Hamilton Constitution Center

Really worth your time to watch and listen to this heartwarming roundtable chat between Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. It is such a beautiful conversation! The values they grew up with are values I fully share. As soon as they get elected, Trump will be in jail in six months time and probably serving six years. There is HOPE IN AMERICA!

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When you worship power, compassion will look like a sin. Beware of any Christian movement that demands the government be an instrument of God's wrath but never a source of God's mercy, generosity, or compassion. We want the warhorse. Jesus rides a donkey. ~ Benjamin Cremer

HOW THE BEAST FOOLS SO MANY ~

Under the guise of abortion bans they got most of “Christianity” to vote for extreme Republicans who support Christian Nationalism and the union of church and state. In the furtherance of abortion bans they got Protestants to support Catholicism by installing Catholic judges in the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

Protestants didn’t realize, or didn’t care,—including many of our own people,—that they were actually following the beast and making an image to the beast by forcing their religious beliefs on others through the enactment of abortion laws.

I knew it was wrong. I knew it was not in alignment with the character of God, but even I didn’t fully comprehend what the Devil was doing, but here we are. Now these people are so in bed with, and controlled by this cult, that they can’t break free. They don’t think they are following the beast because they still go to church on Sabbath, but they fail to realize the image of the beast has always been one of forcing others to their own will and beliefs. We saw 1260 years of that during the dark ages. That’s what the beast does. God is not a God of force. He is a God of freedom and love. So whenever you see a spirit of force, coercion or violence, you’re seeing the beast, or the image to the beast.

Written by Mark Barger

FALSE PIETY & THE DOCTRINE OF PROPHETIC INEVITABILITY ~

Have you ever encountered someone who thinks that since everything is prophetically inevitable, they have no role or responsibility to preserve and advance the constitutional separation of church and state, religious freedom, civil rights, social justice and our constitutional system of government as a Democratic Republic, with its separation of powers and corresponding constitutional checks and balances?

Often such individuals make varying arguments and justifications. Here are two familiar ones that I have encountered over my many years in ministry and the religious liberty advocacy arena:

1) When our Country is sinking into religio-political fascism or when justice is denied in convicting super corrupt individuals in high places of influence and power: "If God wills it, so be it." They don't seem to care if they get away with it.

2) Justifying their embarrassing vote for someone who clearly seeks to dismantle the constitutional separation of church and state, and promoting Christian Nationalism (a Christian Nation by law): "Why not hasten the fulfillment of prophecy and the coming of the Lord?"

When we do not actively help the four angels of Revelation 7 hold back the four winds of strife by championing religious freedom, civil rights, and the Constitution in an effort to defend democratic norms, we are grossly misunderstanding our prophetic role and harboring a selfish spirit. It's selfish because the whole purpose of helping to hold back the winds of strife is a divinely unselfish one ~ so that more souls can have the opportunity of knowing and experiencing the love of Jesus.

Such apathy is scripturally likened to dumb dogs that don't bark. Our prophetic role is to stand before rulers and government officials, and in the spirit of Christ professionally plead with them to reverse their course of thinking. This is what the prophets of old in Old Testament times did, and Christ and the Apostle Paul did in New Testament times. Their purpose, as used by the Holy Spirit, was to help them understand the true nature of Christ's kingdom and thus help them experience an about-face change in their worldviews. And yes, this involves course corrections in public policy away from autocracy, authoritarianism, and oppression of those they disagree with and hate. Yes, hate.

I am reminded of a particular national leader in Germany that precipitated World War II, who rounded up those who threatened his leadership. Who did he oppress and fill his concentration camps with? Were they only Jews that he rounded up? No. They were religious and political dissenters, ethnic and religious minorities (Jehovah Witnesses, including Adventists involved in the French Underground), samesex peoples, and atheists.

Those Adventists who believed all of this was inevitable backed this madman in the name of 1) "law and order," a buzz phrase or slogan that sought to dismantle the Weimar Republic and replace it with an Authoritarian Strong Man; 2) "but he's a vegetarian and doesn't drink!" (SIGH); and 3) "he is hastening righteousness and the coming of the Lord," which was really nothing more than asserting that this Madman was their National Savior, along with German Christian Nationalism and promoting the Third Reich, which means "millennium on earth," "God's kingdom on earth." "MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN?" Sound familiar?

What's interesting is that the Adventist leadership in Germany only recently officially apologized for their gross lack of discernment and their role in supporting such a Madman, and oppressing others, and not advocating the preservation of the Weimar Republic in which people's constitutional rights were protected.

