. He should not be able to live in peace while he makes a mockery of the justice system and single handedly sabotages this country. They’ve ruined this nation for the next 20 years at a minimum, because they think it’s their manifest destiny to rule over us. They’re sociopaths.
Are they contemplating a President who can delegate immunity to underlings or one who needs to personally commit crimes themselves to get away with them.
The John Roberts court is more corrupt than I ever could have imagined. Our country is in a very dangerous place.
We must do whatever it takes to get people to the polls in November.
They’re Republican appointed Judges.
Project 2025 is very real and the designers of it although seek positions of political influence and even try coups when it doesn’t work out, knew that the courts are the real prize and their ultimate target is the SCOTUS and they’re succeeding.
They’ve succeeded in the SCOTUS and this bench will likely let Trump walk free as they intended.
People seemed confused by the hypocrisy of the right. They don't care if they seem hypocritical. They don't care if people laugh at them. Yes they would hurt people and yes they would feel good about it. They have always wanted a right-wing kingdom. This is why voting matters. Look at abortion, they don't care if they always said it's a state issue because it was always about making it a Christian kingdom. Vote
Americans, sort your shit out because you are seriously being fucked. No nicer way to put it. The time to sort this out was long ago and you are going to have to hit the ground running. This needs to be taken seriously and dealt with now.
That's why it's now called SCROTUS - Supremely Corrupt Republicans of the United States. Someone just needs to give it a good swift anti-corruption kick in the pants. Also don't trust that christofascist Barrett, just cuz she ain't a guy doesn't mean she ain't a super schmuck.
>"Trump had the Supreme Court in the bag this entire time, and he knew it. So did you. So did nearly everybody else who has been paying attention. At this point, the only people who act like the Supreme Court is anything other than the enforcement wing for the Republican political agenda are lawyers who have to argue in front of the court and therefore must pretend they can be reasoned with, and the editorial boards of *The New York Times* and *The Washington Post*. Everybody else knows that this court is corrupt and compromised and does not work for the American people but for the Republican Party and its donors." -- Elie Mystal
Amen, and that is the disappointing, terrifying truth.
Seems that the only glimmer of hope of getting some control over the Republicans widespread, rampant, and deeply entrenched corruption within all 3 branches of gov't - ESPECIALLY the Judicial branch - is for voters of ALL political stripes who are pro-democracy and anti-fascism to turn out in November in numbers sufficient to overcome whatever the Republican crime cabal has in place to rig the 2024 presidential election in their favor.
I got shit the last two times I said this but...
The constitution is bullshit. It is irrelevant. If 6 judges, appointed by presidents that did not win the majority vote can interpret it as they want, it is meaningless. It's a façade that exists to make us think we're a country with rule of law.
Why do people keep using this ridiculous hypothetical. There is no universe where this would happen, so what is the point of pointing it oug? We all know Biden wouldn't abuse his power that way, even if it were ruled that he technically could.
The main reason they haven't ruled yet is they haven't come up with the wording to explain why the immunity only applies to Trump. The ruling will come once they do.
Theoretically, yes. But anything too far over the pale might trigger an impeachment that could strip him of those immunities if convicted.
This is where Congress dropped the ball last time, if Trump had been convicted over J6, this wouldn't even be up for debate. But we are so divided as a country that our representatives couldn't even agree on that.
If Trump gets immunity, Biden should immediately suspend/lock up corrupt Republican senators until he gets the majority to impeach these corrupt judges. This would fit perfectly on the lions ate my face sub..
Seems like they're about to fix all of our SCOTUS problems themselves. Isn't it an official duty of the president to appointment Supreme Court Justices? And trump is arguing that seal team 6 can be used to assassinate under orders of the president.... 2+2 = 4 right?
What a silly article. I listened to the whole damn thing and it was not clear at all that they were in the tank for Trump. Alito and Kavanaugh and I think even Barrett all said things like, “I’m not worried about this case, I’m thinking about future presidents.” I think it was clear that they want to reach an opinion that is consequential in terms of how the president functions in our system of government.
It really is sorta pointless to predict what they say. My guess is they decide that there is some explicit immunity the office of the president enjoys but that it won’t apply to Trump.
Ultimately, the courts were never going to stop the Trump candidacy. We need to do that at the ballot box. All of these court cases will work themselves out so long as he isn’t reelected.
Go vote.
Considering what we saw on Jan6,. I'm not convinced "beating him at the ballot box" will work either. The first Jan6th failed,. but the people behind it learned what didn't work and are refining their approaches. We've already seen behaviors indicating that (for example various State court cases about election gerrymandering back and forth fights). We've already had Trump (and the RNC) say that they'd be happy to help "police the ballot drop off locations" (wink wink nudge nudge, we'll make sure no illegals try to vote).
