We’re no longer approaching a US constitutional crisis. We’re in the midst of one

(Editor's note: This column was first published in The News and Observer, October 7)

The Cambridge dictionary describes tyranny as “unlimited authority or use of power – a government which exercises power without control or limits.” Perhaps each of us, at least in our secret heart of hearts, could now concede that Donald Trump has gone full tyrant. We’re not approaching constitutional crisis. We’re in mid-stream. And no one knows on which side of the shore we’ll land. 

Masked ICE agents terrorize whole communities, as if they were a private Trumpist strike force. National guard units are deployed on the streets of America cities, as if we faced insurrection or civil war. The president tells his pompous, misogynistic Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to consider “training” soldiers in Democratic strongholds. We’re meant to become accustomed to it all. It’s a new age.

Universities cower under a regime of extortion — do what we require, or we’ll take all your money. And, be advised, even after you do what we demand, we might take your money anyway. Law firms, corporations, networks, newspapers, non-profits, tech companies, Democratic state and local governments and arbitrarily “tariffed” countries get the same bullied treatment. Disney is told “we can do it the easy way or the hard way.” Trump’s adversaries are deemed “the enemy within” — echoing Hitler and Joe McCarthy. The Department of Justice is a loaded weapon, aimed at anyone who has the temerity to speak, or to challenge or to honestly do her or his job.

Prosecutors are fired if they insist on following the law. James Comey, former FBI director, is boldly and unconstitutionally indicted. The president and his embarrassing, seditionist, Attorney General, Pam Bondi, tell us it’s just the beginning. Lots more to come. Keep your head down. Way down. Or We’re coming after you.

Any executive branch official can be fired at the president’s whim. The Congress has effectively ceased independent operation. Its only obligation is submission. And Republicans are all in. Federal courts are regularly defied. All actual power resides in the White House. Dissent becomes dangerous, expensive and criminal. When the president speaks, no matter how idiotic it sounds (think of the U.N. speech or Trump’s address to the generals), we’re all to pretend he’s making sense. The ‘old’ United States increasingly disappears.

In the face of this unfolding revolution, last week the U.S. Supreme Court did what it does best and now most consistently — It prevented, without meaningful explanation, a thoughtful, courageous federal trial judge from enforcing the constitution against the Trump Administration. This time the 6-3 Republican majority allowed Secretary Kristi Noem to abruptly end Temporary Protective Status for 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants facing dangerous humanitarian crises at home. The dissent accurately accused the Court of “wordlessly” allowing Trump “to disrupt as many lives, as quickly as possible.”

That has become the Roberts Court’s trademark — avoid conflict with Trump by giving him anything and everything he wants. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh cheer the spiteful anti-constitutional cascade. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett have apparently decided the way to save the Supreme Court is to never deploy it. The combination is an endless permission slip. And the end of judicial review.

 University of California-Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky explains that the Roberts Court has become a constant “rubber stamp to approve Trump’s actions.” Adam Winkler of UCLA adds the chief justice obviously “doesn’t seem interested or willing to put any limits on” Trump. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is more colorful: “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: there are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and the administration always wins.” No one doubts that Trump is the most lawless president in American history. Who would have guessed he’d also have the best win-loss record at our highest tribunal.

Welcome to a new term of the worst, and perhaps the last, Supreme Court of the United States. Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.