Articles of impeachment is fine as this process stinks and I think this court failed, but we really, long-term, we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear that this is not okay.
I love the constitution, wonderful framework, but it needs the following amendments:
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Anti-corruption measures on the judiciary (looking at you Thomas). Provide some teeth to enforce recusal and avoid conflicts of interest.
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Term limits for justices and age limits on all elected/appointed officials at the highest level (justices, pres/VP, congress). Tie those to either the retirement age or a percentage of life expectancy (as we get older as a society, and work into our later years, federal officials should be able to remain longer too).
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Divestment requirements for all federal elected and appointed officials. i.e. no more insider trading, sorry.
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Replace the electoral college with a popular vote.
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Replace the filibuster with nothing. Fuck that thing. Let the legislators legislate. If, whatever it is, is a bad idea, it’ll be shown to be a bad idea and the next congress will fix it. This is especially important now that Chevron is no more. The court just replaced rules created by executive offices with the most dysfunctional branch of government (congress) without any prospect of undysfuctionalizing themselves.
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Congress shouldn’t be allowed to block supreme court justices without a vote. Once they are announced, they have X days to approve/deny or they are auto-approved.
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(edit) I can’t believe this has to be done, but the President is not above the law. The president must follow the law while in office, following “official acts” or not. This is a fucking democracy, not a dictatorship.
While I know there are other ways to approach a lot of these and those ways are easier is not the point of my post. These are things that the constitution is currently WRONG about and it should just be fixed.
If we’re asking for things that will never happen I would like a unicorn that shits Lucky Charms
General Mills added unicorn marbits in 2018, so this sounds appropriate!
This is a “should happen” list not a “will happen” or “could happen” list. No delusions here, just felt good to say it out loud, given today’s news. I’d also take that unicorn. My kids would go bananas.
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Yes please.
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The way you framed this is dangerous as conservatives already want to eliminate retirement so everyone who is not rich has to be a wage slave until death. This just gives them incentive.
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You will just create a shell game. Their spouses or children or cousins will just suddenly become amazing at trading. Or that weird company that incorporated in the Maldives with Fred Flintstone and Betty Boop as the board of directors will be doing weirdly well, but be out of the reach of the DoJ.
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- Ranked Choice voting, fixed that for ya.
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This one I have mixed feelings on. The spirit of the filibuster is good. Its purpose is to allow a minority, or even a single legislator, who feels so strongly about a proposed law to actually fight it. This purpose has been perverted, obviously, but that purpose is important for a truely functioning democracy. The ability for someone who actually sees something nobody else does to pump the brakes is vital. That said, I do believe there need to be severe consequences to doing what is effectively trying to break the legislative process over your knee. Personally, I believe that it should be the nuclear option. If you break that glass, you nuke your whole career in the process. No person who utilizes the filibuster is allowed to hold ANY public office for the rest of their life. Anyone who signs on as a supporter is allowed to hold federal office. Period. If you feel SO strongly that the passing of a law is either abhorrent to your beliefs or is fundamentally flawed in a way that will forever scar our way of life that you feel it is necessary to pull the emergency cord, then you need to have that cord available.
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Yeah, and voting is mandatory. I’m not sure if I would allow abstention, but your ass has to mark something down for sure.
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I hate that this has to be listed as well. 😮💨
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fair point, agreed. I typically like things that move with changing times so the same logic works in 100, 200 years. Ages are more static than dollar amounts. Not tying the gas tax or minimum wage to inflation or cost of living has put us in a major bind, which is what I was thinking about.
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Let them play that game (and hopefully get caught). Better than the in-the-open shit they do now. At least try
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I’d rather it not specify so we can play around changing it with laws instead of having it hard coded in the constitution. There are ones that I like even more than straight ranked choice. Just get rid of the EC, though maybe just dictating ranked choice would be the right move.
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No need to. Biden can have the 6 corrupt justices killed. He has the immunity and he can pick new justices. If members of the senate refuse to put the new justices on the bench, have them killed too. No rules anymore.
Strategically speaking liberal politicians are backed into a corner and only have two real options:
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Seize control preemptively, promoting conservative conspiracy to prophecy, and likely inciting CW2.
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Hand over full control come January and hope they continue to maintain some privilege under a new regime.
They’re already in check, but more concerned with soliciting large donations and collecting hot stick tips.
Liberal politicians do not need to be the ones to make sure #1 happens. The second amendment literally exists so the citizens have the capacity to do that ourselves.
200 years ago though, now you’ll get shit stomped by the military. The 2a thing is honestly a joke.
