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  • Rep. Byron Donalds advises Supreme Court to ‘action in’ on Trump conviction

    Rep. Byron Donalds advises Supreme Court to ‘action in’ on Trump conviction

    Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds on Sunday advised the Supreme Court to use up previous President Donald Trump’s New york city case in which he was founded guilty on 34 counts of falsification of company records.

    “Speaker [Mike] Johnson, myself consisted of, and numerous Americans think the Supreme Court ought to enter this matter,” Donalds informed NBC News’ “Satisfy journalism” on Sunday.

    His remarks followed Johnson informed Fox News that the Supreme Court ought to check out the case.

    “There’s a great deal of advancements yet to come, however I do think the Supreme Court ought to action in. Clearly, this is completely extraordinary,” Johnson informed “Fox & Buddies” soon after Trump’s conviction.

    Trump’s legal group has actually assured to appeal his conviction, however there are appellate courts in New york city that would need to examine the case before it might be given the Supreme Court.

    Donalds referenced the prolonged appellate procedure in New york city on Sunday, mentioning it as a reason that the Supreme Court ought to action in earlier.

    He called the case versus Trump an effort to “interfere” in his election project.

    “This is being provided for political functions. Everyone understands how the court system operates in New york city. The only capability for this to be reversed is going to be occurring 2 or 3 years from now,” Donalds informed mediator Peter Alexander.

    “That’s why what occurred in lower Manhattan was to disrupt an election,” he included.

    Donalds is extensively reported to be on previous President Donald Trump’s list of possible vice governmental candidates.

    At an occasion in Michigan on Saturday, Trump informed the crowd, “[Donalds] takes place to be on the list of possible vice presidents. Would any person like to see him? I observed your name is really high up on the list.”

    Asked Sunday whether he would be prepared to work as leader in chief if required, Donalds stated, “I believe that I would have a capability to action in. I’m in fact quite smart. I can sort through concerns truly, truly well. It’s about judgment. It’s about reasoning streams. It’s about how you make choices at the end of the day.”

    He included, “I think in myself 100%, I do, therefore you understand, we’ll see what President Trump chooses. I’m going to support whatever he does.”

    This short article was initially released on NBCNews.com

  • Supreme Court guidelines prohibit on weapon bump stocks is illegal

    Supreme Court guidelines prohibit on weapon bump stocks is illegal

    WASHINGTON — In a loss for the Biden administration, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that a Trump-era federal restriction on bump stocks, weapon devices that enable semiautomatic rifles to fire faster, is illegal.

    In a 6-3 judgment on ideological lines, with the court’s conservatives in the bulk, the court held that a practically 100-year-old law focused on prohibiting gatling gun cannot legally be analyzed to consist of bump stocks.

    The Trump administration enforced the restriction after the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, in which Stephen Paddock utilized bump stock-equipped guns to open fire on a c and w celebration, at first eliminating 58 individuals. Then-President Donald Trump personally required the device to be prohibited.

    Composing for the bulk, Justice Clarence Thomas stated that a gun geared up with the device does not satisfy the meaning of “machinegun” under federal law.

    The judgment triggered an energetic dissent from liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

    “When I see a bird that strolls like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she composed in recommendation to bump stocks allowing semiautomatic rifles to run like gatling gun. Sotomayor likewise took the uncommon action of checking out a summary of her dissent in court.

    Even with the federal restriction out of the photo, bump stocks will still not be easily offered across the country. More than a lots states have actually currently prohibited them, according to Everytown for Weapon Security, a not-for-profit gun-control group. Congress might likewise act.

    In a declaration, President Joe Biden stated he had actually utilized “every tool in my administration to mark out weapon violence” and swore to continue to do so.

    “We understand ideas and prayers are insufficient,” Biden stated. “I get in touch with Congress to prohibit bump stocks, pass an attack weapon restriction, and take extra action to conserve lives — send me a costs and I will sign it right away.”

    Senate Bulk Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., echoed the point in a declaration, stating “the only method to completely close this loophole is through legislation.”

    A bump fire stock that attaches to a semi-automatic rifle to increase the firing rate is seen at Good Guys Gun Shop in Orem (George Frey / Reuters file )

    A bump fire stock that connects to a semi-automatic rifle to increase the shooting rate is seen at Great Guys Weapon Store in Orem (George Frey / Reuters file )

    Weapon control supporters decried the judgment and raised issues that a few of the state law restrictions might be overruled also.

    “We’ve seen bump stocks trigger enormous damage and violence,” stated Esther Sanchez-Gomez, lawsuits director at Giffords Law Center. “Most of justices today agreed the weapon lobby rather of the security of the American individuals. This is an outrageous choice.”

    Although Trump enforced the restriction, a spokesperson for his project revealed no dissatisfaction at the choice, stating the judgment “must be appreciated” and promoting his assistance for weapon rights.

    The National Rifle Association, a leading weapon rights group, at the time showed it would likewise support a restriction, although it consequently backtracked. The group invited Friday’s judgment, stating on X that the court had actually “appropriately limited executive branch firms to their function of implementing, and not making, the law.”

