One of the documents describes Putin and senior officials overseeing proxy efforts to spread claims that Biden, as vice president, engaged in criminal activity in his dealings with Ukraine and Burisma. The document says operatives affiliated with the Russian government advanced these narratives with U.S. officials and other prominent figures, through personal interactions as well as audio and documentary releases via U.S. and Ukrainian outlets.
It goes on to say these figures were conspiring to intensify their efforts as the election approached, aiming to “orchestrate a high-profile corruption scandal” implicating Biden and the Democratic Party in order to help Trump win.
The document describes an intelligence assessment that Russian government-linked proxies were working to damage Biden’s candidacy ahead of the vote, relying in part on U.S. officials and other prominent people to amplify the narratives, though many of the people involved remain redacted in the public version.
Russia, like China and the USA and Saudi Arabia and Israel, spend money and time on every Presidential election, whichever candidate they think will suit their interests more (as they always do).
We were aware of this when we allowed “Super PACs” to funnel money directly to bOtH pArTiEs without that pesky middleman (the law). So… of course we have President Trump, he is the end result of our own party’s unlimited greed.
When your government is for sale, you get what they pay for. I’d wager Musk and Bezos spent much more money on the last campaign than Russia, this is a “red herring”.
We did what now?
Super PACs became possible due to the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizen’s United decision. “We” had nothing to do with it, just like “we” had nothing to do with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
“We” do desperately need another 5 SC justices.
I used to believe we needed to add 3-5 additional justices, but I no longer believe that.
Now I believe we need to add 20 additional justices. The composition of the court shouldn’t be so tight that one bad-faith president can manipulate the system to negatively influence American society for the next 50 years.
We need 29 justices, with rolling term limits so that every president can appoint a few, but not enough to fundamentally change the direction of the court.
A country as big and influential as ours, needs to be responsible to our citizens and the world in keeping our political policies under control and trustworthy. How can any other nation make deals with America, when they know the very people they dealt with may change their minds tomorrow - literally. Nobody can trust such a capricious government, and nobody will work with us.
It is already happening, and America is starting to feel the results of permanent trade shifts away from American goods and markets. That is a direct result of recklessly fickle governmental policy at every level - trade, military, judicial, Congressional, presidential, etc. None of our systems can be trusted anymore.
Adding 20 justices to SCOTUS would be a big step in the right direction in taking true control of this country.
I don’t think additional justices are enough.
The bullet points of what I have in mind:
More justices, preferably from each branch of government. Outside branches can’t select the justices of another branch.
Term limits.
The president can’t have more than 1 justice, and that justice leaves with their president.
IMO, what I put there is a temporary solution - we actually need regional governments and presidents, who add their respective governmental branch justices to a portion of the national government. This would make it harder for justices to be sourced from a single location or ideology. This would hopefully make it harder for corruption to become ingrained into the national court.
I’ve seen all sort of interesting suggested modifications, but the main concept, expanding the court to be large enough to prevent it from being manipulated, doesn’t seem to have much resistance as a starting point.
I think that increasing the size is good, but the problem is that you can still source too many judges from too few authorities. By limiting how much each authority can have judges, it forces negotiation and discussion between judges on political problems.
We saw how justice selection can be distorted by delaying the selection of judges after one has passed away, for example. We should allow each authority to quickly select their judges of choice, but unable to interfere with the judge selection of rival authorities.
YES - expand the court. it’s needed beyond this corrupt cabal; the sitting court can’t handle the caseload. expand the court and refigure the circuit courts instead of this mishmash - it’s beyond time to remedy this one part of our judiciary, and it’s something congress (blue wave) could do in short order.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/circuitAssignments.aspx