Biden surrogates brushed off questions about reining in the court, while emphasizing the gravity of a second Trump term.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that American presidents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for any “official acts” they take while in office. For President Joe Biden, this should be great news. Suddenly a host of previously unthinkable options have opened up to him: He could dispatch Seal Team 6 to Mar-A-Lago with orders to neutralize the “primary threat to freedom and democracy” in the United States. He could issue an edict that all digital or physical evidence of his debate performance last week be destroyed. Or he could just use this chilling partisan decision, the latest 6-3 ruling in a term that was characterized by a staggering number of them, as an opportunity to finally embrace the movement to reform the Supreme Court.
But Biden is not planning to do any of that. Shortly after the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Trump v. The United States, the Biden campaign held a press call with surrogates, including Harry Dunn, a Capitol police officer who was on duty the day Trump supporters stormed the building on Jan. 6; Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas); and deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.
Their message was simple: It’s terrifying to contemplate what Donald Trump might do with these powers if he’s reelected.
“We have to do everything in our power to stop him,” Fulks said.
Everything, that is, except take material action to rein in the increasingly lawless and openly right-wing Supreme Court.
I don’t understand how he can make changes to the Supreme Court using this new Supreme Court ruling. My understanding is that change requires Congress and the recent ruling just means he can’t be held accountable for crimes committed as official acts.
What crimes are being suggested to change the Supreme Court?
Kill the judges using his own immunity granted by them. Elect new ones that will take away this immunity. They are very obviously a threat to democracy and they themselves have said that whether something is an official order cannot be questioned.
He doesn't need to kill them. Take all their personal property using eminent domain, sell all their office space in D.C. and close the court buildings where they operate. Leave them running SCOTUS out of a store front in a strip mall in the most crime ridden part of D.C. He could even use extraordinary rendition (Thanks Dubya) to nab their families and hold them in black sites in foreign countries. There are any number of non-lethal official acts that he can use to make their lives a living hell until they consent to make the changes we need to keep this country safe from fascism. When your enemy hands you a gun, use it.
But that's not all. They also ruled that you can't use official acts in the process of determining what wasn't an official act. If Biden ordered the military to assassinate Trump, the fact that the President is Constitutionally the head of the military and that the military must obey orders from the President couldn't be used as evidence that he gave an illegal order.
The US military can choose to ignore illegal orders to execute citizens protected by the Constitution. They did not swear an oath to the president, only an oath to protect the Constitution.
No military leader will want to go to a military tribunal where arbitration is decided as punishment and has no jury by peers. It would be either a death sentence if any military official followed the order, or a hard life in a military prison.
In fact, I read that it is codified in the US law Uniform Code of Military justice to be obligated to deny an illegal or an immoral order.
My dude, you're acting like Monday's decision didn't happen.
SCOTUS delineated presidential immunity into three situations:
Unofficial acts- no immunity.
Official acts- presumed immunity. However, no official acts can be used to determine the legality or official-ness of an act.
Constitutionally delegated exercises of authority- total immunity.
In other words, laws are subordinate to Presidential exercises of Constitutional authority. Under the decision rendered by SCOTUS on Monday, as the President is the Commander in Chief of the military, any order he gives the military he would have total immunity for and thus wouldn't be "illegal" as such. Also, because the pardon power is listed in the Constitution, there's no oversight for it either.
So yes, the President could absolutely order the military to assassinate a citizen with the promise of pardoning them, and there's literally no recourse anyone could take.
He has absolute immunity from Prosecution for official acts. Impeachment is not a Prosecution (a criminal court proceeding) in that sense: it's a legislative act which looks a lot like a prosecution, but is fundamentally different. So impeachments are not bound by this same rule. Presidents can be impeached for anything, even the color of their shirt, if a majority of the House thinks it's a "high crime or misdemeanor".
You can be impeached for basically anything. But you still need 67 votes in the senate to be removed. And senators can also be murdered. Being able to have immunity for murder as long as you murder anyone who would deny it is a self-empowering ability.
The president acts through people. Asking the military to murder Americans on American soil is the easy slam dunk straight to pound me in the ass federal prison for life idea you've ever come up with.
I don't think you're quite getting the "he can kill anyone who would oppose him" issue.
And literally that he has absolute immunity for acts in his constitutional powers, which including telling the military to kill people. At best the order would be refused, but that's still not an illegal act. You don't need to trust me, you can just read the dissenting Supreme Court justices. The "Seal Team 6" hypothetical was never addressed by the majority, because it's a pretty direct consequence of the ruling, just something they hope wouldn't happen or wouldn't work.
The president can't kill anyone who opposes him. The president is subject to the laws just like anyone else. Breaking the law is not part of his official duty. Assassinating someone the president doesn't like is against the law.
Assassinating an enemy of the United States is a different story. The president cannot claim a citizen of the United States with no criminal activity or record against the United States is an enemy. Furthermore, the military cannot use force on citizens of the United States. The FBI can, and the president doesn't control the FBI the judicial branch does.
Any power outlined in the constitution is absolutely official, which arguably covers murder via the military. But if you murder the people who would say something isn't official, an entire world of options opens up. The survivors will either agree with you or want to not die.
Which is notably why it's so dangerous under Trump. Trump can get the broad immunity without murdering most of the court (and rightfully setting off alarm bells/triggering rebellion) first.