    Sotomayor pointed out the Las Vegas shooting in her dissent.

    “All he needed to do was shoot and press the weapon forward. The bump stock did the rest,” she composed.

    The judgment, she included, “hamstrings the federal government’s efforts to keep machineguns from shooters like the Las Vegas shooter.”

    In a concurring viewpoint, conservative Justice Samuel Alito, yielded that in useful terms, a weapon geared up with a bump stock is really comparable to a gatling gun and stated Congress might act to prohibit the device.

    The “dreadful shooting spree” in Las Vegas demonstrated how “a semiautomatic rifle geared up with a bump stock can have the very same deadly impact as a machinegun,” reinforcing the case for legal action, he included.

    The Supreme Court in 2019 decreased to obstruct the guideline. The currently conservative court has slanted even more to the right ever since, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, changing liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away in 2020.

    Conservatives now have a 6-3 bulk that has actually backed weapon rights in previous cases.

    The National Firearms Act was enacted in 1934 to control gatling gun in reaction to Prohibition-era gangster violence.

    The claim was brought by Texas-based weapon owner Michael Cargill, a certified dealership who owned 2 bump stocks before the restriction entered into impact and later on surrendered them to the federal government.

    “Over 5 years ago I swore I would protect the Constitution of the United States, even if I was the only complainant in the event. I did simply that,” he stated in a declaration reacting to the judgment.

    Bump stocks utilize the recoil energy of a trigger pull to allow the user to fire up to numerous rounds with what the federal government calls “a single movement.”

    Cargill’s legal representatives state it is a tough ability to master.

    Some weapon rights supporters, consisting of the National Rifle Association, at first backed then-President Donald Trump’s relocate to control bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting, however have actually because lined up in opposition to it.

    The case does not link the scope of the right to bear arms under the Constitution’s 2nd Modification. The oppositions argue that the federal government does not have the authority to prohibit bump stocks under the 1934 law.

    The 1968 Weapon Control Act specified “gatling gun” to consist of devices “for usage in transforming a weapon” into a gatling gun, and the ATF concluded that bump stocks satisfy that meaning.

    Much of the legal battle depended upon the meaning of gatling gun as a weapon that can immediately fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

    The federal government argued that the expression describes the actions of the shooter, with a single action needed to fire numerous shots. Cargill’s legal representatives argued that it describes the action inside the gun when the trigger is engaged. Since a bump stock still needs the trigger to be engaged for each shot, it is not a gatling gun, they argued.

    The Supreme Court accepted Cargill’s argument, with Thomas composing that a gun geared up with a bump stock does not end up being a gatling gun since “it cannot fire more than one shot” with a single function of the trigger.

    “ATF for that reason surpassed its statutory authority by releasing a guideline that categorizes bump stocks as machineguns,” he included.

    Lower courts were divided over the concern, with both the New Orleans-based fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based sixth Circuit judgment that the restriction was illegal.

    The Biden administration appealed in both cases, while weapon rights supporters objected to the judgment by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that promoted the restriction.

    The Supreme Court has actually backed weapon rights in cases straight resolving the scope of the 2nd Modification, consisting of the 2022 judgment that discovered there is a right to bring a pistol outside the home.

    However in a case argued in November, the court showed it may stop brief of overruling some enduring weapon laws in a case including a restriction on having guns by individuals implicated of domestic violence.

    This post was initially released on NBCNews.com

  • Trump Is Great With SCOTUS Legislating Bump Stocks, Which He’d Assisted Restriction

    Trump Is Great With SCOTUS Legislating Bump Stocks, Which He’d Assisted Restriction

    The Supreme Court overruled the across the country restriction on bump stocks on Friday that previous President Donald Trump had actually worked to execute, however his project had fairly little to state on the matter.

    “The Court has actually spoken and their choice must be appreciated,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s project press secretary stated in a declaration.

    Leavitt then highlighted the assistance he won from the National Rifle Association previously this year.

    “President Trump has actually been and constantly will be an intense protector of Americans’ 2nd Change rights and he is happy to be backed by the NRA,” Leavitt stated Friday.

    The Supreme Court choice fixated the power of federal regulative companies to prohibit bump stocks, easy gadgets that permit semiautomatic rifles to spray bullets a lot more quickly. The bulk — consisting of 3 judges that were chosen by Trump — concluded that Congress, instead of the companies Trump had actually directed, would require to act in order to prohibit the gadgets.

    However Trump’s declaration Friday consisted of no require Congress to do anything.

    Rather, Leavitt turned to migration, declaring “the right to keep and bear arms has actually never ever been more important” at a time when “our border is open to terrorists and bad guys.”

    “Joe Biden wishes to take that immediately from obedient Americans,” Leavitt stated. “President Trump won’t let that take place.”

    The Trump project’s declaration contrasted greatly with the message put out by President Joe Biden, who provided a declaration decrying the “mass destruction” that bump stocks had the capability to trigger.

