It’s one of the great ironies of our time that Trump—a completely irreligious man—is serving the interests of the most evangelical Christians. Ban abortion? Done. End LGBT rights? Certainly. Ban contraception? Soon. Crush unions? Soon. Eliminate any climate regulations? On the way. Defund public schools? Yes. Send public money to religious schools with no accountability? Yes.
“Project 2025” is nothing short of a 900-page blueprint for guiding Donald Trump’s second term of office if he’s re-elected.
After the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025 in April last year, when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination, he had no problem with it.
But now that the nation is turning its attention to the general election, Trump doesn’t want Project 2025 to draw attention. Its extremism is likely to turn off independents and moderates.
So Trump is now claiming he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.
This is another in a long line of Trump lies…
Trump has said he’d seek vengeance against those who have prosecuted him for his illegal acts. Project 2025 calls for the prosecution of district attorneys Trump doesn’t like, and the takeover of law enforcement in blue cities and states.
Project 2025 is, in short, the plan to implement what Donald Trump has said he wants to do if he’s re-elected.
Trump may want to distance himself from Project 2025 in order to come off less bonkers to independents and moderates, but he can’t escape it. The document embodies everything he stands for.
The New Republic published a hypothetical speech by Sidney Blumenthal that Joe Biden might give if were as ruthless as Trump. However, he won’t because he is an institutionalist. He believes in the law and the Constitution. He believes, despite the Roberts Court, that no one is above the law, not even the President.
Good evening, my fellow Americans. With the close of the current session of the Supreme Court, I want to report to you on my compliance with their decisions, especially in the case involving presidential immunity, United States v. Trump.
When I took the oath of office, I swore that I would “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The Supreme Court has now reinterpreted that document. The court, for all intents and purposes, has also reinterpreted the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” to replace the “absolute tyranny” of a king.
I have read the court’s majority opinion that an official act of the president is “presumptively” immune from all prosecution during and after his term, and that the president’s motive cannot be questioned. I have read, according to the majority, that a president who orders the Department of Justice and his vice president to commit election fraud is immune. I have read that a president who incites a mob to attempt to assassinate the vice president for failing to follow those instructions is immune. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
Fellow Americans, I have taken the court’s opinion to heart. I am not one to defy the court. I am, as many have remarked, an institutionalist. I believe with all my soul in our institutions. And now, following the letter and the spirit of the court’s ruling, I have acted swiftly, decisively, and enthusiastically to enforce it. I will not, I cannot, shirk my constitutional duty. As Justice Sotomayor states, “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
To begin with, certain “gratuities,” as we shall call them, have been paid to the court majority as a token of appreciation. In their ruling in the case of Snyder v. United States, the majority decided that James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who cajoled $13,000 from a trucking company after he granted it a city contract, was not liable for bribery. The court stated that it was a “gratuity.” “Gratuities are typically payments made to a public official after an official act as a reward or token of appreciation,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the majority opinion.
Payment of “gratuities” to the justices who ruled in the majority in y follows the court’s decision in Snyder. It cannot be considered a bribe because it was not promised beforehand. But I do hope, as Justice Kavanaugh wrote, that there is “appreciation.”
Now, following my strict construction of the court’s ruling on immunity, I can report to the nation that the threat to national security posed by my former political opponent, my late predecessor, has been eliminated. It was an official act. It was, to quote the court, “presumptive.”
The reasons for his removal do not need to be explained. Under the court’s decision, as an official act, it is more than privileged. I hope you understand that I need not disclose the reasons. I must respect the Supreme Court. I can assure the American people that there will be a thorough report that is currently being written by the intelligence community. It is classified. The substance cannot be disclosed—and never can be.
But I do want to tell you that he did have sex with a porn star. She didn’t like it. And he lied about his golf handicap.
Why am I doing this? That’s not admissible. The state of mind of the president, according to the court, is not admissible. My state of mind falls under an official act, so it’s nobody’s business but my own. I am proud of my official acts. I must respect the precedent of keeping secret all my reasons. Otherwise, I would be damaging the presidency for others who might follow in this office.
I regret to inform you that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been arrested. A number of other members of the House Republican Conference have been taken into custody. Jim Jordan, unfortunately, attempted to resist arrest. After wrestling with an FBI agent, he met a tragic fate. In the sudden absence of those members, there is a new majority in the House. I look forward to a long and cooperative relationship. I can say proudly, gridlock is at last broken. And we can all give thanks to the Supreme Court.
