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FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

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Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#121

Post by penultimatename »

yieldcrv wrote: post #111
gtowey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional The rule of law has left the building. The SC is willing to rubber-stamp nearly anything right now. Waiting and hoping for common sense to prevail is what allows authoritarian regimes to bulldoze through existing laws and norms. Even if the courts were an avenue for redress, they are being overwhelmed by the daily barrage of new illegal and unconstituti…

that perspective is not backed by data, and the administration doesn't appeal everything very few supreme court cases make it to headline news, and the ones that do are the ones you're thinking about it. those are the ones split by ideological lines, which are less than 10% of what SCOTUS rules on. the government loses many cases unanimously as well. there are some unsigned opinions that do punt things back to lower…

This is literally backed by data. 21 out of 25 emergency docker cases taken up with the Supreme Court were ruled in the Trump administration’s favor. Only one of the cases against the administration was unanimous.

At the appellate level, Trump appointed judges vote in favor of his policies at a substantially higher rate than any previous president at 92% of cases.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeal...

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#122

Post by avidiax »

derektank wrote: post #114
lotsofpulp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also said the president can’t be punished for doing illegal things, so what difference does it make?

They made that ruling while Biden was president. It seems hard to call that an example of rubber stamping for an administration that did not exist yet. John Roberts and other conservative members of the court do have an ideological commitment to the Unitary Executive Theory of the presidency (foolishly, in my view) but this has the potential to benefit both Democratic and Republican presidents.

That ruling[1] is even worse than rubber stamping. It's saying that no stamp is needed at all.

> It seems hard to call that an example of rubber stamping for an administration that did not exist yet.

The Trump administration absolutely did exist, both in the past and the present (waiting in the wings) in July 2024 when the ruling was issued.

While it's true that all past and future presidents are affected by the ruling, there's exactly one former president and presidential candidate at that time that was likely to face criminal charges for actions taken while in office, in either first or second terms.

It's a bit much to claim that the ruling doesn't have at least the appearance of benefiting Trump exclusively, especially given the timing. The ruling caused many of Trump's trials to be delayed to be effectively concurrent with the 2024 election.

We went 235 years without clarifying that presidents had presumptive immunity; all previous presidents (even Trump) acted under the presumption that prosecution for official acts might be unlikely but was possible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#123

Post by terminalshort »

seattle_spring wrote: post #108
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what they ruled.

How so? The ruling was that he had full immunity during "presidential duties", which has many times been interpreted by the SC as "anything he wants to do while president."

> The ruling was that he had full immunity during "presidential duties"

Yes. This was basically agreed upon before that the president has legal immunity for exercising his constitutional powers, but was never explicitly ruled on by the court. If the president does something outside his legal authority, then that isn't his presidential duty, and he can be punished.

> which has many times been interpreted by the SC as "anything he wants to do while president."

This part is just false

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#124

Post by prmph »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #83
yoyohello13 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People believing the president of the United States has been ordained by God, and can therefore do no wrong, should be extremely concerning to EVERYONE, no matter what team your rooting for.

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them. Barry Goldwater He had a few more pertinent quo…

Correction: you cannot have a debate with people who have set up their politics as a God.

In the scriptures God is depicted as someone who sometimes is willing to have a debate, and reason with people, of course not to learn anything, but to explain why things are (or must be) the way they are.

In some instances, God is even depicted as willing to listen to man and do things he otherwise would not have done, so long that they don't deviate from his fundamental purpose.

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#125

Post by terminalshort »

fzeroracer wrote: post #112
seattle_spring wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? The ruling was that he had full immunity during "presidential duties", which has many times been interpreted by the SC as "anything he wants to do while president."

And notably, before any further disagreement pops up the other dissenting judges literally said as much. The relevant quote: "When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon?…

Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that.

As a practical matter, if the president is ordering the military to do those things and the military is obeying those orders, we are far beyond the point where concepts like legal immunity matter.