Eh, Iraq and Afghanistan went rather poorly for the United States.
What does that have to do with the second amendment?
Second amendment grants the right to bear arms, arms were used by the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What does Iraq and Afghanistan have to do with America and taking arms up against our government? You really think a bunch of hillbillies with guns are going to do shit against our military?
It wasn’t a joke from me. Democracy dies when the good man does nothing. I am a good man and I will fight for this democracy, as fucked up as it is. The right believes the left to be weak pacifists because we choose compromise, tolerance, and acceptance over bigotry, hate, and subjugation. They will need to learn the hard way that we choose that because we know that mutually beneficial social contracts make living better and provide a safe, prosperous world. They obviously do not want to be party to these social contracts with me, so I will not allow them any of the safety or benefits.
But the president has the power to tell the army “Don’t do shit” in complete impunity.
He does, but why would the president tell the army to do nothing when the people are rising up against said president? Nobody is that stupid, any rise up against the government will end with the military curb stomping it in about 15 minutes.
We’re talking about people rising against the Republican side of the government
Domestic wars are never pretty, no matter how powerful the military. Most people in the military don’t serve to shoot their own country. Countries don’t want to damage their own infrastructure or enflame their own people. Oligarchs won’t support a war that damages their bottom line. People vastly over simply how easy it would be to stop an armed resistance.
Did you see the police step on people during the blm 2020 marches? They have no problem being fascists
Or … Ya know… Get the votes
We want them to do option 1, but know they are going to choose option 2.
When confronted with fascist Threats liberals always blink. They’ll wade through masses of bodies to destroy what they perceive to be a leftist threat, but they don’t stand up to fascists.
All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.
George Lucas
Didn’t Caesar literally march his army into Rome? ‘crossing the rubicon’ - and then there was a thing called the roman civil war
Alea iacta est
Yeah. There was also the title, literally “dictator”, that was bestowed on individuals in times of crisis (or perceived crisis), and in some cases the power of the dictator was returned to the republic when the crisis was addressed (see Cincinnatus). Rome had an established process for giving power to the dictator.
I want to move away so bad
Go. Start some research, and head out. Many countries you can just enter. Call it a vacation for the first year and see if you like it.
Oh boy I can’t wait to get to another capitalist country!
Option 2 is suicide. I guess that’s it for American Democracy. Of course, option 3 being that the Democrats win every election until the Republican party collapses. At which point the Democratic party will likely split, with one part becoming a moderate party, and the other half absorbing the remains of the Republican party.
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Shoutout to Voyager for implementing Apollo’s new account marker. It makes spotting trolls really easy.
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“Congress may not criminalize the president’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the executive branch under the Constitution” makes pretty much anything fair fucking game.
“The president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,”
I don’t understand how you can confuse this sentence. People act like the president can commit any crime they want. That is categorically false. Crimes committed in the name in the highest office of the land are not o in an official capacity.
The U.S. Constitution includes several provisions that limit the powers of the president and prevent the president from committing crimes without consequences:
Article I, Section 2 and Section 3: These sections provide the House of Representatives the power to impeach the president and the Senate the power to try and convict the president. Impeachment is a process by which the president can be removed from office for committing “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Article II, Section 4: This section specifically states that the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States can be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 8: The president must take an oath of office to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This oath implies a legal and ethical obligation to adhere to the law and Constitution.
Checks and Balances: The Constitution establishes a system of checks and balances, whereby the legislative and judicial branches can limit the actions of the executive branch. Congress can pass laws, override presidential vetoes, and control the budget, while the judiciary can review the constitutionality of presidential actions through judicial review.
Together, these provisions and principles ensure that the president is subject to the rule of law and can be held accountable for criminal actions.
Nothing you wrote ensures anything.
Trump was impeached twice with no consequence.
“Official acts” is arbitrary.
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So in other words, Trump can do whatever he wants as long as his cronies vote that it’s okay.
Guess you missed Trump’s entire presidency.
Trumps own legal team has described political assassinations as qualifying as an official act as president
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It is! in the dissenting opinion in which Sotomayor explicitly describes this ruling as granting immunity for political assassinations
Al-Aulaqi v. Obama made kill lists for Americans legal.
Have you been living under a rock?
The president can’t commit criminal acts and claim it was an official capacity, lol.
What the fuck do you mean “lol”. That is PRECISELY what this ruling does. It removes criminal liability for anything that is done as an official act, which is entirely fucking subjective, and up to the interpretation of a corrupt, coopted judiciary. Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
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And who decides how to interpret law and levy consequence? And whose pocket are they in?
