Adam Serwer nails it:

People are way over-reacting.

No, people are not overreacting. The Roberts Court was tasked to answer a simple question based on a known set of conditions that are real and not hypothetical. The question at issue was does Donald Trump possess ANY form of Presidential immunity for the specific acts he's being charged with regarding January 6th(?) The Roberts Court has told this nation repeatedly that's it's not their job to legislate or rewrite laws from their bench unless there is a constitutional issue at stake which they deem either Congress or the Executive have misinterpreted.

That is not the case with Trump v. U.S.. The ONLY issue before the Court was whether or not Donald Trump has inherent constitutionally-based immunity from prosecution for the criminal acts he's charged with committing on and around January 6th and his conspiracy to illegally remain in office against the expressed will of voters and the constitutional process of presidential succession.

Worrying about what presidential actions are "core" or "not core" is not germane to answering the precise question put before the SCOTUS. And the most insidious aspect of Alito's meandering rant is that he completely ignores that no former President EVER has been charged with a crime expressly by his successor - including Trump. So what basis of fact is his hypothetical point based on? N-O-N-E!

President Biden has nothing to do with the DOJ investigating and charging Donald Trump, but if one listens to Alito, that is the direct allusion his questioning promotes. No one is asking today's SCOTUS to set parameters for presidential conduct but for the SCOTUS itself. Instead of sticking to what has already occurred under an actual President, hours were wasted on hypotheticals which don't address the ripe issue they injected themselves into.

Presidents place their hand on a bible and swear to faithfully execute our laws under the Constitution. Unlike most every other President not named Nixon, Trump not only broke his oath by conspiring against the Constitution, he's now trying to undermine that Constitution in alliance with corrupted judges placing the protection of fantasy before the prosecution of criminality, turning the Constitution on its head.

*In early 2021, Trump's lawyers said during his second impeachment trial that there was no need for the Senate to convict the former president, because the matter was better left to the judiciary.

*In early 2024, Trump's lawyers said the former president's alleged crimes can't be left to the judiciary, because the Senate didn't vote to convict.

"We have a judicial process in this country; we have an investigative process in this country to which no former officeholder is immune," Trump attorney David Schoen said at the time. "That is ... the appropriate one for investigation, prosecution and punishment, with all of the attributes of that branch." Schoen went on to argue that the courts were better prepared, because Congress "does not and cannot offer the safeguards of the judicial system."

Soon after, Bruce Castor, another member of Trump legal team, was even candid on this point: "If my colleagues on this [Democratic] side of the chamber actually think that President Trump committed a criminal offense ... after he is out of office, you go and arrest him."

How are the former president and his lawyers resolving the contradiction? By ignoring it and hoping others don't notice.

Steve Benen

The abject hackery shown by the male SCOTUS members yesterday as they bent over backwards to create hypotheticals wholly unrelated to the set of facts before them flies in the face of America's history in jurisprudence up until this moment where the ethos that no one person is above the law was presumed inviolate.

Not anymore.

Trump's lawyers went in front of his Senate jurors and told them that the court system was where Donald should be held accountable for crimes if that is what the investigations and grand jurors decided. Yesterday, Trump's lawyers went before the highest court in the land and made the argument that Trump's actions while in office forever precludes him from any prosecution in court because the House and Senate did not complete an impeachment conviction beforehand.

These hacks should have been thrown out on their arses for having the hubris of raising completely contradictory arguments diametrically opposed to each other that if implimented would create conditions where no President could be held accountable for anything they do while seated in office as long as they can claim it was done as a part of their presidential perogative.

Sure the Roberts Court is partisan, I thought. But there's a threshold level belief in the rule of law. My guiding heuristic has been that the Roberts Court, especially in its post-2017 iteration is thoroughly corrupt and will generally do whatever is in the interests of the GOP so long as it doesn't put too big a dent in the Court's own perceived legitimacy and elite social standing.

Everything comes into conceptual alignment if we understand the Court's corruption: corrupt in its construction, corrupt in its jurisprudence, venally corrupt as well, though that is the least of its problems. No. We don't want to shore up faith in a corrupt institution.

That's the challenge in front of us. It sucks. But things become more clear cut once we take the plunge and accept that fact. Swallow it whole.

The justice was especially concerned with the idea that former presidents would be targeted for political prosecution by their rivals. When the government's lawyer, Michael Dreeben, argued that prosecutors don't always get grand juries to agree to indictments, Alito responded, "Every once in a while there's an eclipse too."

The risk of such prosecutions poses the biggest threat, Alito suggested: "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?"

As Dreeben correctly responded, that is the literal inversion of the Jan. 6 case, which involves a defeated former president who, after pursuing several legal avenues to challenge the outcome and losing all of them, chose very clearly not to "go off into a peaceful retirement," but rather tried to overturn the election by illegal and unconstitutional means that resulted in a violent attack on Congress.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was also perplexed by Alito's upside-down hypothetical, which actively avoided the facts of the case before the court. "A stable democratic society needs the good faith of its public officials, correct?" she asked, adding that the crimes Trump is charged with committing "are the antithesis of democracy" and that his immunity argument cast doubt on the principle "that no man is above the law, either in his official or private acts."

