So then nothing a President ever does can be considered premeditated. This timeline is fucking insane.
I mean, that's what this comes to, right? If he ordered Seal Team Six to storm Mar-A-Lago to recover classified materials with deadly force, then he's operating in order to maintain national security via his authority as Commander in Chief. That would be legal under this ruling, correct?
I get that would lead to an actual civil war, and I get that their argument is important to shield the office from neverending frivolous lawsuits, but in being forced to rule so explicitly on this it seems like they've opened the door to political assassinations. All a President would need is a willing wing of the military and a superficial rationalization and there'd be nothing a court in this country could do about it.
Please, someone tell me I'm missing something.
Imagine how powerful leftist grassroots organizations would be if folks like you would dedicate the same amount of time and energy to voter engagement and activism that you devote to ranting and raving on political message boards. This country would be completely transformed in a matter of months.
Edit: Seriously, 6,800 comments over a 12 month period is almost 19 comments every single day of the year. That's borderline obsession, and it can't possibly be good for your mental health.
You've offered no proof that it is, despite my asking several times. From what I can tell that's just your opinion, which is fine but carries significantly less weight.
So his delegates are not pledged to Harris, they aren't required to support Harris, her name isn't on a single ballot in the country, Biden's name isn't on a single ballot in the country, and no one has officially been nominated. You've offered no proof to the contrary.
Whether you think a change is likely before ballots are finalized was not my question, merely whether or not you had proof that it's impossible.
As you suggest it’s a regulatory problem. There was a recent kerfuffle involving the Ohio ballot, which was solved by putting Biden/Harris on the ballot before they are officially nominated. So any changes made at the Democratic convention will come too late to change the Ohio ballot.
.....nnnnno. That's not what's happening in Ohio. From your article:
President Joe Biden will be formally nominated as the Democratic presidential nominee through a virtual roll call ahead of the party’s official convention in Chicago in August
The Democratic National Convention, where the president would otherwise be formally nominated, comes after Ohio’s ballot deadline of Aug. 7. The party’s convention is scheduled for Aug. 19-22.
I really hate to repeat myself because it seems like you're engaging sincerely and at least trying to support your argument, but there are currently no ballots that have been formalized in the entire country. Biden and Harris have not been put on the ballot before they're nominated, they're being nominated before the ballot access deadline in Ohio. So quite simply, as long as the Democrats nominate any US-born person older than 35, that person's name will appear on the Ohio ballot. You have it quite literally backwards.
partly because her name can’t be taken off the general ballot in multiple states
Again, where is your proof of this? Ballots haven't been finalized anywhere in the country, as Biden isn't even officially the nominee yet. You keep saying these things as if they're set in stone, but from what I can tell they're not. Do you have proof that ballots have been printed before the convention, or that states have closed the registration window for running mates before closing the registration window for candidates?
Note: I agree with the rest of what you said, for the most part.
And sadly, the campaign response to this sentiment is not inspiring a lot of faith in their judgment. This after the NYT Editorial Board called on him to step aside:
Does he think that "LOL! Fuck you!" is the correct response here? The chorus of people in every corner of the country calling for him to step aside is deafening, and all he can muster is a Trump-style clapback?
Furthermore, at this point I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario where asking the incumbent to drop out would be more justified. Like, how bad would it actually have to get for the party to admit, "hey guys, this isn't fixable, time for Plan B"? Incumbency advantage is huge, but it's certainly not all-powerful.
The subtext here is just as important as the main story. The reason the EPA has had to try desperately to stretch their interpretations of statutory authority into gray areas that are vulnerable to judicial review, is that Congress has utterly failed to pass any truly meaningful environmental protection laws for decades. The Clean Water Act, for example, has only been meaningfully amended once since it was passed 50 years ago, and that resulted in a huge (albeit slow) improvement in stormwater management in urbanizing areas. The last time we had a bipartisan interest in curtailing the excesses of industry, the Cuyahoga River was routinely catching fire and places like Love Canal had children playing in actual toxic sludge.
There have been very few times that the EPA has been granted any kind of legal authority since the 1970s, and most of them were intentionally ambiguous. Bush II's Clean Skies Act, for example, was a direct result of the Kyoto fiasco and actually weakened a lot of environmental regulations from the 1970s. In contrast, things like Obama's Clean Power Plan were simply agency-level policies devised to get around the fact that Congress hadn't amended the Clean Air Act since 1990. Since they were policies and not laws, they could be subsequently gutted by future administrations (i.e. Trump) and the courts. Policies and rules have no staying power.
Congress has done fuck all for the environment since Nixon, and that lay at the feet of the Reaganite neoliberal coalition wedded to the free market which had champions in both parties for several decades. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is a fucking awful ruling because it'll take away the few powers the EPA tried to devise in the absence of Congressional action, but it's actually overdue because Congress should have dealt with these problems long before now.
In the end, voters are left with a choice. Start giving enough of a shit to vote for politicians that will pass environmental laws, or live in the regulatory world that stopped evolving before the personal computer was invented. We've been able to eke out a meager existence because things like Superfund and NPDES exist, but as we can see from the Flint and GenX disasters, we've taken clean water, soil, and air for granted for far too long. It's not the job of the EPA to devise creative ways to get around the shitty, intansigent Congress we keep sending to DC. It's our job to send better politicians to DC to help them keep us safe.
But they're not "Biden/Harris delegates". They're Biden delegates, as he was the only name on the ballot. Are you just saying they'll go with her out of deference?
If Biden decided to step down, his delegates are pledged to support Kamala Harris.
I've tried to verify that this is the case and can't find evidence anywhere. Can you point me to a source? I was under the impression that they'd be expected to turn to her, but that they're not required to.
Edit: After lengthy back and forth, it finally became clear that this is simply an opinion. User has absolutely no proof.
But national security is. All they would need is a flimsy justification that the person was stealing state secrets (like Trump) or organizing a terrorist attack, which could include any contact with an armed or paramilitary group that's planning a protest. They could use state influence to coerce that group to take action, and the records of that planning process would be inadmissible per this ruling. It's not hard to come up with superficial reasons that do align with Constitutional obligations.
Edit to add: Hell, just look at the McCarthy era, or the Iraq war. It's not hard at all for a sufficiently shameless group of politicians to gin up a moral panic about national security. They don't even need evidence, they just need motive. We're real fucking close to the government being able to legally assassinate purported communists for subversion.