#SCOTUS Is Compromised

[mylionheart2]

[roguekhajiit]

With the SCOTUS ruling that the president is above the law, the MAGATs are showing their true colors.

And it's not the red, white, and blue that they fly next to their cult flags.

No, it's peach and orange.

That's because all this time, while they were screaming the loudest about how they were the "True patriots," they were really just reading a script their great orange leader gave to them.

They absolutely praise the deeds of these corrupt justices that blatantly disregard the vision the founding fathers had for our country.

When you call them out on their treasonous ideas, and that's what this boils down to, they can't do much more than regurgitate the tweets of their supreme leader.

They are not Patriots! Project 2025 seeks to tear down our democracy and rebuild our government into a dictatorship, crowning their cult leader as king.

All of these recent SCOTUS rulings are designed to lay the groundwork for Project 2025, and the MAGATs fully support it. Don't you forget that. Every single truck flying a MAGA flag, every single house with a Trump 2024 sign out front, and every red hat in the crowd at this year's 4th of July parade; they all support a dictatorship.

Don't let these kool-aid drinkers win this year. If they do, you can kiss your freedoms goodbye. They will undo all the progress we made over the years and set us back 300+ years. Under their regime, only rich, white men will have any semblance of freedom in the new country.

The only way we can hope to stop it is to get out and vote, turn as many states blue as we can. And let's hope that the electoral college isn't as corrupt as the Supreme Court is.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

This afternoon, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced articles of impeachment against two corrupt far-right judicial activists sitting on the Supreme Court: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The articles of impeachment against SCOTUS Justices Thomas and Alito have no chance of passage in the GOP-controlled House.

Summary of the impeachment charges against Alito and Thomas, via Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Congressional website:

The first impeachment resolution includes the following impeachment articles against Justice Thomas:

Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.

Refusal to recuse from matters concerning his spouse’s legal interest in cases before the court.

Refusal to recuse from matters involving his spouse’s financial interest in cases before the court.

The second impeachment resolution includes the following impeachment articles against Justice Alito:

Refusal to recuse from cases in which he had a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party in cases before the court.

Failure to disclose financial income, gifts and reimbursements, property interests, liabilities, and transactions, among other information.

This afternoon, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced articles of impeachment against corrupt and unethical far-right judicial activists Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas that currently sit on the nation's highest court.

AOC is correct: these two corrupt far-right judicial activists deserve to be impeached and removed from the court for their unethical conduct on the bench.

Read the full story at Daily Kos.

[eugenedebs1920]

In their last term, The Supreme Court of the United States of America (SCOTUS), mainly the men, but occasionally Barrett showed the American people how little we are worth to them. They made it blatantly obvious that we are nothing more than serfs, subjugated, whose purpose is to pay taxes and STFU.

This was also made apparent with the reversal of Roe. The 2023-24 term had its share of long term dire consequences yet to be felt. The overturning of the Chevron doctrine was a devastating blow to the middle class/working poor. Its reversal will, at one time or another, affect the lives of 98% of Americans (the middle class, upper middle and working poor).

The right wing apparatus will tell you that regulations, protections, and limitations prohibit productivity which leads to less profits and in turn, a cooling of economic prosperity. What they aren’t divulging is the massive amounts of wealth they have amassed over the past 4 decades.

As far back as the Nixon administration, one could go back as far as the New Deal but, it’s a post, not a novel, certain restrictions, limitations, protective measures, and practices have been imposed on major corporations and industries. These regulations range from environmental protection, labor practices, safety standards, hazardous substances, banking practices, equal pay, the list goes on.

These regulatory agencies specialize in the field in which suits their skill set. Some call it the bureaucratic state. These non partisan civil servants work throughout changing administrations in their various fields without being inhibited by the views held by the party in power.

What the overturning of Chevron did is lessen the power that these agencies have. Putting the rules and regulations they enforced in peril. Now regulations created to protect the health and safety of Americans and the environment we live in, as well as the financial institutions and practices in which they can engage in, are put in peril.

The effects of this won’t be immediately noticeable. We are the frog in a warm pot of water, slowly being boiled to death. What does this have to do with Helene and future natural disasters one may ask?