    “I get in touch with Congress to prohibit bump stocks, pass an attack weapon restriction, and take extra action to conserve lives — send me an expense and I will sign it right away,” Biden stated.

    When Trump revealed in 2018 that his administration was pursuing the bump stock restriction, the then-president acknowledged the power they have, stating gadgets like bump stocks “turn legal weapons into gatling gun.”

    He provided a declaration extoling going even more on the bump-stock problem than President Barack Obama had before him.

    Trump made that statement simply after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which happened around 4 months after a shooter utilized a weapon with a bump stock to massacre 60 individuals at a music celebration in Las Vegas, Nevada.

    While Trump has actually consistently shown determination to review the country’s courts when they rule versus him, in this case, he picked not to.

    He has actually likewise appeared excited not to get on the incorrect side of the NRA. At a convention previously this year, he informed participants that “nobody will touch your guns” if he wins.

    “Every Biden attack on weapon owners and producers will be ended on my really first week back in workplace, possibly my very first day,” Trump stated in February.

    Associated…

  • Clarence Thomas took extra journeys moneyed by Harlan Crow, senator exposes

    Clarence Thomas took extra journeys moneyed by Harlan Crow, senator exposes

    The United States supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took a minimum of 3 extra journeys moneyed by the billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow that the conservative justice stopped working to reveal, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee stated on Thursday.

    Crow, a Texas business person and Republican donor, revealed information about the justice’s travel in between 2017 and 2021 in action to a judiciary committee vote last November to license subpoenas to Crow and another prominent conservative, according to the committee chair, Senator Cock Durbin, a Democrat representing Illinois.

    Related: Lindsey Graham pledges to obstruct Democrats’ supreme court principles expense

    “The Senate judiciary committee’s examination into the supreme court’s ethical crisis is producing brand-new info – like what we’ve exposed (Thursday) – and makes it clear that the greatest court requires an enforceable standard procedure, due to the fact that its members continue to select not to fulfill the minute,” Durbin stated.

    A supreme court representative did not instantly react to an ask for remark, nor did an attorney for Crow.

    Thomas has actually formerly come under criticism for stopping working to reveal presents from Crow. Most just recently, Thomas recently belatedly modified his 2019 monetary disclosure type on to acknowledge that Crow had actually spent for his “food and accommodations” at a hotel in Bali, Indonesia, and at a California club.

    However the current filing by Thomas stopped working to reveal that Crow had actually spent for his travel by personal jet associated to the Bali and California journeys, and an eight-day adventure on a private yacht in Indonesia, omissions that were exposed on Thursday in a redacted file that Durbin’s workplace stated included travel schedules where Crow had actually supplied the justice with transport.

    The file reveals personal jet travel in Might 2017 in between St Louis in Missouri, the state of Montana, and Dallas. It likewise reveals personal jet travel in March 2019 in between Washington DC and Savannah, Georgia, and personal jet travel in June 2021 in between Washington DC and San Jose, California.

    Under pressure from criticism over principles, following a series of rows focusing primarily on Thomas and Samuel Alito, the most conservative justices, the 9 justices of the supreme court last November embraced their very first standard procedure.

    Nevertheless, critics and some congressional Democrats have stated the code does not go far enough to promote openness, continuing to leave choices to recuse from cases to the justices themselves and supplying no system of enforcement.

    Previously today, the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the top-level Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, stated he would obstruct Democrats’ efforts to pass a principles expense to control the United States supreme court.

    And Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated the court has actually been “caught and damaged by cash and extremism”, provoking a “crisis of authenticity” that threatens the stability of United States democracy.

    Reuters contributed reporting

  • Here’s How Trump Might Still Prohibit Abortion Tablets Across The Country

    Here’s How Trump Might Still Prohibit Abortion Tablets Across The Country

    Regardless Of the Supreme Court all declining an attack on abortion tablets today, pro-choice supporters are warning versus calling the choice a win — and for great factor. 

    The judgment declined the anti-abortion complainants on standing, not on the benefits of the case, which just preserves the status quo of abortion gain access to in the U.S. The choice does not provide extra defenses to mifepristone, the abortion drug at the center of the case, and the door is broad open for ongoing attacks. 

    There are a couple of methods Donald Trump might prevent the courts and Congress to prohibit mifepristone throughout the nation if he wins the presidency in November. Trump’s anti-abortion allies have actually detailed the presumptive GOP governmental candidate’s second-term program in Job 2025, a desire list of severe policy propositions that would improve the federal government. There are at least 3 methods Trump can utilize executive action to prohibit abortion across the country, consisting of in states where abortion care is presently secured. 

    “He has an actual plan to broaden the turmoil and ruthlessness he’s currently produced across the country, even in states where abortion is presently legal,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the Biden-Harris project supervisor, informed press reporters in a contact Thursday.

    Trump’s second-term program threatens ladies in all 50 states.Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden-Harris project

    “Donald Trump’s anti-reproductive liberty program is not simply a hazard to red states,” she continued. “Trump’s second-term program threatens ladies in all 50 states, and it’s incredibly harmful for ladies’s healthcare and our households.”

