A leading House Democrat is preparing a constitutional amendment in response to the Supreme Court’s landmark immunity ruling, seeking to reverse the decision “and ensure that no president is above the law.”
Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, sent a letter to colleagues informing them of his intent to file the resolution, which would kickstart what’s traditionally a cumbersome amendment process.
“This amendment will do what SCOTUS failed to do — prioritize our democracy,” Morelle said in a statement to AP.
It’s the most significant legislative response yet to the decision this week from the court’s conservative majority, which stunned Washington and drew a sharp dissent from the court’s liberal justices warning of the perils to democracy, particularly as Trump seeks a return to the White House. Still, the effort stands almost no chance of succeeding in this Congress.
Nothing pisses off congress more than having to do something and vote on legislation. Supreme Court made an enemy.
The patriotic thing to do for Biden is to go on a crime spree using his newly found immunity. All crimes must be part of core acts or official acts. See how long that takes
Seriously, he needs to “no not like that” this shit so far that the Republicans have no choice but to reign in their bullshit.
How are they expected to prosecute the “Biden Crime Family” if they can’t prosecute the Kingpin?
I think this is unironically how they need to spin it. Convince the Republican base that this ruling is actually better for Biden than it is for Trump by repeating their own false narratives back to them - that the Biden Crime Family will get away with everything. Albeit, the things he could actually get away with are limited to what the court determines is an official act, and given the current makeup of the SCOTUS it’s unlikely that they would side with him even if there were precedent, but he would be still almost untouchable under this new ruling no matter how you spin it.
Have a case against Joe Biden? Sorry, all of that evidence is now inadmissible in a court of law because it happened while he was president. Too bad, Republicans! Maybe if you were to… I dunno, pass a constitutional amendment that revoked that privilege. But oooooh nooooo, that would be horrible! Please, anything but that! All our nefarious plots would be undone and Biden would go to prison!
That’s the insidious part. People advocating for Biden to go on a crime spree are assuming that the Supreme Court is aiming to be consistent, and apply this ruling fairly to both parties. They’ve INTENTIONALLY left it unspecified what counts as an “official” act, so that any question that comes up just goes right back to them, and they can rule however they see fit. Also, people are assuming the Court won’t just directly contradict their own rulings, the moment it’s convenient. This entire thing just shows that the Court can and will give itself final say on any questions of law or policy, I.E. anything anyone in the government does. This doesn’t make the President a king, it makes the Court the king.
I’d say it makes a criminal President into a King.
It doesn’t give the president authority to do anything he wants. It just shields him from prosecution if he commits a crime.
Biden isn’t a criminal so he has no additional authority. Trump on the other hand is a criminal and makes no apologies for it. He will commit crimes if he’s President again. And Trump’s weaselly nature around the law means he’ll be able to find every crime he can convince people to commit on his behalf. It won’t matter if it’s known he ordered the crime to happen he’s immune. His henchmen can get pardons. He no longer would need to care that the pardon would nullify fifth amendment protections on compelling testimony since he’s immune from prosecution. And if he gets elected as a convicted felon, why would he care about things like legacy (as if he did before)?
People advocating for Biden to go on a crime spree are assuming that the Supreme Court is aiming to be consistent, and apply this ruling fairly to both parties.
The SCOTUS doesn’t have a DOJ or an FBI to arrest and prosecute anyone with. That’s the big catch in all this arguing.
If Biden seriously wanted to be a sassy bitch, he’d have Trump extraordinarily renditioned to a prison in Iraq and tried for bombing the Iraqi airfield that hosted the Iranian ambassadors.
The SCOTUS gets to pound sand, Americans can heal a gapping foreign policy wound between the US and Iran, and Trump gets a taste of living as an illegal.
But he’s not going to do that. He’s not going to impound Trump’s assets or freeze his accounts. He’s not going to treat Trump in any way like an asset of an enemy power.
Because he’s terrified of violating the Norms that dictate presidents can, in fact, do whatever the hell they want.
