@Alon Harris is included in Other, I promise!
2024 Democratic nominee should be
42.9%
Biden
(18 votes)
57.1%
Other
(24 votes)
from Tressie McMillan Cottom https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/06/opinion/biden-debate-scotus-immunity.html
However poorly Biden performed at that debate (and he was embarrassing), debates are theater. However ill equipped the Democratic Party is to provide an heir apparent — and they are embarrassingly unprepared for this predictable eventuality - their dysfunction is not the clear and present danger. The Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity is a harbinger of not just the court's growing power but of Democrats' inability to mount a populist defense. This conservative bloc on the court reflects years of undemocratic political maneuvering, from Mitch McConnell stealing a seat to the political activism of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. Their decisions are not only codifying minority interests, they are a show of strength for a Republican Party that has no intention of ever ceding power to majority will again. If you take your eye off the ball of democracy for any length of time, no amount of history will save you. Americans have taken our eyes off the ball. I have not wanted to make that call.
Do we really need judicial review? See Nikolas Bowie https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Bowie-SCOTUS-Testimony.pdf
// I feel like the upsides of judicial review are given shirt shrift. Miranda rights, gay marriage, until recently abortion rights all derive from judicial review. Reading this piece, you’d think the only minority rights the Court ever protected were rights of the wealthy. But in a post-Roe world with a weaponized Supreme Court legalizing corruption and authoritarianism, judicial review is becoming hard to defend.
@Hyolobrika @AltonDooley @volkris No. Quite the contrary. The President is given absolute immunity for "conclusive and preclusive" "official acts" including "commanding the Armed Forces of the United States; granting reprieves and pardons", and "at least presumptive immunity" for all other official acts. The majority explicitly states that "Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law." 1/
![Text:
(1) When the President acts pursuant to “constitutional and stat- utory authority,” he takes official action to perform the functions of his office. Fitzgerald, 456 U. S., at 757. Determining whether an action is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s au- thority to take that action. But the breadth of the President’s “discre- tionary responsibilities” under the Constitution and laws of the United States frequently makes it “difficult to determine which of [his] innu- merable ‘functions’ encompassed a particular action.” Id., at 756. The immunity the Court has recognized therefore extends to the “outer pe- rimeter” of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.” Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F. 4th 1, 13 (CADC).
In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. Such a “highly intrusive” inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to ju- dicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose. Fitz- gerald, 457 U. S., at 756. Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law. Oth- erwise, Presidents would be subject to trial on “every allegation that an action was unlawful,” depriving immunity of its intended effect.](media_attachments/files/112/738/353/619/464/492/original/746a6ebf41fad1a3.png)
Text: (1) When the President acts pursuant to “constitutional and stat- utory authority,” he takes official action to perform the functions of his office. Fitzgerald, 456 U. S., at 757. Determining whether an action is covered by immunity thus begins with assessing the President’s au- thority to take that action. But the breadth of the President’s “discre- tionary responsibilities” under the Constitution and laws of the United States frequently makes it “difficult to determine which of [his] innu- merable ‘functions’ encompassed a particular action.” Id., at 756. The immunity the Court has recognized therefore extends to the “outer pe- rimeter” of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.” Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F. 4th 1, 13 (CADC). In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives. Such a “highly intrusive” inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to ju- dicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose. Fitz- gerald, 457 U. S., at 756. Nor may courts deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law. Oth- erwise, Presidents would be subject to trial on “every allegation that an action was unlawful,” depriving immunity of its intended effect.
@Hyolobrika @AltonDooley @volkris People understandably presume reasonableness of the Court, try to fill gaps in in such a way as you could say, look, this is a balanced measure to prevent harassing or politically motivated prosecution while continuing to ensure that Presidents follow the law. But read the text. It is not that, not at all. It provides absolute immunity for actions with sufficient scope to order violent lawlessness and protect perpetrators from any criminal accountability. /fin
@ike to say i'm deeply concerned would be an understatement.
