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> I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional The rule of law has left the building. The SC is willing to rubber-stamp nearly anything right

by gtowey 9mo ago

> I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional The rule of law has left the building. The SC is willing to rubber-stamp nearly anything right now. Waiting and hoping for common sense to prevail is what allows authoritarian regimes to bulldoze through existing laws and norms. Even if the courts were an avenue for redress, they are being overwhelmed by the daily barrage of new illegal and unconstitutional actions. Once the courts get around to addressing these cases, the damage has been done and the precedent has been set.

scoofy 9mo ago
If you think the SCOTUS has been arbitrarily rubber stamping the administration's goals, you haven't been paying attention. I'll fully agree with you it appears to have been fairly partisan, but less than a month again they blocked the administration from deploying the national guard to states: >In one of its most consequential rulings of the year, just before breaking for the holidays last week the Supreme Court held that President Trump acted improperly in federalizing the National Guard in Illinois and in activating troops across the state. Although the case centered on the administration’s deployments in Chicago, the court’s ruling suggests that Trump’s actions in Los Angeles and Portland were likewise illegal. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-12-30/supreme-court-troop-deployments https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-12-30/supreme-cou...
- lotsofpulp 9mo ago
  But they also said the president can’t be punished for doing illegal things, so what difference does it make?
  - halfmatthalfcat 9mo ago
    That’s not what they ruled.
    - seattle_spring 9mo ago
      How so? The ruling was that he had full immunity during "presidential duties", which has many times been interpreted by the SC as "anything he wants to do while president."
      - fzeroracer 9mo ago
        And notably, before any further disagreement pops up the other dissenting judges literally said as much. The relevant quote: "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."
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        terminalshort 9mo ago
        Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that. As a practical matter, if the president is ordering the military to do those things and the military is obeying those orders, we are far beyond the point where concepts like legal immunity matter.
        fzeroracer 9mo ago
        > Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that. Just to be clear: you are disagreeing with a dissenting Supreme Court justice on how much the law protects the president. Are you a lawyer? Do you know more about how much the law binds the president than the literal office that has the final say on the law?
  - derektank 9mo ago
    They made that ruling while Biden was president. It seems hard to call that an example of rubber stamping for an administration that did not exist yet. John Roberts and other conservative members of the court do have an ideological commitment to the Unitary Executive Theory of the presidency (foolishly, in my view) but this has the potential to benefit both Democratic and Republican presidents.
    - CamperBob2 9mo ago
      And they will be perfectly happy to walk it back when (or if) a Democrat is elected president in the future. Stare decisis is no longer a thing with this bunch.
    - avidiax 9mo ago
      That ruling[1] is even worse than rubber stamping. It's saying that no stamp is needed at all. > It seems hard to call that an example of rubber stamping for an administration that did not exist yet. The Trump administration absolutely did exist, both in the past and the present (waiting in the wings) in July 2024 when the ruling was issued. While it's true that all past and future presidents are affected by the ruling, there's exactly one former president and presidential candidate at that time that was likely to face criminal charges for actions taken while in office, in either first or second terms. It's a bit much to claim that the ruling doesn't have at least the appearance of benefiting Trump exclusively, especially given the timing. The ruling caused many of Trump's trials to be delayed to be effectively concurrent with the 2024 election. We went 235 years without clarifying that presidents had presumptive immunity; all previous presidents (even Trump) acted under the presumption that prosecution for official acts might be unlikely but was possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
