Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
Absolutely, it's insane that congress passed an ammendment that said a thing and now the Supreme Court is saying "no, it doesn't say that thing, if you wanted that to apply you'd need to pass a congressional act on a case by case basis."
Imagine if everytime someone committed tax fraud congress had to officially vote to investigate that specific person. Imagine if a country like America was unable to delegate any powers.
deleted by creator
It’s because they don’t actually care what the constitution or the bill of rights or any of the amendments says. The Tribunal of Six only cares about ensuring their political compatriots - that is, the GOP - can cement their power for good. And if that means that we sink into fascism… they don’t care. Because they’ll be calling the shots.
Literalism is just a tool for the corrupt Supremes to wield as a convenience.
SCOTUS is clearly making unconditional rulings. The states should go nuclear and ignore them. Let SCOTUS enforce its decisions.
deleted by creator
It's like the Supreme Court thinks it can supersede the constitution because it thinks the ammendment was poorly worded/thought out. cough cough second ammendment cough cough
It's been a shit show since day one with this court. If there's ever been a time to pack the court it is now. Hell, do it in response to this ruling. Allowing an insurrectionist on the ballot is plain unacceptable. We're already heading toward discourse we cannot solve. Make a stand, would someone?
Edit: Just clarifying it's the Supreme Court who doesn't think it has to adhere to the language in the amendment. Not myself.
The thing is it's not poorly worded. It clearly establishes the ban and clearly allows Congress to create legislation. It does not revoke the state power to administer elections. It does not require Congress to create legislation.
It's meant to be understood by anyone reading it and it was created with far more modern English than the original document. What you see is what you get, no semantics required.
It's the Supreme Court that thinks it, not me. I'll update my text to reflect that.
I thought I read that the decision was unanimous. If the liberals and conservatives on the court agree, it seems unlikely that packing the court would change the decision.
Also, as much as I'd love to see Trump excluded from ballots, we all know that states like Texas would turn around and do the same to Biden, just out of spite. It would change the nature of democracy, in a bad way, if individual states could just randomly decide to exclude candidates they don't like. Heck, what would stop them from excluding ALL candidates of a particular party, except perhaps some token losers or quislings no one ever heard of?
The liberals dessented by essentially saying the law should be "self executing" (a fucking joke) in that if he was part of an insurrection then he's just as ineligible as a 30 year old running for president. You simply can't run if you're under 35, so in some fantasy reality those judges live in Trump just wouldn't be able to be on the ballots automatically, as if no one has to actually ENFORCE that law (see: judges actions in removing him)
It's astounding how utterly deranged our laws are.
Trump has well earned the name "Teflon Don."
The ONLY thing that man has not lied about is "I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any supporters (and he'd walk away into the sunset with 0 repercussions whatsoever)"
This is a strange situation, for sure. The age requirement you bring up is a good comparison. Age is something you are, not something you've done, possibly done, or definitey not done, so there isn't as much to argue about.
However, what if some 33 year-old decided to run and had the support of one of the two big parties, and just lied about her age? Presumably, that would require a finding of fact and would be adjudicated by the federal courts, not Congress or each state legislature or Attorney General.
Your example makes it pretty clear that even something supposedly "self-executing" still needs a back-up plan. Another interesting example is the 2000 election, where it was the Supreme Court that arbitrated the final vote, which decided the winner of the presidential election (incorrectly, it seems, based on later statistical analysis). Nasedon these two examples, I don't entirely understand their reasoning for pushing the decision about eligibility to Congress. While an election is for a political office, the process of running an election is supposed to be apolitical.
What the US really needs is a non-partisan, apolitical, independent federal electoral commission.
There is a remedy for that actually. If a state gets too far out of line with it's elections Congress can refuse to certify results from that state. This is what Trump supporters were hoping Congress would do in 2020 and why they rioted when it didn't happen.
And if we can't bar proven bad faith actors from office then our democracy is already dead. It just doesn't know it yet, like a person who overdosed on Tylenol. Furthermore the longer we push this confrontation with anti-democracy forces back the bloodier the resolution gets. We've seen this handled well and handled poorly in history. Handled well are cases like Bismarck and handled poorly are cases like the French Revolution. (Which if you think was just rich people dying, you really need to actually read about it.)
Right, but Congress votes along party lines so that isn't much of a remedy. The remedy is just as flawed as the process that leads to political bad acting in the first place. That's why people look to a (supposedly) non-partisan body like SCOTUS to resolve the issue, and why SCOTUS becoming partisan is such a big deal.