Some of those regulatory agencies impacted by this reversal are, the EPA, FEMA, NOAA, the Department of Labor, OSHA, The FCC, the SEC, and so many more. Pretty much any agency that limits the exploitation these massive conglomerates and giant corporations can impose on Americans and the world they reside in.

We live in a time where the Supreme Court is rogue. With an extreme right wing MAGA majority, dead set on revoking rights as opposed to instilling them. A Supreme Court who, when scandals arose of lavish gifts coming from billionaire benefactors, rather than enforce a code of ethics they simply legalized bribery (Snyder vs the United States). A Supreme Court, so lawless and void of standards, that justices refuse to recuse themselves from constitutional crises cases, where they flew flags in support of the defendant, where the wife of another was in direct contact with the cheif of staff of a man who, while watching from the dining room of the White House, while a mob, led by his incendiary rhetoric ramshacked our capital. All the while chants of “hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike Pence” rang through the the halls of that hallowed ground. When told the mob wanted to hurt the Vice President, the defendant said, “So what”.

I’ve had tacos more supreme than this court! This November 5th, it is not a choice between a vile demented old man and a lifetime protector and prosecutor for the people, it is the direction, the safety, the environment, the lending practices, the food we eat, the wages we make, the lives our children will have that is the choice because. If Trump is elected, Alito as well as Thomas WILL retire, giving the mandarin Mussolini FIVE SCOTUS appointments. This will dictate the next 30 plus years of our lives. So please! Get out and vote! Vote the Harris Walz ticket and blue down ballot. The freedoms of women, LGBTQ rights, labor rights, environmental protections, food and drug safety, fair banking/lending practices, our federal lands, clean water, green energy for the future, so much hangs in the balance and the effects will be felt for a majority of the rest of our lives. We are one nation, indivisible, we stand for liberty and justice for all! ☮️🇺🇸

[ivovynckier]

Roe v. Wade: NO woman is smart enough to take decisions about her body.

Trump immunity: ONE man so smart he can stage a coup and murder his rivals.

[rosielindy]

[donnatroyprincessofthemyscira]

[samasmith23]

THIS!!!

“How did the court get so much power that it can overrule both Congress and the president, ignore efforts to hold justices accountable when they are nakedly corrupt, and overturn laws like our bribery statutes? Who put them in charge of America? The simple answer, as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, is that the justices gave that power to themselves. Not only is such power for the court not found anywhere in the Constitution, but Article 3, Section 2 explicitly puts the Supreme Court under the thumb of Congress, not the other way around: In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. [emphasis added] The Founders and Framers were very clear about this, even though that notorious liar Sam Alito wasn’t when he recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.””

—

The Supreme Court Was Never Meant to Be Kings and Queens

This stolen, illegitimate, corrupt, right wing SCOTUS majority has no legal or moral right to impose its tyrannical, christian nationalist agenda on an entire nation. 

[freyan2973]

[ianmelchizadek]

Conservative legal scholars say the Supreme Court's Trump immunity decision isn't conservative

So appalling...

[roguekhajiit]

This is just a friendly reminder that the Civil Rights Act wasn't signed until July 2, 1964.

Just for some perspective.

5 of the 9 supreme court justices are older than the Civil Rights Act.

4 of those 5 are old enough to remember when Whites Only establishments existed.

1 of those 4 wouldn't even have been able to enter such establishments.

These are the same people taking power away from federal agencies, telling us that the president is above the law and allowing for unhoused individuals to be jailed.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Today’s GOP controlled Supreme Court is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party focused on imposing their right-wing agenda upon us--from ending fundamental rights like abortion and marriage equality to undermining voting rights and more.  That is why we must work to win control of the Supreme Court the same way we work to win control of the House, Senate and White House. That means going forward every Democratic presidential candidate must commit to “winning the court” (aka “reform of the Supreme Court”) or we should not support that person. The latest example of this grotesquely partisan court came Thursday in the oral argument of Donald Trump’s appeal that he has absolute immunity to commit all the crimes he wants as President. The six GOP Justices—who were all active in Republican politics or administrations before being picked by GOP presidents to serve—showed zero concern that Trump was charged with crimes for attempting to wage a coup to remain in power despite losing.  Instead, it was clear that the Republican justices are focused on protecting Trump by delaying his Jan 6 trial beyond Election Day.