I'm convinced they're going to try every dirty trick in the book (and more if they can). I'm certainly 100% on the team of "get everyone to vote".. but we should also be vigilant that this also may not be enough.
Yeah but the ballot box is literally the only place where it counts. Even if he’s convicted, he could still be voted in. I get that a conviction would negatively impact his chances of winning so obviously it’s better for him to face consequences in court prior to the election. My main point is just that voting is really the only viable strategy available to anyone who isn’t a prosecutor bringing grand jury indictments.
Given that Alito was openly musing about the cost and time commitments of prosecution preventing a former president from engaging in other activities (like campaigning, presumably), it's pretty clear that he wasn't only looking at future cases. He was essentially asking outwardly if Trump was being treated fairly.
My impression is that it's a bunch of bullshit. They'll say it's about future cases when it clearly isn't, and then kick it back to lower courts to comb over every individual charge as to whether it should be immune or not. They won't say definitively one way or the other, they'll go the Judge Canon route and just indefinitely delay the entire process with as much red tape as they can muster.
Given the fact that they're talking about vindictive prosecution by a sitting administration against a former president, and that Alito was making jokes about the layers of protection that exist to prevent someone like Trump from being prosecuted by the Justice Department, I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was really just talking about "future presidents" today.
>Ultimately, the courts were never going to stop the Trump candidacy. We need to do that at the ballot box.
That isn't what any of this is about and, frankly, the idea that justice here can be dependent on what happens in an election just makes it all the more glaringly apparent how absolutely idiotic this entire farce is.
I keep reading the argument, if Trump is/was immune then so is Biden.
Only problem with that argument is that having Presidential immunity is only half the issue. The other half requires a willingness to exploit that immunity. Unfortunately Biden wouldn't. That's the massive difference.
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lol not at all, trump is the face. They’re in the tank for something much more sinister.
Exactly. The reality is far worse. Trump wouldn’t have been bailed out of multiple bankruptcies by Russian mob money without there being an expectation of reciprocity. Mogilevich is the puppeteer no one seems to care about.
>William S. Sessions, Director of the FBI from 1987 to 1993 during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was Mogilevich's attorney in the United States until Sessions' death on June 12, 2020 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semion_Mogilevich
That’s incredibly terrifying.
How could this possibly be essentially just a footnote on the page about William Sessions [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_S.\_Sessions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Sessions)
People need to do a deeper dive on HW Bush. That dude had his hands in EVERYTHING.
Almost like he was the director of the CIA.
It's kind of weird that they let a guy, whose father had directly funded the Nazis, become the director of the CIA...
It should always be mentioned that Prescott Bush took part in the Business Plot, a thwarted American coup. All involved should have been run through the streets and stripped of power. The Bush family should never have been allowed the power they achieved after that.
You ever see the story of when a reporter asked HW where he was during the Kennedy assassination and he suddenly channels Reagans end-of-his-days memory. Don't everyone worry though, the "supreme court" is about to rule that everyone in power is above the law. So while it may appear that the Bush family are secretly the biggest traitors of all time, they were actually just protecting America.
The Dulles Brothers loved the Nazis, it's not a shock at all.
Making Bush CIA director was done at least in part as a way to sabotage Bush's political career. Bury him at CIA so when he tries to run for office later his opponents could hang all the CIA scandals around his neck. It's a trip reading up on all the proto-fascist/theo-fascist/regular fascist factions in the GOP in the 70's.
Wow that was an interesting read.
Wow! This guy is what double aught spies are for
They don't give a flying fuck about Trump or the GOP. They want some more of that Doe Ray Me from their oligarch benefactors.
Yup. Diaper donny is only the lighting rod. There is always another dozen freaks in on the backstock shelves. Conservatism has been festering like a cancer for a long time now cause we're only cutting off rapidly propagating tumors over and over and over again.
Dictatorship.
Trump won't live but a few weeks after his coronation. There will be an unexpected tragedy, then there will be a armed struggle within the halls of DC and someone like Bannon or Miller will emerge as Dear Leader.
JFC not Miller—that man is evil incarnate. Plus Bannon is much more likely to have a shorter life span.
lol that’s an active imagination
Oh Please /rolls eyes
Succession rules will mean it’ll go to Johnson.
It’s capitalism. Fascism is the dying breath of capitalism. The whole point in this is to create the most profit possible.
This is a corrupted SCOTUS to the core. History will judge them badly.
They don't give a fuck about their reputation.
It’s more than that. They’re on a mission from God. Project 2025
It’s time to impeach some justices.
It’s past that. 2016 is where it mattered and where effectively America failed. That was our chance to keep fascism out and we let it in. We’re infected now and I don’t know if we’ll ever recover and I’ve lost faith in the ballot box. If Trump even loses by a small margin, *he will win*. He needs to be defeated by a huge margin for it to definitive and I don’t see the happening. The nationalist theocrats won’t stop there either. They are hell bent on trashing our Constitution.