The question the SCOTUS was engaged to answer today was whether a President has "absolute immunity" for any and all acts undertaken while in office. Now that has morphed into the non-asked argument as to whether criminal laws need to specifically include the President as prosecutable if charged with violations of them.

It is clear as day that the right wing is actively delegitimizing historical constitutional checks and balances, heretofore thought to apply to every single American equally without fault or favor in support of the most corrupt, anti-liberal (small L), criminal President to ever sully the White House and Oval Office. Trump is everything our Founders tried to anticipate and created various means to thwart and remove from public service, understanding centuries ago that a popular demagogic leader could emerge and attempt to consolidate authoritarian power not unlike the King they fought a war of independence to escape from.

If Johnson has "seen the light" or "turned over a new leaf," I'll reserve my judgement until I see if this about-face is a genuine separation from Trump or a one-off.

That isn't what the evidence shows actually happened. Johnson came to understand the need to fund Ukraine as an existential national security issue, where as Speaker he really didn't have a choice NOT to put the nation's (and the free world's) interests ahead of the MAGA hardliners including Trump.

Johnson just went to Mar-a-Lago the weekend before last so there was no need for Trump to telegraph his messages, he gave them to him personally. Can you think of a single time Trump hasn't spoken his mind to anyone behind closed doors if something is important to him? He blabs stream of consciousness utterances to non-relevant individuals in his incessant quest to be important or to simply show off.

And let's not forget, Johnson also brought the government budget bill to the floor in opposition of the MAGAts and Trump who wanted to see the government shut down, so this is already more than a simple one off. I don't see any need to wait to assess Johnson in this regards. He simply sees and understands a much larger picture in a much more complicated world than the simpleton MAGAts who're only trying to drive their own narratives and unpopular policies based on their nihlistic zero sum politics. Let me put it this way - I don't see Johnson as a loyal partner in the MAGA agenda when said agenda runs counter to what he'd do if he were President in that same moment. And that doesn't mean he's now hostile to MAGA, it simply means he's learned as Speaker the real master he must serve is the US Constitution and the good of this nation especially on existential issues that ultimately transcend insolar partisan politics.

So, congratulations to Speaker Johnson for his skill in convincing Trump that the popular aid package for Ukraine would translate into votes for Trump into 2024.

Where are you seeing this reported? I haven't seen a single word about Johnson trying to convince Trump of anything. The only thing I've seen is that Johnson ignored Trump and MAGA because he's Number 2 in line for the presidency and realized that national security trumps MAGA politics. And his son is entering the Naval Academy and allowing Putin to defeat Ukraine would most certainly lead to further European conflicts that would involve placing American troops in harm's way.

There was an article (that I can't locate right this moment) that listed all the things that Trump has demanded his GOP allies do in Congress that haven't been done without any direct repercussions befalling the members. If anything, Johnson's stewardship of the Ukraine aid has shown that MAGAts do not have the power that they think they do in Congress.

I found the passage:

Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and CIA Director William J. Burns gave Johnson a dire presentation, warning that Ukraine would lose the war without immediate U.S. support. Sullivan briefed Johnson on exactly when Ukraine might run out of weapons, laying out in detail when it would no longer have a single artillery shell or air defense interceptor.

McConnell, Biden, Schumer and Jeffries all stressed the historic importance of the moment, according to a second senior administration official. After the meeting, Biden pulled Johnson aside for a further one-on-one conversation, the official said.

As Johnson strategized, he recognized that different parts of the bill would prompt different defections: Many Republicans would oppose Ukraine aid, while dozens of Democrats could withhold their votes because of military aid to Israel. And many Republican lawmakers had also long demanded the issues be separated.

That's how he landed on the strategy of passing four separate bills: for Ukraine arms, Israel aid, Indo-Pacific funding and other provisions. Each mini-bill would spur defections, but not enough to sink any one of them.

The gambit worked; the four bills passed the House and were then stitched back together and sent to the Senate.

It took months, but finally Speaker Johnson found a way to rise above the cries from party allies and their criminally-indicted presidential nominee, wanting to see US backing for Ukraine collapse, easing Putin's consolidation of his invasion's goal of bringing Ukraine to heel.

While many point to various polling still showing Trump in the lead across crucial swing states, these same people are ignoring that the combination of actual governing - which ignores the GOP's pet hair-on-fire issues - and the increasing daily portrayals of Donald Trump facing civil charges, lawsuits, and criminal indictments throughout multiple courts in multiple states. actually shows a GOP hurtling towards what very well could be a terminal entropy.

As a legal matter, it's relevant that ------ and his former publication were focused on Trump's electoral needs - as opposed to Trump's family and/or personal reputation - when it worked with Michael Cohen, the candidate's then-fixer, on the Enquirer's campaign-season efforts.

"The CEO of the National Enquirer is an individual named David ------," Cruz said at a [2016] campaign event. "Well, David is good friends with Donald Trump. In fact, the National Enquirer has endorsed Donald Trump, has said he must be president." The senator lamented that his young daughters would someday "read these lies, these attacks that Donald and his henchmen, that his buddies at the National Enquirer spread" about their father.

After the tabloid went after Cruz's father, and Trump seized on the story, the senator also told reporters that the future president was a "pathological liar," adding in reference to Trump, "He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth."