There are moments in the life of a democracy when a court decision must be understood not merely for what it formally decides, but for the door it leaves open.
August 24, 2026, was one of those moments.
By a 6–3 vote, the United States Supreme Court lifted an injunction that had prevented Donald Trump’s administration from proceeding with portions of an executive order seeking to impose new federal restrictions on mail-in voting before the November midterm elections.
The Court did not rule that Donald Trump possesses constitutional authority to control the administration of federal elections. It did not declare his executive order constitutional. It did not transfer to the presidency powers the Constitution assigns primarily to the states and, in the case of congressional elections, ultimately to Congress.
Indeed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized in dissent that the Court’s decision did not answer whether the President’s attempt to interfere with state administration of the 2026 elections is lawful. The majority instead concluded that the states challenging Trump’s order had come to court too soon—that their injuries were not yet sufficiently concrete to permit this particular lawsuit to proceed.
Another nationwide injunction involving the Postal Service remains in place. Litigation continues. The constitutional question has not been finally decided.
All of that matters. But so does something else.
What the Court Did—and What It Refused to Decide
There is an important distinction here, because understanding it makes the Supreme Court’s decision more—not less—troubling. The states challenging Donald Trump’s executive order did not merely argue that his actions might inconvenience them. They argued that the President was attempting to exercise authority the Constitution does not give him. A federal district court agreed strongly enough to stop portions of the order from taking effect. When the case reached the Supreme Court, however, six justices did not decide that the lower court was wrong about presidential authority. They did not hold that Donald Trump possesses constitutional power to regulate these aspects of federal elections.
They did not rule that his executive order was constitutional. Instead, they concluded that the states had not yet demonstrated an injury sufficiently concrete and imminent to justify this particular injunction.
That is an important legal distinction.
Federal courts do not exist to issue abstract declarations about constitutionality. Article III requires an actual case or controversy, and plaintiffs ordinarily must demonstrate that they themselves face a concrete injury that a court can remedy. But that procedural principle produces an extraordinarily uncomfortable question in this case:
What happens when the power being asserted is itself a power the Constitution never gave the President?
Must states wait until an unconstitutional assertion of presidential authority actually begins disrupting an American election before they are entitled to stop it?
That is not merely an academic question.
The Supreme Court’s action came through its emergency docket, before a final decision on the underlying constitutional merits.
And almost immediately afterward, circumstances changed.
The Postal Service finalized the disputed rule, making the threatened consequences substantially more concrete, and the states returned to court—again arguing both that the administration’s actions interfere with their election systems and that the President is intruding upon constitutional authority that belongs elsewhere.
In other words, the sequence now looks something like this:
A president claims authority over election administration that the Constitution does not expressly give him. The states challenge him. A federal judge intervenes. The Supreme Court removes that particular restraint because the threatened injury has not yet become sufficiently concrete. The administration proceeds. The threatened injury becomes more concrete. The states return to court. All while a federal election approaches. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the Court’s intervention would inject “chaos and uncertainty” into the midterm elections. It is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss that concern.
And there is something deeply unsettling about a constitutional system that may require an injury to progress from threatened to actual before courts will decisively confront whether the President possessed the power to cause it in the first place.
Who is asking for this power?
Because this is not an ordinary president raising an abstract disagreement about election administration. The man now attempting to extend presidential influence into the machinery of American elections is the same man who already attempted to remain President after the American people voted him out of office. That fact cannot responsibly be omitted from our understanding of what is happening now.
We Have Been Here Before
Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. He refused to accept that result. He spread false claims of widespread election fraud. He pressured state officials. He pressured his own vice president. His allies pursued schemes involving alternate electors. He sought to interfere with the constitutionally mandated certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
And on January 6, 2021, the peaceful transfer of presidential power—a tradition that had survived civil war, depression, world wars, political assassination and bitter partisan division—was interrupted by an attack on the United States Capitol. Call it an attempted coup. Call it an attempted self-coup. Call it an effort to overturn an election.
The terminology matters less than the underlying fact:
A sitting President of the United States attempted to remain in power after losing an election.
The House of Representatives impeached him for incitement of insurrection. The Senate then had an opportunity to convict him. Fifty-seven senators voted to do so, including seven Republicans. But 43 Republican senators voted to acquit him, preventing the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. Had enough senators voted to convict, the Senate could then have voted to disqualify Donald Trump from holding federal office again.
It did not.
The constitutional mechanism existed. The political courage did not.
And here we are.
That failure was not merely a historical footnote. It helped make Donald Trump 2.0 possible.