I further regret to inform you that 10 members of the Republican Senate caucus have been arrested. Again, unfortunately, Josh Hawley attempted to run away and was wounded in the leg. The incident was entirely his fault: if only he had submitted to the authorities. Lindsey Graham was arrested in his office. He has renounced all of his former allegiances, and I have issued him a pardon—a conditional pardon. There will be no more obstruction from filibusters. Again, we can thank the court.
Now, about the court itself, with the present available members of the Congress, I have proposed that the Supreme Court be expanded by 26 justices. I can report that those new justices have already been nominated and approved. Advise and consent is on the fast track. All 26 will be here tomorrow. A longer bench is already under construction.
Tragically, Chief Justice John Roberts has been arrested for his treasonous comment that the president is doing something illegal, based on his very own opinion. I will name a new chief justice after the new 26 members take their posts.
More reform is on the way. The Twenty-Second Amendment prohibiting the president from holding more than two terms will be replaced by the Twenty-Eighth Amendment, which rescinds it. The new amendment has been proposed in the states. I have no doubt that three-quarters of the states, through their legislatures, will be cooperative. In fact, I can promise you that I expect 100 percent cooperation from each and every state legislature on a bipartisan basis. I have alerted FBI offices in every state to assist in our plan to extend democracy.
To that end, I am creating a new Cabinet department, the Department of Official Acts, to coordinate, simplify, and centralize the far-flung activities of the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Defense, and other departments and agencies. I am committed to eliminating waste and abuse in official acts.
Moreover, the vice president will head a new office here at the White House, the Office of Reimagining Official Acts, to spur innovation, creativity, and efficiency, and above all the execution of justice. That office will review all of the acts that I take so that they qualify as official.
The Office of Reimagining Official Acts has already held a Zoom conference this morning with all of the Fortune 500 CEOs. Each and every executive without exception has released a statement in support of my official acts and promised full cooperation, with gusto. By the way, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee will hold a press conference to announce the details of the amazing news that our campaign has just received new contributions of $43 billion and counting.
I can also report that Rupert Murdoch has been arrested for seditious conspiracy, along with his accomplices at Fox News, who have previously been liable for defamation. They have been spewing libels every hour of every day since. That’s as much as I can say. I cannot give another reason without breaking the strictures laid down by the court.
The Supreme Court’s immunity decision has also had a big impact on international relations. I have had a conversation with Vladimir Putin, who told me that he misunderstood me all along, and that after the day’s events here at home, he has decided to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine. He told me he has the greatest admiration for our form of government now. He said, we can do business, strongman to strongman.
As for the rest of the campaign, when the Republican National Committee decides on its candidate, I would consider a debate with the ground rules that candidates adhere to national security guidelines, which will be presented as needed—before, during, and after such an event, consistent as official acts.
If any reader of this column can show where anything described here would be illegal under the Supreme Court immunity ruling, please turn yourself in to the nearest FBI bureau to avoid yet another tragic result. Thought is mother to the deed. Thought must be included among the potential threats to be countered by presidential official acts. “Presumptive,” as the court stated, must mean presumptive. And the reason? The president does not need to explain.
As we celebrate this Fourth of July, in a fervent prayer that the court’s ruling will work out for the best of all possible worlds, I want to say in conclusion, what goes around comes around.
The Supreme Court just ruled that the President has absolute immunity to do whatever he wants so long as it’s “official,” and Trump is giving the public a view of how he will use that power: to prosecute and jail his enemies, especially Liz Cheney. He could imprison them in Guantanamo and tried for treason by a military tribunal,
This is the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships, not in the USA. Right? In a Trump future, July 4 would be celebrated with a military parade of tanks and missiles. Do you think our men and women in the military can learn the goose step?
Former President Donald J. Trump over the weekend escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking “televised military tribunals” and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.
Mr. Trump, using his account on Truth Social on Sunday, promoted two posts from other users of the site that called for the jailing of his perceived political enemies.
One post that he circulated on Sunday singled out Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who is a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s, and called for her to be prosecuted by a type of military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.
“Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason,” the post said. “Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.”
A separate post included photos of 15 former and current elected officials that said, in all-capital letters, “they should be going to jail on Monday not Steve Bannon!” Those officials included Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell — the top leaders in the Senate — and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.
The list in the second post also had members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including Ms. Cheney and the former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, another Republican, and the Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson, who chaired the committee.
In a statement, the Trump campaign did not address Mr. Trump’s posts, instead repeating allegations of misconduct by members of the committee, saying “Liz Cheney and the sham January 6th committee banned key witnesses, shielded important evidence, and destroyed documents” related to their investigation.