    As president, Trump might change the commissioner of the Fda and direct them to withdraw the company’s approval of mifepristone. Mifepristone is recommended as part of a two-drug program along with misoprostol for abortion and miscarriage care — which together are utilized in more than 60% of abortions in the U.S. The drug was authorized by the FDA in 2000 and has actually considering that been utilized securely and efficiently by almost 6 million Americans, according to the company.

    Trump’s capability to select a brand-new FDA commissioner would take mifepristone out of flow, efficiently executing an abortion restriction in both red and blue states. Remembering mifepristone would have destructive results on abortion care in the U.S., in addition to take care of other medical conditions that are treated with mifepristone, like Cushing syndrome and hyperglycemia.

    The other proposition detailed in Job 2025 consists of imposing the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law that criminalizes sending out “profane” products in the mail, consisting of anything “meant for producing abortion.” Around 20 states enacted abortion restrictions after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Pitch in 2022 – requiring some pregnant individuals to take a trip out of state to get care, otherwise continue with an undesirable or risky pregnancy.

    However abortion rates have typically remained the very same in big part due to the fact that individuals can still access abortion tablets by mail. The Comstock Act would restrict sending out tablets by mail to any state in the nation, producing a backdoor abortion restriction over night. 

    The Comstock Act is a harmful weapon for anti-abortion groups, and they understand it. Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer representing Trump in his own case before the Supreme Court, has stated that Republicans don’t require an across the country abortion restriction due to the fact that the Comstock Act exists. 

    “We don’t require a federal restriction when we have Comstock on the books,” Mitchell informed The New York City Times in February. Mitchell is likewise the designer of the Texas abortion fugitive hunter law, which prohibited abortion in the state over a year before Roe v. Wade was reversed. 

    He included about Trump: “I hope he doesn’t learn about the presence of Comstock, due to the fact that I simply don’t desire him to shoot off his mouth. I believe the pro-life groups need to keep their mouths shut as much as possible up until the election.”

    Former president Donald Trump speaks at an event in Phoenix on June 6, 2024.

    Previous president Donald Trump speaks at an occasion in Phoenix on June 6, 2024. Justin Sullivan through Getty Images

    Awareness of the Comstock Act is amazingly low: 2 in 3 Americans do not understand about the Comstock Act and its ramifications, according to current ballot from Navigator Research Study and Global Method Group. 7 in 10 Americans opposed the enforcement of the law after finding out about it. 

    “The manner in which these anti-abortion extremists wish to abuse the Comstock Act is completely incorrect from a legal point of view,” Julia Kaye, senior personnel lawyer at the ACLU’s Reproductive Liberty Job, informed press reporters throughout a Thursday press call. “They are defying the agreement of the federal appellate court, the U.S. Postal Service, Congress and the Department of Justice.” 

    The 3rd method Trump might prohibit abortion across the country returns to today’s Supreme Court case. There will likely be continued lawsuits due to the fact that the case was not dismissed however remanded back to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s courtroom.

    Kacsmaryk is the reactionary Trump appointee, popular for his anti-abortion views, who ruled in 2015 that the FDA unlawfully authorized mifepristone in 2000. After the Supreme Court took the case, Kacsmaryk permitted attorney generals of the United States from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to be included as complainants. Those authorities have recommended they will continue prosecuting the case — either by continuing in Kacsmaryk’s Amarillo courtroom or by submitting copycat claims in other federal district courts. 

    The suit that remained in front of the Supreme Court need to not be permitted to continue in Amarillo based upon legal precedent, Kaye stated. However if it does progress in Amarillo or through copycat matches, a Trump Justice Department might stop protecting the FDA and its evidence-based mifepristone policies.

    Mitchell, the lawyer banking on imposing the Comstock Act, is supposedly on Trump’s list for chief law officer. 

    “The bottom line is that these attacks on medication abortion and on all abortion across the country are definitely going to continue in spite of the relief these days’s choice,” Kaye stated. 

    Associated…

  • Supreme Court obstructs ‘Trump too little’ hallmark quote

    Supreme Court obstructs ‘Trump too little’ hallmark quote

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday rebuffed a California attorney’s effort to hallmark the expression “Trump too little,” a recommendation to an unrefined joke made about previous President Donald Trump.

    The court ruled all in favor of the U.S. Patent and Hallmark Workplace over its choice to turn down the application brought by Steve Elster. In doing so the court threw out a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit judgment.

    Composing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas stated that “history and custom” recommended that constraints on individuals trademarking specific names do not break the Constitution’s First Change.

    The law in concern “is of a piece with a common-law custom concerning the trademarking of names. We see no factor to interrupt this longstanding custom, which supports the limitation of using another’s name in a hallmark,” Thomas included.

    The “Trump too little” expression is a recommendation to a 2016 Republican governmental main dispute including Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida. Rubio joked about what he stated were Trump’s little hands, including: “And you understand what they state about guys with little hands.”

