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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 4 days

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On Thursday, the Supreme Court held oral arguments over former President Donald Trump’s claims that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for engaging in what he contends were his official duties while in office. And one justice, Samuel Alito, offered a particularly wild theory about how to preserve American democracy and the rule of law.

The case centers on whether special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election can proceed or whether—as Trump contends—he is above the law when it comes to his conduct leading up to the January 6 insurrection. Much of Thursday’s hearing revolved around a debate over which of two possibilities poses a greater threat to American self-government: that defeated presidents might fear prosecution by vindictive political enemies upon leaving office, or that sitting presidents—secure in the knowledge that their legal misdeeds cannot be punished—might reign with impunity. Based on their questions, it seems possible that a majority of the justices prefer the latter. At the very least, the court appeared likely to rule in a way that would immunize at least some of Trump’s efforts to steal the presidency, an outcome that could delay his trial until after the 2024 election, if it happens all.

During oral arguments, several Republican-appointed justices expressed concern that without immunity, former presidents might suddenly begin to face criminal prosecution with regularity. But Alito took this entirely hypothetical concern to an absurd conclusion: He worried that if presidents believed theirs successors could prosecute them, they might refuse to leave office peacefully when they lose reelection. Put another way, presidents need immunity from prosecution in order to encourage them to accept electoral defeat and preserve American democracy.

Considering that this entire case is about a president who sought to illegally remain in office—and whose supporters staged a violent insurrection to help him do just that—this was a stunning argument to make. In Alito’s own words:

"I'm sure you would agree with me that a stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully, if that candidate is an incumbent? All right. Now if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process where the loser gets thrown in jail."

Attorney Michael Dreeben, representing the special counsel, responded: “I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito.”

The next question went to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who tried to rebut the idea that to preserve American democracy, we must exempt the president from the nation’s laws. “A stable democratic society needs the good faith of its public officials, correct?” she asked. “And that good faith assumes they follow the law?”

Sotomayor then pushed at the logic underpinning Alito’s hypothetical and the broader concern of her GOP-appointed colleagues that despite checks meant to protect against politically motivated prosecutions, former presidents might become frequent targets of vengeful presidents and rogue prosecutors. “There is no failsafe system of government,” she said. “Justice Alito went through, step-by-step, all of the mechanisms that could potentially fail” to prevent abusive prosecutions. “In the end, if it fails completely, we’ve destroyed our democracy on our own.” If a future of politically motivated prosecutions of former presidents comes to pass, she argued, America will already have lost its democracy.

The irony of using Trump as the vehicle for enhancing presidential immunity out of a fear of increased instances of political prosecution never came up. But it’s worth remembering that Trump was elected in 2016 on a platform of locking up his political opponent. Throughout his presidency, he tried to use the Justice Department to launch politically motivated prosecutions and was dismayed that the norm of the department making its own prosecutorial decisions did not break down. He has even complained bitterly that his attorney general and other federal prosecutors refused to help him steal the election.

However, should he become president again, Trump plans to tear down the post-Watergate norm of DOJ independence and wield the department as a prosecutorial weapon upon his opponents. “I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said last year. Trump is literally threatening to do what Alito, along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, openly fretted about on Thursday. Clearly, a president attempting to use the government to prosecute political rivals is exactly the kind of person who should not be granted more authority to break the law.

Earlier in the arguments, Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson helped explain the moral hazard of creating an executive who is immune from prosecution. “If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes,” she said, “I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country.”

Alito and his judicial allies appeared open to that bargain—that in order for a president to act unimpeded, and without the fear of prosecution upon leaving office, he should be above the law. If the court ultimately combines this bizarre logic with endless legal delays to help Trump return to the Oval Office, it will usher in the very parade of horribles the conservative majority claims to fear.

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notreallyimportant · 2 years

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I better not see not na’am person try to blame Kentanji Brown Jackson for what happen on June 24th.

She will not be seated until June 30, 2022 after Justice Breyer retires.

Blame is solely on the following Justices that are still seated:

Amy Coney Barrett

Brett Kavanaugh

Clarence Thomas

Neil Gorsuch

Samuel Alito, Jr.