Power Is Not Only Seized. It Is Surrendered.
Lord Acton famously wrote that:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
There may be no more appropriate warning for America in 2026. But there is another part of the story that deserves equal attention. Absolute power rarely arrives fully formed. It is assembled.
One surrendered congressional prerogative at a time. One frightened legislator at a time. One constitutional norm violated without consequence. One act of retaliation excused. One judicial accommodation. One unlawful or unprecedented assertion of authority that becomes the precedent for the next. One institution deciding that perhaps somebody else will finally draw the line.
Power is not only seized.
Sometimes it is surrendered.
And that is the larger story of Donald Trump’s political era. The Republican Party had repeated opportunities to tell him no. Too often, it chose submission. Congress possesses enormous constitutional power. Yet much of the Republican Congress has behaved less like an independent branch of government than a collection of people terrified of provoking the President or the political movement he commands. That is not strength. That is institutional cowardice. And constitutional government cannot survive indefinitely when one branch stops behaving like a branch of government and begins behaving like an appendage of another.
Then came the Supreme Court.
In 2024, in Trump v. United States, the Court’s conservative majority established sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts—absolute immunity for exercises of a president’s exclusive constitutional authority and at least presumptive immunity for other official conduct. That decision did not make a president a king. But it substantially expanded the sphere within which presidential power may operate without criminal accountability. Now the same constitutional system is confronting another question:
How far may a president reach into American elections?
And once again, instead of resolving the underlying constitutional danger before an election, six justices have effectively said that the states challenging Trump’s actions must return when the threatened injury becomes sufficiently real. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the Court was needlessly injecting “chaos and uncertainty” into an approaching federal election. That warning should matter to every American.
This Is Not About Envelopes
Trump’s order reaches well beyond an argument about whether a ballot arrives by Tuesday or Wednesday. It directs the Department of Homeland Security toward the creation of state citizenship lists. It instructs the Justice Department to prioritize investigations and, where deemed appropriate, prosecutions of state and local officials who issue federal ballots to people the administration considers ineligible. And it directed the Postal Service toward new restrictions governing mailed ballots. The Constitution gives states primary authority over the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections and gives Congress the authority to alter those rules. It does not say Congress and the President.
There is a reason for that. The framers understood concentrated power. They had lived under it. They did not design a republic in which the chief executive could determine the mechanisms through which voters decide whether his party—and ultimately his own political power—will continue.
And consider again who is demanding this authority:
A president who already tried to overturn an election he lost.
How can that history possibly be irrelevant?
The Normalization of the Abnormal
One of the most dangerous developments of the Trump era has been our growing capacity to absorb the extraordinary. Something happens that would once have dominated American civic life for months. We discuss it for three days. Then another outrage arrives. The first one moves below the fold. Then off the front page. Then out of memory.
Eventually the unthinkable becomes merely familiar.
This is one of the great dangers of authoritarian politics. Not simply that government commits abuses. But that a society becomes accustomed to them. We begin describing actions as “controversial” that a previous generation might have recognized immediately as assaults upon democratic norms. We begin treating every development as though it emerged independently yesterday morning.
But history is cumulative.
January 6 cannot be separated from the lies that preceded it. The second Trump presidency cannot be separated from January 6. Presidential immunity cannot be separated from the conduct for which Trump sought immunity. This week’s voting decision cannot be separated from the fact that the president seeking greater influence over elections previously attempted to overturn one. And America’s immigration crackdown cannot be separated from the broader project of concentrating governmental power while portraying opposition as illegitimate.
What We Have Seen on American Streets
Donald Trump’s second administration has deployed federal immigration power with an aggressiveness that has produced scenes many Americans once assumed belonged to other countries and other eras. Stephen Miller has remained one of the principal architects of that immigration agenda. Even after political fallout forced changes in personnel and tactics, Reuters reported in March that the administration intended to continue an aggressive crackdown driven substantially by Miller.
In Minneapolis, thousands of federal immigration personnel were deployed during Operation Metro Surge. Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by an ICE officer on January 7.
Seventeen days later, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse and U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by federal immigration officers. Whatever eventual criminal judgments may be reached about the individual officers—and those investigations matter enormously—the political and moral context cannot simply disappear. These deaths occurred during an extraordinarily aggressive federal immigration operation created and directed by this administration. And federal authorities then withheld critical evidence from Minnesota investigators for months before turning it over in July. The administration subsequently changed some enforcement tactics.
But the machinery did not stop.