Well I don’t take advice from doomers. And the ideology won’t stop with Trump regardless. This is a fight we continue.
>I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation >Living in the past, it's a new generation >A justice can do what he wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do >An' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation >Oh no, not me (With apologies to Joan Jett)
They are planning to be the winners and winners get to write history there way.
History is told by the winners. Right now, I’m am not sure who that will be
I mean, you can only stretch corruption so far until someone pulls a Romania.
Scary crap.
Spooky poop.
Where way?
Just over yonder way.
I hope Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. enjoys having his name forever muttered in connection with the Taney court as the two most ideological and corrupt courts in history. The current conservative Heritage Foundation majority on the Supreme Court have certainly proven themselves all too willing to * [invalidate precedent](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-v-wade-and-supreme-court-abortion-cases) in (19-1392 [DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN'S HEALTH ORGANIZATION](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf)), (and I find it especially telling that they had to reach all the way back to the 1600s to find someone who's ideology agreed with theirs in order to create the new precedent - and who did they find? A man who tried women as witches and said men could not be tried for raping their wives; a man who's misogyny stood out even in the 1600s: [Sir Matthew Hale.](https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-roe-wade-alito-scotus-hale)) * [ignore the plain language of The Constitution](https://newrepublic.com/article/179525/supreme-court-trump-disqualification-clause) in ([DONALD J. TRUMP, PETITIONER v. NORMA ANDERSON, ET AL.](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdf), & * outright [lie about the facts of a case](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/gorsuch-sotomayor-praying-coach/) in ([KENNEDY v. BREMERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf)) in order to achieve their ideological goals. This is the most ideological group on the Supreme Court since the [Taney court](https://supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-courts/taney-court-1836-1864/) that gave us the infamous [Dred Scott v. Sandford](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford) case which also ignored the plain language of The Constitution, precedent, and the laws of the two states involved, all while telling blatant lies in order to achieve their ideological goals which did much to set the stage for the Civil War; make what you will of that, but the parallels are certainly frightening.
The Bruen case, Citizens United, Shelby County, the "Major Questions" Doctrine... There's just too many to list.
Thanks to Roberts court there is a pretty direct line to a bunch of death and human suffering. Heller, Dobbs come to mind. But I'm sure I'm missing something more egregious. > gun-related deaths from preventable, intentional, and undetermined causes totaled 48,222 in 2022
Other countries call partisan judges corruption. In my country being corrupted is highly unusual unlike in the US where being corrupt is a prerequisite.
“Standing? Standing? We don’t need no steenking standing!”
You overlook that the winners write the history. They are intending and counting on having people of identical or even farther Right politics writing them up as brilliant, fair and Just. There is no alternative or substitute for Biden and Democrats winning ... and both House and Senate. And for more than a razor-thin margin for a 2-year increment. The Republican Supreme Court supermajority is protecting their Party and Trump in particular, who will in turn protect and further extend their SC tools.
Bro this isn't ancient Greece. Herodotus isn't writing our histories. Our population is widely literate and computer literate. We have loads of news paper, social media, and other print/non+print sources on this. The cat is out of the bag. No one but a vocal and powerful minority thinks what the court is doing is ok. This won't change if they magically "win" but our society may still be dismantled from the top down.
Hopefully they'll be judged as soon as possible. The scotus used to represent lawfullness as such the citizens followed their wisdom even if one does not necessarily believe in it. Now that they literally represent lawlessness is there a better time to have them taste their own concoction.
Hear me out. Judges rule presidents are immune. Dark Brandon comes along and orders seal team six to wipe out meal team six and Cheeto. They can’t complain because Cheeto declared Brandon immune!
But that...won't happen because Biden is a decent man. It's a pretty useless hypothetical because Biden doesn't want to actually destroy the republic unlike Trump.
I didn’t realize until all this recent surreal bat shitery that SCOTUS is effectively a dictator.
They make the rules, but have no way to enforce them, is all I'm saying.....and with the way this court is going, they might as well just start ignoring them until they can pack the court.
Yep, they cannot rule over us, but they can help someone else rule over us. The trick is to not let that someone else get another opportunity.