May Justice Brown Jackson have a blessed day and the five listed forever step in pushpins.

#roe vs. wade #justice kentanji brown jackson #amy coney barrett #brett kavanaugh #samuel alito #neil gorsuch

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gusty-wind · 2 months

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#the great awakening #war is real #ncswic #treason

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leohtttbriar · 11 months

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I am so, so glad for Justice Barrett's clarification because I had the same thought about what you were arguing, and I'm glad that you clarified that your core point is that the Gingles test has to have a race-neutral baseline or that the -- the first step has to be race-neutral. And -- and what I guess I'm a little confused about in light of that argument is why, given our normal assessment of the Constitution, why is it that you think that there's a Fourteenth Amendment problem?

And let me just clarify what I mean by that. I don't think we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem, because I understood that we looked at the history and traditions of the Constitution at what the framers and the founders thought about and when I drilled down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the framers themselves adopted the equal protection clause, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, in a race conscious way. That they were, in fact, trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freedmen in -- during the reconstructive -- reconstruction period were actually brought equal to everyone else in the society. So I looked at the report that was submitted by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, and that report says that the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves. The legislator who introduced that amendment said that "unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen." That's not -- that's not a race-neutral or race-blind idea in terms of the remedy.

And -- and even more than that, I don't think that the historical record establishes that the founders believed that race neutrality or race blindness was required, right? They drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which specifically stated that citizens would have the same civil rights as enjoyed by white citizens. That's the point of that Act, to make sure that the other citizens, the black citizens, would have the same as the white citizens.

So they recognized that there was unequal treatment, that people, based on their race, were being treated unequally. And, importantly, when there was a concern that the Civil Rights Act wouldn't have a constitutional foundation, that's when the Fourteenth Amendment came into play.

It was drafted to give a foundational -- a constitutional foundation for a piece of legislation that was designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens. So with that as the framing and the background, I'm trying to understand your position that Section 2, which by its plain text is doing that same thing, is saying you need to identify people in this community who have less opportunity and less ability to participate and ensure that that's remedied, right? It's a race-conscious effort, as you have indicated. I'm trying to understand why that violates the Fourteenth Amendment, given the history and -- and background of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, Merrill v Milligan Oral Arguments

#the best part is her referring to the reconstruction congress as “framers” because that isn't done nearly enough #that term is normally used to refer to the original constitution drafters from 1787 and #as the law and the constitution are in fact not dead-upon-arrival #every amendment to the constitution is the result of the work of the Framers.#reposting as text for my own records bc i love her sooo much i need easy access #kentanji brown jackson #scotus #VRA

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andronetalks · 2 months

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US Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson Just Defended The US Government Violating the 1st Amendment...

The Gateway Pundit By Patty McMurray March 18, 2024 This afternoon, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted about today’s US Supreme Court case (Murthy v. Missouri) that involves several plaintiffs, including The Gateway Pundit, who have been harmed by censorship by the government and big tech. Read more…

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#Alternative #Crime #News #Politics

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deblala · 2 months

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JUST IN: US Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson Just Defended The US Government Violating the 1st Amendment During Arguments in Case Sen Rand Paul Calls "the most consequential free speech case in U.S. history" | The Gateway Pundit | by Patty McMurray

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/just-us-supreme-court-justice-kentanji-brown-jackson/

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garythingsworld · 2 months

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JUST IN: US Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson Just Defended The US Government Violating the 1st Amendment During Arguments in Case Sen Rand Paul Calls "the most consequential free speech case in U.S. history" | The Gateway Pundit | by Patty McMurray

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 17 days

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The Supreme Court on Monday said Idaho can enforce a law banning gender transition care for minors, stepping into the debate over an issue that has divided lower courts.

The court did so over the objections of the three liberal justices.

It’s the first case about restrictions on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender people under age 18 that the court has acted on. But it does not get to the underlying legal questions of the ban itself, an issue that has divided lower federal courts and is part of a wave of conservative legislation and litigation aimed at transgender Americans.

Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, writing for herself and Justice Sonya Sotomayor, criticized the majority for granting Idaho’s request through its “emergency” route, rather than letting it proceed through the regular channels.