In July, an immigration agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during an enforcement operation in Houston. Witnesses have disputed the government’s account, and subsequent reporting indicates federal officers had pursued the wrong vehicle while seeking another target. Six days later, an ICE officer fatally shot another driver during an operation in Maine. DHS said the officer feared for public safety; at the time, officials had not even established publicly whether the dead man was the person agents originally intended to apprehend. These events deserve scrutiny individually.
But they also deserve to be seen together.
When armed agents of the federal government operate in our communities with extraordinary power, when American citizens die, when innocent people can become entangled in enforcement actions, when courts repeatedly find problems with detention practices and government compliance, and when peaceful opposition itself becomes subject to extraordinary federal attention, Americans have every right to ask what kind of country we are becoming.
I understand why people reach for historical words like Gestapo when they see masked or heavily armed federal officers, mass sweeps, intimidation and fear on American streets. Historical analogies should always be used carefully.
But neither should fear of an uncomfortable analogy prevent us from recognizing authoritarian methods when we see them developing.
And Then There Is Epstein
There is another subject Americans are repeatedly told either to stop asking about or to discuss only within artificially narrow boundaries: Jeffrey Epstein. Donald Trump had a documented social relationship with Epstein. Epstein was a convicted sex offender who was later federally charged with sex trafficking minors.
Congress eventually passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed on November 19, 2025. The law required responsive material to be publicly produced within 30 days. DOJ acknowledged that it did not complete production by that statutory deadline and continued releasing material on a rolling basis. It subsequently announced the release of roughly 3.5 million pages.
Yet litigation over withholding and redactions continued, and in June a federal judge concluded that the Justice Department likely violated the Transparency Act with respect to some withheld material, ordering DOJ either to disclose less-redacted documents or explain its withholding.
Here is where I believe Americans are entitled to use common sense.
If complete disclosure would unequivocally exonerate Donald Trump, why has complete, credible and independently verifiable transparency been so difficult?
That question is not proof of guilt. It must not be presented as proof of guilt. But neither is it unreasonable. When a president has a documented history with the central figure in one of the most notorious sexual-trafficking scandals in American history, and his own Justice Department possesses records Congress has ordered released, the burden should be overwhelmingly on the side of transparency. Not technical evasion. Not unexplained withholding. Not excessive redaction. Not delay.
Transparency.
Every page that may lawfully be released should be released. Every legitimate redaction should be explainable. Every decision involving material touching upon the President himself should be made in a manner capable of surviving independent scrutiny. Anything less invites suspicion. And the administration has only itself to blame for that suspicion.
Even Our National Institutions Become Props
The same mentality appears in places that may seem less consequential but reveal something important about the character of power. Consider the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was created as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy and has stood for more than half a century as one of the nation’s principal cultural institutions. Trump installed himself as chairman of its board. His allies pursued efforts to place his name on the institution. A federal judge ruled that Congress had designated the center to honor Kennedy and blocked the attempted renaming.
Now the Justice Department has argued in federal court that the building could eventually become so unsafe and financially unsustainable that it might have to be demolished if Trump’s renovation effort cannot proceed. The administration has even floated replacement by an outdoor amphitheater. Perhaps the Kennedy Center requires substantial renovation. Buildings age. Deferred maintenance is real. But look at the larger spectacle:
The Department of Justice of the United States is now appearing in court to advance an argument in which the survival of a national memorial to John F. Kennedy becomes intertwined with whether Donald Trump is permitted to reshape it and receive personal recognition for doing so. There is something profoundly revealing about that.
Institutions cease being inherited national treasures. They become extensions of the leader. Government becomes personalized. History becomes another surface upon which the incumbent seeks to engrave his own name.
That impulse is not democratic. It is monarchical.
What Are Our National Priorities?
There is another measure of moral default: what a nation chooses to spend money on—and whom it decides must sacrifice. In August, the United States national debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time. That milestone cannot fairly be blamed on one president or one political party. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have contributed to the debt over decades. But Donald Trump returned to office promising economic discipline and fiscal competence. Instead, the signature reconciliation law enacted during his second term is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to add trillions of dollars to federal deficits over the coming decade.
At the same time, that law sharply reduces federal Medicaid spending and food assistance. CBO projects that millions fewer Americans will ultimately be enrolled in Medicaid and that millions more will be left without health insurance. So Americans are entitled to ask:
What exactly are our national priorities?
Because while government tells struggling families that programs providing health care and food assistance must be constrained, this administration has found extraordinary resources for other things. For an immigration-enforcement apparatus of unprecedented scale. For an expanding war with Iran that the President chose to enter and that has now continued for months, costing lives, military resources and economic stability while contributing to higher energy prices at home.
