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2 yr. ago

  • Exactly, that's what's so scary about this. The courts now explicitly can't consider things like motive to determine any of this. Just the action in a general sense. And since of course restricting the ability of a president to speak publicly to supporters in the general sense could infringe on the power of the executive, immune.

    And even if by some miracle some act was declared unofficial, he could either pardon the person or himself (automatically an official act), or fire the prosecutors bringing the case (automatically an official act). Or in the extreme case, order an assassination (automatically official act). Those core powers in article 2 mean even when the president uses some power not described in article 2, even when a court overcomes the extremely high hurdle placed to declare something not an official act and without immunity, it will still all be for naught. There's effectively no limits.

    Trump has already said he wants to pardon the January 6rh rioters/coup participants. Immune.

  • Weird cause I've got the FTC act right here. Says this:

    (a) Declaration of unlawfulness; power to prohibit unfair practices; inapplicability to foreign trade (1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.

    And then later on it has this whole entire section where it lays out the process for how the FTC is supposed to make rules in regards to unfair or deceptive practices

    Except as provided in subsection (h) of this section, the Commission may prescribe-- (A) interpretive rules and general statements of policy with respect to unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title), and (B) rules which define with specificity acts or practices which are unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce (within the meaning of section 45(a)(1) of this title)

    And more sections about how they can enforce those rules on individual rule breakers.

    Sure sounds like congress was trying to give the FTC the authority to make rules about unfair competition. Both general rules and with "specificity" apparently. Specifically here, non compete agreements have been declared an unfair practice and they followed all rule making procedures as laid out in the law.

    https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/statutes/federal-trade-commission-act/ftc_act_incorporatingus_safe_web_act.pdf

  • Except the means of helping to get them homes of course.

  • If anything it seems like the media hasn't grasped just how bad this is. Too focused on plastering the front page every day with more anonymous source opinions on if Biden is going to stay in the race or not. The whole official vs unofficial acts thing just has tricked people to believing there's some discretion or something. There's not. If it's a power listed in the constitution, like the military or pardons, the president can legally do whatever they want with that power for any reason. And the unofficial vs official acts determination explicitly doesn't allow consideration of motives or results. So talking to justice department employees is official? Alright, then talking with justice department employees to coordinate a bribe or a coup means immunity. As long as the president is using functions of government to commit crimes basically, they're golden.

  • I ate the onion on this one for a second.

  • Okay I'm not saying she's the best choice, wouldn't be my preferred choice, but also this is a poll run by the Daily Mail. I can't even find any pollster reputation ratings for them. I also can't find any of their methodologies published online, which is also sketchy. And knowing what we all do about the Daily Mail anyways, this should all be taken with a massive truckload of salt.

    Edit: Ah found it, it was run by J.L partners, ranked 145 on five thirty eight pollster rankings for reliability (1.6/3 stars for reliability with a transparency score of 4.2/10). And again, without the methodology being published who knows. The pollster themself, James Johnson, is also a former senior advisor to Theresa May and the UK conservative party.

  • Whaaaaaaa???? But I thought Israel totally didn't have any nuclear weapons

  • Oh gotcha, no worries! I was just kind of like whaaa?? when I read the comment at first.

  • It's mostly been conservatives that have a problem with this, not progressives for the most part. I mean sure some progressives are against but they're by far the minority.

    I know progressives and democrats, and conservatives and Republicans, aren't the same thing, but you get the picture. I think most on the left would prefer to stand up to authoritian genocidal governments, whereas many conservatives crazily see a lot they like in Russian government and want the US to embrace them.

  • Also in the northern district of Texas. I smell some judicial venue shopping. Northern district of Texas is basically now the Mordor of the legal world.

  • The president already was protected from all civil lawsuits due to previous rulings. This ruling was only about criminal prosecutions.

    He has absolute immunity for any use, for any reason, of his core presidential powers include anything listed in article 2 (the military, pardons, firing or hiring officials within the executive department). There is no determining if those are an official act or not. Anything the president does with an article 2 power is an official act with absolute immunity now. Motives or reason for using that power or the outcome of that cannot be questioned. It is legal for the president to accept a bribe to pardon someone right now. The fact that it happened couldn't even be mentioned in court.

    Only when the president is doing something not listed in the constitution can it be determined if it's an official or unofficial act by the courts and should be immune. And again it's the action, not the motive or the result or purpose of the action, that determines whether it is official. The only example they gave was talking to justice department officials is official. So if he is talking to justice department officials to arrange a bribe or plan a coup? Legal, immune, can't even be used as evidence against him. It doesn't matter why he was talking to the justice department, the fact that he was makes him immune from any laws he breaks in the process of doing so. They aren't determining if a bribe or coup is an official act, they're determining if talking to justice department officials in general is. It doesn't matter what he's actually doing it for, arranging a coup? That's perfectly okay. Oh someone found out, pardon everyone else involved in the conspiracy who wasn't already immune. Now it can't even be brought up in court.

