Yep. And, hwowww, what d'ya know, they just happened to drop this ruling during the most ineffective congress in the entirety of American history, coincidentally. I've seen some really, really bad takes on it as well. Lawrence O'Donnell wanted to pretend like this was some big win, that SCOTUS had confirmed that Trump was an insurrectionist, and it's like, "OK..? Then they also said they're fine with it". You watch, they'll use the immunity case ruling to fuck up Jack Smith's case as much as they possibly can. Already are. A court that knows it's considered illegitimate is even more dangerous, at least in the short term.Through inaction alone, Congress can effectively erase part of the 14th Amendment.
So here’s the problem they faced in a nut shell: They absolutely had no basis to countermand the fact finding of the lower courts. I.e., if the lower courts found it was an insurrection and Trump didn’t really even try to say he wasn’t. At least that wasn’t the main thrust of his argument. And they really didn’t want to entertain that bullshit about the president not being an officer. So where do they go? Clearly, Roberts and crew weren’t comfortable with where the libs were, which is “states don’t get to say, but someone does”. I goes they felt they had to invent something, and the something turned out to be section 5. Ok. It’s a stretch that you don’t have to be a legal scholar to see though, but the problem is that they were all just uncomfortable with the facts. They were too afraid to just apply the law, because the consequences were too much to face. So now we have a wack-ass precedent that could stand for 150 years. Insane.
Agree. It's also really cowardly to simultaneously cloak these deliberations in hypotheticals while rushing to get the ruling out before Super Tuesday. Like "so, this theoretical insurrectionist, whoever it may be". They're supposed to think like that, yeah, but they're not.