“This Court is not compelled to rise and respond every time an applicant rushes to us with an alleged emergency, and it is especially important for us to refrain from doing so in novel, highly charged, and unsettled circumstances,” Jackson wrote.

But Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, said the district court went further than it should have when it blocked the state from enforcing any aspect of the law while it’s being litigated. That decision threatened to suspend the law indefinitely because it can take years to reach final judgment, Gorsuch wrote.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote his own defense of the majority’s order in a concurrence joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Chief Justice John Roberts did not make his position public.

The court could also decide soon whether it will review such bans in Tennessee and Kentucky. That election-year decision would come as transgender issues have become an increasingly potent political issue.

Passed last year, Idaho’s law is being challenged by the families of two transgender teenagers.

After lower courts temporarily blocked enforcement, Idaho asked the Supreme Court to let it go into effect with an exception carved out for the challengers.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the two Idaho families, said that option won't protect the teenagers as medical providers won't want to risk triggering a law that could put them behind bars for a decade. Also, the teens would have to give up their anonymity.

AN 'AWFUL RESULT FOR TRANSGENDER YOUTH'

The ACLU called the Supreme Court's decision an "awful result for transgender youth and their families across the state."

"Today's ruling allows the state to shut down the care that thousands of families rely on while sowing further confusion and disruption," the group said in a statement.

Praising the court's decision, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said the law ensures minors will not be subjected to life-altering drugs and procedures.

"Denying the basic truth that boys and girls are biologically different hurts our kids," he said in a statement.

Filed as an emergency request, Idaho’s appeal to the high court is a prelude to the larger pending issue: Whether the justices will uphold such bans, which have proliferated in recent years.

KENTUCKY, TENNESSEE TRANSGENDER CASES MAY COME NEXT

Families of transgender children have asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit allowing Kentucky and Tennessee to ban gender-affirming medical care for minors.

The Justice Department has weighed in on the side of the families, telling the court that its input is “urgently needed” to definitively resolve whether the bans are discriminatory.

“These laws, and the conflicting court decisions about their validity, are creating profound uncertainty for transgender adolescents and their families around the nation,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in a filing.

The court could announce as early as this month if they will hear the appeals.

Combined with other state actions to restrict the bathrooms transgender students can use and what sports teams they can join, the laws are expected to be a major issue in this year’s elections.

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL PUSH TO BAN GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE FOR MINORS

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, has said he will press Congress to pass a law banning gender-affirming care for minors and will cut federal funding for schools pushing “transgender insanity” if he returns to the White House.

President Joe Biden has boasted about steps he’s taken to strengthen the rights of “transgender and all LGBTQI+ Americans.”

The issue has gained prominence with startling speed, despite the tiny fraction of Americans who are transgender.

Since 2022, the number of states taking steps to limit access to gender-affirming care for minors has grown from four to 23, according to the nonpartisan health research organization KFF. Restrictions were fully in effect in 17 states as of January.

That’s despite the fact that most major medical groups support youth access to gender-affirming care.

The American Medical Association has called the state bans a “dangerous intrusion of government into the practice of medicine and the criminalization of health care decision-making.”

“Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people,” Dr. Michael Suk, a member of the AMA board, said when the group reinforced its opposition to state bans in 2021.

DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND SELF-HARM

One of the transgender teenage girls challenging Idaho’s law suffered from depression, anxiety and self-harm before starting gender-affirming medical care, according to filings. The mental health of the other teen likewise deteriorated as puberty began.

Their parents have told the courts they’re terrified about the impact on their daughters’ health and lives if they can’t continue treatment.

Labrador, Idaho's attorney general, argued the law is needed to protect “vulnerable children” from what he called “risky and dangerous medical procedures.”

“Idaho should be able to protect children from experimental medical procedures that cause irreversible and life-long harms,” Labrador wrote in his appeal to the Supreme Court.

Originally scheduled to go into effect in January, Idaho's law was temporarily blocked by a district court judge in Idaho while it’s being litigated. The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that decision in January.

Despite the litigation swirling around transgender minors, the Supreme Court has largely been silent on the issue. In April, the high court sided with a 12-year-old transgender girl who was challenging a West Virginia ban on transgender athletes joining girls sports teams, temporarily blocking the state from enforcing the prohibition. The ruling came on the court's emergency docket and did not resolve the underlying questions in the case.

