As with many things related to Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, it's hard not to sound hyperbolic when describing their actions. The former president has proven to shock with despotic rhetoric, free-flowing racism, and mind-melting stupidity; this conservative-majority Supreme Court continues to hand down decisions that undo longstanding precedence, many of which will inflict harm onto large swaths of people living in the United States.
So, when sounding the alarm that the high court's latest decision granting Trump sweeping immunity effectively puts a twice-impeached, convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual abuse above the law, it's once again difficult to avoid seeming dramatic. Yet as my colleague Pema Levy writes, that's exactly what today's disastrous ruling amounts to:
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that presidents have broad criminal immunity for official acts, effectively placing the presidency beyond the reach of criminal law for the first time in the country’s history. The 6-3 decision along ideological lines sends the federal case over Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election back to the district court to determine whether Trump’s actions fall outside the court’s sweeping new grant of immunity—but the effects will stretch far beyond Trump’s possible trial by fundamentally changing the nature of the presidency and, by extension, American democracy.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who with Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent in Trump's immunity case, described it this way:
The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
That this decision arrives days out from one of the worst days of Joe Biden's political career makes everything feel even more screwed. Here's to hoping that the powers that be, whether that's Biden himself, the folks running the DNC, or the voters themselves, avoid installing a despot come November.
—Inae Oh
