Stop Waiting for the Courts to Save Us

Why the Supreme Court Has Chosen Trumpism Over Justice

Jun 29, 2025

For years, many Americans have clung to a dangerous delusion: that the Supreme Court—the last stop on the train of justice—will save us from the rise of Trumpism, from creeping fascism, from the destruction of our democracy. The truth? That train has already left the station.

This week, as the Supreme Court gutted nationwide injunctions in the context of Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship, they once again showed us who they are. And if you’re still counting on the judiciary to protect your rights, it’s time to wake up. Because the very same Court that claimed state action would create “patchwork chaos” around the presidency has now handed the government the power to create a patchwork of citizenship itself.

It’s not an accident. It’s capitulation, dressed up in the robes of legal tradition. And it’s time we saw it for what it is.

The Patchwork Excuse: When “Uniformity” Matters—And When It Doesn’t

Let’s go back just over a year, to when the Supreme Court slammed the door on Colorado’s attempt to disqualify Donald Trump from its presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The Court’s reasoning? If Colorado could decide who qualifies to run for president, other states could do the same. We’d end up with a “patchwork” of rules—a chaotic situation where the very definition of who can be president would differ state by state.

Never mind that Section 3 was literally written to keep insurrectionists out of power. Never mind that Colorado followed the law, the facts, and the process. The Court decided that the risk of a “patchwork” was too high—so high, in fact, that it was willing to override state sovereignty, historical precedent, and the clear text of the Constitution to avoid it.

But now, in a ruling that has received far less attention but could affect not only the very meaning of citizenship for some, but the ability to defend constitutional rights for all, the same Supreme Court decided that patchwork is just fine—so long as it leaves your fate in the hands of the right people.

The New Patchwork: Citizenship by Zip Code

The Supreme Court’s latest move, in response to Trump’s executive order gutting birthright citizenship, was not to rule on the merits of the order, or to review whether a national injunction was correctly issued—or an abuse of judicial power. Instead, it chose to review whether lower courts can issue national injunctions against the federal government at all. And their answer was clear: no more nationwide injunctions, except in the narrowest cases. From now on, lower courts can only block policies for the people actually in front of them—not for everyone who might be affected.

What does this mean in practice? It means that your citizenship—or any of your constitutional rights—could be protected in one state but denied in another. That if the government comes for your rights, you’ll have to find a group of people in the same boat, fight for class action status, and hope the courts see fit to protect you all at once. Until then? The federal government is free to strip your constitutional rights away, and there’s nothing that a federal district judge can do to protect you, unless you have the means & resources to file on your own, or that someone else has overcome all the burdens associated with getting a class certified and then an injunction—one that SCOTUS can just arbitrarily dispose of at their convenience—protecting the class.

This is a recipe for exactly the kind of legal chaos, uncertainty, and “patchwork” the Court claimed to fear so much in the Colorado case. Only this time, it’s not about who can be president. It’s about who can be an American, and whether the federal government can capriciously dispose of constitutional rights.

The Bait and Switch: Shifting the Burden from Government to the People

Let’s be absolutely clear about what just happened. Under the old rules, if the government was credibly accused of violating constitutional rights, a single judge could block that policy nationwide—at least until a higher court ruled on the merits. That system wasn’t perfect, but it recognized a basic truth: rights belong to all of us, and when the government overreaches, it should be stopped immediately, everywhere.

Now, the Supreme Court has shifted that burden. Instead of requiring the government to justify its actions before denying rights to millions, the burden is now on each individual—or worse, each group of individuals—to band together, find a lawyer, and prove they deserve protection. It’s a procedural thicket designed to slow, frustrate, and ultimately defeat challenges to the most aggressive abuses of power.

They call it judicial restraint. I call it abdication.

The Final Capitulation: Immunity for the Would-Be Dictator

Let’s not pretend this is an isolated incident. This ruling is just the latest in a series of decisions that have systematically disarmed the very institutions designed to protect us from tyranny. The same Court recently granted near-total immunity to presidents acting “within their official duties”—a decision so sweeping, so ahistorical, that it effectively places the president above the law for almost anything that happens while in office.

What do these decisions have in common? They both remove constraints on executive power. They both ignore the original purpose of the Constitution: to limit tyranny, not enable it. And they both show us, in no uncertain terms, that the Supreme Court—like the Congress—has chosen not to resist Trump, but to roll over and serve him.

