In the term just ended, the right-wing justices continued their campaign to elevate the presidency, while discarding vital protections and longstanding precedents.
Thanks again, Kim, for your succinct yet trenchant analysis of the latest decisions. I would very much appreciate a deep dive into the presidential immunity decision of 2024. I found it deeply vexing - and it had the effect of postponing Trump's prosecution by Jack Smith - but I cannot say I understand its provisions. Did the Supreme Court punt to trial juries to decide these issues, as some say, or did it, in fact, establish reasonable boundaries for the prosecution of former presidents?
Since we have no precedents to draw upon before Trump, I am confused. Also confusing is whether Trump can be prosecuted after his term expires for crimes committed during his term. If Trump takes payments for pardons, can this be prosecuted?
TERRIFIC summary. Noting this for future reference.
"[...] but they held that federal courts are barred from even hearing legal challenges to then-Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end the TPS designations"
How do they do this? As in, is there a name for this kind of add-on to a ruling?
"the need for serious congressional and public scrutiny of the dominant justices’ fidelity to their oaths"
Oh, they're faithful to their oaths alright. It's just those oaths were sworn to FedSoc long before they ever made it to SCOTUS.
At the end of the day there are some Justices who are obviously not too bright, including Roberts; they clearly don’t fully understand democracy, or the US Constitution, or the damage they are doing to the fabric of the country and its government. They clearly don’t comprehend the concept of corruption. There must be a problem in the hiring policy for these Justices, with money and influence getting in the way of appointing honorable and wise individuals. If I was the Chief Justice I would be embarrassed at the damage my blundering court was inflicting on the nation. But he probably doesn’t realize what’s going on, he’s obviously clueless.
Roberts has been on a multi-decade crusade to end the Voting Rights Act. He succeeded. Roberts also seems to be a monarchist. He wants the install a king and he's half way there.
I disagree - Roberts knows exactly what he's doing. He has a long history of fighting for most of what the Court is now doing. He's just not as red-pilled as Thomas and Alito..
I have no doubt he’s been fighting for his own agenda for decades, but if he looks at a man like Trump, stuffing his pockets full of gold as fast as his piggy little hands can move, and believes the Founding Fathers wanted a president like that, and that he should be immune from the law, with the power to supersede Congress, he’s quite clearly got a screw loose somewhere.
Kim, Excellent reporting and review of yet another disastrous term for the rogue Supreme Court. The six conservative Justices are not jurists, they're magicians, magically pulling rabbits out of our Constitution. They are aiding and abetting this President in killing our Democracy. It's tantamount to treason. The first priority in our recovery must be holding all the nefarious actors to account for their crimes. A bold vision will be necessary to accomplish this quickly, because the reformation itself will take a generation.
I'm old enough to remember when the GOP decried "activist judges" who just made up law vs what was written in the Constitution and the laws passed by legislatures.
IF the Democrats have the Trifecta by 2029, we need a movement for radical reform (a Project 2029) which will re-center Congress as the dominant branch in national politics, and which will engage in a direct confrontation with this MAGAfied-Conservative court.
It is a moral certainty that Trump will issue a self-pardon, as he leaves office, along with his en masse pardons of Regime criminals (including all ICE agents). The 'Radical Democrats' in Congress need to seize on this as the predicate for drafting legislation that enables Congress to CANCEL Presidential pardons. And then the Congress needs to use this power, canceling ALL of Trump's pardons, so that the DOJ can proceed to prosecute those who have committed actual crimes.
This Conservative Court will attempt to bar the way, citing the Constitution. But the Congress can also read the Constitution, and the text does *not* state that the pardon power is "absolute," and the evolution of Executive Supremacy in our system makes it necessary that the Congress have a means to check rank abuses of presidential power like en masse pardons for criminal conduct.