The stupidity of this statement truly strains belief given the actual verbiage in this ruling. May you suffer the full weight and consequences of that stupidity.
A person of power cannot commit a crime and claim it was in official capacity, because the act itself is against the law and cannot be committed without consequence.
This whole ruling is because of a person in power (Trump) who committed a crime (fake electors plot to overturn the 2020 election) and is claiming it as an official capacity of the office. That’s the whole point of the case which was appealed to the Supreme Court.
So what consequence will Trump face for his crimes now based on this ruling?
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Wow. You are a fucking idiot lol. Ooof. I feel bad for you.
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It was an official act to use a drone on his political opponents.
Supreme court literally just said he could by saying Jan 6 was fine for President to incite
You can organize a coup to overthrow the government and claim it’s an official act, there’s absolutely nothing stopping a president from claiming assassinations are an official act now. Hell, the commander in chief already organizes assassinations on foreign targets.
The Democrats might not abuse this, but the Republicans will, and they have given themselves carte blanche to start killing political dissidents.
Is this fascism yet, or are we waiting for the trains to run on time?
I think we all know that one of those two things will never happen in the land of the free and home of the mass-produced automobile.
Trainspotters are going to storm the capital when Biden loses.
If they are traitors and terrorists, he may have to send them to Guantanamo.
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That was yesterday.
But he can commit official acts that happen to be criminal. Semantics are fun!
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Your logic doesn’t even follow. Why would the president need immunity for a non-criminal act? Think about it for like 2 seconds dude.
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While i agree with you, it’s a huge grey area. Like Biden could have trump assassinated and then claim that his constitutional duties require him to protect the cotus from enemies both foreign and domestic.
Official act or not?
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Please cite where in the ruling it says charges would be brought against him.
In fact, it would have to be the DoJ or Congress that did so - Biden could order the DoJ to stop, and arguably could have anyone in Congress killed or jailed without trial by stating that they presented a clear danger to democracy by trying to impeach him.
Who says he can’t? The Supreme Court just said that he’s immune from “official acts” without even defining what that would mean. Who determines what is and isn’t an official act? The President? The Supreme Court? Right now, as this ruling is worded, all bets are off. There’s nothing stopping a sitting President from just arbitrarily declaring someone as a threat to national security and having them picked off by ST6 as an “official act to prevent a terrorist attack against the United States”, then just having the details classified.
Having something criminal declared as an “official act” is piss-easy, especially when you’re in charge of the branch making the decision and you have one of the other branches in your back pocket, possibly both.
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If it were, Trump would have been behind bars years ago.
The laws about that were just thrown out the window with this ruling. Everything is an official act as long as he was president when he stated it to he done. Ordering fries from McDonald’s is now an official act as well.
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You just showed us you didn’t lol
Don’t bother with this “user”. Look at their comment history. The person showed up today to defend this obvious act against democracy. My guess is a Russian/Chinese misinformation promoter.
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You’re trying to play it off like a joke, but that should really trigger some introspection.
Probably is a total coincidence that you’re saying this here.
Good. Fuck off then.
There’s some hyperbole in these threads for sure, but not a lot. The president can’t handwave away the bill of rights, because nothing in the constitution gives them that power.
However, the president does have the authority as commander in chief of authorizing lethal force against individuals. If Biden authorized Seal Team 6 to execute Trump, that is in fact an official act that he has the authority to perform. Sure maybe it is technically not legal, but that doesn’t matter since the president has complete immunity from criminal law. The house could still draft articles of impeachment but the senate would be unable to remove the president because the president is immune to criminal proceedings.
And if Trump wants to create an organization to round up and execute all the gays (and the Jews, of course), he has the power to do that; and with today’s ruling, he will never face consequences for doing so.
Irreparable damage has been done to American democracy today.
The Christian Caliphate was birthed today, and Trump will be supreme Ayatollah
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But as an official act, the president can strip someone of citizenship.
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Removed, civility, ableist slur.
So you are saying he just has to wait until he leaves American soil? You’re right, that’s so inconvenient.
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So the US has never killed someone outside of the US?
At this point you need to present your evidence that they can’t because SCROTUS literally said they can
At this point you’ve outed yourself as a partisan hack that is stuck in binary thinking.
At this point, you’re a towel.
The supreme courtSupreme Court Justices disagree with you, but OK I’ll bite.Why can’t a president kill an american citizen on american soil? Because it’s illegal? Do you understand that that
thatno longer applies to the president?
