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As long as the Dems have less than 60 votes in the Senate, and aren’t willing to ditch the fucking filibuster, there’s literally nothing they can do.
*and even the number of democrats minus 50 don’t want to. So even one (plus Harris helping) in the first two years of the term or even two (if Harris helps again) in the second two years of the past term. It’s not like all democrats are unified about the filibuster, most voted to bypass it. You need either more than 60 dems total, or more than 50 dems that support bypassing the filibuster.
Or you know, even a single republican that doesn’t want to be a facist helping to transition the country to authoritarian rule. But that seems less likely unfortunately.
The president already was protected from all civil lawsuits due to previous rulings. This ruling was only about criminal prosecutions.
He has absolute immunity for any use, for any reason, of his core presidential powers include anything listed in article 2 (the military, pardons, firing or hiring officials within the executive department). There is no determining if those are an official act or not. Anything the president does with an article 2 power is an official act with absolute immunity now. Motives or reason for using that power or the outcome of that cannot be questioned. It is legal for the president to accept a bribe to pardon someone right now. The fact that it happened couldn’t even be mentioned in court.
Only when the president is doing something not listed in the constitution can it be determined if it’s an official or unofficial act by the courts and should be immune. And again it’s the action, not the motive or the result or purpose of the action, that determines whether it is official. The only example they gave was talking to justice department officials is official. So if he is talking to justice department officials to arrange a bribe or plan a coup? Legal, immune, can’t even be used as evidence against him. It doesn’t matter why he was talking to the justice department, the fact that he was makes him immune from any laws he breaks in the process of doing so. They aren’t determining if a bribe or coup is an official act, they’re determining if talking to justice department officials in general is. It doesn’t matter what he’s actually doing it for, arranging a coup? That’s perfectly okay. Oh someone found out, pardon everyone else involved in the conspiracy who wasn’t already immune. Now it can’t even be brought up in court.
In the example you gave of ordering an assassination, if it used the military to do the assassination that is a core power, cannot be questioned. The supreme court ruling placed no limits on what can be done with his article 2 powers. Only a nebulous official vs not official test for things not listed in article 2. There’s also a very worrying vague phrase about “ensuring laws are faithfully executed” that even Barrett thought was too much in her concurrence. Basically, as long as the president is using the levers of government to commit crimes, legal now.
Impeachment is the only recourse now as you say, but even if impeached and removed from office by some miracle, they still wouldn’t be able to be held criminally liable afterwards for that.
Everyone panicking in this thread is right to do so.