    Elster, a work attorney and progressive activist, used to sign up “Trump too little” — a double-entendre suggested to insinuate a likewise little penis — with the hallmark workplace in 2018. The motto appears on the front of a Tee shirts Elster produced, with “Trump’s bundle is too little” on the back.

    Elster stated in his application that he wished to spread out a message that “some functions of President Trump and his policies are small.”

    However the hallmark workplace declined his application on the premises that members of the general public would right away associate the word “Trump” with the then-president. Under recognized law, Trump’s composed permission would be needed, the workplace concluded.

    Elster argued that his complimentary speech rights would be breached if he might not sign up a hallmark that slams a public figure. The appeals court ruled for him, stating his complimentary speech rights under the Constitution’s First Change were breached.

    The Biden administration, representing the hallmark workplace, then interested the high court.

    The Supreme Court concurred there was no complimentary speech offense. The 9 justices all settled on the result although they varied rather on the reasoning, with 3 justices composing different viewpoints.

    The case is the most recent of a number of the Supreme Court has actually used up just recently worrying complimentary speech rights in the hallmark context.

    In 2017, the court overruled a restriction on hallmarks that include disparaging language, handing a win to an Asian American rock band called The Slants. 2 years later on, the court tossed out a restriction on hallmarks based upon unethical or outrageous words, judgment in favor of the clothes brand name FUCT.

    This short article was initially released on NBCNews.com

  • Supreme Court rejects Elon Musk’s challenge to SEC agreement to vet his social media posts

    Supreme Court rejects Elon Musk’s challenge to SEC agreement to vet his social media posts

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s attempt to challenge the terms of an agreement he reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission that require a lawyer to review some of his social media posts.

    The justices rejected Musk’s appeal of a ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of the government agency.

    Musk complained that the SEC unlawfully imposed conditions on his ability to comment online about Tesla-related issues what has been dubbed the “Twitter sitter” provision.

    He has long been an impulsive user of Twitter, now renamed X. Musk acquired the social media company in 2022.

    The SEC cracked down on Musk after he posted tweets in 2018 saying he had secured funding to take Tesla private, which came as a shock to the market and initially sent the company’s shares surging. The agency said the tweets were “materially false and misleading” in violation of securities law.

    Musk agreed to settle a civil securities action brought by the SEC. As part of that agreement, he signed off on the social media provision.

    In a separate civil case, a jury last year found that Musk was not liable for misleading investors.

    Now, Musk is saying that the limits on his speech are unconstitutional and says he was effectively coerced into agreeing to it. His lawyers say in court papers that the SEC has waged an “ongoing campaign” against Musk.

    The provision “restricts Mr. Musk’s speech even when truthful and accurate. It extends to speech not covered by the securities laws and with no relation to the conduct underlying the SEC’s civil action against Mr. Musk,” the lawyers added.

    The SEC responded in court papers that Musk had waived his right to bringing his argument when he signed off on the settlement.

    Lower courts agreed in rejecting Musk’s claim.

    This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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  • Is Supreme Court just winging it in Trump immunity fight?

    Is Supreme Court just winging it in Trump immunity fight?

    The Supreme Court’s conservatives often accuse liberals of inventing provisions nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Now, the fingers are pointed in the other direction.

    At the attention-grabbing arguments this week over Donald Trump’s claim of sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, the six-member conservative bloc seemed largely unconcerned by a key flaw in Trump’s theory: Nothing in the Constitution explicitly mentions the concept of presidential immunity.

    Trump’s lawyer told the justices that the founders had “in a sense” written immunity into the Constitution because it’s a logical outgrowth of a broadly worded clause about presidential power. But that’s the sort of argument conservative justices have often scoffed at — most notably in the context of abortion rights.

    Two years ago, conservatives relied on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s text and original meaning to overturn the federal right to abortion. But on Thursday, as they debated whether Trump can be prosecuted for his bid to subvert the 2020 election, they seemed content to engage in a free-form balancing exercise where they weighed competing interests and practical consequences.

    Some critics said the conservative justices — all of whom purport to adhere to an original understanding of the Constitution — appeared to be on the verge of fashioning a legal protection for former presidents based on the justices’ subjective assessment of what’s best for the country and not derived from the nation’s founding document.

    “The legal approach they seemed to be gravitating toward has no basis in the Constitution, in precedent, or logic,” said Michael Waldman, president and CEO of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “It sure ain’t originalism.”

    The two-hour, 40-minute argument session featured a boatload of scary hypotheticals about coups and assassinations, along with predictions about serial, tit-for-tat prosecutions of future presidents, but there was little discussion of the Constitution’s text.

    That could come as a surprise to some. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three liberals now on the court, famously declared in 2015 that conservatives had essentially won the decadeslong battle between those who favored a close fealty to text and original meaning and those who emphasized pragmatism or saw the Constitution as an evolving document.

    “I think we are all textualists now,” Kagan told an audience at Harvard Law School then, as she delivered a lecture named for her then-colleague Justice Anontin Scalia, arguably the lead crusader for the text-based approach.

    Kagan was perhaps the most insistent Thursday in highlighting the absence of any explicit immunity for presidents in the Constitution.

