[qqtt]

It's really impossible to understand and determine before hand how the court would rule on any of these theoretical cases that may result as a consequence of this decision. It is up to further cases to actually establish was constitutes "official" versus "unofficial" capacities as President and we can absolutely not guess before hand what that entails. From the decision, it seems that only those duties constitutionally mandated would fall under the "official" capacity, with quite a lot of leeway for determining how to evaluate individual actions.

Also I think we should all be reminded that there is separation of powers for a reason. The President is ultimately largely beholden to Congress. The government cannot sink into a dictatorship without the explicit approval of the majority of Congress. It is Congress' duty to remove Presidents from office that it feels are a danger to the country.

All these checks and balances still exist and will still be enforced. The President can not unilaterally go off the rails as many of these extreme hypotheticals seem to be implying.

[suzzer99]

> It's really impossible to understand and determine before hand how the court would rule on any of these theoretical cases that may result as a consequence of this decision.

I've got a pretty good guess, and it will be based on the political party of the defendant.

[riskable]

> The President is ultimately largely beholden to Congress. The government cannot sink into a dictatorship without the explicit approval of the majority of Congress.

This is nonsense. The President can just assassinate all of their political rivals in Congress that would hold them to account. Before this ruling there was an assumption that any such actions would be prosecuted after the President was no longer in office (assuming they didn't have enough power to interfere with a free election). Now that can't realistically happen.

There's a reason why folks are saying this ruling, "paves the way to a dictatorship"!

[nataliste]

If president has gone rogue and is assassinating members of congress (or rival candidates, why would they need legal immunity? Assassinating opponents is already the action of someone that refuses to relinquish office and has de facto immunity. They don't need the validation of the Supreme Court to do this; nobody is going to charge them in the case that it'll bring a death sentence.

[qqtt]

This is not really true though. Congress is responsible for granting authority to the President regarding valid military targets. This is why drone strikes are only legal against targets recognized by Congress as security threats. It cannot realistically happen for the President to start targeting individuals outside of Congressional authority.

For your hypothetical situation to arise, Congress would have to declare members of Congress themselves as valid military targets.