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Last spring, then–presidential nominee Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to grant him #criminal #immunity for all his official acts while he was in the White House.
Ignoring the ominous warnings of the Democratic-appointed justices,
Chief Justice John Roberts and all the other Republican appointees agreed.
On July 1, 2024, former presidents became immune from prosecution for essentially all official acts of the job of president.
The only check is if the justices themselves decide a particular act is prosecutable.
In his majority opinion, Roberts justified his grant of criminal immunity as rooted in
the framers’ desire for a “vigorous” and “energetic” executive who shall have “‘the maximum ability to deal fearlessly and impartially with’ the duties of his office.”
For historians, this is bunk.
“While the Founders had a range of ideas about the scope of executive power, none of those ideas included
conferring immunity on the President in the circumstances
at issue here,”
scholars of the country’s founding wrote in an amicus brief that Roberts ignored.
“Petitioner’s argument to the contrary is not historically credible.”
As presidential historian and executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library Lindsay Chervinsky told me, of Roberts’ immunity ruling,
“historically, it has zero basis

So now, in the first weeks of President Trump’s second term, we are witnessing a
“vigorous” and “energetic” executive
and his minions who have been given license to remake the government without bothering to follow the law.

Trump is firing civil servants, independent agency commissioners, and inspectors general,
-- despite laws to the contrary.

His administration has attempted to illegally halt billions in federal aid payments,
in contravention of Congress’ power of the purse.

And he has empowered Elon Musk,
a billionaire whose business empire is tied to federal government contracts and investigations,
to gut the civil service,
access the country’s sensitive payment systems, and, in so doing,
jeopardize the most private personal information of millions of Americans.

It appears to be, as former US Attorney Joyce Vance described the situation,
“a coup—a takeover of government by a self-appointed group that wasn’t duly elected by the American people.”

Though Trump has blessed Musk’s efforts, he has no authority to do so.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/what-justice-jackson-warned-about-in-the-trump-immunity-case-is-coming-true/