To think that this vile man might be re-elected ruins my day.
Greg Olear writes a terrific blog called PREVAIL about whatever he wants.
He writes about the Supreme Court’s latest decision placing the President above the law, freeing him to commmit crimes with absolute immunity from prosecution. He notes that they ignore history and the clear-cut intentions and writings of the Framers of the Constitution.
He is not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar. He explains in plain language how extreme this decision is by citing the dissenting Justices.
He writes:
A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. —Declaration of Independence
Whatever the MAGA narrative about his alleged crime family, President Biden is as honest as politicians come, and regardless of his newfound kingly powers, he’s not going to recommission Alcatraz and send Trump there, or nationalize Fox News, or deport Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch and Peter Thiel, or sic SEAL Team Six on SCOTUS. The guy won’t even pardon his son—the obvious victim of a humiliating political witch hunt—because he thinks it would be inappropriate. So it’s safe to say he’s not gonna go John Wick on Donald anytime soon. Brandon only runs so dark.
Furthermore, I am neither attorney nor law school graduate nor Supreme Court Kremlinologist. Legal texts bore me. Like, I don’t even like court procedurals. So I’d be lying if I told you I had any idea what the decision augurs for the FPOTUS, the election, or the future of the country. I’m going to defer, instead, to the experts who do know: three sitting Supreme Court Justices.
“The main takeaway of [yesterday]’s decision is that all of a President’s official acts, defined without regard to motive or intent, are entitled to immunity that is ‘at least…presumptive,’ and quite possibly ‘absolute,’” Sonia Sotomayor wrote, in a dissent for the ages. “Whenever the President wields the enormous power of his office, the majority says, the criminal law (at least presumptively) cannot touch him.”
We must presume a POTUS is immune from, basically, any potentially criminal act committed while he was in office. Ah, and who determines what he isn’t immune from? The Supreme Court! Fancy trick, that.
“In sum,” Sotomayor continues, “the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.”
In her own addendum to the dissent, Ketanji Brown Jackson discusses the IRL impact the decision will have:
In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate as speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction. Once selfregulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible. So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future. The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious.
Obvious to anyone who is not a Leonard Leo radical Catholic reactionary weirdo on Harlan Crow’s payroll, that is.
And speaking of Leonard Leo radical Catholic reactionary weirdos, there is an “Easter egg” in the decision! In his concurrence, Clarence Thomas—who violated the law by not recusing from the case, not that Dick Durban gives a shit—shared his unsolicited opinion, clearly directed at the corrupt judge Aileen Cannon, that the Office of the Special Counsel should not exist, constitutionally speaking.
You might want to take your heart medication before reading this excerpt from Thomas’s little addendum, because this is next-level—which is to say, Kremlin-worthy—trolling:
I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States. But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been “established by Law,” as the Constitution requires. Art. II, §2, cl. 2. By requiring that Congress create federal offices “by Law,” the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure. If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.
Wow, someone really doesn’t want that case to go to trial! One can’t help but wonder, reading that oddly specific wording, what Clarence and/or his insurrectionist-adjacent wife might be hiding in regards to January 6th. Does Trump have something on them? Are they trying to protect themselves from eventual prosecution? Are they bona fide True Believers? Or is there something even more insidious happening chezClarence et Ginni?
Thomas may as well have borrowed Trump’s Sharpie and scrawled I AM A TRAITOR—or, better yet, я предател—on the hard copy of the decision. The man is an adenocarcinoma on the prostate of democracy. At this point, we must question, if not fully doubt, Thomas’s allegiance to the United States.
But the true evil genius of Trump v. United States, if you’re fash, is in the shielding of POTUS communications, such that, even if an act is deemed personal and unofficial, most of the available evidence to prove criminality isn’t admissible in court.
“Not content simply to invent an expansive criminal immunity for former Presidents,” Sotomayor explains, “the majority goes a dramatic and unprecedented step further. It says that acts for which the President is immune must be redacted from the narrative of even wholly private crimes committed while in office. They must play no role in proceedings regarding private criminal acts.”
In her dissent, Sotomayor lays out what the majority—which is to say, the aforementioned Leonard Leo radical Catholic reactionary weirdos—decided, why it’s “atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable,” and the malefic impact it will have on our democracy: (Note: I’m removing the references that appear after every other sentence, to make it easier for us non-lawyers to read.)
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent….