    “The framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to. There were immunity clauses in some state constitutions. They knew how to give legislative immunity. They didn’t provide immunity to the president,” said Kagan, an appointee of President Barack Obama. “And, you know, not so surprising. They were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law.”

    Arguing for the Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith, attorney Michael Dreeben emphasized that the court would effectively be announcing judge-made law if it says presidents are entitled to criminal immunity.

    “There is no immunity that is in the Constitution, unless this Court creates it,” Dreeben declared. “There certainly is no textual immunity. … I think it would be a sea change to announce a sweeping rule of immunity that no president has had or has needed.”

    Of course, the court isn’t writing on a blank slate. The current justices aren’t the ones who essentially made up executive privilege in a 1974 ruling related to the Watergate probe or the president’s immunity from civil suits in a 1983 case brought by an Air Force analyst pushed out of his job. Those cases were mentioned numerous times in Thursday’s arguments.

    “Whoever is a textualist is a textualist leavened by precedent,” University of Virginia law professor Saikrishna Prakash said. “To say that everybody’s a textualist … I think suggests to some people the false hope that we all agree about what something means. I mean, we’re all speaking English, but we all disagree on the margins about what to make of someone’s communications.”

    Dreeben told the court that the Justice Department supports those earlier rulings on presidential privilege and immunity, even though the Constitution contains no explicit provision addressing either topic.

    A prominent Supreme Court critic, Georgia State University law professor Eric Segall, said there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the justices reaching a legal conclusion that lacks direct support in the Constitution. But he said the members of the nation’s highest court should not pretend that, in doing so, they are simply engaged in a mechanistic application of legal text.

    “Do I think there should be some kind of constitutional privilege for the President? Yes, I do. But we have to recognize how atextual that is,” Segall said.

    Calling someone a “purposivist” or a “consequentialist” might set off a brawl at a Federalist Society gathering, but the raft of hypotheticals offered by both liberal and conservative justices suggested they were intensely focused on both the founders’ purposes in laying out three separate branches of government and the possible consequences of giving or denying Trump his requested immunity.

    The conservative justices did not completely ignore textualism in the Trump arguments Thursday. Indeed, the first question asked — from Justice Clarence Thomas — urged Trump lawyer D. John Sauer to “be more precise as to the source of this immunity.”

    In response, Sauer pointed to the extraordinarily broad words of the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” it reads. Sauer didn’t read it aloud, perhaps because one can’t find any discussion of immunity there.

    Sometimes, the court has found the absence of such language to be of great import.

    Writing for five conservative justices in the earth-shaking abortion case two years ago, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito referred to the notion of guaranteed access to abortion as “an asserted right that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.”

    On Thursday, Sauer did offer one argument for presidential immunity drawn relatively directly from the text of the Constitution: The assertion that the language allowing for criminal conviction of a federal officer after impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate implies that a current or former president can’t be criminally charged until and unless he or she is convicted by the Senate.

    No justice of any stripe seemed particularly interested in that contention, although a couple did poke holes in it.

    “What if the criminal conduct isn’t discovered until after the president is out of office, so there was no opportunity for impeachment?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked.

    Sauer appeared to concede that adopting Trump’s approach would mean some presidential misconduct could never be punished.

    “We say the framers assumed the risk of under-enforcement by adopting these very structural checks,” the Trump lawyer said.

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  • Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Argument for Immunity Heads to the High Court

    Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Argument for Immunity Heads to the High Court

    This week at the Supreme Court, a simple question will sound difficult: Can a former president be criminally prosecuted if he tried to steal a presidential election through a campaign of lies and political bullying that apparently violated multiple federal criminal laws?

    That is the question the justices have chosen to confront on Thursday, when they hear oral argument in Trump’s pretrial appeal from the Justice Department’s prosecution in Washington. The outcome will undeniably shape the 2024 election.

    Some commentators have insisted that the issues aren’t simple, that they are sprawling and complicated, and that the court must grapple with the implications of its ruling in this case for future presidents to come.

    Legal framing is often a deliberate choice. The court can — and should — have resolved this issue narrowly and quickly. But instead, the justices chose to hear arguments, a decision that already has imperiled — possibly fatally — the prospect of a trial for Trump on Jan. 6 charges before Election Day.

    Even if Trump ultimately loses at the high court, that delay may already have provided him with a de facto form of immunity, since he could easily escape judgment before the election. And if he wins reelection, it will have been as good as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

    Unfortunately, there is still more that the conservative justices can do to help Trump out.

    The correct answer to the question in the United States of America — where colonists waged a war to free themselves from the rule of a king — is clearly “no.”

    Indeed, Trump’s argument for immunity is “at least in its strongest form, crazy,” as Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor who currently teaches at Cornell Law School, told me last week. Dorf clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, hosts a lively and insightful blog that features some of the most clear-eyed commentary about the workings of the court today and also holds the dubious distinction of having been my constitutional law professor years ago.