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#126

Post by tasty_freeze »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #105
scoofy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the SCOTUS has been arbitrarily rubber stamping the administration's goals, you haven't been paying attention. I'll fully agree with you it appears to have been fairly partisan, but less than a month again they blocked the administration from deploying the national guard to states: >In one of its most consequential rulings of the year, just before breaking for the holidays last week the Supreme Court hel…

But they also said the president can’t be punished for doing illegal things, so what difference does it make?

Trump claimed repeatedly and vigorously that whatever the President does is by definition legal. He also repeatedly and vigorously claimed that Obama had broken the law by spying on then-candidate Trump in 2016. I don't know if he himself noticed the contradiction but blustered on anwway or was too dense to notice.

[BTW, Trump wasn't spied on -- Russian assets were spied on and it turned out that some of those communications were with Trump's team. There are ~100 pages of these communications captured in the Mueller report. ]

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#127

Post by fzeroracer »

terminalshort wrote: post #125
fzeroracer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And notably, before any further disagreement pops up the other dissenting judges literally said as much. The relevant quote: "When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon?…

Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that. As a practical matter, if the president is ordering the military to do those things and the military is obeying those orders, we are far beyond the point where concepts like legal immunity matter.

> Unless ordering assassinations and launching a coup are "core constitutional powers" of the president, then no the ruling does not give him immunity for that.

Just to be clear: you are disagreeing with a dissenting Supreme Court justice on how much the law protects the president. Are you a lawyer? Do you know more about how much the law binds the president than the literal office that has the final say on the law?

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#128

Post by overfeed »

scoofy wrote: post #115
bonsai_spool wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they blocked the administration from deploying the national guard to states That is not what the decision stated - there was even a quote from a justice saying that the administration could easily attain the same result with a different legal mechanism, all but encouraging such a change in behavior. Edit: the ‘improperly’ portion of your quote is the operative term

Yes, and my point is exactly that a rubber stamping SCOTUS would have literally allowed it even though it was "improper." That's what rubber stamping means.

"Change this sentence, change the date and resubmit" is rubber-stamping - they just require a big-enough fig-leaf and are bold enough to publicly hint at the parameters of the fig-leaf they will accept.

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#129

Post by DennisP »

jacquesm wrote: post #80
05 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about bargain bin analog FPV drones? Most people can’t operate them and even for an experienced operator it’s far from the best tool for the job of filming armed thugs..I mean ICE.. You’d need a digital system with a gimbal, and the DJI O4 Pro alone will run you $200+. For dual lenses with different zoom levels and feed switching it’s getting pretty expensive very fast.

Most people can't operate drones, period. FPV is a skill you can learn though and for filming armed thugs I actually can't think of a better tool because it allows you to fly the drone out of LOS so you can do it from a relatively safe position while still getting footage that matters. For extra protection you could even abandon the drone and record the video directly on your headset.

> Most people can't operate drones, period.

Technically true I guess, but learning to fly a recent DJI drone takes about ten minutes. You're not so much flying it, as telling it what you want and letting it fly itself. And the controller has a built-in tutorial with a simulator.

Re: FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

#130

Post by nine_k »

roughly wrote: post #72
mothballed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DHS flagged my passport on a list for literally fighting against terrorist in a US sanctioned anti-terrorist militia. When I returned they interrogated me as if I was a terrorist. So if you are against the terrorists, you are also a terrorist.

The Americans who fought against the Francoists in the Spanish civil war faced enormous scrutiny back home for what was later described as “being prematurely anti-fascist.” The state worries about people willing to take up arms to protect their ideals without being told to do so (or what those ideals are).

This is the administration of the same FDR who stayed in power for 4 consecutive terms, which imprisoned nearly 150k ethnic Japanese, most of them US citizens, without any due process, and which executed one of the biggest power grabs by the federal administration. In a way, FDR was much more impudent towards law than Trump, but he was not publicly arrogant or silly, and WWII has been won under his rule, so he is considered a good guy.
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