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law. The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of “core constitutional powers.” This holding is unnecessary on the facts of the indictment, and the majority’s attempt to apply it to the facts expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable bounds. In any event, it is quickly eclipsed by the second move, which is to create expansive immunity for all “official act[s].” Whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless. Finally, the majority declares that evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical.
Argument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force. Under scrutiny, its arguments crumble. To start, the majority’s broad “official acts” immunity is inconsistent with text, history, and established understandings of the President’s role. Moreover, it is deeply wrong, even on its own functionalist terms. Next, the majority’s “core” immunity is both unnecessary and misguided. Furthermore, the majority’s illogical evidentiary holding is unprecedented. Finally, this majority’s project will have disastrous consequences for the Presidency and for our democracy.
What Trump v. United States does, as I am hardly the first to point out, is turn the president into a king. This is ironic, because for all of Alito’s and Thomas’s bluster about “originalism,” where they ask WWJD (where “J” stands for “Jefferson”), the one thing we Americans—even little kids, ffs!—know for sure about the Founders is that they did not want another king. How do we know this? They wrote a whole fucking letter about it and posted it to George III. You can see a copy at the National Archives Museum.
Anyway, said Troll King of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, worked the George III stuff into his reasoning that Jack Smith has no more authority to indict Donald Trump than Jack White, Jack Black, Jack B. Nimble, or Jack B. Quick. “In fact, one of the grievances raised by the American colonists in declaring their independence was that the King ‘ha[d] erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance,’” Thomas writes, no doubt pleased with himself for working “erect” and “eat out” into a concurrence.
“The Founders thus drafted the Constitution with ‘evidently a great inferiority in the power of the President, in this particular, to that of the British king,’” he continues, noting that they “broke from the monarchial model by giving the President the power to fill offices (with the Senate’s approval), but not the power to create offices. They did so by ‘imposing the constitutional requirement that new officer positions be “established by Law” rather than through a King-like custom of the head magistrate unilaterally creating new offices.’”
In short, Clarence Thomas is attempting to eighty-six Jack Smith on the grounds that the Founders explicitly rejected a “monarchial model,” while simultaneously arguing that Trump should be given kingly powers.
These bought-and-paid-for fascists are just fucking with us at this point.
The last six paragraphs of Sotomayor’s dissent are, in a word, chilling. Again, I’ve not read many Supreme Court decisions, but I’d be surprised if this were not the first one that mentioned the possibility of a president tapping SEAL Team Six to whack a political rival.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: this is the senior liberal justice on the Supreme Court freaking the fuck out about what Roberts and his reactionary chums have unleashed. Lines from this section have been quoted in every article published about the decision, but I’m going to include the entire excerpt, for maximum impact:
Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were not so single-minded. In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.” The answer after today is no.
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.
With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
Six weeks ago, Sotomayor spoke at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where she was honored with an award. She was remarkably candid about her experience working with six fascists. “There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” she said. “There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”
I wonder if the immunity case was one of the times Sotomayor wept in her office—or if the ugly future it portends was too horrifying for the tears to come.
Jamelle Bouie is an opinion writer for The New York Times. He writes with exceptional insight and clarity. In this column, he explains the radical, unprecedented nature of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. The majority claims to be “originalists,” paying strict attention to the meaning of the words of those who wrote the Constitution, but this decision clearly demonstrates their complete indifference to the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution. The Framers created a strong balance of power among the three branches of the Federal Government; this Court negates those checks and balances.
With this ruling,Trump vs. US, the six member majority of the Supreme Court has shown that they are rank partisans. Their overriding objective was to protect Trump, first, by dragging out their decision as long as possible; second, by remanding the case to a District Court, where it may require months of hearings and appeals to determine which acts are official and which are not; and third, by affirming Trump’s once-absurd claim that the President can do whatever he wants and it’s not illegal.
The Roberts Court is a disgrace.
Jamelle Bouie writes:
In 1977, nearly three years after leaving office in disgrace, President Richard Nixon gave a series of interviews to David Frost, a British journalist. Of their hourslong conversations, only one part would enter history.
“When the president does it,” Nixon told Frost, defending the conduct that ended his presidency, “that means that it is not illegal.” He went on to add that if “the president approves an action because of the national security — or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude — then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law.” Otherwise, Nixon concluded, “they’re in an impossible position.”
Yesterday, in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the Supreme Court affirmed Nixon’s bold assertion of presidential immunity. Ruling on the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for his role in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that the president has “absolute immunity” for “official acts” when those acts relate to the core powers of the office.
“We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office,” Roberts writes. “At least with respect to the president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity.”