After he was elected, Biden appointed a 36-member bipartisan commission to study potential changes to the Supreme Court -- including the addition of more seats, as well as term limits and a code of ethics for justices.
The commission unanimously adopted a report late last year, in which they warned that excessive change to the institution could cause democracy to regress in the future.
The panel found "considerable" support for 18-year term limits for justices, but the issue of expanding the court beyond nine seats was met with "profound disagreement."
Because the bipartisan commission claimed fixing it would do more harm then letting the current corrupt court do shit like repeal Roe v Wade and all the other shit Biden now says was so terrible.
But if elected again, he still won't fix.
That's a big reason Biden has a 37% approval rating, he opposed actually fixing things. And just wants to maintain the status quo.
It's not a valid long term strategy.
Moderates just want to complain, they don't want to actually fix shit. We've been ignoring it since Obama's pick was stolen, ignoring it more won't magically solve it.
He could throw them in prison extrajudicially for actions against the US government including treason for their support of 1/6... Hell, he can ship em to Gitmo even tho theyre US citizens.
Although I've seen far less civilized but more permanent suggestions.
It's not even a crime, or false accusation.
And as an official act, no one can go after Biden for it.
If Biden believes trump is the threat he says he is, then he needs to do that. But ideally he would have expanded the SC back in 2021 when we had the numbers.
Like, we're backed into this corner because Biden decided to walk into it...
Also, my understanding is a supermajority is required in Congress to change the Supreme Court. Which we did not have in 2021. Am I wrong?
Can be done with a simple majority, which we had till 2022. If Dems really fought and tossed out the filibuster, but they didn't.
Instead Biden created a bipartisan committee to investigate if the corrupt Republican SC should be allowed to stand as is. He gave them 6 months, and after 2 years (as soon as Dems.lost the House) they decided we should just let it go.
At every step, Biden and party leadership refuse to fight.
We can't afford that. If trump is as dangerous as they say (he is) then we need to actually fight.
Even if we lose, it motivates voters for the next election.
But he could still, this very day, arrest them for treason and jail them indefinitely and no one can stop him due to the SC's recent ruling.
He could throw them in prison extrajudicially for actions against the US government including treason for their support of 1/6… Hell, he can ship em to Gitmo even tho theyre US citizens.
I didn't say anything about impeachment...
From 2020-2022 we could have added justices with a simple majority after throwing out the filibuster.
We didn't.
We are running out of actions because we are running out of time. I wish Biden wouldn't have wasted those two years with a bipartisan commission to find out if everything was fine...
But he did.
Due to the recent SC ruling, Biden faces no punishment for actions committed in office. So he can jail Clarence and everyone else who's corrupt in jail and thus remove the conservative majority. Hell, legally he can have them executed for treason without trial, but I think Gitmo and no communication is more than enough.
There's lots of people in GITMO who have done far less
If trump is the threat Biden says (he is) then we need to do whatever we can to prevent trump.
Do you disagree that trump is an existential threat to American democracy and we may never recover if he becomes president.
For Biden to face no punishment for his actions a judge has to decide that the actions were official acts of a president. So what he can and can’t do are decided by a judge.
Again, you’re strategy for adding justices depends on the vote of Sinema and Manchin. But you’re blaming Biden instead. That makes it seem like a bad faith argument.
Yeah, that's a good point, I've seen a lot of suggestions that seem to go beyond the scope of this terrible terrible ruling. I guess he could order the military to prevent congress and the SC from meeting or doing anything. Then he could just issue executive orders, or declare war on a faction of politicians trying to stage a coup maybe?
That’s what it sounded like to me also but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
Are these people suggesting that Biden assassinate politicians and stage a coup arguing in good faith? Seems like something that would be suggested by an enemy nation.
Basically, the Supreme Court decides what is an official act, so any actions Biden would use this new power for to correct this would be ruled over by the hostile Supreme Court. So the hostile Supreme Court would have to be removed, then the replacement could remove the right for the president to do all this. The first action would have to be to attack the Supreme Court. How bleak. Dammed if you do and SUPER dammed if you don’t
I mean, if Trump wins the election, it might literally be our last election. They have a plan to dismantle our government. So no, unfortunately, I think they're arguing in good faith, trying to use this tool the GOP has set up against them to save the country.
What about the voters that are voting Biden because they don’t want a coup or assassinations? Biden would lose all those votes. Then how does he win the election?
You say that as if it wouldn't be a moot point once SCOTUS has five or six vacancies on it all at once, along with who knows how many in the Senate.
That's how power actually works, you know. Don't believe me? Watch Saddam Hussein's 1979 purge to see how it goes down.
That's the kind of power that exists here in the US now, thanks to the fascist Supreme Court. If Biden doesn't use it against itself in order to destroy it, the next Republican President will use it to consolidate his own rule much the same way Saddam did.
You can be in denial all you want, but the factual reality is that, since this SCOTUS ruling, the US is an autocracy now. Practically speaking, the only way for it to stop being such in the short term is for the autocrat (i.e., Biden) to forcibly change it back.
That's because your fantastical scenario is exactly that, fantasy. You do not understand whatsoever the implications of the ruling because you cannot grasp the duty of the president, checks and balances, and the rule of law. Did they stop teaching civics in school?7