But your larger point that the system has broken down is well-taken. Much of how government functions successfully is based on unspoken conventions and norms of behavior. When a large proportion of the population actually WANTS someone like Trump, you have a very serious problem. No democratic structure or form of government can save the people from themselves forever. Sure, gerrymandering and other dirty tricks make a difference, but at the end of the day Trump really will get almost half the vote. He's not the representative of some small fringe party who managed to ride a crazy set of circumstances to power, like Hitler did. Trump represents one of only two major parties and will legitimately get support from right around half of those who vote, which is just crazy when you think about it.
What the actual fuck happened that we stand on the precipice of such madness?
We repealed the fairness doctrine; didn't obliterate Fox News when it was obvious they were party propaganda fraudulently representing themselves; gave social media a license to be neither publisher nor public utility under regulations; and made bribery legal in Citizens United.
Where are all the states’ rights people now?
Too busy working to overthrow the government and implement a fascist dictatorship...
You know, in a sane universe, the President could legitimately actually declare a national emergency over the ongoing efforts to overturn representative democracy in the open, but we live in this one.
If we lived in a sane universe, the foreign-funded propaganda that Trump and his grift relies upon for energy, cash, and followers would have been turned off fifteen years ago back when Fox "News" openly misrepresented material facts regarding the Obama administration, or when they got sued the first time for not being actual news.
The much vaunted checks and balances mean nothing when the SC is corrupt
Defund the Supreme Court.
deleted by creator
It’s not inconsistent with the court’s inconsistency though.
Scalia was a legal juggernaut on the bench and off it, as unfortunate his politics may be, he had a very large influence on the legal arena surrounding Constitutional law. He argued (correctly) for separated powers and the legislature doing the legislation on big and controversial topics instead of the court(s) - openly pointing out SCotUS’s composition as an unelected, politically appointed technocracy.
What changed and grew was the inconsistency of the conservative members at respecting that separation of powers whilst also not shying from their role as final legal arbiter. Trump v Anderson was correctly decided that states cannot deny candidates federal ballot access without due process, but they completely neglected to affirm or deny the lower courts ruling of what counts as attempted insurrection, kicking that to Congress.
This is political cowardice, not good and proper separated powers keeping each other in check. A legal case is the correct route to determine facts surrounding a candidates eligibility - not a political disqualification process without precedent nor established rules regarding evidentiary eligibility, rights of the accused, composition of the adjudicators, etc. any attempt to disqualify via US Congress will spurn a host of new legal challenges based on procedural questions
deleted by creator
Cool can we ignore the second amendment next?
God, I hate this timeline. Why couldn't we get the cool dystopian one.
Don't worry, let this one cook for a while and it'll turn into the cool dystopian one.
I was really hoping for zombies, instead we get fascism and climate apocalypse.
No mention of the Court's reasoning that it should not be enforced at the State level, but instead at the Federal level?
I propose we go out in mass this weekend and let them know we are pissed.
What's next? No more basic human rights? Maybe make it ok to own slaves if the owner really really wants to?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision striking Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot, even insurrectionists who’ve violated their previous oath of office can hold federal office, unless and until Congress passes specific legislation to enforce Section 3.
In the aftermath of the oral argument last month, legal observers knew with near-certainty that the Supreme Court was unlikely to apply Section 3 to Trump.
But instead of any of these options, the court went with arguably the broadest reasoning available: that Section 3 isn’t self-executing, and thus has no force or effect in the absence of congressional action.
We can bar individuals from holding office who are under the age limit or who don’t meet the relevant citizenship requirement without congressional enforcement legislation.
In one important respect, the court’s ruling on Monday is worse and more consequential than the Senate’s decision to acquit Trump after his Jan. 6 impeachment trial in 2021.
It would be clearly preferable if Congress were to pass enforcement legislation that established explicit procedures for resolving disputes under Section 3, including setting the burden of proof and creating timetables and deadlines for filing challenges and hearing appeals.
The original article contains 948 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It was a unanimous decision and the precedent they set was that states don't have the right to declare who is and who is not a traitor, only the federal government can decide that. I don't like Trump, but the precedent needed to be set and I agree with the supreme court on this one. You can still try to prove he is a traitor in federal court, and then he would be knocked off the ballot in all states.
Also, i thought states were given the right to determine their own ballot rules.
Or is that mute because this is a federal election?