The majority divides official conduct from “unofficial conduct,” which is still liable for prosecution. But it doesn’t define the scope of “unofficial conduct” and places strict limits on how courts and prosecutors might try to prove the illegality of a president’s unofficial acts. “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the president’s motives,” Roberts writes. “Such an inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose, thereby intruding on the Article II interests that immunity seeks to protest.” In other words, the why of a president’s actions cannot be held as evidence against him, even if they’re plainly illegitimate.
Roberts tries to apply this new, seemingly extra-constitutional standard to the facts of the case against the former president. He says that the president “has ‘exclusive authority and absolute discretion’ to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute, including with respect to allegations of election crime” and may “discuss potential investigations and prosecutions” with Justice Department officials, effectively neutering the idea of independent federal law enforcement. Turning to Trump’s attempt to pressure Mike Pence into delaying certification of the Electoral College, Roberts says that this too was an official act.
Having made this distinction between “official” and “unofficial” conduct, Roberts remands the case back to a Federal District Court so that it can re-examine the facts and decide whether any conduct described in the indictment against Trump is prosecutable.
The upshot of this decision is that it will delay the former president’s trial past the election. And if Trump wins he can quash the case, rendering it moot. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has, in other words, successfully kept the American people from learning in a court of law the truth of Trump’s involvement on Jan. 6.
But more troubling than the court’s interference in the democratic process are the disturbing implications of the majority’s decision, which undermines the foundations of republican government at the same time that it purports to be a strike in defense of the constitutional order.
Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution does not exist in the Constitution, Justice Sonia Sotomayor observes in her dissent. The historical evidence, she writes, “cuts decisively against it.” By definition, the president was bound by law. He was, first and foremost, not a king. He was a servant of the public, and like any other servant, the framers believed he was subject to criminal prosecution if he broke the law.
And while the majority might say here that the president is still subject to criminal prosecution for “unofficial acts,” Sotomayor aptly notes that the chief justice has created a standard that effectively renders nearly every act official if it can be tied in some way, however tenuously, to the president’s core powers.
If the president takes official action whenever he acts in ways that are “not manifestly or palpably beyond his authority” and if “in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the president’s motives,” then, Sotomayor writes, “Under that rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt motives and intent, remains official and immune.”
A president who sells cabinet positions to the highest bidder is immune. A president who directs his I.R.S. to harass and investigate his political rivals is immune. A president who gives his military illegal orders to suppress protesters is immune.
These examples only scratch the surface of allowable conduct under the majority’s decision. “The court,” Sotomayor writes, “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.” When he uses his official powers in any way, she continues, “he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s SEAL team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune.”
The bottom line, Sotomayor concludes, is that “the relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
If the president is a king, then we are subjects, whose lives and livelihoods are only safe insofar as we don’t incur the wrath of the executive. And if we find ourselves outside the light of his favor, then we have find ourselves, in effect, outside the protection of the law.
Roberts says that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution is necessary to preserve the separation of powers and protect the “energy” of the executive. But the aim of the separation of powers was not merely to create exclusive spheres of action for each branch — if this were true, the Senate, which ratifies treaties and confirms executive branch appointments, would not exist in its current form — but to prevent the emergence of unchecked authority. Roberts has reversed this. Now separation of powers requires the absolute power of the executive to act without checks, without balances and without limits.
In their relentless drive to protect a Republican president and secure his power for a future administration, the conservative majority has issued a fundamentally anti-republican opinion. In doing so, it has made a mockery of the American constitutional tradition.
By the end of his time in the White House, Nixon was a disgrace. But to the conservative movement, he was something of a hero — hounded out of office by a merciless liberal establishment. One way to tell the story of the Republican Party after Nixon is as the struggle to build a world in which a future Nixon could act unimpeded by law.
Roberts has done more than score a victory for Trump. He has scored a victory for the conservative legal project of a unitary executive of immense power. Besides Trump, he has vindicated the lawlessness of Republican presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush. The Nixonian theory of presidential power is now enshrined as constitutional law.
This time when the president does it, it really won’t be illegal.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President of the United States has absolute immunity for criminal acts committed in his official capacity. He may order the Department of Justice to prosecute his political opponents. He can organize a coup against the government. He may order the military to assassinate his enemies. He may, as Trump did, send a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol and seek to stop the certification of the man who won the election and to murder elected officials. He may take a bribe for appointments or pardons.