So what will follow is an open political struggle between the Roberts Court and Congress, on this issue; a struggle in which Congress has MANY tools to bring to bear against the Justices (on up to and including Court-expansion). Like it or not, thanks to MAGA we live in radical times - and the new Radical Democrat Congress needs to know what time it is. The Roberts Court has created an Executive that is above the law; it cannot stand.
to me we went through a long era of pragmatic rulings we'll call them last century... a kind of "we changed, let's make it so in these rulings...." and this era of justices, using a kind of retrograde idealistic vision of the past & faux literal-ism -- have slowly dismembered as much of it as they can.
and so once, it doesn't align with who we are...
let's do this then -- motherhood and apple pie amendments. vague maybe but at least bring the thing up to date. One liners, "half a dozen" and just we if we can get (some of) them through ... and in so doing bring all this to a close.
1 -- the president shall serve only two terms maximum
2 -- the pardon power is reserved only for those serving time in federal prison
3 -- congress creates, funds and runs: doj, fbi, fed, etc
4 -- campaign contributions are limited to human beings. personal contributions are capped per election year at 7% of per capita. all contributions are made public.
5 -- the right to privacy is a natural right
6 -- execute orders are not laws
7 -- the president must exercise the terms of treaties
The premise of "one person, one vote" assumes a baseline of political equality at the ballot box. However, wealth in any society is distributed unequally. When you equate money with voice, you legally protect a system in which the volume of a citizen’s voice is directly proportional to their net worth.
The architects of early US governance debated endlessly about the dangers of "factions" and the undue influence of property and wealth on the republic. While they were far from perfectly egalitarian, modern mechanisms of infinite financial amplification, such as Super PACs and dark money networks, introduce a scale of influence that completely bypasses the geographic and individual representation the House and Senate were initially designed to protect.
This court's ruling on financial contributions to political operations accelerates the realignment toward a government that is no longer responsive to the electorate but to the money that funds their private clubs' political ambitions.
When the electorate realizes that their single vote cannot compete with a multi-million-dollar media blitz, the result is deep civic apathy and a feeling that the system is entirely rigged.
This court is a disgrace, corrupting the most fundamental promise: "We the people"
"This court's ruling on financial contributions to political operations accelerates the realignment toward a government that is no longer responsive to the electorate but to the money that funds their private clubs' political ambitions."
to me its obvious -- more money, bigger bullhorn, limits free speech has to be balanced against spending... so of course i favor make it everyone "the same" as closely as we can...
I agree with most of your criticism of the Roberts Court for this past term. However, I do agree with their decision to uphold State Laws that ban biological males from competing in women's sports.
So, what other "state laws" that strip rights from people are ok? What would be a bridge too far?
As I see it, this is the sort of incrementalist logic that's allowed us to get to where we are today. Chip, chip, chip, each little chip seemingly rational and allowable, but then before you know it...oops. The whole cliff face of rights collapses and falls on top of you.
Meanwhile, if your argument had ANY merit, you'd not confine it to "biological males...competing in women's sports." This is the tell that you're not operating from a well intentioned place. If this argument were well intentioned, you'd also be concerned about "biological women...competing in men's sports", right? Those poor tranny men! They're going to get creamed on the field! We cannot put their tender bodies at risk!
We do NOT know whether these are biological males because those that make a big deal over the "trans" issue push that as fact when biology does indeed express XY females. This fact is never discussed because the "trans" community appears to not want to and genetic sex expression is not taught in High School.
The fact is that every embryo has both sex ducts, the Mullerian, female, and Wolffian, male and how sex is expressed is dependent on genetics and thus things can go very differently when one's DNA has issues. I suggest that you watch:
In it, Dr Breedlove discusses the biology behind sex. This needs to be taught in High School because while there are only two sexes because the human genome is divided into only two packages, eggs-female and sperm-male, how sex is expressed runs a spectrum that we need to accept and understand for fair and realistic policy. Using the conservative whiner view doesn't work.
All conservatives need to hang for supporting the GOP coup that has replaced our constitution with their unitary executive.
Their unconstitutional rulings will be overruled by a future court:
- Their unconstitutional Dobbs ruling. Women still have the innate and unenumerated right to abortion, protected by the Ninth Amendment and Article III, Section 2 that explicitly and clearly restricts their authority to law and equity, not rights.
- Their Trump ruling is unconstitutional because Article II, Section 3 mandates that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed", thus negated any claim of "absolute immunity" for crimes committed "while performing his official duties".