In January, the Supreme Court declined to decide whether schools can bar transgender students from using a bathroom that reflects their gender identity, leaving in place a lower court ruling that allowed a transgender middle school boy in Indiana to use the boys' bathroom.

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wearethesame77 · 10 months

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Tribe quotes Justice Jackson’s pithy description of how racial diversity, in the Supreme Court’s view, is seen as desirable and applicable in practice when done in service of certain necessities of American society — supplying soldiers, for example — but not when it comes to the privileges of that society, such as providing higher education pathways that lead to opportunity and success in the corporate-driven system of American market capitalism

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headintheoffice · 1 year

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youtube

Today, Gage and Jeremy talk about Kentanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination hearing and a (massive??) conflict of interest regarding justice Clarence Thomas and his awful wife.

If you want to support the show, check us out on Patreon and leave a 5-star review!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/headintheoffi... Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4iJ... TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headintheoffi... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headintheof... Twitter: https://twitter.com/headintheoffice

#Youtube

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briefnewschannel · 2 years

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Justice Jackson Offers Fresh Interpretation of 14th Amendment in Alabama Case

During oral arguments Tuesday on Merrill v. Milligan, Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, in one of her first cases on the bench, laid out some of the history of the 14th Amendment, as it is being referred to in the case, and the intention of the amendment’s drafters when it was passed. Merrill v. Milligan is a case about whether Alabama’s 2021 redistricting plan for the state’s U.S. House seats…

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iowafed · 2 years

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ARA Friday Alert

History Made as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Joins the Supreme Court On Thursday retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer swore-in Kentanji Brown Jackson as the Court’s newest Justice. “We congratulate Justice Brown Jackson on this extraordinary achievement and look forward to her serving the American people for many years to come,” said Robert Roach, Jr., President of the Alliance for…

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notreallyimportant · 2 years

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PUT SOME RESPECT ON HER NAME!!!

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson WILL BE the first Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court after receiving enough vote in the Senate on Thursday to secure her confirmation.

Despite being confirmed, Jackson won't be sworn until Associate Justice Stephen Bryer retires this summer.

#ketanji brown jackson #justice kentanji brown jackson #put some respect in her name

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anamericangirl · 2 years

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This is a small look at Judge Ketanji Jackson's sentencing history of cp offenders. Notice how the sentence imposed is far less than the minimum of the sentencing guidelines and often lower than the government's recommendation.

In United States v. Hawkins according to sentencing guidelines the minimum sentence is 97 months. The prosecutor asked for 24 months. Judge Jackson sentenced the offender to 3 months.

But according to the left the only reason I don't like her is because she's black.

#kentanji brown jackson #racism #criminal justice #supreme court

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takunwilliams · 2 years

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KETANJI BROWN JACKSON

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beardedmrbean · 2 years

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Sen. Chuck Grassley is calling for records related to Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson’s time on the U.S. Sentencing Commission ahead of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing next week, amid Republican claims she was overly lenient to child pornographers -- a charge that the White House is branding a "debunked" and "desperate" conspiracy theory.

"Judge Jackson’s history of sentencing below guidelines, particularly in cases involving child exploitation, raises legitimate questions about her views on penalties for these crimes," Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Saturday.

SEN. HAWLEY WARNS OF BIDEN SCOTUS PICK'S ‘LONG RECORD’ OF LETTING CHILD PORN OFFENDERS ‘OFF THE HOOK’

"This is exactly why I asked for her Sentencing Commission records – the same types of records the committee traditionally reviews when vetting a Supreme Court nominee," he said.

Grassley said the records from the Sentencing Commission were being withheld and said that a full review could not properly be conducted without them.

"Unfortunately, somebody somewhere doesn’t want us to see that information. How can this be a thorough review if this information is withheld?" Grassley said. "And why aren’t Democrats interested in allowing the committee to have this information to conduct a thorough review?"

Grassley’s call comes after Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., this week used a lengthy Twitter thread to accuse Jackson, who President Biden nominated to fill the seat of outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer, of "a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker."

