What's kind of fascinating is the way they've introduced things like the Major Questions Doctrine (MQD), which asserted the importance (really, necessity, in their view) of Congress's explicit delegation powers, as a way to curtail agency actions. But then faced with something like this EO, they seem quite obviously faced with something that runs up against the fact the Congress gave explicit statutes for how and what they should do. As far as I'm aware, the statues creating these agencies don't explicitly give the president this power...which raises a clear MQD consistency issue for the supreme court.

Republican Senators want this. It's not about statistics. They believe in this stupid Unitary Executive thing (aka, we should have a King).

I don’t think that’s an accurate description of the decision. I think that it stated that when the President exercises core constitutional power (e.g. the pardon power, or the veto power) then the exercise itself cannot be illegal. I’m not sure if the decision of the Court left open the possibility that the conduct around the exercise of such power can be illegal. If so, then this could be a distinction without much difference: for example, issuing a pardon may not itself ever be criminal, but taking a bribe to issue a pardon is separate from issuing the pardon itself. To some extent, I think that some of this does flow from the structure of the Constitution itself, but I’m not convinced that phrasing it in terms of immunity is particularly helpful.

Then there’s a rebuttable presumption of immunity for more conduct. I don’t see that this flows from the Constitution, but perhaps it flows from judicial decisions over the past two centuries? ‘When the President does something official, he probably is immune, but maybe he’s not, and he could still be prosecuted from crimes he commits around the immune act’ doesn’t seem terribly meaningful.

It sounds a bit to me like saying that a citizen is immune from prosecution for his vote, but not for selling it or whatever. But I’m not a lawyer, and I could be wrong.

Well, yes, that's how the system works: a determined President can, in fact, grab as much power as the Supreme Court will allow. That's literally what the Supreme Court is there for.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how legal immunity equates to legal authority.

If you are a government employee and Trump orders you to do something that exceeds his authority, can't you still say no? It seems like the Supreme Court only said that Trump can't get in trouble for asking. I don't think the court said that you have to answer yes.

I'm not trying to say that we're in a great position here or that immunity doesn't have some very destructive effects. But I am saying that we shouldn't act as if he has powers that the Supreme Court hasn't given him.

A competent Joe Biden would've taken that ruling, said "thank you very much" and "cleaned house" with Seal Team Six of select judges and politicians and then pardoned everyone involved.

The fact that SCOTUS wasn't even slightly concerned about that happening belies the problem: the Democrats are ineffectual by design. They knew Biden would throw his hands up citing "norms" and "institutions" as an excuse to do absolutely nothing.

SCOTUS completely invented a concept of presidential immunity out of thin air to derail the criminal prosecutions. They also deliberaly took their time. Remember when Jack Smith tried to appeal directly to SCOTUS because everyone knew it was going to end up there? Instead, SCOTUS put everything on hold for another 6 months as a delaying tactic.

Even then, the opinion is rushed and haphazard and not at all well thought out. Some in the conservative supermajority allegedly wanted to punt the issue to the next term.

The presidential immunity decision is so brazenly political. The Roberts court will go down in history for the kinds of awful decisions in the 1840s and 1850s that led up to the Civil War.

Your courts and judiciary don't have any power - he'll just write an EO to release people. Senate and Congress likewise - meaningless talking shops.

“Criminal use of presidential power” is a bit of an oxymoron, which is why people are getting wrapped up in knots here.

The Supreme Court said, if the Constitution authorizes the President to do it, then he can’t be criminally prosecuted. That doesn’t mean blanket immunity!