He can still probably get impeached, if it’s something congress doesn’t like
I don’t even think this ruling allows for impeachment, TBH. This ruling was pretty broad. As long as the act is done in an official capacity and it is within the president’s powers, even if only under certain circumstances which you can’t prove the circumstances didn’t exist if you can’t prosecute, then there is immunity. Immunity means no one can even investigate officially, much less bring a case. The only thing you can investigate is if you can prove that he did it while not acting in an official capacity, which sex is one of the few things that applies to and even that could probably be manipulated, or that the president has no authority whatsoever over the subject, but that’s pretty limited since he has full authority over the military and the entire executive branch as well as our nuclear weapons. I mean he can’t go into the Supreme Court, take the place of a Justice and issue a judgement. But he definitely can use the CIA to assassinate a Justice to change something. And you would only be able to prosecute the CIA agents, not the president.
People keep making this dumb joke over and over and over again. Biden isn’t going to do anything trump wants to do with this newfound immunity
Joke? We know that Biden won’t. But he should, if only just to show how farcical this ruling is. Maybe, start small. Make mail-in voting mandatory and the election a national holiday, via executive order. Then, officially allow all prisoners to vote. Next, make DACA recipients citizens allowed to vote. As long as he doesn’t ruffle the feathers of the capitalist class, eventually Republicans will be begging for a Constitutional Amendment.
Ballsy move. I support this
I think most people do but there is no way we will see an amendment come to pass.
What we need is for a Democratic president to do something bananas and claim immunity. I bet at least the less crazy Republicans would suddenly see how that could be a problem. Maybe if Joe set one of the conservative justices on fire as an official act.
But seriously, they have no problem with hypocrisy so that probably still wouldn’t help.
it will happen easily if biden wins. If the court majority becomes 5-4 liberal republicans will absolutely hop on board. Thats why dems should also float an electoral college reform and an amendment to ban gerrymandering. Even a ban on courts creating “immunity rules” should be floated since immunity is something that shouldn’t be handed out as often as the supreme court does it.
The amendment process is long and difficult and honestly being just willing to go through the extra steps makes good headlines.
The supreme court has nothing to do with constitutional amendments. To propose one you need a 2/3 majority vote in both the house and senate (or 2/3 of states calling a constitutional convention, but no amendment has gone through this process). Then, it requires that 75% of the states ratify it.
There’s no chance the amendment will even get 2/3 of the congressional vote, much less 75% of states agreeing to it.
An amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
It’s worth a try but don’t pin all your hopes on it.
And that’s only half the battle - then 3/4 of the state legislatures must pass it as well
I thought it’s an either or thing, as two different paths to possibly get an amendment passed, not that it needs both.??
IMO the only valid move for Biden right now asap, is to use his new immunity powers to invalidate his immunity powers, as a display of self checkmate.
Declare the full supreme court under threat of death has to go back and redo the decision, and all of them must vote to reverse it and remove the presidential immunity, or be hung.
This of course means “if you dont remove my ability to kill you, you will die”.
Its the ultimate display of being handed ultimate power, and rejecting it through the power itself.
I cant think of any other move that makes sense really. It would be a headache in court but thats what the supreme justices get for making such a stupid ass decision.
As far as I understand the decision (IANAL!), the definition of what constitutes an “Official Act” is left intentionally undefined, so in effect you can only claim this ultimate power if the courts like you in order to declare what you’re doing official.
This means, if I understand it correctly, king powers for Trump and nothing for Biden. They’d just rule everything Biden is doing as not an official act.
The ruling happens after the act. Who knows what justices we’ll have by then.
*hanged.
“Hung” is a… different thing, which the male justices might see as a positive.
We are dealing with psychopaths who are itching to murder people and they vow to NOT recognize a free and fair election. VOTE people.
I love how people will open face admit that voting is clearly not enough and then be like “remember to vote owo”
I think folks need to start digging into a little stronger stuff than simply voting, lol
Need to start looking into further legal options beyond just voting.
Soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. In that order.