If these justices were truly concerned with protecting our Republic, they would have agreed to hear this case in December 2023 when Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the court to fast track Trump’s appeal of the trial judge’s decision denying him immunity in the Jan 6 case.  But that was rejected by the GOP controlled court to help Trump delay his trial. And in the end, the Republican justices may render a decision that makes it all but impossible to prosecute Trump for his crimes in the Jan 6 case. In reality, no one should be surprised that the Republican justices would protect the presidential nominee of their party in an election year. That is especially true given that three of those justices were appointed by Trump. [...]

And the GOP Supreme Court is helping Republicans impose these women killing abortion bans. We saw this on Wednesday when the court considered a challenge from Idaho Republicans to a federal law that mandates doctors to provide an abortion to a woman who is faced with an medical emergency.  It’s clear from the oral argument that GOP justices support the Idaho state law that makes it illegal for doctor to perform an abortion--even if a woman is suffering horribly or could suffer permanent injuries. Only if a woman is literally on the doorstep of death after suffering extensively and begging for help would these Republican justices allow an abortion. This is barbarism—and it’s also the mainstream GOP position. The GOP controlled court has also repeatedly chipped away at the wall between church and state to pave the way for a theocracy consistent with their right-wing religious views. For example, in 2023, the GOP justices rolled back anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community in the name of “religious freedom.”

In addition, these same GOP justices weakened the Voting Rights Act and greatly restricted the ability of the EPA to address climate change. And in a case that will literally result in more Americans being killed by gun violence, these same six Justices struck down in 2022 a century old New York state law that limited who can carry a concealed weapon.  Justice Thomas—in between lavish gifts from his billionaire benefactor—wrote in that case that modern gun control laws must be “consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.” This decision has resulted in courts striking down a wide range of modern gun laws—including prohibitions on guns in mass transit, guns in post offices, guns with obliterated serial numbers and gun possession by certain felons. Whatever the GOP wants, this court will deliver. That means—as Justice Thomas has vowed—the court will, when given a chance, limit access to forms of birth control that right wing theocrats oppose, roll back marriage equality and more. The reason the GOP Supreme Court is so acutely dangerous to our freedoms and rights is that there are no checks on their power. These justices don’t answer to the voters. There is no way to directly defeat them in an election. (We can’t even force Thomas to recuse himself from Jan 6 cases despite his obvious conflict of interest!)

[...] That is why Democrats going forward must make reforming this court a priority. That could mean—by way of a federal law--expanding the court to say 13 justices to match the number of federal court of appeals. It could mean rotating judges from Supreme Court to lower federal courts after a set number of years. Reform can also mean “term limits” for justices—which polls show is supported by 67 percent of Americans. There is no greater threat to our freedoms, rights and democratic Republic than today’s corruptly partisan Supreme Court. That is why every Democratic presidential candidate and those seeking a House or Senate seat must make “reforming the court” a priority. It’s time to transform the US Supreme Court from an arm of the GOP back to a real a court!

Dean Obeidallah nails it: The Supreme Court must be expanded and reformed to counter the ill-gotten GOP edge on the court.

[darthvatrix2]

It's hard watching 50 years of progress for Black people, women, and the LGBTQ communities being annihilated, case by case.

a system built to oppress

[ivovynckier]

Expect a Supreme Court ruling as corrupt as Bush v. Gore: Clarence Thomas gets to decide whether the insurrection his wife Ginni participated in was an insurrection.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 11, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 12, 2024

Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution” has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story: “His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.” The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Raiklin said the list was just the beginning. “This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?” 

Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has tried to distance himself from the radical extremist blueprint outlined in Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Today, videos surfaced of Trump cheering the project on from the start. At a Heritage Foundation dinner in 2022, Trump, slurring his words, said: “Our country is going to hell…. This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do...when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming.”

On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that Trump’s agenda and Project 2025 have “tremendous” overlap. “There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is okay, but it's actually good,” Roberts said. “I mean, we're gonna be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.” He said that Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the project was “a political tactical decision.” Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that Trump is “very bought in with this.” 

The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention. 

Today the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House “by force.” It said that Biden and his administration could “circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.” 

There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government. In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it, has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden: Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021. 

Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt, although the Supreme Court’s eye-popping July 1 decision in Trump v. U.S. declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” means Trump can challenge those indictments. Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump’s lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury’s conviction of Trump on 24 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election, and to dismiss the indictment. 

While the U.S. and our allies celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Erin Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation and support for NATO, including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries.

This seems likely to be related to the news that the U.S. intelligence discovered a series of Russian plots to assassinate executives from European defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine. Americans took that intelligence to Germany and foiled a Russian plot to kill the chief executive officer of a German arms manufacturer. 

Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday he held a rally at his Doral golf club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90-degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75-minute speech was, as The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reported, “full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US ‘most of their prisoners’; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.” He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, “We don’t eat bacon any more.” 

Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be. 

Luscombe reported that the crowd “appeared mostly subdued,” yawning and playing on their phones. 

Today, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Trump is “the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office—any office—and an imminent threat to democracy.” “If the [Republicans] had any decency left,” it wrote, they would dump him. Voters, the board said, must see the election as “a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.”

Almost two weeks after calling for Biden to step out of the 2024 race for the presidency, the editorial board of the New York Times also said that Trump is unfit to lead the United States of America, and urged voters “to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”

There was continued good news today about the American economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had collected more than $1 billion in overdue tax bills from millionaires. That crackdown was possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS. 

Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut the funding that made this enforcement possible. 

Today’s inflation report for June showed that inflation continues to cool, falling in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It declined in June by –0.1%, as gas and electricity prices dropped and as rent had its smallest monthly increase since August 2021. Statistics also show that workers’ wages continue to grow more quickly than prices. 

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO executive council voted unanimously to reaffirm its support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying: “Unions have never wavered in our support of them because they’ve never wavered in their commitment to working people.” The Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union quoted that statement and added: “BAC is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters across the labor movement in supporting the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.”

In a press conference this evening, Biden championed the economic boom his policies created for the middle class and reminded attending journalists that “none of you thought that would happen.” 

In that press conference, held after he presided over the three-day NATO summit and thus focused on foreign affairs, Biden answered press questions directly and fully, not only on his health but also on foreign affairs. He reiterated the importance of NATO and reminded reporters that he was key to reinforcing the alliance after Trump weakened it, then went on to talk about foreign affairs more broadly. He also noted that “I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other president,” adding: “And by the way I handed in my notes.” This was a reference to the fact that in an unprecedented move, Trump infamously refused to disclose the notes from one of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

At the same time that Biden was holding a press conference that focused on NATO and foreign affairs, Trump was meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Putin ally Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. On social media this evening, Trump indicated that he is trying to conduct his own foreign policy, although the Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, and reiterated his support for Putin’s call for “peace” in Ukraine. Their plan calls for giving Putin the western regions of Ukraine that were central to his 2016 support for Trump; Trump’s 2016 campaign manager promised Trump would look the other way as Putin absorbed them. 

Orbán, who has openly called for Trump’s reelection, posted: “Peace mission 5.0[.] It was an honour to visit President [Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make [peace]. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[vintageseawitch]

fascist billionaires are complete morons. evil, morally bankrupt, & terrible as well of course, but most of all morons.

they want their American tax breaks SO BAD that they're willing to destroy America for it. between trump's absurd tariff "plan" which will cost American consumers more, the "deportation" of over 10 million people which will cost American money to do which will turn into "sending people to concentrator camps" instead so they get that precious free labor they dearly wanted without having to do that silly thing called "treat your workers like human beings" & many businesses & jobs will be lost so the cost of groceries that are awful now will be IMPOSSIBLE so people will starve & start going homeless because workers protections will disappear & they have no plans to make it so the cost of living is affordable on one income per government forced family so people will start not being able to pay for rent or their mortgage so that's MORE prisoners for free labor, abortion & contraception will be banned so women will suffer & die but don't worry they're just expendable incubators but after that state sanctioned forced baby is born TOO FUCKING BAD YOU'RE NOT GETTING ANY HELP, they intend to make climate change worse, & so on.

all of this & more is going to tank the economy of the USA. this is not just counting our position as a world superpower; make no mistake, a second trump presidency is promising a world of fear & uncertainty where no one will be free. the American dollar will become worthless so what good will American billionaire money be? millions are going to suffer & die. they don't care about that i know but they won't be getting sky high profits for very long.

eat the rich.