[new draft post] If the issue was the lawfare https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/07/05/if-the-issue-was-the-lawfare/index.html
Should Democrats strategically poll?
If a pollster calls, and you are one of the weirdoes who takes pollster calls, and of course you would vote for Biden rather than Trump, but you think Biden should pass the baton, should you lie and say you'd vote for Trump to put greater pressure on the Biden campaign?
@data_from_space fucking with you, then making you take a breath and think about what is being communicated.
"Right now each of these scenarios are equally possible but that does not mean they are equally likely." #CassidySteeleDale https://cassidysteeledale.substack.com/p/possible-futures-for-the-2024-democratic
// an interesting framing for when probabilities over a set of scenarios are not knowable, but none are overwhelmingly likely or vanishingly unlikely
@Hyolobrika @rms @waltercool if the issue were preventing "lawfare" and spirals of politically motivated convictions, the decision would look nothing like this. yes, it would grant immunity to the President.
BUT IT WOULD NARROW HIS PARDON POWER AND ENABLE INQUIRIES INTO MOTIVATION.
it would hold unelected subordinates inescapably accountable for following unlawful orders.
this is the accountability equilibrium we created after the Nixon administration. Nixon's henchmen went to jail.
1/
@Hyolobrika @rms @waltercool this is a decision calculated, in its own words, to enable "bold and unhesitating" (ha!) Presidential action, not to prevent scurrilous prosecutions. it is about reducing accountability, quite explicitly with respect to the President himself, but implicitly of all subordinates by placing the pardon power within the charmed circle of that which cannot be questioned. /fin
it is better to prevent than to punish.
The pain was impossible. He thrust the blade again and again and again. Into belly. Leg. Chest. My only consolation was this would end. It had to end, very soon. This will end!
I hadn't realized I had spoken aloud, but he laughed. Pausing only for a moment he asked, "Don't you believe in knife after death?"
Text: The Supreme Court has, for example, (1) taken away the right to choose whether to have an abortion, (2) decided that the Courts (packed with Trump appointees) not scientists or experts will get to decide whether our air and water is clean, (3) legalized taking bribery after its own members were caught taking bribes, (4) declared that the violent attempts to stop Congress in an insurrection is not a crime of interfering with Congress, with two members of the majority refusing to recuse even when evidence came out that they supported the insurrection, (5) created out of thin air a new rule that Presidents are immune from the crimes committed in office even though the Constitution specifically says that former presidents are subject to prosecution and the founders wrote that a president can be held criminally liable.
@ike Presidents have long has immunity from civil suits stemming from "official acts". The 1982 decision that established that explicitly excluded criminal immunity.
Whether that was right or wrong, gathered as "the people" we still could hold the President accountable for unlawful action, criminal abuses.
Not anymore!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_v._Fitzgerald
Judge Jackson: "While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death. Put another way, the issue here is not whether the President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exercises that authority."
The Constitution is not a homicide pact!
Text: Make no mistake about it — this is the most radical, destructive, arrogant Supreme Court in the entire history of the United States of America. John Roberts promised us it wasn’t his job to pick up a bat, and yet he’s spent his time as Chief Justice using a baseball bat to bludgeon the Constitution and the institutions of our government he promised to protect. It’s long past time for us to stop him and his fellow bagmen from the Federalist Society before they finish the hit job they’ve been contracted for. Make no mistake: the Supreme Court will the most important issue of this election, and long beyond that. Democrats need to treat it like the fundamental crisis it is, both on the campaign trail and in congressional committees which must hold in-depth hearings and advance legislative solutions immediately. The Court’s conservative majority has revealed itself to be the most direct threat to American democracy, and any Democrat who is not ready to shelve old fears about “court packing” and get serious about expanding and reforming the Court isn’t made for this moment, period. This is serious. Act like it.
Screenshot of BlueSky post by Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social - 6 days ago - Right-wing SCOTUS majority in Grants Pass: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges." But unironically. [Quoting the Supreme Court majority decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson] Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 159. Because the public-camping laws in this case do not criminalize status Robinson is not implicated.