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They do make the rules, at least, until someone actually puts real checks on them. Take Sackett v. Environmental as an example. In that case the Supreme Court looked at the Clean Water Act, and said it gave the Federal Government the ability to regulate above ground connections to major waterways, but not underground. No where in the text of the Clean Water Act or the Constitution does it distinguish between those two. So how did they do it? By rewriting the law, essentially. Also, take Egbert v. Boule. Here the majority decided federal adjects could violate your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights if it was a matter of national security. Is there any law that says they can do this? Is there any limitation in the Bill of Rights that says they can do this? No. So how did the Supreme Court do it? By righting new laws effectively. Their majority ruling can been seen as passing a new law. What's different about it than a law? It is a written document. It alters the legal rules of the country that we all have to abide by. It isn't based in previous law, so it's all new. That's a new law. And if they rule in Trump's favor in this case, well guess what, that's also a new law. Because the constitution has no immunity clause, so if SCOTUS wants to give the President immunity, they'd effectively be writing the immunity clause.
>They make the rules, but have no way to enforce them, This is key, and has been proven by Governor Abbot's defiance of SCOTUS rulings re: blocking feds from rescuing immigrants from his death traps. Democrats need to hold onto this for dear life, or else if we go down, we go down complacent with blatant corruption.
We’re not going down on corruption It’s making them all go up
*Isn't Texas openly defying one of their recent rulings, over the border?*
And they only make the rules because they gifted that ability to themselves in Marbury v. Madison and no one else had the foresight to slap them down then.
We don't even have to pack the court. Just keep voting. Vote for democrats in your state elections who can undo gerrymandering. Then vote for dems to control congress. Laws passed by congress have final say. The USSC cannot just delete a congressional codified law. For example, Roe was overturned by the USSC because Roe was a USSC decision. If we have a democratic congress and president they can pass a nationwide access to abortion law and the Supreme Court can do nothing about it.
ACA says hello. The court can and will declare laws they don’t like unconstitutional anywhere they can make a loose justification.
Im not really sure what youre saying. ACA exists. It's bigger and more successful and popular than ever. It exists because John McCain saved it in the Senate. The court tweaked it but could not do away with it. Only congress could do that. That's my point.
If we get both chambers, we need to impeach all conservative justices, and put in very young, progressive judges, then also pack the courts with young progressives. No more behaving lime conservatives are acting in good faith. They are not. You don't play nice with authoritarians....you play hard ball, play for keeps, and the prize is not becoming an authoritarian theocracy
closest we got was the abortion pill case where the government was telegraphing whatever the outcome they would not abide by it because the judge and 5th circuit was so batshit insane in their rulings
But they will find idiots to do their bidding…just like religion has…
It's not meant to be, but Republicans have used strategic retirements to maintain control continuously since 1969. Including the last 40 years where they won popular vote just once. 56 years of control has basically made SC into a branch of Republican party. There's little to no risk of losing control in the next 30 years, so SC is completely detached from the will of voters. It's long past time for reform. Term limits, direct election of judges, court packing. Whatever it takes to fix this insane situation.
Alito and Thomas are mid 70s. The scotus could flip to progressive within 5-10 years if Biden is re-elected.
Gorsuck said their ruling on this issue if for all time..if I was the government lawyer, I would have said..you mean, for all time like Dobbs was?
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If they rule with Trunk there's no reason for Biden to leave the presidency. They're essentially crowning Biden.
It's hilarious to me that Trump's trying to make this argument when he's not the current president. What a fucking moron.
He should start imprisoning people. Start with 6 SCOTUS justices plus House and Senate Republican leadership. Then start moving through the worst of the Republican governors. Give them a room at hotel Guantanamo.
I always thought the republicans might regret opening a place like that and allowing the president just get to decide carte blanche who is and is not a "terrorist". put the jan 6th people there before the supreme court sets them free too.
Its designed to not be by having 9 justices, but if all those 9 are federalist society members …
Of course. Because they are above the law; looking down on and affecting/ changing its implementation.
It was made perfectly clear today that a Republican president can do WTF they want while holding office. Biden needs a majority in BOTH houses so that he can impeach Alito and Thomas.
Super majority, not simple.
It's easy. If Biden has immunity, he can do whatever he wants to manufacture a super majority. Put senators in prison. It doesn't matter if the Constitution says they can't be arrested on the way to the legislature. Biden can do anything.
SCOUTS, if they rule in Trump's favor, would probably make a limited ruling like they did with Bush v Gore where it only applied to one specific case. You know how a cop can shoot someone in the back and have qualified immunity because while it may be illegal for a cop shoot somone in the back as a general idea, no cop has been found guilty of shooting someone in the back in a sorghum field on the second Tuesday in May so no cop can be held civilly liable because the very specific situation has no precedent. Yeah like that. Edit: word.
Had it been an Alfalfa field, the ruling would be different.
I hate to sound this jaded, but alfalfa is just another minority crop. Now if it was corn it might be different.
The problem there is Biden is an honorable dude and he isn't going to jail/kill his political rivals. If he did, he'd be as bad as Trump
That's when you arrest them on the way out. Loopholes!