The quickest way to save the country would be for Biden to kill the 6 justices that ruled in favour of immunity (and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t even mind since they’re the ones that made it legal), install 6 liberal judges and the new court can overturn every ruling the corrupt court made. Which means Biden would probably end up in prison, but hey, it’s a small price to pay for democracy.
Why would he end up in prison? It would not have been a crime when he committed it. That’s what immunity means.
Yep. They made an official ruling, Biden acts on it appropriately, new Justices get appointed in a month (or else), new Court orders a review of every case the six fascists ruled on.
Oh, what do you know, first out the door, no, extrajudicial murder powers aren’t supported by the Constitution!
Whoopsie.
Biden should use the Emergency Alert text system to let every American know what this ruling means, and what’s at stake.
Or, at least break into broadcast programming with an address to inform everyone.
Just write it up in an executive order. Official as it gets
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I guess it depends on whether the court sees it as an official act or not?
I mean he would certainly make a mark as one of the most interesting president’s yet by doing so…
How? Wouldn’t what he did be legal when he did it?
This is the way.
The only Democrat worth their salt.
They won’t do shiiiiiiiit.
Politician attacks establishment when the establishment doesn’t prosecute her political opposition to the extent she wants.
“Hey everyone, things are NOT going our way in the Supreme Court, and we need to change everything about our judicial, political, and constitutional system!” - Sincerely, Democrats.
Well congresswoman, there still is a republican majority so you’re going to have to wait for your chance. In addition, balance of powers and all that.
If you don’t try, you’ll never succeed.
There’s no such thing as wasted political capital these days, shit like this energizes the base, and this is probably the biggest thing to help Biden (or whoever the candidate is) all year.
trumpers are already jacked up on Mountain Dew, they can’t vote any harder then they already are and they’re not gonna vote any less. We need the focus on motivating Dem voters.
And win or lose, this does that.
Show voters that with X amount more votes. We can actually fix something. It’s a few months before the election, this is literally perfect timing.
Sorry, but she can’t try. The floor is controlled by Republicans and they will not let her proceed.
Right…
Which will highlight to the country that a Republican House matters right before an election is coming up and donations will make a huge difference in races…
What dem voters want is to know that their votes matter. And this shows them what happens because of the 2022 midterms and will lead to increased turnout in 2024.
It’s not “all or nothing”. To beat fascism we need to never stop fighting even when the odds are astronomically against suceeding.
It’s not even politics at this point, it’s basic psychology. We need to give voters what they want, and right now Dem voters want to fight fascism.
If it wasn’t clearly obvious that votes matter before, you’re not paying attention.
Welcome to America
We can sit around and talk about how the average voter should do better on their own out of a sense of civic duty…
Or we can do what we know will motivate them.
Which do you think is more productive?
You can talk now.
I doubt talking about something you can’t do could be called productive.
Nice.
So we agreed:
Or we can do what we know will motivate them
Which is “performative” stuff like this that won’t succeed, but will energize voters leading to more dems in office across the board.
Wasn’t that the exact thinking of the immigration bill before it was done as an executive order?
Immigration was bipartisan and passed by the Senate, but yes it was never brought to the floor.
Whoosh
Sounds like something that would be a popular thing to campaign on.
and too bad supreme court doesn’t think that exists anymore
So many things to campaign on…
And all they use is not trump.
Okay, let’s suppose this plan succeeds… Then what? Are we going to replace the court? Who said the new judges are going to be more or less the same regardless of political affiliation? And what exactly is there to stop the opposition from doing the same thing?
There seems to be more systematic issues involved.
And what exactly is there to stop the opposition from doing the same thing?
Process. The same that that puts barriers on this discussion from AOC. The entire impeachment process is the understanding of the people who created this country, to have a political process that is departed from the legal process. That’s why being impeached doesn’t also mean criminally convicted and vice versa. Historically, if you were a vassal of the lord and had your fief removed, you couldn’t hold court with your lord AND you basically were penniless with the potential to end up in jail. The entire impeachment process is to separate those two things. That’s why the process is spelled out fully in the Constitution and the execution solely left to Congress to implement.
There entire point of an impeachment is to execute some political justice without having legal justice married to it. What stops anyone from just abusing the process is the process itself and what it indicates for functioning government. If the goal is have no functioning government, then there isn’t anything that stops anyone from abuse. But no functioning government means that those in Congress would lose power, and a loss of power means they become less enticing for lobbyist to enact agendas, for people to seek recourse, and for States to enhance power within the vacuum.
