The Supreme Court Doesn’t Need Trump to Dismantle Democracy, But He Helps

This excerpt is from a piece by Rachel Rossi that originally ran at Democracy Docket on August 7, 2025.

Every summer, it’s tradition to draw conclusions about the end of the Supreme Court term and how its biggest decisions shaped the country.

However, this summer feels particularly untraditional. With the “shadow docket” full of appeals from the Trump administration, the term hardly feels over. And despite some truly terrible decisions, we’re also still desperately rooting for the court to save us from some of President Trump’s most dangerous actions.

We can’t pretend we’re optimistic that this Court will actually spare us from the steep authoritarian hill we’re quickly tumbling down. After all, this was the Court that handed Trump immunity from criminal behavior while president, and then, this summer, gutted the lower courts’ ability to hold back his illegal activity.

In the last month, even after the official term was over, we have seen the Court continue to enable Trump. Over pleading dissents from the three liberal justices, the conservative majority is allowing Trump to completely decimate the federal government in ways that are blatantly unconstitutional and unlawful. From independent agencies designed to be immune to political interference to whole departments that can only be unmade by Congress, the Court has handed Trump exemption after exemption to wield his administration wrecking ball.

This brazen, hackish partisanship is the lens through which we must assess the direction the Roberts Court is taking us — and it’s clearly nowhere good. That’s why the work of our lower courts is more important than ever.

Read the complete piece.