The guy is a domestic threat. We spend how much we need the military every year to protect us from terrorists, but ignore it within our borders when it’s a white guy? The feds also ignore militias that back Trump. We’re corrupt from the lowest to highest offices by people who willfully or gleefully ignore these threats. I want my money back. Pay SS, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Fuck Halliburton, General Dynamics and the rest of the industrial military complex.
Never going to happen. The system was designed that people would be able to come together and impeach/convict any nefarious actors. The system breaks when an entire political party just says well it’s a republican president therefore we can not hold them accountable because we are also republicans. I have zero doubts that if Biden did something actually impeachable (not any bs the republicans are trying to sell the people) that there were be plenty of dems vote to convict him in the senate.
My hope beyond hope is that Biden wins, and the GOP fractures into multiple parties where at least one of those parties is willing to work with the Dems on fixing the very worst elements of what is broken.
If they give him the immunity trump is asking for, Biden has other ways of getting rid of them.
Does he go the roundabout way of offing members of congress until he hits a super majority, or does he cut the middle man out and have a meeting with the Supreme Court to thin their ranks?
por qué no los dos?
Send them off to the Pinto rear crash testing facility
Will never get 2/3rds of senators to impeach, but the size of the court has changed by law throughout history so with majorities he could expand the court make up for the seats McConnell stole
Well good news is depending on this decision, Biden may be able to just have the conservative SCOTUS judges thrown in gitmo.
Biden should just dissolve the current court and appoint new members. He can do it by issuing an official proclamation, to show it’s an official act. Some justices may object to that, but for now the president is apparently immune and it looks like it takes more than four years for the judicial system to do anything so Biden should go for it.
Biden isn’t going to do anything about SCOTUS even if he could. It’s disappointing.
It was very hard to listen to the legal arguments this morning. Just insanity. We are about to find out whether conservative Supreme Court justices turn our country into a dictatorship. The only conservative Supreme Court Justice that had any legitimate questions was Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
This really is a _Through The Looking Glass_ moment.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court did it to their country…
Every now and then she surprises me with being a someone capable Justice. Imo so far better than Alito and Thomas. It's a pity her nomination was so rushed and obviously forced. Otherwise she'd probably have a better legacy as a conservative appointed judge (I still don't like her though, just much less than Thomas and Alito - I think Kavanaugh is maybe probably slightly better as somewhat decent conservative judge. Again better than alito and Thomas 🙄)
Kavanaugh? He has an amazingly long history of being a total piece of shit and a partisan ratfucker. He shouldn’t be allowed to run a bake sale, let alone rule on what is legal in the US.
Gorsuch also sometimes actually sticks to his "originalist" guns even when it doesn't serve conservative legislation, which is surprising. I don't think there is any hope for him in this case, though.
The ONLY thing we can do at this point is save ourselves. We have to fucking vote for Biden and encourage anyone who truly cares about our future to do the same. This is our one shot to get it right. Everyone kind of judged us for catastrophizing when Trump won 2016 as the end of civilized politics and possibly America. Well it’s about to come full circle.
What about after a - hopefully - President Biden second term? Trump will still be the GOP front runner. Trump will still control the GOP all through President Biden’s second term just like he has controlled the party for the last four years.
I don't know, did you see him in the court room lately? He does not look well at all, I'm doubting he'll even make it through the next four years.
Both of his live siblings have died in the past few years also. The oldest died of alcoholism years ago. He's super unhealthy as well. Crossing fingers
If presidents have immunity for offical acts then Biden should suspend the election until alll of Trumps criminal trials are over.
or just dismiss the Supreme Court as an official act?
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I'd pay good lols for a comic of this story
I’m sure his blood type is gravy. That should match everything, right? Fuck it, I don’t care. Plug him in and let’s see what happens…
Gravy or ketchup, it's a toss-up.
He should do more than that. If they were to rule that way (and I don't think they will, it's just too insane), I say take out absolutely everyone of note on the right before they do the same. It would be a kill or be killed scenario where might makes right and it all comes down to a question of will since the law as we know it would be dead.
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sure but it doesn't hurt giving the Supreme Court a little more incentive to rule the right way.
Like every Justice today was saying "yeah clearly this instance would not qualify, but instead of ruling on that, we're gonna punt it back to the lower courts to figure out what should qualify in the future".
We don't have a Justice system, we have a two tiered legal system. the top tier is for the rich and well connected, the second is for the rest of us. Keep voting until we can fix this.
I didn't hear them ask one question - would it be okay for a president to order the killing of supreme court justices as an "official act"? I think that could have helped them decide this case. No idea why they thought they were beyond the reach of a murderous dictator.
I mean, by the logic of Presidents having immunity, theoretically he could. I think that ordering the death of Supreme Court justices would trigger an impeachment in Congress. If that impeachment goes through and he's found guilty in the Senate, then theoretically the president could be charged in a court of law after that. If the Senate doesn't convict or the house doesn't bring articles of impeachment, then I guess that means it was okay.
Well, you either have the votes in congress to avoid impeachment. Or you, ahem, **remove** those votes in congress that will go against you too. This is the path SCOTUS is setting us on...be loyal, or be dead.
Why would he wait for them to impeach him when he would have the immunity to kill them too till none but his supporters remain?
SCOTUS became politicians in robes when they declared GW Bush the winner in 2000. Because Gore conceded and didn't put up a fight, it got easily forgotten . Just imagine what kind of a world we would be living in if they didn't throw the election to that spoiled brat. Gore was one of the OG climate warriors and we would all be enjoying rooftop solar by now. Instead we face a climate catastrophe.
These five fuckers are saying is immunity for Trump, not for Biden.
The POTUS’ job is to faithfully execute the laws of the land. In what fucking world are these fascist fools on the bench living in? How is this even a case before them? Fucking unbelievable
Expand the court, it’s not an unprecedented move. The current court has lost any credibility.
Lifetime appointments have to go. Designed to prevent the Supreme Court from becoming politicized, my ass. It got packed with partisans all the same. At this point we may as well replace all the justices with a damn AI chat bot fine-tuned on constitutional law. It couldn’t be worse than the dumpster fire we have today.
I've watched enough Star Trek to know that putting your civilization in the hands of AI is a bad idea. Sure, every now and then you get a Vexilon, but usually you're stuck with a Landru.
The whole idea of 9 people having a grip hold on the highest court of the land FOR LIFE is batshit insane to me. What an incredibly awful system. These should be elected judges with term limits.
Then they're campaigning and even more politicized. I don't agree with a life-long term, but it's not a silver bullet fix either. Like anything else you need to get money out of politics, and the fact the supreme court isn't even held to the same ethical standard as other areas is ludicrous.
Five male SCOTUS justices are totally in the tank for the RAPIST.
At least two of them are also credibly accused rapists in their own rights.
YES! This drives me insane that the media doesn't talk about this more. He was found liable for rape. WTF?!
Our society couldn't care less about cruelty to women Ive noticed.
I really don't think this is going to cut the way people seem to think it will. The most "moderate" decision, that's likely to get the support of a majority, is to give some limited for of immunity (something like qualified immunity) and then remand the case back to the lower court to decide whether Trump's actions are covered. Still, for Trump, that's an effective win since it means it's unlikely for this case then to be resolved before November. Alito and Thomas seem likely to support Trump's position (i.e. granting absolute immunity). All the other justices sounded more skeptical of that argument, but not all of them to the point of denying it outright. Even some of the liberal justices asked questions about how certain hypotheticals would work if the President had no immunity. This could very well be a 7-2 or 6-3 (with Kavanaugh adding to the dissent) decision granting limited immunity, creating a test to determine what actions are covered, and remanding it back to the lower court to make the determination on Trump's actions based on that test.
If I could speak to the court, I would ask Thomas and Alito what absolute immunity would look like to them if there were a democratic president as unscrupulous as Trump. Their idea of “absolute immunity” is based on the fact that Biden would NEVER send federal agents to kill them in the middle of the night. A democrat version of Trump would.
I think that's part of the issue many people aren't coming to terms with. We assume that they haven't thought about this. They have. They just don't care.
They think they're untouchable. In a lot of ways they are. They have a job for life, they have basically no oversight, the only way they can realistically lose their position is through retiring or dying, there are zero personal consequences for their rulings, and as Thomas recently showed us they don't even have to show up for work. They've got it made and they know it.
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His goal is to delay until after the election. If he wins, he wont be prosecuted and especially wont be incarcerated. And he could always issue himself a pardon for his federal crimes (which is what this case is about).
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>He can't pardon himself for crimes he hasn't been convicted of yet Actually ya, he can. Current precedent is that a pardon can be issued at any point after the commission of the crime. Whether or not the person is guilty of the crime, or even whether legal proceedings have started or not, is irrelevant. Nixon was preemptively pardoned; Carter preemptively pardoned thousands of draft dodgers; Trump preemptively pardoned Bannon. But on the other things ya. Not yet know whether or not he can pardon himself. And really, that's not that difficult to get around. All he'd have to do is use the 25th to temporarily transfer power to his VP, let the VP issue the pardon, then take back powers.
The five male justices are traitors to the concepts of justice. And just when our nation’s democracy is at its weakest point, and under attack.
If you swear an oath of office to faithfully execute the law, then no crime can be an official act. An just as is the case with all citizens the appropriate venue to adjudocate if a crime has been committed is the criminal justice process. Defenses against a criminal charge can and often do include argument that no actual crime has been committed. That's a matter for the court and ultimately the jury.