    Intuitively, most Americans appear to recognize that Trump’s arguments are absurd: In a recent POLITICO/Ipsos poll, 70 percent of respondents, including nearly half of Republican respondents, said that they do not believe that U.S. presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution for alleged crimes that occurred while in office.

    Trump first asserted his crazy argument last October, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected it in December, in a rigorous and well-reasoned opinion. Trump appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals shortly thereafter, resulting in a stay of the pretrial proceedings and an indefinite adjournment of the March 4 trial date that Chutkan had previously set. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to hear the appeal straight away, but they declined that very sensible proposal.

    In early February, a three-judge panel of appellate judges affirmed Chutkan’s ruling in an even more thorough and compelling opinion, ultimately holding that “any executive immunity that may have protected [Trump] while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution,” which concerns, among other things, “the citizenry’s interest in democratically selecting its president.” Days later Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, and about two weeks after that, the justices — three of whom he appointed — set the case for oral argument for late April. The result will be that a question whose answer was obvious back in December is unlikely to get that answer from the Supreme Court until its session ends in June.

    “I was surprised and distressed that the court set it for argument rather than quickly rejecting it,” Dorf told me. “You take a couple days,” he continued. “You issue a five-page opinion, the upshot of which is, ‘No, a former president is not above the law.’”

    There is good reason to remain worried about the conservative justices’ handling of the case so far, about how they have already influenced the 2024 election to Trump’s political benefit and about how they could inflict still more damage on the most important democratic process in our country: the presidential election.

    On the merits, the arguments that Trump and his lawyers have been making are ridiculous, and they have not materially changed since his lawyers began making them over six months ago.

    “It’s never been suggested that the president can just violate laws with impunity so long as he’s acting within the outer perimeter of his official duty,” Dorf said. “In fact, you might think that the text of the impeachment clause” in the Constitution “simply resolves the question.”

    Indeed, that clause specifies that a federal official who has been impeached “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” Read with a modicum of common sense, the clause indicates that if someone has been impeached — including the president — that person can also be criminally prosecuted. The clause presupposes the legitimacy of a criminal prosecution against a president, at least after he leaves office.

    In a tour-de-force of illogic, Trump’s lawyers have claimed almost the exact opposite. They argue that the text of the provision means that the president can only be criminally indicted after leaving office if he was first impeached and convicted by trial in the Senate.

    That argument makes no sense as a legal, political or practical matter. Under that reading of the Constitution, a president who is angry about having to leave office after losing an election could nuke an American city at 11:59 am on Jan. 20, right before his successor takes over, and be immune from criminal prosecution.

    Trump’s lawyers have also argued that the court should infer some form of presidential criminal immunity from the president’s immunity from civil lawsuits, which protects them from cases that concern acts within the “outer perimeter” of the president’s duties. The majority reached that conclusion based on structural inferences from the Constitution and the practical consequences of a ruling to the contrary — most notably, the chilling effects on presidential activity that would result if he could be sued by anyone for doing his job.

    But the analogy between civil and criminal immunity is dubious for many reasons — not the least of which is that anyone can file a civil lawsuit but only the Justice Department can bring a federal criminal prosecution. That process comes with built-in political and legal protections that do not exist in the civil context. The attorney general is a political appointee who is accountable to the president, who is in turn accountable to the American people. Prosecutors must also get approval from a grand jury to bring charges; at trial, they have to prove every element of their case beyond a reasonable doubt; and the jury has to vote unanimously in favor of a verdict of conviction — none of which applies to civil cases.

    There are strong policy reasons to reject the comparison as well. “We worry about civil liability,” Dorf explained, “for fear of over-deterrence” — of inhibiting the president from taking actions in the national interest — “but if you eliminate all criminal penalties, and you get a criminal president, then you’ve got a severe under-deterrence problem.”

    This doesn’t mean that there might not be some limited form of criminal immunity for a former president. “It’s not crazy to think that something like some kind of qualified immunity for a judgment within the scope of the president’s discretion could affect how you construe a statute as applied to official conduct,” as Dorf told me, “but there’s nothing resembling that here. The closest they’ve come up with is to say that as president, [Trump] was concerned about there being election fraud, and therefore he was ordering the Justice Department and these other people to investigate it.”

    That would be a perfectly fine factual defense at trial if Trump could actually prove it, but there is no reason that highly dubious assertion should shut the whole proceeding down under a fact-free theory of immunity.

    As Dorf put it to me, “The idea that simply because you were doing something that in a totally different universe could have been done by a president for a legitimate reason means that you’re immune to prosecution — when it’s very plausibly alleged that you were doing it for a totally illegitimate reason — is quite shocking.”

    Thanks to the Supreme Court, the prospect of a trial in Washington currently remains highly uncertain, but there are still ways for the court’s conservatives to foreclose the possibility entirely. And they can do that even if they ultimately reject Trump’s bid to dismiss the case by the end of June.

    The most obvious way the court could lend Trump a hand would be to devise some new standard for determining whether presidents might have criminal immunity for acts they committed while in office, and to then send the case back to Chutkan for review under that standard. Something similar happened in 2020 after the Manhattan D.A.’s office went all the way up to the Supreme Court in their bid to obtain Trump’s tax returns.