The Court laid the groundwork for authoritarianism. For fascism. It eroded a basic understanding of our democracy. The six reactionary justices obliterated the bedrock principle of our government that “no person is above the law.” Under this ruling, the President is above the law. He is a King. The Founders would be appalled by this decision. Under this ruling, Richard Nixon need not have resigned.
This court is a threat to democracy. The majority is not conservative. It overrules precedent without hesitation, as it did in Dobbs (the abortion decision) and as it does in this decision.
Dahlia Lithwick and Norman Ornstein are lawyers and close observers of national politics. In this article, they urge us to take Trump’s threats seriously. They are not just campaign rhetoric or empty promises. He means what he says. As Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Most of the mainstream media (MSNBC is an exception) attempts to normalize Trump, as though he’s just another in a long line of conservative politicians. He is not. He is an autocrat who longs to have total control and to use that control to get vengeance for his enemies (no “loyal opposition” for him).
The first term was a warning. Trump tried in some cases to pick good people, but they didn’t last long. He won’t make the same mistake. He will demand loyalty, total loyalty. Anyone he appoints will have to agree that the election of 2020 was rigged and stolen.
He says he will take bold steps to reverse the progressive gains of the past 90 years, which he will attribute to “communists, socialists, fascists vermin, and scum”
Lithwick and Ornstein write at Slate about The dangers posed by Trump:
Most would-be dictators run for office downplaying or sugarcoating their intentions, trying to lure voters with a vanilla appeal. But once elected, the autocratic elements take over, either immediately or gradually: The destruction of free elections, undermining the press, co-opting the judiciary, turning the military into instruments of the dictatorship, installing puppets in the bureaucracy, making sure the legislature reinforces rather than challenges lawless or unconstitutional actions, using violence and threats of violence to cow critics and adversaries, rewarding allies with government contracts, and ensuring that the dictator and family can secrete billions from government resources and bribes. This was the game plan for Putin, Sisi, Orbán, and many others. It’s hardly unfamiliar.
The battle plan of his allies in the Heritage Foundation, working closely with his campaign via Project 2025, includes many of the aims above, and more; it would also tighten the screws on abortion after Dobbs, move against contraception, reinstate criminal sanctions against gay sex while overturning the right to same-sex marriage, among other things. His top foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, has reiterated what Trump has said about his isolationist-in-the-extreme foreign policy—jettison NATO, abandon support for Ukraine and give Putin a green light to go after Poland and other NATO countries, and reorient American alliances to create one of strongmen dictators including Kim Jong-un. Shockingly, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson violated sacred norms and endangered security by bypassing qualified lawmakers and appointing to the House Intelligence Committee two dangerous and manifestly unqualified members—one insurrectionist sympathizer, Rep. Scott Perry, who has sued the FBI, and one extremist demoted by the military for drunkenness, pill pushing, and other offenses, Rep. Ronny Jackson—simply because Donald Trump demanded it. They will have access to America’s most critical secrets and will likely share them with Trump if his status as a convicted felon denies him access to top secret information during the campaign. This is part of a broader pattern in which GOP lawmakers do what Trump wants, no matter how extreme or reckless….
We are worried about this baseline assumption that everything is fine until someone alerts us that nothing is fine, that of course our system will hold because it always has. We worry that we are exceptionally good at telling ourselves that shocking things won’t happen, and then when they do happen, we don’t know what to do. We worry that every time we say “the system held” it implies that “holding” equals “winning” as opposed to barely scraping by. We worry that while Trump has armies of surrogates out there arguing that Trump is an all-powerful God proxy, the rule of law has no surrogates out there arguing for anything because nobody ever came to a rally for a Rule 11 motion. The Biden administration has largely taken the position that the felony conviction is irrelevant because it’s proof that the status quo isn’t in danger. But the reality is that Republicans are openly campaigning against judges, juries, and prosecutors. Overt declarations of blowing up our checks and balances and following the blueprints to autocracy set by Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, are treated with shrugs by mainstream journalists and commentators. What’s more, Republicans in Congress have shown a willingness to kowtow to every Trump demand. The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger.
“The system is holding” is not a plan for a knowable future. It never was.
Please open the link and read the article in full.
From 1981 to 2010, the average annual days in Oklahoma City where heat put a strain on electric transformers was 10. This was due to “blistering daytime highs along with sultry nighttime lows, depriving electrical equipment of a chance to cool down.” By the midcentury (2036 to 2065) it is projected to reach 45 days. Also, Tulsa is expected to reach 44 days and Altus 65 days of heat waves.