    - expedition32 9mo ago
      This is all highly commical considering the US has black bagged a foreign president. That is going to be the court case of the century by the way. Maduro will have lawyers begging to represent him. It will be America on trial and I'm looking forward to the Trump administration absolutely bungling it.
  - tasty_freeze 9mo ago
    Trump claimed repeatedly and vigorously that whatever the President does is by definition legal. He also repeatedly and vigorously claimed that Obama had broken the law by spying on then-candidate Trump in 2016. I don't know if he himself noticed the contradiction but blustered on anwway or was too dense to notice. [BTW, Trump wasn't spied on -- Russian assets were spied on and it turned out that some of those communications were with Trump's team. There are ~100 pages of these communications captured in the Mueller report. ]
    - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
      Talking out of both sides of his mouth is kind of a daily thing at this point. But he's had a lawyer advocate the immunity point before the Supreme Court while he hasn't attempted to prosecute Obama.
- bonsai_spool 9mo ago
  > they blocked the administration from deploying the national guard to states That is not what the decision stated - there was even a quote from a justice saying that the administration could easily attain the same result with a different legal mechanism, all but encouraging such a change in behavior. Edit: the ‘improperly’ portion of your quote is the operative term
  - scoofy 9mo ago
    Yes, and my point is exactly that a rubber stamping SCOTUS would have literally allowed it even though it was "improper." That's what rubber stamping means.
    - overfeed 9mo ago
      "Change this sentence, change the date and resubmit" is rubber-stamping - they just require a big-enough fig-leaf and are bold enough to publicly hint at the parameters of the fig-leaf they will accept.
yieldcrv 9mo ago
that perspective is not backed by data, and the administration doesn't appeal everything very few supreme court cases make it to headline news, and the ones that do are the ones you're thinking about it. those are the ones split by ideological lines, which are less than 10% of what SCOTUS rules on. the government loses many cases unanimously as well. there are some unsigned opinions that do punt things back to lower courts that may be in the government's favor, or not. all to say, its more nuanced than that. the trend, as a last and compromised bulwark, is there, but that's not how the court consistently behaves.
- penultimatename 9mo ago
  This is literally backed by data. 21 out of 25 emergency docker cases taken up with the Supreme Court were ruled in the Trump administration’s favor. Only one of the cases against the administration was unanimous. At the appellate level, Trump appointed judges vote in favor of his policies at a substantially higher rate than any previous president at 92% of cases. https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-supreme-court-and-the-trump-administration/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeals-court-judges.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeal...
  - atonse 9mo ago
    Is there a reason you’re only choosing the emergency docket in your sample size though?
    - acdha 9mo ago
      The emergency docket is a preferred method for blatant partisanship because it lets them immediately prevent lower courts from stopping the administration but doesn’t require them to set a binding precedent or even explain the ruling. If it looks like they might be losing power, suddenly those “emergency” decisions which were subsequently back-burnered can be dropped to prevent a Democrat from using the same powers.
  - 9mo ago
no_wizard 9mo ago
Anything but an administration being able to manipulate the Fed, it seems. Most legal experts believe that will be a hard strike down on the administration
cosmicgadget 9mo ago
Well, as an alternative to rubber stamping it they can overturn any injunctions and let him have eighteen months of moving drone bubbles until the issue has made its way through the lower courts. See also Alito's outrage about deportations being fast tracked to SCOTUS.