Hawley laid out evidence for what he said was a consistent theme of Jackson both calling for more lenient treatment of some sex offenders and deviating from federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child sex offenders.

In particular he said that, when serving on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Jackson "advocated for drastic change" in a report on mandatory minimums for those engaged in child pornography.

It’s a series of claims that led to pushback from media fact checkers -- which Hawley himself has issued a response to -- and blistering criticism from the White House.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday called Hawley’s push "a last-ditch, eve-of-hearing desperation attack on her record on sentencing in sexual offense cases."

White Houe spokesperson Andrew Bates on Saturday took aim at both Hawley and Grassley in a statement to Fox News Digital, in which he noted that the Sentencing Commission recommendations were from a bipartisan panel that included Trump-era pick Dabney Friedrich.

"Josh Hawley’s desperate conspiracy theory has been conclusively debunked by multiple fact checks in the press, including the Washington Post, the AP and CNN," he said. "What’s more, Senator Grassley - in addition to every other Senate Republican - voted to confirm one of the Republican signers of the same unanimous, bipartisan sentencing commission report when Donald Trump nominated her in 2017."

Bates also dismissed calls for further document releases, saying that the sentencing commission’s work "is almost entirely in the public record, and Judge Jackson has already provided thousands of documents on top of that." He also pointed to comments Grassley made during then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings that were dismissive of Democratic document requests.

The Republican concerns center on both what Jackson has said, and how she has ruled. An analysis by Senate Judiciary Republicans of Jackson’s record, reviewed by Fox News Digital, pointed to comments she made in 1996 in which she showed skepticism toward notifying communities of sex offenders in their midst.

WHO IS BIDEN SUPREME COURT NOMINEE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON?

"Community notification subjects exconvicts to stigmatization and ostracism, and puts them at the mercy of a public that is outraged by sex crimes. Civil commitment sacrifices a fundamental right – freedom – indefinitely, based solely upon unreliable assessments of the convict’s predilection to commit future sex crimes," she wrote as a law student.

The analysis by Judiciary Republicans found also that as a judge, she routinely handed out light sentences, but was especially lenient in child pornography cases. On average, Jackson’s sentencing was just over three years below the sentence requested by government prosecutors, and approximately five years below the bottom of the applicable sentencing guidelines range, the analysis found.

Bates, responding to that claim, cited a CNN fact check that found that such a discrepancy from the guidelines was not surprising, "as it has become a norm among judges to issue sentences below the guidelines in these child porn cases that don't involve producing the pornography itself" and that less than a third of "non-production child porn defendants" received sentences within those guidelines.

CNN’s was a number of fact checks to claim that sentencing guidelines are widely seen as out of date by the judicial community, in part due to technological changes that meant the guidelines failed to differentiate among offenders in terms of culpability and threat. In one 2010 survey of federal judges, 71% said that mandatory minimum for receipt of child pornography was too high.

More broadly, the White House has repeatedly rejected the implication that Jackson was outside the judicial consensus on the matter.

"95 percent of the decisions with which she was involved as a commissioner were bipartisan," Bates said. "In the overwhelming majority of her cases involving child sex crimes as a judge, the sentences Judge Jackson imposed were consistent with or above what the government or U.S. Probation recommended. Judge Jackson has been endorsed by some of the most respected retired conservative judges in the country, leading law enforcement organizations, and victims of crime."

In a sign of how both sides were casting Jackson’s records, the Republican analysis found that in the 14 sex crime cases reviewed (including nine involving child pornography), in ten of those cases she sentenced at levels below the recommendation of government prosecutors -- while the White House instead noted that in nine of the same cases she imposed sentences at either the same or above the level recommended by the U.S Probation’s Office.

The back-and-forth between Republicans and the White House comes just days before Jackson’s confirmation hearings, and sees likely to continue, with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah having accused the White House of a "whataboutist response to Judge Jackson’s very real record in child pornography cases" that he called "dismissive, dangerous, and offensive."

Three Republicans voted to confirm Jackson to her current position in 2021. However, even if no Republican were to vote for Jackson in the 50-50 chamber, Democrats have enough votes to confirm her down party lines (with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as a tie-breaker) if all Democrats vote for her.

#nunyas news

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