Unfortunately, many in our midst are of the same mindset and blindly, if not willfully, going down the same road because they understand not the true nature of Christ's kingdom and their prophetic message-role to rebuke wicked kings and defend the downtrodden and oppressed among us.

Written by Gregory W. Hamilton, President
Hamilton Library and Constitution Center

"RIGHTEOUS NATION" MINDSETS

By Gregory W. Hamilton

Many individuals in our Beloved Country would rather have a "Righteous Nation," which, in their eyes, means outlawing abortion; contraception; samesex marriage; samesex rights; limited voting rights for African Americans; and state authorities who become authorized by newly enacted state laws to "legitimately" rig elections, both state and federal (in the name of states' rights, a Confederate model of government) in order to fulfill their so-called "Righteous" goals. (And it is not necessarily about the rightness or wrongness of certain issues listed above, but rather about a much larger prophetic picture that requires holy discernment.)

In other words, they would rather have a so-called "Righteous Nation" than a Democratic Republic with a Constitution that is prescribed by the Non-Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to keep church and state as separate as possible. To be more frank, they would rather opt for a Theocracy than a Democracy.

It is no coincidence that they chose a weak man, even a Sociopath, a Mob Boss, as their President in 2016, knowing that he would bend to their every whim so as to stay in power, even indefinitely as a king; but also like kings during the Dark Ages as a means of receiving absolution for all of his many corruptions and sins.

Past Republican Presidents somewhat successfully stiff-armed these crazed Theocratic Dominionists (i.e., their radical base) and truly tried to govern with, and under, democratic and constitutional norms. These included Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr. While it is true these particular presidents worked with organizations like the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation to secure their handpicked judges, they did not even come close to radically succeeding like they did through Donald Trump. Our nation is now experiencing the fruits of their persistence.

Keep in mind these references from The Desire of Ages, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, and The Great Controversy that have warned us through historical analogy, and unfolding prophetic history, so that we will not be deceived as to the prophetic trends taking place right now. After reading these references, ask yourself, "Am I on the right side of prophetic history, or the wrong side?

JESUS CHRIST ON CHURCH AND STATE
"Today in the religious world there are multitudes who, as they believe, are working for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ as an earthly and political dominion. They desire to make our Lord the ruler of the kingdoms of this world, the ruler in its Courts and Military Camps, its Legislative Halls, its Palaces and Market Places. They expect Him to rule through legal enactments, enforced by human authority. Since Christ is not now here in person, they themselves will undertake to act in His stead, to execute the laws of His kingdom. The establishment of such a kingdom is what Israel desired in the days of Christ. They would have received Jesus had He been willing to establish a political dominion, to enforce what they regarded as the laws of God, and to make them the expositors of His will and the agents of His authority. But He said, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' John 18:36. He would not accept the earthly throne." ~ E.G. White, The Desire of Ages, page 509

ANATOMY OF PERSECUTION
"They will force men to comply with their ideas of what is right. This is what Israel did in the days of Christ and what the church has done ever since whenever she has LOST the GRACE OF CHRIST. Finding herself destitute of the power of love, she has reached out for the strong arm of the state to ENFORCE HER DOGMAS and execute her DECREES. Here is the secret of all RELIGIOUS LAWS that have ever been enacted, and the secret of all PERSECUTION from the days of Abel to our time." ~ E.G. White ,Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, page 126

RELIGIOUS POWERS CONTROL THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT
"In order for the United States to form an image of the prophetic beast [Papal Rome], the religious power(s) must so control the civil government that the authority of the state will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends." ~ E.G. White, The Great Controversy, page 443

In context, pages 442-450 describe an alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Conservative Evangelical Catholics that forms this modern-day prophetic IMAGE of ancient Papal Rome in which Papal Rome manipulated, dominated and controlled kings and emperors, and thus the people of Europe.

Notice, it doesn't say Communists, Socialists, Secular Humanists, Atheists or Samesex movements. Remember this: Inspired by the united Lutheran and Catholic Right, Adolf Hitler's Concentration Camps during World War II were full of religious and ethnic minorities, samesex individuals, political dissenters, and atheists besides those of Jewish origin.

In fact, Jesus told his disciples that it would be people of faith who passionately believed they were doing God's service who would persecute and even seek to kill them (John 16:1-4). I challenge you to think prophetically and not get caught up in the national and constitutional train-wreck that is Christian Nationalism.

Authored by Gregory W. Hamilton, President
Hamilton Library and Constitution Center

The Real Origins of the Religious Right They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.

