The [Supreme] Court easily could have let the lower court ruling against Trump [having presidential immunity] stand, but Roberts orchestrated a ruling that effectively pardoned Trump retrospectively and prospectively. That unprecedented and partisan edict paved the way for Trump’s return to power.
The Constitution provides zero immunity for presidents from criminal prosecution. But John Roberts chose to be the kingmaker, giving Trump king-like powers last year, and then this year mowing down well-founded and well-grounded temporary restraining orders [that allowed] an array of unilateral and extreme dictates to proceed — even though doing so will cause irreparable harm [by letting Trump] transgress constitutional provisions, laws passed by Congress and long-standing legal precedents.
Can we judge him now and hold him accountable?
Like if the Dems get past Republican election meddling can they just fucking impeachment him and do something? I’m sick of horrible people getting to make everyone else suffer while they live a life of luxury until they finally die of old age.
They could - Congress has the exact same authority to impeach a supreme court justice as they do a president (or any other federal office-holder for that matter).
But they won’t.
A Dem majority wouldn’t be enough, because Schumer and Jeffries and all the rest of their neolib hack allies would still be there, and they’re owned by most of the same big money donors that own the Republicans.
The only way there’s any chance that Congress would actually exercise its authority is if all of the corrupt shitweasels are primaried and the Dems end up not just with a majority, but a majority of actual leftists with actual principles and integrity.
And that’s terribly unlikely, since both the Republicans and the Democrats would fight it tooth and toenail.
Impeachment requires 2/3 of the senate voting to convict. The only way that will happen is for one party to have 67 senate seats, or for members of both parties to vote to convict.
For the Dems to get to 67 senate seats in the next midterm election would require winning every single race, The odds of that are just slightly more than 0, you’d be better off playing the lottery.
It’s slightly less implausible that the Democrats could win most of the seats up for election in a large backlash against Trump and the Republicans, and that in that scenario you could get the remaining votes from Republicans who view the Trump administration as a sinking ship that they don’t want to go down with. Trump’s second impeachment was as close as we’ve seen to that kind of scenario.
Even then, it’s a lot easier to imagine Republicans going along with an impeachment of Trump (who will almost certainly be gone soon anyway) than it is for them to remove members of the Supreme Court whose positions could affect the balance of power for decades. About the only way I can see it happening (even in this extreme scenario) is if they went after Thomas and/or Alito, because they are the oldest members currently on the court and that would give Trump the opportunity to appoint two new justices.
So, realistically, any (legal) accountability is at least two elections away. And even then, it’s more plausible that it would come from a new administration pursuing criminal charges against the fascists and their enablers than it would be through impeachment.
Who came up with this incredibly dumb system? Judges for life and basically no way to remove them… the founders were just as smart as the current iteration of buffoons.
If the Dems win, they could immediately resize the court and add another 5 justices. Then make Roberts eat his garbage legacy by relitigating these terrible decisions and fixing the mess one case at a time.
Yeah how are we a decade in and still most Democrats are still on the whole “well, you know, it’s better to let democracy die on the high road than to stoop to their level” shit??? I’d rather not live the rest of my life in the coming and present nightmare in the service of some abstract, holier-than-thou nonsense, tyvm. Go lower, Jesus Christ.
Huh. Guess those rich white guys from the 1700s COULDN’T anticipate everything that could possibly threaten a nation. Imagine that!
They set up a system that could be amended over time to address this kind of thing.
Yet the combination of hyperpartisanship, congressional gridlock, and a politics divorced from objective reality had made that remedy functionally unavailable
Just some of the many things that they couldn’t anticipate hundreds of years ago at a time where there was nine or so states.
How’s that going?
It isn’t a perfect system, but they did acknowledge that they couldn’t foresee everything and included a system that would allow for addressing these kinds of issues.
Even if they foresaw this very specific way of running the country into the ground it wouldn’t matter because the administration and the conservative members of SCOTUS and the Republicans in congress are all blatantly ignoring the law and the constitution and every other part of the system they want to ignore. No system would be able to stop a hostile takeover that ignores the safeguards of the system.