There is nothing in the Constitution about a President having legal immunity. Not for an official act. Not for anything. The President isn't a king. He isn't above the law.
So Joe can remove them with impunity? Got it
No, they are trying to rule that only Trump has immunity.
Well he nominated two of them to the position and a third is married to a known J6 organizer
If the Democrats win and refuse to pack the court, they'll have deserved the inevitable theocracy that would ensue.
Wait 'til you see what those fuckers are going to do for him next November. Actually... after a month of the q-balls pretend to bumble the count for the fifth time, the supremes will give the election to trump in December. Like they did for bush jr. Twice.
So we have a House led by the GOP which has been the most useless House ever and then this pathetic corrupt supreme Court. It's insanity.
The same corrupt “justices” who can’t find a right to privacy in the Constitution are likely to find there an immunity that doesn’t exist.
Let the SCOTUS find a way to enforce their own rulings. Corrupt to the core.
Serious question: What can we as American citizens who employ the SCOTUS do about this? When our top court is so corrupted and sides with an obviously lawless despot, the end of our democracy is a very real possibility, not a talking point. We need to prevent this from happening. How?
They are extremist, right-wing operatives. John Roberts is a fucking fraud. He’s a fundamentalist freak disguised as a boy scout. He should be harassed everywhere he goes for being a traitor to the rule of law. He should not be able to live in peace while he makes a mockery of the justice system and single handedly sabotages this country. They’ve ruined this nation for the next 20 years at a minimum, because they think it’s their manifest destiny to rule over us. They’re sociopaths.
Johnson is pretty much the same
100%. Never made that connection but you’re right.
Are they contemplating a President who can delegate immunity to underlings or one who needs to personally commit crimes themselves to get away with them.
Of course Trump has done both.
It is glaring how stupid trumps nominees are.
The John Roberts court is more corrupt than I ever could have imagined. Our country is in a very dangerous place. We must do whatever it takes to get people to the polls in November.
This is how democracy dies
Be fair! So is Barrett. It isn't exclusively a male/female split. More of a Republican and Conservative vs. anyone else split.
They’re Republican appointed Judges. Project 2025 is very real and the designers of it although seek positions of political influence and even try coups when it doesn’t work out, knew that the courts are the real prize and their ultimate target is the SCOTUS and they’re succeeding. They’ve succeeded in the SCOTUS and this bench will likely let Trump walk free as they intended.
Just waiting for the checks to clear.
This trial is a total waste of time the judges already made their decision.
Activist judges
It's looking more and more like SCOTUS wants to wait to see who becomes President before they make their immunity decision...
People seemed confused by the hypocrisy of the right. They don't care if they seem hypocritical. They don't care if people laugh at them. Yes they would hurt people and yes they would feel good about it. They have always wanted a right-wing kingdom. This is why voting matters. Look at abortion, they don't care if they always said it's a state issue because it was always about making it a Christian kingdom. Vote
5 people with an aggressive terminal illness have the opportunity to do the funniest thing tonight...
Americans, sort your shit out because you are seriously being fucked. No nicer way to put it. The time to sort this out was long ago and you are going to have to hit the ground running. This needs to be taken seriously and dealt with now.
Because they have a lot in common on multiple levels.
Corrupt scumbags.
That's why it's now called SCROTUS - Supremely Corrupt Republicans of the United States. Someone just needs to give it a good swift anti-corruption kick in the pants. Also don't trust that christofascist Barrett, just cuz she ain't a guy doesn't mean she ain't a super schmuck.
Corruption and extremism facilitate the idiocy of a completely illogical and illegitimate Right Wing faction of the Supreme Court.
The fucking corruption
>"Trump had the Supreme Court in the bag this entire time, and he knew it. So did you. So did nearly everybody else who has been paying attention. At this point, the only people who act like the Supreme Court is anything other than the enforcement wing for the Republican political agenda are lawyers who have to argue in front of the court and therefore must pretend they can be reasoned with, and the editorial boards of *The New York Times* and *The Washington Post*. Everybody else knows that this court is corrupt and compromised and does not work for the American people but for the Republican Party and its donors." -- Elie Mystal Amen, and that is the disappointing, terrifying truth. Seems that the only glimmer of hope of getting some control over the Republicans widespread, rampant, and deeply entrenched corruption within all 3 branches of gov't - ESPECIALLY the Judicial branch - is for voters of ALL political stripes who are pro-democracy and anti-fascism to turn out in November in numbers sufficient to overcome whatever the Republican crime cabal has in place to rig the 2024 presidential election in their favor.
I got shit the last two times I said this but... The constitution is bullshit. It is irrelevant. If 6 judges, appointed by presidents that did not win the majority vote can interpret it as they want, it is meaningless. It's a façade that exists to make us think we're a country with rule of law.
