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I know this is a broad statement. There will of course be exceptions. But we’ve started too many conversations with the exceptions being the rule, especially for the president. His “absolute immunity” is only through judicial precedence, not through law. There is nothing in the Constitution that specifically states anyone has immunity from legal liabilities except for:

* Congress being sued for their actions on the Congress floor, and

* the 11th Amendment that grants states “sovereign immunity” from being sued without their permission.

The first should stay. It’s in line with the First Amendment. The second… I still take issue with.

But beyond that, all other “immunity” and “qualified immunity” claims are judicially enforced, not legislatively.

Legislatively, there are a few examples of immunity passed as law:

* The Westfall Act that protects federal employees from common law torts. This is a good example of agreed-upon legislation preventing frivolous lawsuits. Completely fine but should be reviewed.

* The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) includes 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) which states that the government (and its officials) cannot be sued for actions that involve an element of “judgment or choice” based on public policy. This prevents people from suing over high-level policy decisions, even if those decisions cause harm. Are the provisions too broad? Perhaps something to review.

* Section 1983 of the The Civil Rights Act of 1871 is cited often as the basis of qualified immunity, based on the “common law immunities” present at the time not being intended to be dismissed. This again was not a literal interpretation but judicial.

* The PREP Act (2005) provides broad immunity to health officials, manufacturers, and “covered persons” involved in the administration of medical countermeasures during a public health emergency. It was applicable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

* The Volunteer Protection Act (1997) rovides immunity to volunteers from liability for harm caused by ordinary negligence while performing their duties.This includes government agency volunteering.

* Good Samaritan Laws exist in many states to protect those during emergency situations, which includes individuals who are off-duty LEOs and government employees.

This is often the peril of a common law state where jusicial interpretation is the quality assurance of law application. However, a civil law state presents its own challenges in administering laws where wording is unclear, leaving that unclarity to the peril of citizens, required to be later fixed by legislation to resolve disputes.

Nonetheless, American common law is shifted to new precedence with the introduction of new legislature, and case precedence cannot in most cases overrule the will of signed and ratified laws. It only creates new opportunities for interpretation.

In other words, we CAN start over, and in my opinion we should. So whoever we elect, that should be the fire we hold to their feet, the substance of the yard stick by which we measure their success. If falling short, we need to be willing to call for representation replacements who will.

We need to hold the government accountable ke, and if we cannot we have the mechanisms like the rest of the world to replace the government through new election. This continued immunity to the elite must end.

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While it is of course concerning when a top politician starts throwing around ideas about illegally ratchetting down voter rights in opposition-majority states, this is only a means of disruption. The more he can sow destabilization into unruly states, the more he can push his supporters (the few still following him) into believing something other than state sovereignty is desirable.

This also gets to some of the worries I have about TESCREAL, but let’s not try to solve one conspiracy theory with another.

Just from a political leverage standpoint, Republicans have a long history of claiming voter fraud or vote instability in order to destabilize the voting process. It’s the Republicans pushing for HR 22 (The SAVE Act) that would make it more difficult for citizens, specifically women (last name change bureaucracy to verify registration) and people of color (in-person documentation as opposed to voting drives more commonly utilized by Black communities), to prove their status in a way that enables voter turnout.

Republicans don’t want to rely only on populism being popular. They want to ensure that those that disagree don’t even have a chance to do so. And the SAVE Act may ensure that tight races find favor for demographics that align to their values.

But even the suggestion of federal voting interference is enough to distract people and plant suggestive ideas in MAGA. It’s working, but it’s perhaps just a fanning of the flames that are already burning.

I’ve so far heard several rebuttals from the right to moderates and left-leaning pundits that not only agree that voting should be taken away from blue states but that HR 22 doesn’t go far enough. Like many opinions early last year echoed by MAGA after Trump suggested it, they claim the Democratic Party should be outlawed as a designated domestic terrorism organization.

Even worse, the MEGA Act was introduced recently, coincidentally or not. It’s a more aggressive version of SAVE, making voting a privilege not afforded to people who don’t have constant exact documentation on their person at all times (“show me your papers”).

But it does one thing that is telling of the entire game: it bans rank-choice voting.

Rank-choice voting is the single greatest threat to political party power. It is the thing I want to see in all state and local elections, and possibly in federal elections. It would remove the electoral college and make third parties and coalitions a more prominent part of our political discourse.

You want to nationalize voting? I might support it if the solution is to require all voting to be rank-choice. At the very least, it would be an enforcement of actual fairness in elections through probability and the effective voice of every single voter down to the end.

In the meantime, watch, denounce, and be wary. But know that this “admission” on a random podcast is destabilization, not prophecy.

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