Thanks again, Kim, for your succinct yet trenchant analysis of the latest decisions. I would very much appreciate a deep dive into the presidential immunity decision of 2024. I found it deeply vexing - and it had the effect of postponing Trump's prosecution by Jack Smith - but I cannot say I understand its provisions. Did the Supreme Court punt to trial juries to decide these issues, as some say, or did it, in fact, establish reasonable boundaries for the prosecution of former presidents?
Since we have no precedents to draw upon before Trump, I am confused. Also confusing is whether Trump can be prosecuted after his term expires for crimes committed during his term. If Trump takes payments for pardons, can this be prosecuted?
TERRIFIC summary. Noting this for future reference.
"[...] but they held that federal courts are barred from even hearing legal challenges to then-Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to end the TPS designations"
How do they do this? As in, is there a name for this kind of add-on to a ruling?
"the need for serious congressional and public scrutiny of the dominant justices’ fidelity to their oaths"
Oh, they're faithful to their oaths alright. It's just those oaths were sworn to FedSoc long before they ever made it to SCOTUS.
At the end of the day there are some Justices who are obviously not too bright, including Roberts; they clearly don’t fully understand democracy, or the US Constitution, or the damage they are doing to the fabric of the country and its government. They clearly don’t comprehend the concept of corruption. There must be a problem in the hiring policy for these Justices, with money and influence getting in the way of appointing honorable and wise individuals. If I was the Chief Justice I would be embarrassed at the damage my blundering court was inflicting on the nation. But he probably doesn’t realize what’s going on, he’s obviously clueless.
"not too bright, including Roberts"
Roberts has been on a multi-decade crusade to end the Voting Rights Act. He succeeded. Roberts also seems to be a monarchist. He wants the install a king and he's half way there.
I disagree - Roberts knows exactly what he's doing. He has a long history of fighting for most of what the Court is now doing. He's just not as red-pilled as Thomas and Alito..
I have no doubt he’s been fighting for his own agenda for decades, but if he looks at a man like Trump, stuffing his pockets full of gold as fast as his piggy little hands can move, and believes the Founding Fathers wanted a president like that, and that he should be immune from the law, with the power to supersede Congress, he’s quite clearly got a screw loose somewhere.
Kim, Excellent reporting and review of yet another disastrous term for the rogue Supreme Court. The six conservative Justices are not jurists, they're magicians, magically pulling rabbits out of our Constitution. They are aiding and abetting this President in killing our Democracy. It's tantamount to treason. The first priority in our recovery must be holding all the nefarious actors to account for their crimes. A bold vision will be necessary to accomplish this quickly, because the reformation itself will take a generation.
I'm old enough to remember when the GOP decried "activist judges" who just made up law vs what was written in the Constitution and the laws passed by legislatures.
A minor correction: in Footnote 1, the birthright citizenship case was not “Trump v. Slaughter”.
IF the Democrats have the Trifecta by 2029, we need a movement for radical reform (a Project 2029) which will re-center Congress as the dominant branch in national politics, and which will engage in a direct confrontation with this MAGAfied-Conservative court.
It is a moral certainty that Trump will issue a self-pardon, as he leaves office, along with his en masse pardons of Regime criminals (including all ICE agents). The 'Radical Democrats' in Congress need to seize on this as the predicate for drafting legislation that enables Congress to CANCEL Presidential pardons. And then the Congress needs to use this power, canceling ALL of Trump's pardons, so that the DOJ can proceed to prosecute those who have committed actual crimes.
This Conservative Court will attempt to bar the way, citing the Constitution. But the Congress can also read the Constitution, and the text does *not* state that the pardon power is "absolute," and the evolution of Executive Supremacy in our system makes it necessary that the Congress have a means to check rank abuses of presidential power like en masse pardons for criminal conduct.
So what will follow is an open political struggle between the Roberts Court and Congress, on this issue; a struggle in which Congress has MANY tools to bring to bear against the Justices (on up to and including Court-expansion). Like it or not, thanks to MAGA we live in radical times - and the new Radical Democrat Congress needs to know what time it is. The Roberts Court has created an Executive that is above the law; it cannot stand.
to me we went through a long era of pragmatic rulings we'll call them last century... a kind of "we changed, let's make it so in these rulings...." and this era of justices, using a kind of retrograde idealistic vision of the past & faux literal-ism -- have slowly dismembered as much of it as they can.
and so once, it doesn't align with who we are...
let's do this then -- motherhood and apple pie amendments. vague maybe but at least bring the thing up to date. One liners, "half a dozen" and just we if we can get (some of) them through ... and in so doing bring all this to a close.
