The Supreme Court of the United States just legalized bribery at the state and local level, as long as you don't document that it's a bribe when you bribe them. No, this isn't a joke. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-06-26/supreme-court-anti-corruption-law
The ruling was along strict party lines. (The idea that justices are "nonpartisan" is also obviously dead and has been since at least 2000.) This is why it is *necessary* to defeat Republicans in every election, even if electing Democrats is not always *sufficient* to achieve our political objectives.
This is a devastating blow to a free and fair civil society which will be extremely hard to reverse.
@BioGeoMeFi. That's not what the ruling said at all, and the LA Times should be called out for these misleading headlines.
In fact, in the ruling, the Supreme Court went out of its way to emphatically recognize the illegality of bribery. That was a core part of the decision. But as happens so often, it doesn't matter what efforts the Court might make to head off misinformation, these reports go viral anyway.
What the Court pointed out was that the people we elected to Congress changed the law a while back, and the Court respected the legislative process. It wasn't the Court making a change, it was an entirely different branch of government, and if we want to have the law revisited, we are welcome to ask them to fix it.
But we're not going to get there by blaming the Court for something they didn't do based on something that was the opposite of what they said.