And for Donald Trump’s remodeling ambitions at the White House. The historic East Wing was demolished to make way for a massive new ballroom. The project was initially presented as privately funded.
Its projected cost climbed toward $400 million. And then proposals emerged for taxpayers to assume hundreds of millions of dollars in associated costs, with the administration later seeking as much as $1 billion for security-related work connected with the project.
Consider the symbolism.
A government willing to tell vulnerable Americans that there must be less money for Medicaid and food assistance simultaneously finds enormous resources for war, mass immigration enforcement and an extravagant presidential construction project. This is not merely an argument about budgets.
Budgets are moral documents.
They reveal what government values. They tell us whose suffering is regarded as unavoidable and whose desires somehow become national necessities. And they expose something profoundly wrong when sacrifice is demanded downward while privilege, power and extravagance flow upward.
America at 250
And all of this is occurring as the United States marks its 250th year.
Think about that.
Two hundred fifty years after Americans declared that legitimate government derives its power from the consent of the governed, we are arguing over whether a president can insert himself further into the mechanisms by which that consent is expressed. Two hundred fifty years after rejecting monarchy, we are watching presidential power become increasingly personalized.
Two hundred fifty years after creating a constitutional system of divided authority, Congress repeatedly surrenders its own prerogatives. Two hundred fifty years after establishing the principle that government must operate under law, we find ourselves debating how much presidential conduct can occur beyond meaningful accountability.
And two hundred fifty years after proclaiming certain rights fundamental, Americans are watching federal power exercised on their streets in ways that have left citizens dead and communities terrified. This is why I have come to think of our present condition as something more than a constitutional crisis.
America is approaching moral default.
A financial default occurs when an institution fails to honor its debts. A moral default occurs when a nation possesses the means to honor its principles—and chooses not to. Congress knows its constitutional responsibilities. The courts know theirs. Federal officials take oaths. Presidents take oaths. Citizens possess rights. Journalists possess voices. State governments possess authority.
None of this is mysterious.
The question is whether enough people entrusted with those responsibilities still possess the courage to exercise them.
The Cliff’s Edge
For years, Americans have been warned about slippery slopes. I am no longer convinced that metaphor adequately describes where we are. A slippery slope suggests that catastrophe remains somewhere farther downhill.
We have already slid a considerable distance.
The President of the United States attempted to overturn an election he lost. He survived impeachment. His party returned him to power. The Supreme Court subsequently enlarged presidential criminal immunity.
His administration has deployed extraordinary federal enforcement power inside American communities. His Justice Department continues to fight battles over transparency involving material that potentially implicates people close to power. National institutions are increasingly treated as extensions of presidential personality.
And now the President is attempting to push federal executive authority more deeply into the administration of elections while his party prepares for midterms that will determine control of Congress.
No single one of these facts tells the whole story.
Together they tell a terrifying one.
The 250-year American experiment is not standing at the top of a slippery slope.
It is standing near a cliff’s edge.
And we have reached the point at which excessive politeness can become its own form of irresponsibility. There are times when patriotism means celebrating America. There are other times when patriotism requires confronting what America is becoming. Real patriotism is not loyalty to Donald Trump. It is not loyalty to the Republican Party. It is not loyalty to the Democratic Party. It is not unquestioning loyalty to the Supreme Court. It is loyalty to the democratic republic those institutions are supposed to serve. Donald Trump does not own our elections. Congress does not own them. The Supreme Court does not own them.
Political parties do not own them.
We do.
The American people do. And government derives its legitimacy from us—not the other way around. This is not a moment for despair. It is a moment for courage.
For Congress to remember that it is a coequal branch of government. For judges to remember that constitutional limits mean very little if they are enforced only after irreparable damage has occurred. For state officials to defend their lawful authority. For journalists to stop normalizing the profoundly abnormal. For Republicans who still believe in constitutional government to rediscover the courage to say no.
For Democrats to understand that issuing another statement of concern is not an adequate response to democratic erosion. And for the rest of us to refuse the most dangerous temptation of all:
Getting used to it.
The authoritarian depends upon exhaustion. He depends upon fear. He depends upon confusion. He depends upon citizens deciding there are simply too many outrages to keep track of anymore. He depends upon yesterday’s outrage disappearing beneath today’s.
We cannot give him that victory.
The American experiment has survived 250 years not because its survival was inevitable, but because generation after generation ultimately decided it was worth defending.
Now it is our turn.
And this is one battle true American patriots cannot afford to lose.