The test of whether a system is worth anything is can it better prevent this type of thing from happening
Malfeasance and abuse of power is a feature, not a bug. There is no accountability, for any elected office holder. There’s the dog and pony show when someone does something deemed too egregious for the voter base to stomach, where the perpetrator will step down to spend time with their family as they quietly reflect on the “damage” they’ve done, but that’s smoke and mirrors for them being offered a private sector role where any connections they made while holding the reigns of power can be utilized to get tax payer dollars for the company that funds them, or help lobby for ever less restrictive legislation that will allow the company to dump toxic waste into the municipal drinking water then charge those effected to clean it up, all while doing everything they can to reduce the chance they ever have to pay taxes. Accountability isn’t something that applies to the suits in Washington. Laura Bush and Ted Kennedy both killed people, if it had been you or I doing that we’d still be serving time, but for them the qualifying question of “was the victim someone of power, status, or influence?” was asked before the ball even got rolling on the judicial process. Those in power are all above the law, every single one of them, and it’s because of that there is no cognition that these office holders are public servants. They kowtow to the biggest donor, not the public that actually goes to the voting booth. So long as McDonald’s, Bayer, Nestle, Verizon/AT&T-Time-Warner-AOL-Atari-Discovery-Paramount-Skydance-Chuck E. Cheese (whatever other fuckin’ company decides to buy that behemoth)/T-Mobile, Cargill, Dow, DuPont, Pfizer, Disney, Moderna, United Health/Aetna/Cigna, CVS, ExxonMobil, Haliburton, Lockheed, Boeing, and the Duck Dynasty crew (just to name a few) get to throw unlimited money at candidates promising favorable legislation on their behalf, there will be no accountability for the corruption and incompetence that permeates the halls of power. JD Vance said the right things to Peter Thiel and Thiel cut a check to have a talking head in a position of power that could further his [Thiel’s] goals. Until the public gets their shit together and crowd funds a candidate that can’t be bought no matter the cost or threat to family/business interests, we’ll continue to have one shit stain candidate after another, promising a brighter tomorrow to the public, while working feverishly to ensure the shares waiting for them from their sponsor company reach maximum value upon their leaving office or retiring.
I get the gist of what you’re saying, but the “law” has nothing to with morals, ethics, or righteousness and never has. So the “law” will be brought down on anyone who questions the authority of the ones with the most power, and that includes those who also have power, just not as much. They have already threatened Ilhan Omar and Zohran Mamdani with risk of deportation. The House refuses to seat Adelita Grijalva. Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh has been slapped with felony charges. The “law” is also coming after people who enabled all this chicanery as well, including James Comey and Merrick Garland. The pardons that Biden wrote to protect the people in his administration from the incoming Trump administration have been struck as null and void by the Republican apparatus, and charges are likely coming for anyone and everyone in Biden’s orbit, up to and including Biden himself, no matter the Supreme Court ruling that effectively said “if the President does it, it’s not a crime.” They’ll find a way to make anything Biden did a crime, despite that.
Your post also ignores how much more the wealthy private sector benefactors of these political puppets gain by legalizing their corruption through lobbying and bribery. The kind of things they should be in jail for are perverted because their wealth, as you pointed out, allows them to buy out the fear of prosecution from the law. I think it’s unfair to say all those with political power are immune to prosecution when it’s clear they’re happy to go after people like Comey and Garland. I would say those people who aren’t in the political organizations but are rather pulling the strings have even more safety than the politicians. The “law” isn’t ever going to materially come down on Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Steve Huffman, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel and so on. That’s because their wealth bought their way out of that by legalizing the worst of what they do. They have used their wealth to leverage control over a badly designed political system and prevent healthy changes to the system at every step of the way for nearly the entire existence of the USA.
Anyway, I just think your ire should be pointed a little less at a badly designed political system which has been gamed by the wealthy, and instead at the wealthy so willing to game it because they don’t give one hot damn about the future of the nation or it’s citizens. They are all ready to skip the country and go somewhere else when the house of cards falls, leaving us here to suffer after they’ve strip-mined it all. In that moment, many politicians will end up like Gaddafi, literally torn limb from limb by their former constituents, no longer protected by the “law.” The wealthy who enabled them, however, will be long gone in their New Zealand bunkers.