AOC wants to impeach SCOTUS justices following Trump immunity ruling
AOC wants to impeach SCOTUS justices following Trump immunity ruling
The congresswoman said the Supreme Court has become "consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control."
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I'm a little confused. Isn't their ruling just a deferral back to lower courts?
They didn't grant him absolute immunity, they just reaffirmed the incredibly broad language in Article II Section 3 of the Constitution.
They're not giving him immunity for everything he did as president, they just aren't interested in being the authority that decides what is or isn't an "official act". They are letting lower courts decide that.
If there's something I'm missing here, I would love to know, but it feels like people are misunderstanding this decision en masse.
How do you square your take with the dissenting judges that say it effectively makes the president king?
I guess I just don't understand Sotomayor's response. She says that Trump got the immunity he asked for, but that's not true. He was asking for everything he did as president to be considered an "official act", and they deferred to the lower courts.
It doesn't appear that anything actually changed. I am assuming I am wrong on that, but none of the articles I have read so far have answered that question. There are just a lot of assertions that he was granted absolute immunity, which doesn't match the language of the court's opinion.
I would have preferred that they draw a line on specific acts not being considered "official acts", especially as we draw the line between Trump's presidency and his 2020 reelection campaign. I'm just not seeing a lot of honest discourse as to what this decision actually means from a legal perspective.
I would have preferred that they draw a line on specific acts not being considered "official acts", especially as we draw the line between Trump's presidency and his 2020 reelection campaign. I'm just not seeing a lot of honest discourse as to what this decision actually means from a legal perspective.
Well, that's exactly the problem that has everyone up in arms here. They have made this ruling but conveniently failed to rule on what constitutes an "official" act. Therefore whenever a major ruling has to be done about this, they can decide at that time whether an act was official or not based on what flavor of president they're ruling for or against, and until then the lower courts can take the heat off the SCOTUS directly by just ruling that everything Trump has ever done is legal because he was president once.
It's a very transparently partisan ruling, setting the stage for further partisan ruling in the future by being extremely vague about what their ruling actually is. This ruling boils down to "the president is allowed to do anything he wants when we say so, and is subject to rule of law only when we say so, and whether we say so will be determined after the acts in question." In this way the conservative-packed supreme court can easily enable a conservative president or trap a liberal one.
What it does set up though is an official legal stand to say that the supreme Court gets to decide what's "official". Meaning they can decide that all Trump's actions are official and all of Biden's (or whatever dem president) are not
This was already the arrangement. That's why Trump was even at the Supreme Court. He was asking for them to decide that everything he did as president was an "official act". They gave the right to decide that back to the lower courts, where it could theoretically come back to them with a more specific set of actions that they need to decide upon.
Of course, the idea that the SCOTUS is corrupted to the point that they would protect Republicans and sabotage Democrats is a worth discussing, but that seems like a wholly different issue that we allowed the highest court in the country to be corrupted by overt partisanship.
It doesn't seem so much that the claim is that the SCOTUS gave Trump immunity, but that nobody trusts the court system to draw that line to begin with.
It allows for immunity to any "official acts" by the president while they are in office and does not define what an "unofficial" act would be. So if an action is challenged from the lower courts it'll end up at the supreme court where they will deem it official or unofficial.
Which brings the onus of dethroning a king president up to the Congress to impeach them. Which has never happened. However, we have impeached a supreme court justice in the past.
They did rule that you can't question a president about his motivations or reasons for any particular act when determining whether it was official or not. Only whether the act itself qualifies as official or not, regardless of the reason behind it.
This, to my understanding, is how things already worked. We've just never had to draw the line before because we haven't ever had to charge a former president with a crime. My understanding is that the SCOTUS refused to draw the line, not that they granted the office of president absolute immunity.
That's like letting your oldest kid do whatever he wants, and after punching your other two little kids and eating their candy you let him figure out if he should be punished and you let him punish himself.
They’re not giving him immunity for everything he did as president, they just aren’t interested in being the authority that decides what is or isn’t an “official act”. They are letting lower courts decide that.
That's pretty much what they did but that's not how it's being presented by the media so you've got 30,000,000 people all riled up and ready to riot. I would have preferred if SCOTUS found a way to definitively settle this without the Remands but I understand why they did it.
The lower court will take about an hour to decide that this stuff was "unofficial" and write the legal narrative supporting that. Hell I'd be shocked if it wasn't already done. This isn't even close to over.
I think the Dems are trying to spin this as another item in the "war for Democracy" when really it's just the SC re-affirming the constitution. It's also very conveniently timed to detract attention from the growing calls for Biden to step down after his less than ideal debate performance.
When an item gets put onto the political agenda list, it becomes polarized and if you are on Party A or Party B you immediately support or reject it based on affiliation with little thought.
conveniently timed
They’ve had the case since December’23. Don’t spread conspiracy thinking.
This is standard campaigning strategy. If the news cycle is bad for your candidate, try to refocus the narrative. Now people aren't talking about Biden's age but the SC decision.
They're making a bigger deal about it than it actually is in order to better their chances for campaign.
I don't see the conspiracy in this, it's standard stuff.
So, the Biden administration had the majority conservative Supreme Court rule that Presidents are immune from prosecution. Obviously, Biden is hiding his power level. /s
You're not understanding me. I'm not claiming he orchestrated this decision. I'm saying his campaign is using this decision as an opportunity to deflect attention away from the concerns around his age that erupted after the debate.
Never let a good crisis go to waste and all that. Am I speaking Greek?
I suppose he’s also using Hurricane Beryl as a distraction too.
It's PR 101. I'm not making a controversial statement. Biden would be stupid not to. He has competent campaign officials.
This Supreme Court decision effectively ended democratic America, and Biden won’t get any younger.
You're not making sense
They're making a bigger deal about it than it actually is
If, however, the court’s decision frees future presidents to act in corrupt, even criminal ways, then the “rule for the ages” articulated in this opinion will have a major impact upon the separation of powers among the three branches of government, potentially giving far more power to the president than has been the case throughout American history. That will have huge implications for the functioning of the presidency and the stability, if not existence, of American democracy. source
It’s a big deal. Of course Biden would rather talk about the case, it undermines the entire democracy. His age will continue to be a focus of the election, Republicans will not let it go.
Can we also acknowledge how horrible reporting is on major cases and rulings? I've seen barely any coverage of Loper Bright and what the headlines say about it is largely inaccurate.
You're getting downvoted because Lemmy, but that's more or less how I read the ruling as well. They ruled very specifically in a way that let them punt on all the other questions these trials have created.
I'd hoped for better, but not realistically.