Kind of. “Gratuities” are legal, bribery is not, and presidents are immune for prosecution for acts undertaken as part of their duties.
A “gratuitity” must be made after the fact, which is still totally a type of bribery, but it isn’t the same as making all bribery legal as a blanket rule.
Presidents are now immune to prosecution, but only regarding official acts. The court refused to rule on what an official vs unofficial act is, basically meaning that they’ll decide whether something is legal or not when they feel like it. The obvious problem here is how heavily stacked the supreme court is, but they also didn’t just come out and say “fuck it, presidents have absolute power.”
Edit: To be clear, both of these rulings are absolutely fucking terrible. If our courts had any appropriate amount of oversight, the blatant corruption on display would be enough to see the court disbarred and indicted. They’re just not quite as bad as people describe on Lemmy.
I agree, but a significant portion (maybe even most) of our country’s population do live in very high cost of living areas such as the west cost, DC, Boston, and Miami.
The situation is vastly different in most of the country’s less remarkable cities, like San Antonio, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, or Nashville, and I think articles like this only ever account for one side of the equation or the other.
To someone living in DFW (my home), “needing” almost $200k is insane. Honestly I doubt I’d know what to do with that money unless I just bought a bunch if shit I don’t want.