Honest answer: we don’t fucking know. The discarding of Chevron, coupled with the determination a rule may be challenged from the moment of harm and not from the moment the rule was made, throws more or less the entirety of administrative law - the basis of a regulatory system - into flux.
Like, when I say the impact of the last week of rulings can’t be understated, I mean it because Chevron was like…a foundational thing for administrative law for the last four decades.
Add into that the determination that we can’t prosecute a president who commits a crime if it’s an official act, coupled with the absolute lack of definition as to what constitutes an official act, and we have no fucking clue.
Also, little pissed the reasoning for the latter was “We don’t want a president to be concerned about criminal culpability because it may stop them from acting!” and I mean, actually, yes, I want our executive to be considering whether they’re breaking the fucking law before acting.
It’s like “The President is responsible for the execution and enforcement of the laws, so if he has to break a few of those laws to do so, you know, sometimes you gotta kill the patient to cure the disease.”
And with all respect to my friends in the military and who have served in the military but “The military won’t obey an illegal order” is not comforting because I have met a number of members of our military who absolutely fucking will.
If the President is immune ... and he issues an 'illegal order'... is it still an illegal order? Probably but if the President can issue it without consequences, and the President can pardon everyone else, where are the consequences for ordering the killing of a politician or a judge?
It's still an unlawful order even if the POTUS giving it couldn't be prosecuted. But then all that would have to happen is for POTUS to say "and I'll pardon you for it, so don't worry about any court-martial". As POTUS Trump pardoned war criminals.