It also estimated that Phoenix, which is in the news for its current heat wave, “will endure an estimated 126 days each year with heat that reduces transformers’ performance, the analysis found. A power outage during a heat wave would kill thousands of people in the city, according to a peer-reviewed study published last year.”
Of course, the stress that heat waves dump on transformers is just an indicator of the predicted effects of a 350% increase in heat waves in Oklahoma City, and worse increases across the world. The distress imposed on infrastructure should be seen as a symptom of the devastation that humans, and other living beings will face.
The national press has also reported on possible ways that Oklahoma (and other places) could respond to global warming. In an editorial in the Tulsa World, Philip-Michael Weiner explained, “If we want to have a more stable climate in the future, we need to remove a lot of the carbon already in the air.” He adds, “Our elected representatives must not miss the chance to help Oklahoma become a global leader in carbon removal.”
Weiner explains that Oklahoma is “well-situated to become a global leader in carbon removal and reap meaningful economic benefits for our state.” He cites “Oklahoma’s geo-workers, technology, and resources, [and] vast geologic capacity, subsurface geology, needed for carbon storage.” And Weiner adds that, “Exxon Mobil Corp. estimates there will be a $4 trillion market by 2050 for capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.”
But that leads to another concern. Yes, given our failure to adequately tackle the proven threat of climate change, we must invest heavily in a range of efforts to decarbonize our atmosphere. And that will require major commitments from corporations, especially oil and gas companies, as well as government programs. But, we wouldn’t be facing such an existential threat if oil and gas companies, especially Exxon, had not hid their research which confirmed the findings of scientists who nearly convinced the H.W. Bush administration that carbon dioxide emissions needed to be quickly and massively cut. As the Guardian noted, their study:
Made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.
But they borrowed the tactics of the tobacco industry, which knowingly lied about the deadly dangers of their product. And then Exxon “continued its disinformation campaign for another half century.”
Yes, there has been reporting on Oklahomans seeking to apply technologies developed for fracking in order to cut greenhouses gases. But the bigger stories have focused on Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who pledges, “We’re going to be on oil and gas for the next hundred years,” It was Hamm who organized the “energy round table” at former President Trump’s private club where he promised “to eliminate Mr. Biden’s new climate rules intended to accelerate the nation’s transition to electric vehicles, and to push a ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda aimed at opening up more public lands to oil and gas exploration.”
The New York Times reported that sources:
Asked not to be identified in order to discuss the private event. Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry.
One would think that the new predictions regarding global warming in Oklahoma City, and elsewhere, would convince the Chamber of Commerce and political leaders to immediately make de-carbonization a #1 priority. And it should be clear that the Hamm/Trump agenda – pushed by oil industry lobbyists – would devastate our planet. Somehow, we have to come together and hope businessmen will value stakeholders as well a shareholders, and place mankind over short-term corporate profits for a very few.
By the way, as I was about to complete this post, United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said:
There is now an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will mark the first calendar year with an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – up from a 66% chancelast year.
As Reuters reports, “scientists warn of more extreme and irreversible impacts” if the 1.5C threshold is passed. So, “U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert ‘climate hell.”” And I would add, Oklahomans and other Americans must double down on our abilities to fight global warming. But it is too late to make a difference in saving our planet if we don’t resist Exxon, Harold Hamm, Donald Trump, and others who are promoting the economics of destruction.
When a commenter belittled Russian interference in the 2016 election, Democracy returned to provide the evidence of Russia’s active and considerable interference in the election of 2016. The election of Trump was a major coup for Putin.
Democracy wrote:
“Whatever meager influence Russian may have had …”
I suppose this is an improvement over “The fact remains that there is no evidence for Russian involvement in the U.S. election at all.”
This, written at a time when there was — IN FACT – LOTS of evidence of Russian involvement in the 2016 election, from virtually every intelligence agency in the United States government:
US Intelligence news release on October 7, 2016:
“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Reuters: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and Office of Director of National Intelligence agree that Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. There is also agreement, according to U.S. officials, that Russia sought to intervene in the election to help Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.”
There are some people who apply the Trumpian tactic on Michael Cohen to this information, suggesting that because, at certain times in the past, some of these agencies have had credibility issues.
Except, here, private cybersecurity experts have confirmed the information. As The Daily Beast reported in 2017,
“it was a respected computer security company called Crowdstrike that examined the servers, and publicly revealed Russian’s involvement in the DNC hacks last year. It backed up the claim with specific technical information far more useful than anything in the DHS report. Crowdstrike competitors, including Symantec and FireEye, have examined the forensic data from the DNC hack themeselves, and endorsed Crowdstrike’s conclusion that two particular hacking groups were the culprits: ‘Fancy Bear’ and ‘The Dukes.’
