Don Moynihan: This is the ball game folks, the authoritarian green light laid out in advance. Congress will not impeach Trump. And SCOTUS now blesses him with extraordinary latitude to do whatever he wants in power. A second administration will not be constrained by Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy or law.

This is the ball game folks, the authoritarian green light laid out in advance. Congress will not impeach Trump. And SCOTUS now blesses him with extraordinary latitude to do whatever he wants in power. A second administration will not be constrained by Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy or law.

Trump, who tried to overthrow an election, campaigned persistently for his fellow party members to grant him absolute immunity for his misdeeds in office. And they did. If you can't distinguish between "energy in the executive" and a constitutional crime spree, you've given up on US democracy.

SCOTUS simply would grant such broad presidential immunity if a) it was a Democratic President accused of significant wrongdoing, and b) if it was not confident of generational control of the court, which effectively gives it final say on any outcome.

If it is willing to read such broad expansive protections for the Presidency, expect it to commit to a maximalist view of unitary executive in a second Trump term, with a broad interpretation of Article II powers (goodbye civil service system, independent agency authority).

DOJ Independence: gone. This has been a radical position that Trump has proposed, and his fellow indictees like Jeffery Clark has pushed. Roberts just said, yeah, why not. Lets make that the law. bsky.app/profile/nycs...

Chief Justice Roberts decrees the end of DOJ independence in an offhanded sentence on page 20.

As noted above, you don't grant the presidency such power without feeling confident that your team will have semi-permanent ability to shape that grant of discretion. bsky.app/profile/gaut...

However, the Court’s GOP majority did not issue a test for “official” v. “Unofficial” acts so that it can remain the ultimate arbiter of what can or cannot be prosecuted

Genuine question, is there anything we can do about this? There has to be something we can do about this.

There are illegal things we can do about this. When the law is "whatever we say goes" anything to change that is illegal.

get people to vote in November the GOP establishment decided to suck it up and support the guy they didn't like, and look what it's getting them

Somebody could Shinzo Abe trump, the conservative SC justices, Repub party leadership, and a bunch of lower court Judges.

And pardoning is an unquestionably official act, but this decision says courts cannot inquire about the motivations, so pardoning for corrupt purpose is also immune. If he gets in, he's only ever leaving in a body bag.

So, does this mean that Biden just needs an official statement / report that Trump is an immediate threat to the country to have the navy seals merc him? This ruling is insane.

So straight up ordering that all his cases be dropped is now fine.

Find an “official” pretext to remove the six bad ones and leave just the three liberals. Culling the court has the same effect as expanding it. Also, if they’re going to accuse everyone of being a “Soros” puppet no matter what, then let’s give them what they’re begging for

That's key: they create a totally blurry distinction between "official" and "unofficial" acts, to be enforced by them, which allows them to ensure that immunity applies to Republican presidents only. All the jokes about Biden calling on SEAL Team 6 can only reinforce this terrifying point.

would *not* grant (though I expect you'll fix this quickly)

I don't have any idea how to create such a thing, but seems like a good idea to build a GOTV campaign around the slogan "Democracy begins with D", encouraging folks to vote a straight D ticket.

This is a coup people. Recognize it for what it is.

that and all future anti democratic administrations, there will never be a normal election again

A simple widow maker can solve this.

Let this be the new Dobbs. No, let this AND Dobbs be our call to action. Dems and progressives: Wake tf up.

How will voting for Biden or the Dems fundamentally challenge the power of the supreme court? Biden must take extreme action against the court before the election if he wants to show he's serious.

So, semi serious question. If Biden determines that his reelection efforts are best served by reducing Mar-a-Lago and its owners to a smouldering pile of rubble, and halving the amount of supreme court justices... What's there to stop him, other than a naive sense of decency and fairness?

It would be a mistake to start at "drone attack." Maybe start at "Random Trump tax return goes public."

This is Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, Steve Bannon level deconstruction of the administrative state. The plan of the conservatives for a long time now.

That's the definition of "dictator".

Maybe it's time for liberals and progressives to start treating the MAGAts in their lives like the fascist enablers they are through shaming and shunning. bsky.app/profile/insa...

If you're still on good terms with Trump-supporting family or friends, what are you waiting for to happen before you'll impose a social cost by cutting them out of your life? Are you going to brush human soot off your sleeve on your way to Thanksgiving, if it comes to that?

What if the most powerful man in the United States did something meaningful instead? Why can't Joe Biden lead by example?

That's not something I have very much control over, and this is something I can control, so this is one thing I'm doing. Hope that helps!

That means the Court also blesses *Biden* with extraordinary latitude. So Biden can assert that SCOTUS has gone authoritarian (as you say) and use his newfound latitude to pack the Court immediately, in the name of restoring democracy. Please join people calling for him to do that.

Were fucked. The democracy is doomed

Civil war is inevitable now. Individual Americans need to decide their own laws to protect themselves against a tyrannical and bribed Republican elite. Buy a weapon. Learn how to use it. When the MAGAs come for your family, don’t be shy in protecting yourself. @chrislhayes.bsky.social

We the people cannot let him win.

"Guard Rails? Who needs stinking, Gaurd Rails?"

And the whole while we were trying to get Trump convicted of fomenting insurrection SCOTUS was leading one.

So long as the Republicans hold more than a third of the seats in the Senate, Trump will not be removed no matter what he does.

The failure of Trump and his advisers was in believing that the law mattered and that they had to somehow justify the coup legally. SCOTUS just made clear Trump just needed to do the coup "official" and it would be approved.

I really though the Court wouldn’t hand him this power. I thought they’d recognize it as fully surrendering to Trump, and that in a second term, if the gave him this, they wouldn’t retain much of their power

Why his supreme court appointments were not voided is beyond me. Why they ever passed muster in the first place is just insane. And now we all reap the consequences.

This is all illegitimate though. I don't think we should treat it as anything more than an illegitimate act of madmen. Since they have the levers of the system, we don't currently have a solution but they have essentially broken the constitution.

Leopards. Face. Nom. I am just hoping to die early on in his term if he is elected again. I assume I will he uses his complete powers to disband the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, and all social safety nets. Government funds sustain most healthcare facilities. Who needs any of it?

Well to be fair the ruling only stops him from being prosecuted after he leaves office, assuming he's even alive then. Not sure how the Court would interpret such actions in real time if they were done without an act of Congress.

I think we can guess

And this is why so many states have been so busy rewriting their “approved” history books. They fully intend to repeat what happened in mid-1930s Europe.

A second administration did not need this ruling, except perhaps to improve the odds of being one.

So. What are some fucking #CoreActs open to #DarkBrandon to nail #Trump & prove that he is not the over-the-hill spineless woos that millions saw at the debate. It is fucking time to get down and DIRTY vs. wannabe #dictator Trump and the coup-continuing #IllegitimateSCOTUS. NICE is NOT going to win.

Wonder who Seal Team 6 will assassinate on Jan 21, 2025? Will the presidential transition team draw up a list of targets before the inauguration so the killing can start immediately?

So the only thing left to constrain Trump, if he wins, is illegal force. America is over at that point.

Why, oh why were the founding fathers so howlingly naive?

They weren’t! They were smart men. It’s just that time and generations modified the rules beyond what was intended in the first place. Leading to this.

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