THE TRUMP / PROJECT 2025 / HERITAGE FOUNDATION CONNECTION

(1) KEVIN ROBERTS, Heritage Foundation President and Project 2025 Designer QUOTES REGARDING THE TRUMP / GOP / PROJECT 2025 CONNECTION:

- QUOTE (Regarding the overlap of the 2024 Republican Platform, Republican Agenda 47 and Project 2025):
"Well, the overlap is tremendous. In fact, if you compare [the] three documents, . . . . The overlap, as you might imagine, is significant."
(Kevin Roberts, July 10, 2024, edition of The Vince Coglianese Show on WMAL News)

SOURCE: Article, "Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts: “The overlap is tremendous” between Trump's campaign platform and Project 2025"
https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/heritage-foundation-president-kevin-roberts-overlap-tremendous-between-trumps-campaign

- QUOTE:
"The work of the Heritage Foundation is to institutionalize Trumpism - Trumpism as a new version of conservativism. . . . By institutionalizing Trumpism, what we're saying is . . . . right now, Donald Trump, whether someone likes it or not,. . . is the standard bearer for conservativism." (Kevin Roberts, MSNBC The Weekend, 6/22/24)

SOURCE: Broadcast, "Heritage President Dr. Kevin Roberts Debates Project 2025 on MSNBC's "The Weekend" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJZb6POi94&ab_channel=TheHeritageFoundation

- QUOTE:
"President Trump is going to make decisions about policy in his administration if he wins. Project 2025 is something that's going to transcend the next four years, the next ten years. It really is for the first time in the history of the conservative movement, the apparatus for policy and personnel. That's the most important thing to remember"
(Kevin Roberts, MSNBC The Weekend, 6/22/24)

SOURCE: Broadcast, "Heritage President Dr. Kevin Roberts Debates Project 2025 on MSNBC's "The Weekend" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJZb6POi94&ab_channel=TheHeritageFoundation

- QUOTE:
“I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.” (Kevin Roberts, Washington Post interview in April 2024)

SOURCE: Article, "Trump took a private flight with Project 2025 leader in 2022," Washington Post, August 7, 2024
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/08/07/trump-heritage-project-2025-roberts/

- QUOTE:
"Our side is winning. . . we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
(Kevin Roberts, Steve Bannon War Room Podcast, 7/2/24)

SOURCE: See, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BhhulOa97Xg

_______________________________________

(2) DONALD TRUMP QUOTES:

- QUOTE: 4/21/22 (Praising the Heritage Foundation)
". . . this is a great group. And they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America and that’s coming. . . ."

"Let’s go build a legacy of freedom, liberty and greatness that will endure for centuries and centuries to come. . . I think tremendous things are going to be coming out of Heritage. . . ." (Donald Trump, Heritage Foundation Keynote Speaker, 4/21/22)

SOURCE: Article, "Donald Trump Delivers Keynote Speech in Florida 4/21/22 Transcript"
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-delivers-keynote-speech-in-florida-4-21-22-transcript

- QUOTE 7/5/24:
"I have no idea who's behind it. . . . I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them"
(Donald Trump, Truth Social post RE: Project 2025, July 5, 2024)

SOURCE: Article, "Trump disavows Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, despite MAGA ties" https://www.axios.com/2024/07/05/trump-project-2025-heritage-foundation

- QUOTE OF INTEREST:
"You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back. . . If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. That was a big mistake you made.” (Donald Trump, book interview with Bob Woodward)

SOURCE: Article, "Bob Woodward book says Trump offered advice to a friend who admitted 'bad behavior' toward women: 'Deny, deny, deny'"
https://www.businessinsider.com/bob-woodward-book-trump-me-too-women-advice-2018-9

_______________________________________

(3) JOHN MCENTEE, HERITAGE FOUNDATION - PROJECT 2025 ADVISOR

- QUOTE: (On coordinating Republican Policy documents with Project 2025)
"Obviously, there will need to be coordination and the president and his team will announce an official transition this summer, and we're gonna integrate a lot of our work with them." (John McEntee)

SOURCE: Article, "Project 2025 adviser says the initiative will “integrate a lot of our work” with the Trump campaign later this year" 4/22/24
https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/project-2025-advisor-says-initiative-will-integrate-lot-our-work-trump-campaign-later

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts: "The overlap is tremendous" between Trump's campaign platform and Project 2025 Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts: “The overlap is tremendous” between Trump's campaign platform and Project 2025 Roberts says that any “quibbles and differences of opinion” between Project 2025 and the GOP platform would be figured out once a new Trump “administration declares w...