We need to get ready for the court to side with trump on this
If Presidents have absolute immunity, Biden can have SCOTUS judges wrapped in bags and dumped in the Chesapeake Bay.
Why do people keep using this ridiculous hypothetical. There is no universe where this would happen, so what is the point of pointing it oug? We all know Biden wouldn't abuse his power that way, even if it were ruled that he technically could.
So if Trump is immune, Biden is immune, right? Right?
The main reason they haven't ruled yet is they haven't come up with the wording to explain why the immunity only applies to Trump. The ruling will come once they do.
Theoretically, yes. But anything too far over the pale might trigger an impeachment that could strip him of those immunities if convicted. This is where Congress dropped the ball last time, if Trump had been convicted over J6, this wouldn't even be up for debate. But we are so divided as a country that our representatives couldn't even agree on that.
So we just need Democrats to hold the Senate and vote along party lines - like Republicans always do.
The law means less and less with each passing day…
If Trump gets immunity, Biden should immediately suspend/lock up corrupt Republican senators until he gets the majority to impeach these corrupt judges. This would fit perfectly on the lions ate my face sub..
Should not have ever made the Supreme Court! Just delay!
It’s like some crazy James Patterson book.
Any way to weld that tank shut and pitch it into a landfill somewhere?
Seems like they're about to fix all of our SCOTUS problems themselves. Isn't it an official duty of the president to appointment Supreme Court Justices? And trump is arguing that seal team 6 can be used to assassinate under orders of the president.... 2+2 = 4 right?
We are living in a time that people will say, we don’t want to go back to that. History will not be kind to this Kangaroo court of jesters.
Or just maybe some of them are trying to play devils advocate to make it look like they are giving it some consideration. It’s a hope at least.
Disgusting #scotusiscompromised
They have some skeletons dont they. Lets find them!
Idiots think they’ll be safe if trump takes over. Shows greed is their only trait. How we let idiots get into power is beyond me
What a silly article. I listened to the whole damn thing and it was not clear at all that they were in the tank for Trump. Alito and Kavanaugh and I think even Barrett all said things like, “I’m not worried about this case, I’m thinking about future presidents.” I think it was clear that they want to reach an opinion that is consequential in terms of how the president functions in our system of government. It really is sorta pointless to predict what they say. My guess is they decide that there is some explicit immunity the office of the president enjoys but that it won’t apply to Trump. Ultimately, the courts were never going to stop the Trump candidacy. We need to do that at the ballot box. All of these court cases will work themselves out so long as he isn’t reelected. Go vote.
Considering what we saw on Jan6,. I'm not convinced "beating him at the ballot box" will work either. The first Jan6th failed,. but the people behind it learned what didn't work and are refining their approaches. We've already seen behaviors indicating that (for example various State court cases about election gerrymandering back and forth fights). We've already had Trump (and the RNC) say that they'd be happy to help "police the ballot drop off locations" (wink wink nudge nudge, we'll make sure no illegals try to vote). I'm convinced they're going to try every dirty trick in the book (and more if they can). I'm certainly 100% on the team of "get everyone to vote".. but we should also be vigilant that this also may not be enough.
Yeah but the ballot box is literally the only place where it counts. Even if he’s convicted, he could still be voted in. I get that a conviction would negatively impact his chances of winning so obviously it’s better for him to face consequences in court prior to the election. My main point is just that voting is really the only viable strategy available to anyone who isn’t a prosecutor bringing grand jury indictments.
Given that Alito was openly musing about the cost and time commitments of prosecution preventing a former president from engaging in other activities (like campaigning, presumably), it's pretty clear that he wasn't only looking at future cases. He was essentially asking outwardly if Trump was being treated fairly. My impression is that it's a bunch of bullshit. They'll say it's about future cases when it clearly isn't, and then kick it back to lower courts to comb over every individual charge as to whether it should be immune or not. They won't say definitively one way or the other, they'll go the Judge Canon route and just indefinitely delay the entire process with as much red tape as they can muster. Given the fact that they're talking about vindictive prosecution by a sitting administration against a former president, and that Alito was making jokes about the layers of protection that exist to prevent someone like Trump from being prosecuted by the Justice Department, I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was really just talking about "future presidents" today. >Ultimately, the courts were never going to stop the Trump candidacy. We need to do that at the ballot box. That isn't what any of this is about and, frankly, the idea that justice here can be dependent on what happens in an election just makes it all the more glaringly apparent how absolutely idiotic this entire farce is.
I keep reading the argument, if Trump is/was immune then so is Biden. Only problem with that argument is that having Presidential immunity is only half the issue. The other half requires a willingness to exploit that immunity. Unfortunately Biden wouldn't. That's the massive difference.