1 -- the president shall serve only two terms maximum
2 -- the pardon power is reserved only for those serving time in federal prison
3 -- congress creates, funds and runs: doj, fbi, fed, etc
4 -- campaign contributions are limited to human beings. personal contributions are capped per election year at 7% of per capita. all contributions are made public.
5 -- the right to privacy is a natural right
6 -- execute orders are not laws
7 -- the president must exercise the terms of treaties
8 -- ...
The premise of "one person, one vote" assumes a baseline of political equality at the ballot box. However, wealth in any society is distributed unequally. When you equate money with voice, you legally protect a system in which the volume of a citizen’s voice is directly proportional to their net worth.
The architects of early US governance debated endlessly about the dangers of "factions" and the undue influence of property and wealth on the republic. While they were far from perfectly egalitarian, modern mechanisms of infinite financial amplification, such as Super PACs and dark money networks, introduce a scale of influence that completely bypasses the geographic and individual representation the House and Senate were initially designed to protect.
This court's ruling on financial contributions to political operations accelerates the realignment toward a government that is no longer responsive to the electorate but to the money that funds their private clubs' political ambitions.
When the electorate realizes that their single vote cannot compete with a multi-million-dollar media blitz, the result is deep civic apathy and a feeling that the system is entirely rigged.
This court is a disgrace, corrupting the most fundamental promise: "We the people"
"This court's ruling on financial contributions to political operations accelerates the realignment toward a government that is no longer responsive to the electorate but to the money that funds their private clubs' political ambitions."
AKA, "Da plan."
to me its obvious -- more money, bigger bullhorn, limits free speech has to be balanced against spending... so of course i favor make it everyone "the same" as closely as we can...
I agree with most of your criticism of the Roberts Court for this past term. However, I do agree with their decision to uphold State Laws that ban biological males from competing in women's sports.
So, what other "state laws" that strip rights from people are ok? What would be a bridge too far?
As I see it, this is the sort of incrementalist logic that's allowed us to get to where we are today. Chip, chip, chip, each little chip seemingly rational and allowable, but then before you know it...oops. The whole cliff face of rights collapses and falls on top of you.
Meanwhile, if your argument had ANY merit, you'd not confine it to "biological males...competing in women's sports." This is the tell that you're not operating from a well intentioned place. If this argument were well intentioned, you'd also be concerned about "biological women...competing in men's sports", right? Those poor tranny men! They're going to get creamed on the field! We cannot put their tender bodies at risk!
We do NOT know whether these are biological males because those that make a big deal over the "trans" issue push that as fact when biology does indeed express XY females. This fact is never discussed because the "trans" community appears to not want to and genetic sex expression is not taught in High School.
The fact is that every embryo has both sex ducts, the Mullerian, female, and Wolffian, male and how sex is expressed is dependent on genetics and thus things can go very differently when one's DNA has issues. I suggest that you watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-mEiwe2NhE&t=22s
In it, Dr Breedlove discusses the biology behind sex. This needs to be taught in High School because while there are only two sexes because the human genome is divided into only two packages, eggs-female and sperm-male, how sex is expressed runs a spectrum that we need to accept and understand for fair and realistic policy. Using the conservative whiner view doesn't work.
All conservatives need to hang for supporting the GOP coup that has replaced our constitution with their unitary executive.
Their unconstitutional rulings will be overruled by a future court:
- Their unconstitutional Dobbs ruling. Women still have the innate and unenumerated right to abortion, protected by the Ninth Amendment and Article III, Section 2 that explicitly and clearly restricts their authority to law and equity, not rights.
- Their Trump ruling is unconstitutional because Article II, Section 3 mandates that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed", thus negated any claim of "absolute immunity" for crimes committed "while performing his official duties".
Fuck them.