Sorry if this is not the proper community for this question. Please let me know if I should post this question elsewhere.
So like, I’m not trying to be hyperbolic or jump on some conspiracy theory crap, but this seems like very troubling news to me. My entire life, I’ve been under the impression that no one is technically/officially above the law in the US, especially the president. I thought that was a hard consensus among Americans regardless of party. Now, SCOTUS just made the POTUS immune to criminal liability.
The president can personally violate any law without legal consequences. They also already have the ability to pardon anyone else for federal violations. The POTUS can literally threaten anyone now. They can assassinate anyone. They can order anyone to assassinate anyone, then pardon them. It may even grant complete immunity from state laws because if anyone tries to hold the POTUS accountable, then they can be assassinated too. This is some Putin-level dictator stuff.
I feel like this is unbelievable and acknowledge that I may be wayyy off. Am I misunderstanding something?? Do I need to calm down?
Yeah, not only that, there were already plenty of protections in place to prevent being restricted from doing what needs to be done. But this ruling now makes all of the laws that specifically target the president and executive branch from being enforced in addition to the existing protections. This includes implementing martial law for no good reason, which Trump already said he was going to do to get revenge on the people that stopped him from winning in 2020, changing all executive branch employees to political appointments, obeying term limits which Trump also said he deserves a third term, keeping appropriate records which Trump refused to do to the point that staffers had to tape together documents that he ripped up on a regular basis, or plain old murder which again Trump has said he was planning to murder his enemies using the military.