Here’s how Thomas Rid, formerly at the Department of War Studies at Kings College London, and now the Director of the Institute for Cybersecurity Studies at Johns Hopkins, and who studies and writes about technology and cyber warfare, puts it:
“the evidence is so rich that there are only two reasons not to accept it — one, because you don’t understand the technical details, or because you don’t want to understand it for political reasons… It’s really not controversial that we’re looking at a major Russian campaign.”
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum summarized the whole sordid affair well:
“the outline of the case is no mystery…Democratic and Republican Party servers were hacked by foreign agents, yet the Moscow-friendly folks at Wikileaks somehow only obtained the contents of Democratic servers…Meanwhile, Donald Trump ran a campaign that seemed almost designed to please Russian President Vladimir Putin…The campaign then rewrote the Republican platform in ways sure to please Putin. Trump selected as his principal foreign-policy adviser a retired general previously paid by Russia’s English-language propaganda network, RT…Trump himself publicly urged the Russians to do more hacking of his opponent’s email…Trump endorsed Putin’s war aims in Syria…He suggested he would not honor NATO commitments against Russia…He condoned the invasion and annexation of Crimea…Do Americans really need secret information from the CIA to discern the pattern here?”
Yet there DO appear to be SOME people who still try to play off the Russian ratf*cking as some kind of climate-change-like “hoax.”
A commenter who uses the nom de plume “Democracy” responded to a discussion on the blog. Someone said that Putin publicly endorsed Biden. Others said that former KGB agent Putin was lying to mislead gullible American voters. Trump’s deference to Putin before and after he was elected was often noted. Trump denied that Putin interfered in the 2016 election, overruling American intelligence agencies. Putin denied it, and that was good enough for Trump.
Democracy wrote:
To clarify this issue — Biden v Trump — a bit, it’s absolutely CRAZY to think that Vladimir Putin would prefer another Biden term to Trump. Given what we know to be true, it’s really just plain stupid.
There’s just TONS of documented evidence that Putin WANTED Trump to be president and he directed Russian intelligence agencies HELP him.
The Senate Intelligence Committee spent a lot of time investigating the 2016 election and produced a set of reports on its findings.
Volume 1 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s efforts notes this:
“The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure’ at the state and local level…Russian activities demand renewed attention to vulnerabilities in U.S. voting infrastructure. In 2016, cybersecurity for electoral infrastructure at the state and local level was sorely lacking; for example, voter registration databases were not as secure as they could have been. Aging voting equipment, particularly voting machines that had no paper record of votes, were vulnerable to exploitation by a committed adversary…Russian government-affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. elections…the Committee found ample evidence to suggest that the Russian government was developing and implementing capabilities to interfere in the 2016 elections, including undermining confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes.”
Volume 2 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s gets more specific:
“In 2016, Russian operatives associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) used social media to conduct an information warfare campaign designed to spread disinformation and societal division in the United States…The Committee found, that the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin…The Committee found that the IRA’ s information warfare campaign was broad in scope and entailed objectives beyond the result of the 2016 presidential election…IRA social media activity was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump, and to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”
Volume V lays out the “collusion” clearly:
“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.
The New York Times reported on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Volume V conclusions like this:
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pagesprovided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government disrupted an American election to help Mr. Trump become president, Russian intelligence services viewed members of the Trump campaign as easily manipulated, and some of Trump’s advisers were eager for the help from an American adversary…the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom the report identified as a ‘Russian intelligence officer.’…Mr. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Mr. Kilimnik and others affiliated with the Russian intelligence services ‘represented a grave counterintelligence threat,’ the report said…The Senate investigation found that two other Russians who met at Trump Tower in 2016 with senior members of the Trump campaign — including Mr. Manafort; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s eldest son — had ‘significant connections to Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.’…
There is MUCH more to this than what’s here. As Robert Mueller noted, his investigation “established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the campaign. “
Mueller also reported that multiple Trump campaign officials, “deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long term retention of data or communication records. In such cases the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with the other known facts.”
And, as we know, Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three Russian “companies,” and Paul Manafort was convicted for financial crimes and Manafort was pardoned by Trump.
To the issue of third-party voting, it makes no good sense. It makes no moral or “principled” sense. It makes no patriotic sense. In this election, a vote given to a third party candidate is – essentially – a vote FOR this:
Diane Ravitch's blog 