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The Supreme Court made a horrible mistake when it gave Trump absolute power
William S. Becker, opinion contributor, 11/17/25
By now, the U.S. Supreme Court surely must see that it made a horrendous mistake last year when it ruled that presidents are above the law. The court’s conservative majority should admit its error and fix it.
Their decision in Trump v. United States was naïve at best. More likely, the court bought into the right wing’s confusion about the difference between a unitary president and a dictator. Either way, the ruling put the Constitution and the rule of law into the hands of a president who willfully abuses both.
It was an especially reckless act when President Trump was seeking the presidency again. A serial scofflaw and a 34-count convicted felon, he was clearly running for office to escape trials and jail time for dozens of additional alleged crimes. Trump ran on a platform of personal retribution rather than public service.
Once in office, he wasted no time proving how ill-advised the court’s decision was. Under the cloak of presumptive immunity, Trump has become the most thoroughly corrupt president and imminent threat to democracy in American history.
For 10 tumultuous months, he has turned the justice system on its head, granting pardons to allies who violated laws on his behalf. In other words, he has put his friends and donors above the law, too. Meanwhile, he has ordered what can only be called malicious prosecutions.
Within hours of taking his oath of office, he pardoned about 1,500 people convicted of or charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. He called them “patriots” who participated in “a day of love.” National Public Radio determined that dozens had prior convictions or pending charges, ranging from rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of sexual abuse materials involving children, and drug trafficking.
Although data on recidivism is not available, at least five Jan. 6 defendants faced new charges early this year, one involving a murder plot and another a charge of possessing child pornography. One was killed in an altercation with police.
Trump has normalized what is being called the “insider pardon.” He pardoned a money-laundering cryptocurrency billionaire connected to a Trump family crypto firm and bestowed “unlikely pardons on political allies, prominent public figures and others convicted of defrauding the public.”
Earlier this month, Trump issued more than 70 late-night pardons, including several for attorneys and other operatives who rounded up fake electors and promoted outrageous conspiracy theories as part of Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to steal the 2020 election.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt compared the prosecution of the conspirators to “communism” and called the plotters “great Americans” who were merely challenging the election. Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the Justice Department, more accurately described Trump’s use of pardons as a “pay-to-play system that is a thinly disguised form of bribery” by “those who have connections and plenty of money.”
Ordinary citizens are also victims of Trump’s vindictiveness. In October, he was accused of denying disaster assistance to three blue states while granting it to three red states. After investigating, the fact-checking website Snopes concluded that Trump “has approved many more major disaster declarations for red states than blue ones during his second term.”
White House budget director Russ Vought announced last month that the administration was cancelling nearly $8 billion in funding for clean energy projects in 16 states that didn’t vote for Trump. As the New York Times reported, “The cuts underscored the administration’s strategy of putting pressure on Democrats to accept a Republican budget bill and reopen the government.”
So, what was the Supreme Court’s rationale in Trump v. United States? Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that a president must be able to “carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution” and take “bold and unhesitating action.”
Are lawlessness, extortion and corruption disguised as “official acts” what Roberts had in mind? Should a president be able to purge civil servants by the thousands without just cause? Or collect lavish gifts from foreign governments? Or ignore the due process rights of immigrants?
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accurately described the court’s 6-3 ruling as “a loaded weapon for any president that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain above the interests of the nation.”
History will not be kind to the Roberts court, nor should it be. It has failed as the republic’s last line of defense against despots. Worse, it handed the tools of autocracy to a man with criminal proclivities and no moral compass.
The Supreme Court should admit its error and restore the principle that no one, not even the president, is exempt from the rule of law.
William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan climate policy think tank unaffiliated with the White House.
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