The Supreme Court Made the President a King. Then He Acted Like One.

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The ruling in Trump v. United States was 6-3, along ideological lines, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It held that former presidents enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their "core constitutional powers," and at minimum presumptive immunity for all other official acts. Unofficial acts carry no immunity — but the ruling also said that evidence of official acts cannot be used even to prove unofficial criminal conduct. The practical effect: prosecutors would need to rebuild their entire case against Trump from scratch, stripping out anything connected to his use of presidential power. The timing meant his federal election interference trial would not happen before the 2024 election. He won. The trial was dropped.

What the Constitution Actually Says.

The Founders knew how to write immunity protections. They did it for legislators — Article I, Section 6 gives members of Congress immunity from arrest during sessions and protects them from legal liability for their legislative speech. They did not write equivalent protections for the president. They wrote the opposite. James Iredell, one of the original Supreme Court justices, explicitly stated that a president is "punishable by the laws of his country" and "not exempt from a trial." The Founders designed a single executive precisely so accountability would be concentrated and clear — not so the president could commit crimes with impunity. The constitutional law scholars who filed briefs in the case were nearly unanimous: no basis exists in text, history, or precedent for the immunity the Court invented.

Sotomayor's Dissent Was a Warning. Read It.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, wrote a dissent that legal scholars have described as one of the most important documents in modern American constitutional history. She wrote that the decision "reshapes the institution of the presidency" and concluded that "the President is now a king above the law." She walked through specific scenarios the majority's ruling would now protect: a president who orders the military to assassinate a political rival — immune, because commanding the military is a core power. A president who organizes a military coup to stay in office — potentially immune, because the relevant acts involve official authority. She closed: "With fear for our democracy, I dissent." Constitutional law professor Steve Vladeck at Georgetown described the decision a year later as "stunningly, myopically naive" — part of "a much broader decline of accountability mechanisms, the consequences of which we are reaping in spades."

What It Enabled.

The immunity ruling didn't just protect Trump from his January 6th prosecution. It handed future presidents — including Trump in his second term — a blueprint for how to use official power to commit unofficial crimes and make the evidentiary trail disappear. In 2025 alone, the Trump administration faced 530 lawsuits — more than any administration in history, far exceeding Biden, Obama, and Bush combined. Federal judges have issued at least 35 contempt-related orders since August 2025, forcing the administration to explain why it isn't following court rulings. The administration has defied courts on deportations, spending freezes, and immigration enforcement. JD Vance declared that "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." The administration sued every judge on the Maryland district court for imposing a deportation freeze. The immunity ruling didn't cause all of this — but it built the ideological framework that made it feel safe to try.

The Court Abandoned Its Own Principles to Do It.

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court built their careers on "originalism" — the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning and text. They used originalism to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating a 50-year-old right to abortion. Then, in Trump v. United States, they invented a presidential immunity doctrine that has no basis in the original text, no basis in the Founders' stated intentions, and no basis in 200 years of precedent. Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori described the ruling as not based in either textualism or originalism and said it "effectively rewrote the Constitution" and "may go down as one of the most brazenly political decisions in the history of the Supreme Court." The rules of originalism, it turns out, apply to rights they want to take away — not to powers they want to give.