    A comparable test in this case might require Chutkan to analyze the allegations in the Justice Department’s indictment to determine whether some of them should be excluded from the case because they might concern presidential actions that should for some reason be immune from criminal prosecution — perhaps even using some version of the “outer perimeter” test that applies to presidential immunity in the civil context.

    If that test requires Chutkan to hold pretrial evidentiary hearings that might then be subject to further review, that could as a practical matter eat up most if not all of the remaining time on the calendar before Election Day if — or when — the case returns to her.

    We may see some warning signs for this scenario during the oral argument.

    The three liberal justices are almost certain to reject Trump’s arguments, so the people to watch will be justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts. “For Trump to lose, he’s got to lose at least two of them,” Dorf said.

    I asked him what we should be listening for from those justices. “I would be concerned if I heard from Roberts, Kavanaugh or Barrett hypothetical questions that seem designed to elicit the answer, ‘Oh, well, in that case, the former president would be immune,’” Dorf told me. For instance, “What if the president as commander-in-chief orders SEAL Team Six to take out a terrorist, and then is charged with some kind of war crime? Does he have to stand trial if it’s plausibly within the realm of his commander-in-chief functions?”

    Dorf was ultimately less concerned than I am about the prospect of the case going back to Chutkan with instructions for further pretrial analysis of the allegations.

    “It’s hard to imagine any plausible test that you would apply that delays anything further unless the test is, ‘If the president is awake and doing something other than vacationing, he’s immune.’ If it’s anything short of that, then it should be relatively easy to say this case doesn’t fall within the scope of immunity, and I don’t think that adds substantial delay.”

    We shall see, but in the meantime, the conservative justices are further deepening the serious credibility crisis on the court that has been created by their rulings — most notably, the overruling of Roe v. Wade.

    The trajectory of the court in recent years has spurred many serious and veteran court watchers — Dorf included — to sharply question the partisan leanings of the conservative justices and to closely question the standard model of the court as a collection of justices with sincerely motivated ideological differences.

    “One would think I would have been disabused of that idea by Bush v. Gore, by Shelby County v. Holder,” Dorf continued, “by any number of cases from the Rehnquist and Roberts courts that are best explained as serving the institutional interests of the Republican Party rather than any particular vision of the Constitution.”

    The favorable treatment Trump is receiving, however, remains curious even as a political matter. “You would think that a savvy justice who is sufficiently partisan would love to get rid of Trump, but that doesn’t seem to be true. Maybe that’s because they realize at this late juncture that it’s too late to take him out — he’s got the nomination. But they’re partly responsible for us being at this late juncture.”

    Indeed.

    The court’s conservative majority has earned the public’s distrust and disdain the honest way — by issuing transparently political rulings that are clearly aligned with the political priorities of the Republican Party. Now would be a good time for them to start climbing out of the hole that they dug for themselves.

    The public is clearly paying attention to the Trump case — and rightly so. If the conservatives further meddle with Trump’s trial or indulge Trump’s nonsensical claims, there’s no telling how much lower their public approval and political standing in the country could drop. A crisis of credibility can always get worse.

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  • Spain court calls on fugitive Catalan secessionist Carles Puigdemont to testify in terrorism probe

    Spain court calls on fugitive Catalan secessionist Carles Puigdemont to testify in terrorism probe

    MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Supreme Court on Monday called on fugitive former Catalonia President and separatist chief Carles Puigdemont to testify as a defendant in a terrorism investigation over protests linked to the region’s failed 2017 independence referendum.

    A court statement said Puigdemont, a European Parliament lawmaker, and Catalan regional lawmaker Rubén Wagensberg have been summoned to testify voluntarily by video conference from their residences outside of Spain.

    The court set the hearing between June 17-21, adding that the precise date would be agreed upon later.

    The Supreme Court opened an investigation into Puigdemont and Wagensberg “for crimes of terrorism” in relation to a case concerning a clandestine group called Democratic Tsunami that staged protests against the jailing of several Catalan separatist leaders involved in the illegal 2017 independence referendum.

    During the demonstrations, thousands of protesters blocked access to Barcelona’s airport, clashing with police and causing the cancellation of many flights.

    Puigdemont, 61, fled to Belgium after leading the 2017 breakaway bid that quickly collapsed and is still a wanted man in Spain on charges of charges of the misuse of public funds.

    A contentious amnesty bill, crafted by Spain’s left-wing minority coalition government to clear him and hundreds of other supporters of Catalan independence, is slowly making its way through the national Parliament.

    He has announced that he will be once again a candidate in Catalan regional elections on May 12 and may return to Spain if he has a chance of being reelected regional president.

    Puigdemont has continued his political career as a self-styled political exile from Waterloo. He won a European Parliament seat in 2019 and maintained the leadership of his Junts “Together” party while cultivating an almost cult-like status as the figurehead of the movement in exile.

    Wagensberg, regional politician, moved to Switzerland after he was named in the investigation earlier this year.

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