by gtowey 9mo ago

scoofy 9mo ago

If you think the SCOTUS has been arbitrarily rubber stamping the administration's goals, you haven't been paying attention. I'll fully agree with you it appears to have been fairly partisan, but less than a month again they blocked the administration from deploying the national guard to states: >In one of its most consequential rulings of the year, just before breaking for the holidays last week the Supreme Court held that President Trump acted improperly in federalizing the National Guard in Illinois and in activating troops across the state. Although the case centered on the administration’s deployments in Chicago, the court’s ruling suggests that Trump’s actions in Los Angeles and Portland were likewise illegal. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-12-30/supreme-court-troop-deployments https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-12-30/supreme-cou...

lotsofpulp 9mo ago
But they also said the president can’t be punished for doing illegal things, so what difference does it make?
- halfmatthalfcat 9mo ago
  That’s not what they ruled.
  - seattle_spring 9mo ago
    How so? The ruling was that he had full immunity during "presidential duties", which has many times been interpreted by the SC as "anything he wants to do while president."
    - fzeroracer 9mo ago
      And notably, before any further disagreement pops up the other dissenting judges literally said as much. The relevant quote: "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."
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - terminalshort 9mo ago
        Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that. As a practical matter, if the president is ordering the military to do those things and the military is obeying those orders, we are far beyond the point where concepts like legal immunity matter.
        fzeroracer 9mo ago
        > Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that. Just to be clear: you are disagreeing with a dissenting Supreme Court justice on how much the law protects the president. Are you a lawyer? Do you know more about how much the law binds the president than the literal office that has the final say on the law?
- derektank 9mo ago
  They made that ruling while Biden was president. It seems hard to call that an example of rubber stamping for an administration that did not exist yet. John Roberts and other conservative members of the court do have an ideological commitment to the Unitary Executive Theory of the presidency (foolishly, in my view) but this has the potential to benefit both Democratic and Republican presidents.
  - CamperBob2 9mo ago
    And they will be perfectly happy to walk it back when (or if) a Democrat is elected president in the future. Stare decisis is no longer a thing with this bunch.
  - avidiax 9mo ago
    That ruling[1] is even worse than rubber stamping. It's saying that no stamp is needed at all. > It seems hard to call that an example of rubber stamping for an administration that did not exist yet. The Trump administration absolutely did exist, both in the past and the present (waiting in the wings) in July 2024 when the ruling was issued. While it's true that all past and future presidents are affected by the ruling, there's exactly one former president and presidential candidate at that time that was likely to face criminal charges for actions taken while in office, in either first or second terms. It's a bit much to claim that the ruling doesn't have at least the appearance of benefiting Trump exclusively, especially given the timing. The ruling caused many of Trump's trials to be delayed to be effectively concurrent with the 2024 election. We went 235 years without clarifying that presidents had presumptive immunity; all previous presidents (even Trump) acted under the presumption that prosecution for official acts might be unlikely but was possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - expedition32 9mo ago
    This is all highly commical considering the US has black bagged a foreign president. That is going to be the court case of the century by the way. Maduro will have lawyers begging to represent him. It will be America on trial and I'm looking forward to the Trump administration absolutely bungling it.
- tasty_freeze 9mo ago
  Trump claimed repeatedly and vigorously that whatever the President does is by definition legal. He also repeatedly and vigorously claimed that Obama had broken the law by spying on then-candidate Trump in 2016. I don't know if he himself noticed the contradiction but blustered on anwway or was too dense to notice. [BTW, Trump wasn't spied on -- Russian assets were spied on and it turned out that some of those communications were with Trump's team. There are ~100 pages of these communications captured in the Mueller report. ]
  - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
    Talking out of both sides of his mouth is kind of a daily thing at this point. But he's had a lawyer advocate the immunity point before the Supreme Court while he hasn't attempted to prosecute Obama.
bonsai_spool 9mo ago
> they blocked the administration from deploying the national guard to states That is not what the decision stated - there was even a quote from a justice saying that the administration could easily attain the same result with a different legal mechanism, all but encouraging such a change in behavior. Edit: the ‘improperly’ portion of your quote is the operative term
- scoofy 9mo ago
  Yes, and my point is exactly that a rubber stamping SCOTUS would have literally allowed it even though it was "improper." That's what rubber stamping means.
  - overfeed 9mo ago
    "Change this sentence, change the date and resubmit" is rubber-stamping - they just require a big-enough fig-leaf and are bold enough to publicly hint at the parameters of the fig-leaf they will accept.

yieldcrv 9mo ago

that perspective is not backed by data, and the administration doesn't appeal everything very few supreme court cases make it to headline news, and the ones that do are the ones you're thinking about it. those are the ones split by ideological lines, which are less than 10% of what SCOTUS rules on. the government loses many cases unanimously as well. there are some unsigned opinions that do punt things back to lower courts that may be in the government's favor, or not. all to say, its more nuanced than that. the trend, as a last and compromised bulwark, is there, but that's not how the court consistently behaves.

penultimatename 9mo ago
This is literally backed by data. 21 out of 25 emergency docker cases taken up with the Supreme Court were ruled in the Trump administration’s favor. Only one of the cases against the administration was unanimous. At the appellate level, Trump appointed judges vote in favor of his policies at a substantially higher rate than any previous president at 92% of cases. https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-supreme-court-and-the-trump-administration/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeals-court-judges.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeal...
- atonse 9mo ago
  Is there a reason you’re only choosing the emergency docket in your sample size though?
  - acdha 9mo ago
    The emergency docket is a preferred method for blatant partisanship because it lets them immediately prevent lower courts from stopping the administration but doesn’t require them to set a binding precedent or even explain the ruling. If it looks like they might be losing power, suddenly those “emergency” decisions which were subsequently back-burnered can be dropped to prevent a Democrat from using the same powers.
- 9mo ago

no_wizard 9mo ago

Anything but an administration being able to manipulate the Fed, it seems. Most legal experts believe that will be a hard strike down on the administration

cosmicgadget 9mo ago

Well, as an alternative to rubber stamping it they can overturn any injunctions and let him have eighteen months of moving drone bubbles until the issue has made its way through the lower courts. See also Alito's outrage about deportations being fast tracked to SCOTUS.