volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@brianvastag all that matters is what was handed down in the end.

Justices are free to change their minds about anything right up until the official handing down of a ruling.

@SNerd they didn't address it directly, but in passing lumped federal representatives and senators in with the president, so their ruling here would likely apply to them as well.

Outside of a authorization from the feds, the Court finds that states would be interfering in federal operations by blocking federal candidates on those grounds.

> "But there is little reason to think that these Clauses implicitly authorize the States to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates. Granting the States that authority would invert the Fourteenth Amendment’s rebalancing of federal and state power."

@lin11c that's not what they decided in Bush v Gore, and I'll link to it so you can read for yourself.

In BvG the Supreme Court found that a state court had acted unconstitutionally, so it reversed the state court's illegal ruling.

The Supremes didn't say who the president was. They said Florida could vote for anyone they wanted so long as the voting was constitutional, and that the Florida state court can't be allowed to break the law.

Through their ruling in BvG the Supreme Court protected democracy from an illegally acting state court.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep531/usrep531098/usrep531098.pdf
@Stinson_108 @atrupar

@Stinson_108 What makes it illogical?

Even if I'm not entirely convinced that the court was right, its argument seems pretty logical, that states can't regulate the federal government unilaterally.

That seems logical even if not my preference.

@atrupar

@Stinson_108

The reason this fear is overstated is because we don't leave it up to the loser to decide that he has lost. We tell him he has lost. He immediately loses all authority, and it doesn't matter if he camps out in the Oval Office, he's no longer president and he no longer has legal authority.

It's not up to Trump to decide whether to leave office or not. If he's not president, he's not president, regardless of what he might think about it.

@lin11c @atrupar

@servelan The problem is that the Court found the presidential election to be a federal procedure so this wasn't just a state regulating private action since the feds had not, but rather this was seen a state regulating the federal government itself.

I don't fully agree that a presidential election is a federal process, but given that it is, as the Court found, it's a little more understandable.

It would be like Texas proposing to regulate some practice in the EPA just because Congress had not passed a law related to that specific practice.

Or, this analogy is a little more complicated, but Texas proposing to regulate the federal border patrol. It would be disallowed for the same reason, and that is certainly current events at this point.

@TCatInReality Well the core of their ruling is that states don't have this right at all, cannot have a right to interfere in federal matters like that.

(I'm not myself completely convinced by that stance, but it is what they came down with, so it meant they couldn't issue guidelines for a practice that was not legal in the first place)

But yeah, the vast, vast majority of the work done by an appellate court like this one isn't done through oral argument but through huge stacks of papers representing not only briefings to the court but also the record from the lower court including all of the briefings there, so it's always kind of interesting to think about what the oral argument is actually supposed to be accomplishing.

I believe I remember that sometimes judges and justices will even refuse to consider points brought up in the oral argument that weren't in the briefings, telling the arguers that at that point it's too late to bring up something new. You can hear the justices often say, that point wasn't briefed.

@wdlindsy

@Guinnessy I suppose the real complication is the definition of what counts as good, which brings up stuff like what the end goals are, how they might be measured, what standards to meet, etc.

So that's that's kind of what I'm going into: personally I aim for the pragmatic, saying that compositions that are the pinnacle of integrity, that aren't read by anybody, I don't consider that good while somebody focused on the integrity side would. It's not the good that I prioritize.

I think that if journalists spent more time engaging with their readers it would even promote a level of self-reflection that could even improve the integrity side of things. It makes for a system of critical feedback that is, well, critical 🙂 crucial.

So I adamantly agree that quite a few places aren't practicing good journalism. But there's probably disagreement in what that exactly means and how to move forward to improve it.

@Guinnessy again I emphasize that if people don't have trust in journalism then none of it works anyway.

The choice is between a non-ideal path and one that's unworkable from the getgo.

If journalists aren't up to trying to engage the public even with, shall we say, low brow devices like bothsidsm, then we might as well shut the remaining news rooms and go home.

If they're not meeting the people where they are, then it's all futile.

@ginaintheburg Well they were all very different types of cases with different levels of complexity.

@vij no, it's the opposite: the Court *supported* the amendment's grant of power to Congress while pushing back against the idea that states could rise up and interfere in federal processes like that.

It's BECAUSE of a bloody civil war that states were somewhat disempowered here.

The Court upheld that principle.

@TCatInReality there are a lot of problems with the proposal to just make a test.

Practically, that's a pretty important test to be created out of whole cloth, without development in courts below, without solid briefing or study.

US courts recognize the importance of that development.

But more importantly, the Court found that this was a state interfering in a federal activity without authority. Considering the history of the amendment, that's a particularly ironic bit.

The Court would be devising a problematic test for a process that's not allowed as it would allow states to undermine the federal government.

@linuxgnome

@gkmizuno glancing through the ruling this morning I had forgotten that on page 10 the Court did go through such avenues of relief, particularly citing 18 USC §2383.

I think they should have developed this for a paragraph or two more, but with the expedited schedule, well it wasn't the most organized ruling I've ever read.

@jpanzer the option is only foreclosed unless there's a valid grant of authority to the states to intervene in federal elections that way.

Once states have such a power, everything changes, and the Court may be in a position to develop the sort of test you're talking about, hopefully through a solid legal process that was missing here.

At this point, when it comes to such a test, the Court would be developing a test for a procedure that was itself illegal.

The Court said that states didn't have authority over feds like this. The test would be about something that states couldn't do anyway.

@christianschwaegerl there's a reason the quote is from a dissent, though: the Court didn't find the statement to be correct, or else it would be in the opinion itself.

So it's not authoritative.

In any case, far from Congress being unable to act, the opinion is all about Congress acting.

But yes, criminal conviction would lead to automatic exclusion, as the opinion itself cited the specific law, already on the books, that would cause that.

@Guinnessy No, I think bothsidsm is actually a really useful tool for connecting with readers, so I think that's a point where he's particularly offbase.

SO MANY no longer respect or trust news sources. Polling and just daily life shows that. Without that respect, everything else is just recordkeeping, writing the history of a society struggling without solid, trusted journalism.

If a tool like bothsidsm helps avoid the appearance of bias and restore faith, then by all means use it.

But that conclusion relies on recognition of the importance of rebuilding that trust.

@rant I should have said a bit more: state courts can't apply federal law against the federal government.

The Court recognized the presidential election as a federal process, and it drew a contrast against state offices.

I'm not fully on board with it, but I get where they're going.

@popcornreel

@christianschwaegerl I often get the impression that my fellow Trump critics end up buying into his shtick way too much.

Trump says it will be wild? So? The guy's a moron. Why would we take his blather as valid or realistic?

Trump will try to grab power? That's nice. He'd fail, just like he did before, just like others failed, over and over again, because that's not how the US system is set up.

And all the while, treating Trump as a well-oiled anything just buys into his rhetoric and builds him up to his supporters.

The way to oppose Trump is to recognize him as a loser who will not offer his supporters success.

@TCatInReality

But as you say, consistent application *of law* and here the Court is saying that the law (statute) is missing, so they wouldn't have any law to ensure the consistent application *of.*

And practically, I don't know if I mentioned it above, but I don't think the record before the Court was sufficiently briefed on any sort of test that it might choose, which is another reason it wouldn't have basis for going there.

It would be a pretty important test to issue half-briefed and on an expedited timeline.

The lack of a circuit split in this case also makes it problematic to develop such a rule.

@wdlindsy

@christianschwaegerl That's not quite what the rulings said.