The shift from a republic to a rotating tyranny was years in the making but the final blow still managed to shock: A Supreme Court that had just declared it a crime to be poor and homeless ruled that Donald Trump, previously and perhaps soon once again the world’s most powerful man, cannot be prosecuted for anything that a president’s lawyer (or conservative jurist) might spin as an “official act.” Legal experts say the decision effectively legalized executive criminality, ensuring that whoever occupies the White House — at least any Republican — can do as they please with the powers of their office, effectively constrained only by the threat of impeachment, which is hardly any threat at all, or a loss in a free and fair election.
The expansiveness of the decision was indeed not lost on Trump’s attorneys, who immediately sought to overturn their client’s 34 felony convictions in New York — a move dismissed as absurd by many legal experts who may prove to be right but who also, perhaps, have not come to terms with the fact that falsifying business records to cover up a hush-payment to an adult film star ahead of a federal election may now be a core constitutional right.