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The “Nuance” Excuse: When Process Talk Becomes Cover for Tyranny

Some defenders of the Court—law professors, pundits, even a few well-meaning liberals—insist that these decisions are just about “nuance.” They’ll tell you the Court is only “tweaking process,” “clarifying jurisdiction,” or “refining remedies.” They’ll say, “It’s complicated!”—as if you’re too simple-minded to understand.

All excuses that fall under this category can be unequivocally demolished by evaluating them both from a high level and a granular level.

At the high level, the logic is simple:
If the end result of all these “nuances” is a president who is functionally above the law, and a judiciary that ties itself in knots to avoid checking that power, then none of the technical details matter. The window dressing doesn’t change the outcome.
There can never be a system that’s immune to abuse—our founders knew that, and so do today’s justices. If, in some mindless pursuit of procedural purity, the Court systematically weakens every safeguard, all it’s doing is making it easier for abuse to triumph.

At the granular level, the truth is just as damning:
SCOTUS, as the final arbiter in the appellate process, always had the power to review any specific nationwide injunction via the “shadow docket”—an expedited process that can resolve emergency questions in days, if not hours. In other words: if a nationwide injunction ever truly went too far, the Court could and did step in immediately.
Given that, SCOTUS’ decision to completely eliminate lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions is a clear statement: they have “concluded” that there cannot exist any action by the Executive so egregious, so threatening to constitutional rights, as to justify this process—single-judge, nationwide injunctions—even temporarily.
Yet, reality has already proved them wrong. Just a couple of months ago, SCOTUS itself had to order the President to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States after his constitutional right to due process was violated. The government’s argument, delivered by DOJ lawyers, was so appalling that Judge Wilkinson—a Reagan appointee on the Fourth Circuit—wrote:

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”

Therefore, one must have lost their mind to suggest that SCOTUS is unaware of the proven fact—never mind just the potential—that the Executive can and will take extreme actions violating individuals’ constitutional rights, in a way that absolutely justifies a lower court’s ability to issue a national injunction.

Finally, let’s look at it in another way: Any system that requires anything other than a request to the judiciary, and an action by the very first point of contact with the judiciary to stop the widespread abuse of constitutional rights is the wrong system. SCOTUS just replaced what we had—a system that did precisely what it ought to—with a system—with whatever nuance or technicality you may want to explain—that fails to deliver its most fundamental function in this regard.

What’s left, then, but an irrefutable conclusion? These “conservative” Justices are partisan hacks capitulating to a wannabe dictator by any means that can be waved away with “nuance,” “originalism,” and “process purity.”

The only alternative is that the conservative justices are bumbling fools, and that this is all just a result of “misunderstood process”—but that’s hard to square with their glittering resumes and Federalist Society pedigrees. No, they are partisan operatives, pursuing an ideological agenda with ruthless focus. They’re consolidating power—not to save the judiciary, but to guarantee conservative dominance for a generation.

And if that’s the reality, the only thing left to do is meet their agenda with an agenda of our own—one that refuses to hide behind “nuance” while democracy burns.

The Lesson: No One Is Coming to Save Us—Except Us

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court, like the conservative majority in Congress, has capitulated to Trumpism—maybe out of fear, maybe out of calculation, a distinction without a difference. They are not neutral referees. They are not defenders of the rule of law. And just because they dress up their betrayal in legal jargon does not make it any less a betrayal.

We cannot wait for the judiciary to save us. We cannot keep pretending that legal process will protect us from fascism. The only thing that will stop the slide into authoritarianism is a resistance that knows exactly where to apply pressure: not just against the would-be dictator, but against the so-called defenders of democracy who are failing to use their power.

The time for faith in institutions is over. The time for demanding real courage—from the people who still hold levers of power—is right now.

The Court Has Spoken—Now It Is Time for Real “Resistance”

History will not be kind to this Supreme Court. But history will judge us, too—not just for what we opposed, but for what we forced our own leaders to do.

Don’t settle for empty protest or symbolic marches. Show up to demand that blue-state governors, legislatures, and mayors refuse to comply with authoritarian edicts. Demand that they use every tool at their disposal—state law, local police, funding, legal battles, even sanctuary policies—to shield their residents from federal abuse.

If you live in a state or city that claims to oppose Trumpism, make sure your officials know that words are not enough. We need public commitments, emergency legislation, real legal defenses, and networks of mutual aid that are ready to act—not next year, but right now.

Because the system has already chosen a side. If we want a future worth fighting for, it’s time we force our side to choose us.