If you’re just standing on your soap box unwilling to go to the ballot box, you’re probably not going to be willing to go to the other boxes that may be necessary. It doesn’t take that much effort to vote, and the other things take even more effort than that.
I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety.
Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here
You realize immunity doesn’t mean declare what you want, and you get it?
Also It’s not illegal for Biden to say he is invalidating his immunity powers, it’s just meaningless. Now if he punched Stormy Daniel’s until she agreed to give syphilis to the court, that might be illegal acts that fall under his official duties.
Also, you need the courts behind whatever illegal thing you are going to do.
- Declare new rules
- Use any method, legal or otherwise, to enforce said rules
- Claim immunity
Congratulations. You’ve successfully used immunity to declare whatever you want.
Immunity is for crimes which is explicitly about breaking the rules, it’s not about making up new rules.
The idea that you actually need courts behind you is laughable. Power is enforced through the threat of violence, this is how law enforcement functions. Courts do not have soldiers.
Know who does? Commander-in-Chief, now with full immunity for any official act, like, giving orders to the military.
One could say perhaps the soldiers themselves would be afraid of prosecution and would disobey orders, since they don’t get immunity. Until the President pardons them anyway.
Otherwise only one last line of firm defense remains: the oath each serviceman takes to defend the Constitution against all threats, foreign and domestic. That might make someone disobey an illegal order.
There’s a quote from Andrew Jackson when he ignored the Court where he basically told them to enforce their decisions themselves.
You realize, no…
Immunity here means declare whatever you want, and then mandate that the military eliminate anyone who opposes your new mandate. This “fun” hypothetical is a president invalidating their immunity powers and then having that decree reinforced by death, that second part is the illegal you want in this equation.
It’s done to “Save America”, so it’s an official act.
“If a president couldn’t freely do rapes, bribes, frauds and incite violence without repercussions, who would way to be president?”
- one of the two candidates for US President probably
There’s a difference between having the authority to do something and being immune to prosecution for a crime.
Biden doesn’t have the authority to issue an order for summary execution.
If he could convince someone to commit the crime of killing members of SCOTUS, and it was considered an official act of the President, then he might be shielded from prosecution for it, and he could issue a pardon for those that did the deed.
The ruling only benefits a criminal President, and Biden isn’t a criminal.
Except Biden is an adult and not petulant child. Democracy will prevail. The voters will take care of it come November.
The average American has zero clue how anything in the government works, nor the interest in policy to actually understand what the policies their politician of choice are pushing do. The average American is so disconnected from politics it’s zero surprise that shitty politicians are elected everywhere regularly.
This isn’t an indictment of the people themselves but the society they live in that somehow incientivizes general laziness when it comes to civics
The republikkklowns have really simplified it though.They STAND for removing human rights, racism, facism and against anything good for the people. At this point you have two choices. Democracy or Dictatorship. I’ll take human rights and Democracy please.
That doesnt take care of it, nor can voters take care of it.
Even if Biden gets re-elected, this ruling stays in play perpetually until someone undoes it, which requires the supreme court justices to walk it back after a period of time.
The only option is to use the newly granted powers themself to undo the granted powers.
It’s, imo, the only play.
Also this has nothing to do with being a “petulant child”, it proves the point of how the granted powers are over-reaching.
If they werent over-reaching, then he wouldnt be able to use them to do this. It becomes a forced move on the justices behalf.
They either:
a. Accept the powers are to overpowered and in turn are forced to, through the command itself, have to roll it back or b. Rule that Biden cant do that, which forces cementing an upper limit on what the powers can do (it establishes a baseline that you cant just use the powers to force supreme justice acts and/or to order people to die)
Either way, it either neuters the powers to some extent or completely nullifies them.
This will never happen. You can’t get enough states to agree let alone Congress. Getting an amendment passed is near impossible in this climate. The mere fact that a Democrat proposed it mean FOX will demonize it as a threat to america
Ranked choice voting can fix that issue as first-past-the-post sucks so bad.
