A distinguished group of retired four-star generals and admirals from the U.S. military have argued in a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday that Donald Trump’s claims of absolute “presidential immunity” from criminal prosecution tied to Jan. 6 is an “assault” on the “foundational commitments” underpinning democracy and if his argument is allowed to succeed before them later this month, it threatens “to subvert the careful balance between the executive and legislative branches struck in the Constitution.”

The 38-page amicus brief features 19 authors, all of them decorated retired admirals, generals or secretaries from branches of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force respectively. On April 25, the high court is poised to hear Trump’s question of immunity against prosecution for his alleged criminal conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 election. and according to the brief, these are arguments that should be approached with extreme caution.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    8 months ago

    One of the ways democracy falls is if we prematurely declare it fallen

    You’ve got it backwards. Democracies fall because people assert the institutional rot can’t happen to their sacred soil and refuse to acknowledge their own internal failures.

    Democracy is succeeding.

    When barely half the eligible voting population bothers to participate? When seats are so heavily gerrymandered that 40% of the voting public can command a super majority in the legislature? When every election is (fairly or not) considered rigged or stolen going back to the Kennedy Administration?

    We are in a position to completely eliminate entrenched Republican power over the next decade

    We are not. Nobody on the Dem side of the ballot wants this. Party leadership wants a strong opposition. They even state as much publicly.