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>However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Trump v. United States (2024) that all presidents have absolute criminal immunity for official acts un

>However, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Trump v. United States (2024) that all presidents have absolute criminal immunity for official acts under core constitutional powers, presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts. I think future law philosophers and historians will cite this as an example of how immunity should not work. If the president can break any law as long as he is doing it as the president in an official manner (for example by signing an executive order), nothing can stop him from having all his political enemies arrested, exiled or straight-up murdered. So there is literally only the goodwill of one single person keeping the US from becoming a fascist dictatorship.

Loudergood 10mo ago
It appears noone considered a congress controlled by sycophants when designing the system.
- sigmoid10 10mo ago
  To be honest, what could congress even do given what the supreme court has said? If Trump went full Hitler and decided to burn down the Capitol and have everyone in it killed who doesn't do his bidding, he couldn't even be held accountable by them in theory.
  - stvltvs 10mo ago
    They could remove him from office. Theoretically anyway. If it hasn't happened in ~240 years, then it's probably a paper tiger.
    - JohnBooty 10mo ago
      Yeah, "theoretically" is doing a lot of work there. Removal requires a 2/3 majority of the Senate, which is absolutely neverfuckinghappening in a 2-party system. POTUS is now unstoppable and untethered.
    - Tadpole9181 10mo ago
      By the congress he had kidnapped / killed and whose building of operation is razed?
- tharmas 10mo ago
  Just wait til America is ruled by someone with high intelligence AND tRump's guile. Fixes: for the love of God, fixed terms for Supreme Court nominees. No? Do the EU Elite and the Democrats still think that its Putin who is the Evil One?
  - jfengel 10mo ago
    There can be more than one Evil One. Putin is responsible for an utterly unjustified war against Ukraine, committing atrocity after atrocity. Just because our own President is also guilty of war crimes (as well as domestic ones), it doesn't make Putin less culpable.
interroboink 10mo ago
> So there is literally only the goodwill of one single person Well, not quite. Immunity from prosecution is not immunity from impeachment/removal (which is a political, not judicial, process). Of course, that has its own problems, but just pointing out that in theory there are more checks than just the one you mention.
- sigmoid10 10mo ago
  According to the constitution, impeachment is literally for treason, bribery, high crimes or other serious misdemeanours. But the SC basically said it fundamentally can not be treason, bribery, a high crime or any misdemeanour if he did something in his role as president. So the whole process has become stale.
  - interroboink 10mo ago
    Ultimately, the Senate decides on whether to convict/remove for impeachment. The SC does not decide it. Sure, I imagine the Senate would generally want to broadly stay in agreement with the SC, but they don't have any obligation to do so. At least that is my understanding; I'm not a lawyer or constitutional scholar :)
    - sigmoid10 10mo ago
      The Senate decides (or at least should) based on laws that the SC interprets.
  - technothrasher 10mo ago
    You added the adjective "serious" to misdemeanors, which is not in the Constitution. The "high" in "high crimes and misdemeanors" means crimes and misdemeanors committed by high officials, not crimes and misdemeanors that are extreme.
    - jrs235 10mo ago
      If I understand you correctly, then if a President's cabinet (high officials) break the law the President can be impeached. Which makes sense to me. It places accountability on the President to pick trust worthy people and to immediately get rid of them if they break the law (to lessen the chances they'd be impeached for not doing something about it and insuring they are prosecuted).
FrustratedMonky 10mo ago
Doesn't it also imply that the US Gov was doing something illegal. If the President is immune if doing something official, then the government was doing something officially illegal. Even Bush/Cheney went through the motions of coming up with a legal reasoning for torture. Even Bush got Congressional approval for military actions. This president is off the rails not even trying to have even a flimsy cover of legality.
- mandeepj 10mo ago
  > This president is off the rails not even trying to have even a flimsy cover of legality. Rather he has a nerve to declare US War powers act illegal and threatened, abused, and yelled at those 5 republican senators who voted with democrats. Wild times!! https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-power-morality.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-intervi...
- JumpinJack_Cash 10mo ago
  > > This president is off the rails not even trying to have even a flimsy cover of legality. The problem is Trump but also he's a symptom of a larger problem. Left and right are so at odds with each other that all the reforms that a modern country would have to undertake in order to have less traumatic and less 'winner take all' elections not only weren't undertaken like they were in other countries, but the odds of actually happening are close to 0% ever since 2016
lenerdenator 10mo ago
> I think future law philosophers and historians will cite this as an example of how immunity should not work. Today, pretty much everyone is citing this as an example of how immunity should not work.
AnimalMuppet 10mo ago
"For official acts under core constitutional powers". Arresting all his political enemies is not a core constitutional power (still less having them executed). Everyone is spinning this as "total immunity". It's not. At least, it's not worded that way. What's actually going to happen is that, the first time someone tries to prosecute it, it's going to go all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court, as it is constituted at that time, will judge whether the action in question was an official act under core constitutional powers. Until then, we don't actually know what that line looks like. I suspect it's going to be less blanket than everyone seems to be assuming... but we will see.
- acdha 10mo ago
  It’s conditional immunity: the Roberts court is openly an instrument of Republican power, but they knew there was a good chance that the Democrats would win an election and so the ruling was carefully crafted to allow them to pick the opposite outcome if a Democrat were accused of abuse of power. You can see a similar play at work with the unprecedented use of the shadow docket to prevent lower courts from restraining the executive branch without having to take credit for positions which are highly dubious from a constitutional standpoint. If the political tides shift, they can quietly unblock the lower court’s ruling and pretend they hadn’t deliberately given this administration a window of opportunity without creating a permanent precedent empowering a future Democratic administration.
  - disgruntledphd2 10mo ago
    Yup, I really hoped that it might not get this bad, but the Roberts court is basically doing what the Federalist society has been aiming towards for the past 40-50 years, and it's very very sad for all of the US (longterm, this benefits absolutely no-one except autocrats).
- JohnBooty 10mo ago
  Arresting all his political enemies is not a core constitutional power Unless he leaves a smoking gun in the vein of a note saying "kill this guy I don't like" -- and perhaps not even then -- nothing will happen. What he will do is... what he is already doing. What every dictator for hundreds of years has done. His enemies will be persecuted and prosecuted under the guise of legal action: tax fraud, national security, whatever. The sort of compromat that exists, or can be fabricated to exist, for every single person on Earth. To even have a hope of stopping Trump (or any other POTUS) there would have to be clear proof of malicious intent completely divorced from his job duties, and you'd need a Congress or Supreme Court that gave half a shit about opposing him.
legitster 10mo ago
>If the president can break any law as long as he is doing it as the president This is a hyperbolic misreading of the court's decision. The president was only cleared to act with impunity with the DOJ, as the department is part of the executive branch. For the other issues revolving around election interference, the court actually invited the case to be reheard - the prosecutors though must make a case that the illegal interference wasn't related to his duties as a president. That said, I don't know why there has been a huge failure to re-litigate this issue. The previous administration could have followed up but never did - and I fear it was done out of a terrible political miscalculation.
rapatel0 10mo ago
>I think future law philosophers and historians will cite this as an example of how immunity should not work. If the president can break any law as long as he is doing it as the president in an official manner (for example by signing an executive order), nothing can stop him from having all his political enemies arrested, exiled or straight-up murdered. This is not true. The framework defines how to interpret the law. If the president were to do as you say, the subesequent criminal case (brought by federal or state authorities) would interpret those actions in the standard judicial process. If a jury were to determine that the president was acting in the interest of himself, then the president does not get immunity.
- pvab3 10mo ago
  As I understand it, the ruling was left as open-ended as possible and was something that was intentionally vague within the Constitution.

