Robert Black: The analogy to the executive privilege cases is really weird?? Like, they're obviously separate matters...

Oh fun, I'm literally one paragraph in to the analysis in Trump v. US and my blood is already boiling

Guys you wanna... you wanna read that one back again a couple of times?

The analogy to the executive privilege cases is really weird?? Like, they're obviously separate matters...

The opinion is quite sloppy, throughout, about the distinction between "immunity from process while in office" and "immunity from substantive liability thereafter"

Citing previous "we let Trump get away with things" cases as precedent for letting him get away with Actual Crimes now is bleakly hilarious

Aaaaaaaaaand now we're giving structural inference a bad name

Oh this is egregiously wrong

Guys Guys LISTEN TO YOURSELVES!!!!!

The next president can prosecute them... for... for the crimes they did???

This is the part that really caught me off guard in the opinion. Folks rightly focus on, well, the top-line. But this is just a complete misunderstanding of executive privilege or where it comes from, and is patently, grossly invented for one man and for one case

Like, executive privilege is a lot of things, but it's not a 4A evidence exclusionary thing. It just ... isn't. It's entirely different worlds

What is: things that happen with a results-based jurisprudence?

They conflate so many different things in the opinion, it's infuriating! Makes it like, actually tricky to make a concise critique of the reasoning?

They conflate "within the scope of official duties" with "not ultra vires" throughout the entire damned thing That's arguably the core of it??

100%. It takes the (imo correct) basic idea that you need to distinguish president as office and president as man, and then sort of smooshes that idea along with large numbers of obviously unrelated concepts into a chatgpt-esque bullshit machine to get to a result that's just completely unhinged

Like, all of the hypotheticals are weirdly straightforward in the "two bodies" analysis. Can President Obama kill al-Awlaki? Yes. Because he takes that act in his official capacity (whether you agree or not with the outcome, it's relatively straightforward). Can Nixon bug DNC? No. Because it's not.

But then they just completely botch what it means for something to be done in an official capacity and then decide it's done in an official capacity if there's /any/ plausible externalities that could indicate the trappings of the office are involved, such as asking officials to do it

Right, I guess the interesting question is "if Obama has al-Awlaki killed and it turns out that was ultra vires, can he be prosecuted for murder?"

Also killing Al-Awlaki for reasons of and using a method of causation that runs through his official duties indicates it is manifestly the President doing it.

Right, the valid kernel is "if you had actual legal authority to do it, it wasn't a crime" But that's not the holding. If that were the holding nobody would be mad!

Right, this is a really good point that has been dancing around my mind. Like “official duties” is stuff you can do by virtue of holding the office, but like that doesn’t mean that you’re permitted to do that thing whenever, under any circumstances, for any reason. Until now that is.

Everybody makes jokes about ordering drone strikes on Mar-a-Lago, etc. which is obviously insane. But Biden should be using the ruling to "fire a shot across the bow" on some policy matters, if only to highlight the extent of SCOTUS' partisan corruption.

I think it would be hilarious if he had the 6 conservative SCOTUS justices’ catalytic converters stolen, refined, and minted into a coin that erased a significant fraction of the national debt.

Cut the coin back into six pieces and return the scrap to them in gratitude for their role in freeing up Congress to spend more freely.

(Catalytic converters not withstanding, I've long said POTUS should just mint the coin to end the debt ceiling)

It doesn’t work—part of the problem with a creative solution is that the legal uncertainty itself would have calamitous effects, even if you’re ultimately vindicated. But don’t put anything past this court either

Not worse calamitous effects than just hitting default though I agree it makes sense not to do it until you're really up against it

so i'm not super brushed up on my economics, but wouldn't minting a 10tn coin to pay off U.S. debt cause apocalyptic levels of inflation? /gen

Actually, no Krugman I believe has written about this. The key is it doesn't actually create new spending

Nope. Oddly enough, you could mint a $100 quadrillion coin, hell, a $100 quadrillion coin every single day, and it would have *zero* effect on inflation.

This, except unironically. You know if Trump gets in office he’s going to print money and give it to himself. Or he’s going to ignore the 1974 Impoundment law and just take money from blue states or blue members of Congress or Ukraine or... Get the SC to declare this illegal now.

Right. The reason everyone (except, for some reason, the SCOTUS majority) understands Biden can't ST6/drone strike his opponent is because everyone understands it's (a) not authorized (b) not official (c) violates the basic social contract in multiple directions, so would be a gross abuse of office.

Which makes the decision all the less defensible. The hypothetical was raised at SCOTUS OA, at OA at DDC, and in the dissent, and at every stage Trump's counsel and, eventually, the majority just didn't address it, even though it has a very straightforward answer

it's not like it's some hyperventilating op-ed or a blogpost that brought it up. It was raised directly.

I haven't--maybe I won't--put in writing all the gaming I've been doing assuming Biden drops out of the race but not the presidency and then resigns after Harris certifies her own election on January 6 to be pardoned.

c. That's it. a and b are debatable. One can be sure that if a Republican president ordered it, it'd be successfully argued that the president is authorized and it is official. Under Article II. Biden should do something milder if these are considered too radical. He should fire Louis DeJoy.

people (including the scotus majority) can argue what they like, but it's not authorized (its outside of the scope of the broadly understood set of presidential duties) and not official (it is plainly in pursuit of the president's personal ambitions, and not by reference to the national interest)

more of this www.latimes.com/world-nation...

In wake of Supreme Court ruling, Biden administration tells doctors to provide emergency abortionswww.latimes.com The Biden administration is telling emergency room doctors they must perform emergency abortions when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s health.

The problem with that is it only protects Biden from criminal cases. So he has to actually do something criminal. It's hard to see any of his policy ends that are stuck now unless he commits an illegal act.

One of the reasons they had the confidence to make this ruling is because Biden hadn't telegraphed any terrifying prospective crimes against conservative interests that he might be interested in using immunity for. They could relax and focus on supporting Trump.

Like, it's a shocking act of disrespect against Biden that they granted the President dictatorial powers while an *opposing* politician holds the office. They just weren't scared of him.

For one man and for four cases, to be precise.

Are you suggesting that “I shouldn’t do illegal things” is a reasonable restraint on the godlike power of The Unitary Executive in ways that “we should be able to discuss bad ideas without shame” is not?

You know, I actually AM suggesting exactly that!

Notably the executive privilege cases did by and large end up saying "okay but the stuff you're discussing in secret can't be crimes, that's A Problem"

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