volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@ericschutte

It's the system itself.

The US government was designed to have three branches, with the president having charge of the executive branch.

Any government function that's not legislative or judicial is therefore under his control by the fundamental structure of the federal government.

@GottaLaff

@TCatInReality

Again, you're reducing the facts here. Roberts doesn't get to act on his own. The majority of Supreme Court justices came to the same conclusion, and without the other four Roberts would have just been whistling into the wind.

And in the years since the ruling we've seen that the VRA is very much still active. It's clearly not destroyed.

The reductionism of saying it was all Roberts who destroyed the VRA just doesn't match the facts before us, so the argument doesn't have legs.

@JaniceOCG @AngryBlackLady

@lillyfinch I know a lot of articles got this wrong, but no, that's the opposite of what the SCOTUS said.

In its ruling, which I'll link to below, the Court concluded by ordering the DC Circuit Court to continue the case against Trump, which is the opposite of saying he was above the law.

Further, its main holding was that presidents, including both Biden and Trump, were bound by law against prosecuting former presidents when there was no crime.

That's it. There has been so much misinformation spread about this case, but like I said, here's the link for you to read for yourself.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

@iuculano The article kind of refutes itself.

Trump friendly far-right Court? No. It's clearly not. It has ruled against him plenty.

And we need to state this very clearly since there are so many people putting out misleading information about what's going on.

The Supreme Court rules against Trump and right-wing perspectives very consistently when they are wrong.

It's antisocial to promote misleading and sensationalized articles saying elsewise.

@FrChazzz The thing to keep in mind is that so much of the population concluded that the federal government, the way it was acting, was bullshit.

And so the population elected bullshit to be in the bullshit government.

Welcome to democracy.

Let's hope the government does better in the future.

@cdarwin but that's begging the question.

Musk's whole point is that people don't realize how much waste and fraud there really is, so pointing out the amount of waste and fraud that you realize is kind of what he's alluding to.

@zvavybir careful about the chemicals becoming denatured during cooking processes.

@DrALJONES The problem with that take is that even Trump's most public and ardent supporters readily acknowledge that he says things that aren't true.

They just say it doesn't matter.

There's no forcing.

@MAKS23 describe it as the trolling that it is

@kegill That's true, but, it misses the point.

The other side is arguing that the guy is not at all being arrested for peaceful protesting. They would agree with you, and say he can protest peacefully all day, but that's not what they say he did.

So to point out that peaceful protest is protected speaks past the charges against the guy, which according to them have absolutely nothing to do with peaceful protesting.

So no, according to their argument, it is completely wrong that they can arrest anybody. That's a straw man argument compared to what the other side is actually charging.

@PekkaKallioniemi Well it's Trump versus sanity.

The back and forth is whether Trump is thoughtlessly reacting versus letting more mature, more rational people set policy.

There's nothing surprising here. When Trump insists on driving he starts swerving left and right, and then sometimes he lets other people in the administration drive, and they actually steady the course. But they have to talk him into it, pander to him, convince Grandpa to give up the keys as the Republicans kept saying when it came to Biden.

I'm convinced that the people surrounding Trump aren't really on his side. They know he's awful, some are trying to protect the country from him, and some are just after personal ambition. But this framing completely explains whatever's happening.

@lillyfinch What in the world?

The court very often rules against heritage foundation positions, and the heritage foundation for its part often rails against what the court does.

In the real world, no, there is no love lost between those two institutions.

@TCatInReality No you have that completely backwards.

Roberts wasn't hostile to the VRA, he was a supporter of the law! That actually buttressed the VRA.

A lot of people really don't understand that when laws are faithfully respected in the courts that makes them more, not less, powerful.

Roberts didn't lie. And it has absolutely nothing to do with DEI, which was a really nutty leap for the linked article to make.

Yes, times change. Doesn't mean they have changed completely, but when Roberts pointed out that it was important to set aside the loopholes and faithfully apply the law in light of the changed circumstances, that was an extremely rational position to take.

And it's why he was able to gain the support of the other justices. This sort of sensational article talks as if he's acting unilaterally, but that's not how the world works.

@JaniceOCG @AngryBlackLady

@lillyfinch this overlooks that the justices aren't so much talking about conservative versus liberal versus moderate in so many of these cases, but simply discussions about proper procedure.

Neither the world, nor the Supreme Court, are so black and white.

@SaanichGuy keep in mind that Americans are generally not concerned about Alito's performance on the bench, and not particularly interested in his personal life.

If elsewhere this would mean resignation, well, now THAT would be corruption of the system, with personal attacks overriding the role the person serves in our government.

The US might be better than elsewhere when it comes to things like this.

Also, US tax policy promotes charging for checked bags. But we keep reelecting the same people promoting those policies, so again, we get what we vote for.

Yay democracy!

@kims

@kegill the answer is simple: because it's simply not an option on the table to return to the previous borders.

There has been no workable plan for forcing Russia to return to the other boarders. That milk has been spilt.

That's why the victim needs to hand over territory, at least for now. Because there is no realistic alternative on the table.

@kegill this misses that the argument is precisely that the activity WASN'T constitutionally protected.

There are other issues with the legal process here, but that framing gets the situation wrong.

@Free_Press I'd say it goes the other way from the picture.

We ALREADY HAD a circus, so we elected a clown.

The cause and effect are the other way around, and this is backed by the public levels of dissatisfaction with how government had been operating.

@petersuber there's so much question begging there, though.

For example, installing "ideologically aligned" people can be PRO-science if you don't start with the assumption that they're anti-

And so, so many say it's in promotion of science that we need to break the ideological bonds that have been keeping these institutions bound to antiscientific patterns.

@chrischirp