Loudergood 10mo ago

It appears noone considered a congress controlled by sycophants when designing the system.

sigmoid10 10mo ago
To be honest, what could congress even do given what the supreme court has said? If Trump went full Hitler and decided to burn down the Capitol and have everyone in it killed who doesn't do his bidding, he couldn't even be held accountable by them in theory.
- stvltvs 10mo ago
  They could remove him from office. Theoretically anyway. If it hasn't happened in ~240 years, then it's probably a paper tiger.
  - JohnBooty 10mo ago
    Yeah, "theoretically" is doing a lot of work there. Removal requires a 2/3 majority of the Senate, which is absolutely neverfuckinghappening in a 2-party system. POTUS is now unstoppable and untethered.
  - Tadpole9181 10mo ago
    By the congress he had kidnapped / killed and whose building of operation is razed?
tharmas 10mo ago
Just wait til America is ruled by someone with high intelligence AND tRump's guile. Fixes: for the love of God, fixed terms for Supreme Court nominees. No? Do the EU Elite and the Democrats still think that its Putin who is the Evil One?
- jfengel 10mo ago
  There can be more than one Evil One. Putin is responsible for an utterly unjustified war against Ukraine, committing atrocity after atrocity. Just because our own President is also guilty of war crimes (as well as domestic ones), it doesn't make Putin less culpable.

interroboink 10mo ago

> So there is literally only the goodwill of one single person Well, not quite. Immunity from prosecution is not immunity from impeachment/removal (which is a political, not judicial, process). Of course, that has its own problems, but just pointing out that in theory there are more checks than just the one you mention.

sigmoid10 10mo ago
According to the constitution, impeachment is literally for treason, bribery, high crimes or other serious misdemeanours. But the SC basically said it fundamentally can not be treason, bribery, a high crime or any misdemeanour if he did something in his role as president. So the whole process has become stale.
- interroboink 10mo ago
  Ultimately, the Senate decides on whether to convict/remove for impeachment. The SC does not decide it. Sure, I imagine the Senate would generally want to broadly stay in agreement with the SC, but they don't have any obligation to do so. At least that is my understanding; I'm not a lawyer or constitutional scholar :)
  - sigmoid10 10mo ago
    The Senate decides (or at least should) based on laws that the SC interprets.
- technothrasher 10mo ago
  You added the adjective "serious" to misdemeanors, which is not in the Constitution. The "high" in "high crimes and misdemeanors" means crimes and misdemeanors committed by high officials, not crimes and misdemeanors that are extreme.
  - jrs235 10mo ago
    If I understand you correctly, then if a President's cabinet (high officials) break the law the President can be impeached. Which makes sense to me. It places accountability on the President to pick trust worthy people and to immediately get rid of them if they break the law (to lessen the chances they'd be impeached for not doing something about it and insuring they are prosecuted).

FrustratedMonky 10mo ago

Doesn't it also imply that the US Gov was doing something illegal. If the President is immune if doing something official, then the government was doing something officially illegal. Even Bush/Cheney went through the motions of coming up with a legal reasoning for torture. Even Bush got Congressional approval for military actions. This president is off the rails not even trying to have even a flimsy cover of legality.

mandeepj 10mo ago
> This president is off the rails not even trying to have even a flimsy cover of legality. Rather he has a nerve to declare US War powers act illegal and threatened, abused, and yelled at those 5 republican senators who voted with democrats. Wild times!! https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-power-morality.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-intervi...
JumpinJack_Cash 10mo ago
> > This president is off the rails not even trying to have even a flimsy cover of legality. The problem is Trump but also he's a symptom of a larger problem. Left and right are so at odds with each other that all the reforms that a modern country would have to undertake in order to have less traumatic and less 'winner take all' elections not only weren't undertaken like they were in other countries, but the odds of actually happening are close to 0% ever since 2016

lenerdenator 10mo ago

> I think future law philosophers and historians will cite this as an example of how immunity should not work. Today, pretty much everyone is citing this as an example of how immunity should not work.

AnimalMuppet 10mo ago

"For official acts under core constitutional powers". Arresting all his political enemies is not a core constitutional power (still less having them executed). Everyone is spinning this as "total immunity". It's not. At least, it's not worded that way. What's actually going to happen is that, the first time someone tries to prosecute it, it's going to go all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court, as it is constituted at that time, will judge whether the action in question was an official act under core constitutional powers. Until then, we don't actually know what that line looks like. I suspect it's going to be less blanket than everyone seems to be assuming... but we will see.

acdha 10mo ago
It’s conditional immunity: the Roberts court is openly an instrument of Republican power, but they knew there was a good chance that the Democrats would win an election and so the ruling was carefully crafted to allow them to pick the opposite outcome if a Democrat were accused of abuse of power. You can see a similar play at work with the unprecedented use of the shadow docket to prevent lower courts from restraining the executive branch without having to take credit for positions which are highly dubious from a constitutional standpoint. If the political tides shift, they can quietly unblock the lower court’s ruling and pretend they hadn’t deliberately given this administration a window of opportunity without creating a permanent precedent empowering a future Democratic administration.
- disgruntledphd2 10mo ago
  Yup, I really hoped that it might not get this bad, but the Roberts court is basically doing what the Federalist society has been aiming towards for the past 40-50 years, and it's very very sad for all of the US (longterm, this benefits absolutely no-one except autocrats).
JohnBooty 10mo ago
Arresting all his political enemies is not a core constitutional power Unless he leaves a smoking gun in the vein of a note saying "kill this guy I don't like" -- and perhaps not even then -- nothing will happen. What he will do is... what he is already doing. What every dictator for hundreds of years has done. His enemies will be persecuted and prosecuted under the guise of legal action: tax fraud, national security, whatever. The sort of compromat that exists, or can be fabricated to exist, for every single person on Earth. To even have a hope of stopping Trump (or any other POTUS) there would have to be clear proof of malicious intent completely divorced from his job duties, and you'd need a Congress or Supreme Court that gave half a shit about opposing him.

legitster 10mo ago

>If the president can break any law as long as he is doing it as the president This is a hyperbolic misreading of the court's decision. The president was only cleared to act with impunity with the DOJ, as the department is part of the executive branch. For the other issues revolving around election interference, the court actually invited the case to be reheard - the prosecutors though must make a case that the illegal interference wasn't related to his duties as a president. That said, I don't know why there has been a huge failure to re-litigate this issue. The previous administration could have followed up but never did - and I fear it was done out of a terrible political miscalculation.

rapatel0 10mo ago

>I think future law philosophers and historians will cite this as an example of how immunity should not work. If the president can break any law as long as he is doing it as the president in an official manner (for example by signing an executive order), nothing can stop him from having all his political enemies arrested, exiled or straight-up murdered. This is not true. The framework defines how to interpret the law. If the president were to do as you say, the subesequent criminal case (brought by federal or state authorities) would interpret those actions in the standard judicial process. If a jury were to determine that the president was acting in the interest of himself, then the president does not get immunity.

pvab3 10mo ago
As I understand it, the ruling was left as open-ended as possible and was something that was intentionally vague within the Constitution.