    In the example you gave of ordering an assassination, if it used the military to do the assassination that is a core power, cannot be questioned. The supreme court ruling placed no limits on what can be done with his article 2 powers. Only a nebulous official vs not official test for things not listed in article 2. There's also a very worrying core power in article 2 about "ensuring laws are faithfully executed" that even Barrett thought was too much in her concurrence as it could apply to seemingly anything. Basically, as long as the president is using the levers of government to commit crimes, legal now.

    Impeachment is the only recourse now as you say, but even if impeached and removed from office by some miracle, they still wouldn't be able to be held criminally liable afterwards for that.

    Everyone panicking in this thread is right to do so.

  • I wonder if valve is planning on bringing the driver level implementation of frame generation to the steam deck as well. Theoretically should be able to support it I think, since it's an RDNA 2 gpu.

  • As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren't willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there's literally nothing they can do.

    *and even the number of democrats minus 50 don't want to. So even one (plus Harris helping) in the first two years of the term or even two (if Harris helps again) in the second two years of the past term. It's not like all democrats are unified about the filibuster, most voted to bypass it. You need either more than 60 dems total, or more than 50 dems that support bypassing the filibuster.

    Or you know, even a single republican that doesn't want to be a facist helping to transition the country to authoritarian rule. But that seems less likely unfortunately.

  • https://www.newsweek.com/gretchen-whither-chances-beating-trump-poll-1919211

    That's my concern too. Harris was closest at about the same percent as Biden. Though it did increase the amount of people who would say they're not sure when compared to the Biden Trump race. It's possible a new candidate might have some wiggle room to convince more swing voters. So I think there's an argument to be made that some of the potential replacements have a higher ceiling than Biden does that they might get to even if they start at a lower polling basis. I would feel a lot better about a switch if someone was actually polling better than Biden already though.

    https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/358559/biden-harris-whitmer-newsom-shapiro-buttigieg-alternative-nomination-candidate-2024

    These ones were earlier from February 2024, and though it was only in a single poll, the only person who recorded a higher percent than Biden in a poll was fucking Joe Manchin, ugh.

  • “The fact is, I did nothing wrong,” Bryant said in a statement in May 2023. “I wasn’t aware of the wrongdoings of others."

    I had no part in this! I was just an incompetent governor and supervisor! How dare you!

    And Wolfe said it’s not clear more money is getting to Mississippi’s poorest. According to state figures, as of June, 1,423 families and 2,522 individuals are receiving federal welfare grants administered by Mississippi, a state where 548,000 people live in poverty.

    Where is the money being embezzled to now?

  • Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the nation at the state government level. Even though democrats got more votes, Republicans ended up with a super majority in one house and large majority in another. This is why you see the statewide elections like governor and attorney general, and the state legislature makeup, differing so much. They can't gerrymander a state wide vote.

  • Okay, I was linking polling about actual policies that were passed and implemented though, and those were popular with people.

  • That's what this articles is about, but policies passed during the Biden admin have also been popular, though according to these sources some not well advertised enough.

    https://navigatorresearch.org/one-year-after-passage-the-inflation-reduction-act-maintains-broad-support/

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/politics/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-poll-support/index.html

    https://apnews.com/article/poll-ukraine-aid-congress-b772c9736b92c0fbba477938b047da2f

    I tried but it's harder to find polling on very specific executive department actions and regulations though, like the SAVE student loan repayment plan changes for example. So harder to say on those.

  • Military tribunals? Sounds like some of his article 2 powers with absolute immunity now, their use cannot be questioned. Go to town Trump, say the conservatives on the supreme court.

  • The majority are the ones who said that any use of constitutional presidential powers creates absolute immunity. All the dissenters are doing is pointing out the obvious implications and saying why the majority is wrong to create that immunity more eloquently than I can. You are the one who is confused. Or more likely, just arguing in bad faith. But just in case,

    It's on the very first page of the majority ruling, here you go:

    Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.

    And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts

    Seperately from the absolute immunity, any powers not delegated in the constitution (official acts they call it), have presumptive immunity. Uses of specifically delegated constitutional powers, like the military, have absolute immunity. If its an ability delegated to him in the constitution, the majority ruling says that cannot be questioned. They say neither by themselves or congressional laws. Only use of powers not delegated in the constitution can the court even begin to question if it was an "official act."

    The majority says something along the lines of "oh this is just a little immunity we didn't give turmp everything he asked for." I have no idea why they can write that with a straight face. Besides the fact that giving any criminal immunity to the president is totally antithetical to the founding principles of our country, they in fact have given him everything he asked for. Trump himself was arguing if he was impeached for something then he should be able to be criminally liable still. But now thanks to the supreme court conservative justices, for the vast majority of the scariest things a president can do, like the command the military, pardon powers, and appointing and firing of officials, he couldn't be held criminally liable even if he was impeached. It was more than Trump asked for. They may have even managed to torpedo both of his state criminal cases.

    The Supreme Court majority is just so worried that poor president's will get harassed by prosecutors afterwards? Good! He should be afraid of breaking the law, just like everyone else. And if that can be proven in a court of law, he should go to jail, just like everyone else. The supreme court has now elevated the president above the rule of law and abdicated the responsibilities of the judiciary branch.