So an abuse of that power would end with them loosing more and more power. This is the same reason why Congress has had a hard time really pinning impeachment and contempt charges and have talked about inherent contempt for Garland (which inherent contempt is basically using Congress to enforce a contempt charge via the Sergeant-at-arms doing the arresting and Congress inventing a “trail” system all of their own outside of the Judicial system… which by the way SCOTUS way back in the 1930s, the last time this was used, indicated that THAT specific instance was not a violation of habeas corpus, but trying to ring Garland up on inherent contempt and trying to put him in Congress jail, would be such a complex process and likely wouldn’t survive a habeas corpus challenge, but who knows at this point? For all we know SCOTUS may be completely cool with Congress tossing people into Congress jail without a proper trail. But of course that brings with it ALL KINDS of ramifications about our Federal government jailing people in a a jail completely ran by Congress and outside the entire legal system, but I digress).
Long story short, all of this stuff is political process. And you do all of this to further a political agenda to the public. But if the public isn’t backing that action, it has the ability to backfire in that entire you don’t get to come back to Congress or you weaken the overall power of the Federal government. So you have to look at the long term goal of anything you want to do with this process. Like the inherent contempt vote got delayed after the first Presidential debate. Biden’s performance was so bad that Republicans feel that they got what they wanted. The whole Garland audio tapes, the GOP wanted them so that they could play back the tapes to the public and show that Biden was losing his marbles. But now since the debate, there’s little reasons for the GOP to go down the tossing Garland into Congress jail and going down a path that’s likely to not play well for anyone except their most harden supporters.
The process limits the process. That’s what prevent the whole “same thing”.
Are we going to replace the court?
I mean, yeah, that’s the goal. SCOTUS has had about a dozen cases that they’ve overturned decades long, and in some cases century long, established rule. One or two per lifetime of a justice is a lot to completely overturn. This court has overturned nearly a dozen long established rulings. The entire point of a justice system is to bring about stability to the political process. Congress answers to the public, and the public can change their mind often, so random laws flying over the place isn’t unusual. SCOTUS is not elected and thus they faintly answer to the public. So they need to have some stability to maintain legitimacy. Even Robert’s talked about this in the ruling that overturned Roe and felt the majority was going too far.
So I think if the court itself is saying that it is ruining their own legitimacy, bringing them up into the political process to answer to these statements the court itself is making is fair game. And I don’t think that’s unfair to mention in that whole process. Judges don’t answer to the public, so justices that massively change the landscape in short orders of time, are shaking the stability they’re supposed to be building. If SCOTUS wants to rewrite the law of the land, it needs to be gradual not as fast as possible.
This is a pretty thoughtful response, I appreciate you taking the time write it. I agree in spirit with what AOC wants to accomplish. Some of those judges (Clarence Thomas) shouldn’t be anywhere near the Supreme Court. My fear is that this plan only works if the impeachments proceeding are successful, they manage to successfully replace the current justices with new ones, AND enact meaningful change in a short period of time to make that a situation like this doesn’t happen again. If they fail at any of these things, then the Republicans, who don’t respect precedent, process, or the rule of law, would just weaponize the impeachments to remove the justices and replace them with their own whenever they get a majority in government.
replace the corrupt court and amend the constitution so this doesnt happen again. thats what it was made for, to be malleable to change as progress sees fit
the constitution isnt some holy book of rules never to be touched, yet it is treated as such. its too bad the county may be uninhabitable for people like me before we can get our shit together
We deserve a fresh, genuinely impartial court with term limits - three decades ago.
You can have it, if enough people fight for it. Now the president can practically do it all by himself.
DO IT! DO IT NOW! You have to show them the checks and balances. There is no god king, there is no one that is not accountable for their actions. Impeach every single one that was nominated by him. Illegitimate court.
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She’s just grandstanding.
Impeachment starts in the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans.
It goes to the Senate for conviction and removal, which, thanks to the Republican minority, requires a 60 vote majority to move anything forward.
This is why I’ve been saying since the Trump impeachments, we have to control the House and the Senate first, then we can talk impeachment.
House - 219 Republicans, 213 Democrats, 3 vacancies.
https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/party-breakdown
*Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) resigned effective 3/22/2024.
*Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ) died 4/24/2024.
*Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) resigned effective 4/25/2024.
Senate - 49 Republicans, 47 Democrats, 4 Independents that caucus with Democrats.
https://www.senate.gov/senators/SenatorsRepresentingThirdorMinorParties.htm
Joe Manchin III (WV)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)
Angus S. King, Jr. (ME)
Bernard Sanders (VT)
She could accomplish more than you think if she has some help from King Joe.
Somebody needs to fucking do more than say "hey this should happen! "
Too late. The damage is done. It will take years to reverse this decision.