"RIGHTEOUS NATION" MINDSETS SEEK TO OVERTHROW OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC ~
(Updated version)

By Gregory W. Hamilton

Many individuals in our Beloved Country would rather have a "Righteous Nation," which, in their eyes, means outlawing abortion; contraception; samesex marriage; samesex rights; limited voting rights for African Americans; and state authorities who become authorized by newly enacted state laws to "legitimately" rig elections, both state and federal (in the name of states' rights, a Confederate model of government) in order to fulfill their so-called "Righteous" goals. (And it is not necessarily about the rightness or wrongness of certain issues listed above, but rather about a much larger prophetic picture that requires holy discernment.)

In other words, they would rather have a so-called "Righteous Nation" than a Democratic Republic with a Constitution that is prescribed by the Non-Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to keep church and state as separate as possible. To be more frank, they would rather opt for a Theocracy than a Democracy.

It is no coincidence that they chose a weak man, even a Sociopath, a Mob Boss, as their President in 2016, knowing that he would bend to their every whim so as to stay in power, even indefinitely as a king; but also like kings during the Dark Ages as a means of receiving absolution for all of his many corruptions and sins.

Past Republican Presidents somewhat successfully stiff-armed these crazed Theocratic Dominionists (i.e., their radical base) and truly tried to govern with, and under, democratic and constitutional norms. These included Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr. While it is true these particular presidents worked with organizations like the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation to secure their handpicked judges, they did not even come close to radically succeeding like they did through Donald Trump. Our nation is now experiencing the fruits of their persistence.

Keep in mind these references from The Desire of Ages, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, and The Great Controversy that have warned us through historical analogy, and unfolding prophetic history, so that we will not be deceived as to the prophetic trends taking place right now. After reading these references, ask yourself, "Am I on the right side of prophetic history, or the wrong side?

JESUS CHRIST ON CHURCH AND STATE
"Today in the religious world there are multitudes who, as they believe, are working for the establishment of the kingdom of Christ as an earthly and political dominion. They desire to make our Lord the ruler of the kingdoms of this world, the ruler in its Courts and Military Camps, its Legislative Halls, its Palaces and Market Places. They expect Him to rule through legal enactments, enforced by human authority. Since Christ is not now here in person, they themselves will undertake to act in His stead, to execute the laws of His kingdom. The establishment of such a kingdom is what Israel desired in the days of Christ. They would have received Jesus had He been willing to establish a political dominion, to enforce what they regarded as the laws of God, and to make them the expositors of His will and the agents of His authority. But He said, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' John 18:36. He would not accept the earthly throne." ~ E.G. White, The Desire of Ages, page 509

ANATOMY OF PERSECUTION
"They will force men to comply with their ideas of what is right. This is what Israel did in the days of Christ and what the church has done ever since whenever she has LOST the GRACE OF CHRIST. Finding herself destitute of the power of love, she has reached out for the strong arm of the state to ENFORCE HER DOGMAS and execute her DECREES. Here is the secret of all RELIGIOUS LAWS that have ever been enacted, and the secret of all PERSECUTION from the days of Abel to our time." ~ E.G. White ,Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, page 126

RELIGIOUS POWERS CONTROL THE CIVIL GOVERNMENT
"In order for the United States to form an image of the prophetic beast [Papal Rome], the religious power(s) must so control the civil government that the authority of the state will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends." ~ E.G. White, The Great Controversy, page 443

In context, pages 442-450 describe an alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Conservative Evangelical Catholics that forms this modern-day prophetic IMAGE of ancient Papal Rome in which Papal Rome manipulated, dominated and controlled kings and emperors, and thus the people of Europe.

Notice, it doesn't say Communists, Socialists, Secular Humanists, Atheists or Samesex movements. Remember this: Inspired by the united Lutheran and Catholic Right, Adolf Hitler's Concentration Camps during World War II were full of religious and ethnic minorities, samesex individuals, political dissenters, and atheists besides those of Jewish origin.

In fact, Jesus told his disciples that it would be people of faith who passionately believed they were doing God's service who would persecute and even seek to kill them (John 16:1-4). I challenge you to think prophetically and not get caught up in the national and constitutional train-wreck that is Christian Nationalism.

Authored by Gregory W. Hamilton, President
Hamilton Library and Constitution Center

This is what the beginning of the downfall of Trump looks like.

THE 'DRED SCOTT' OF OUR TIME

By Sean Wilentz | THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS | August 15, 2024 issue

In ruling in favor of Donald Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution for his official acts, the Supreme Court has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism.
_________________________________________

The majority opinion in Trump v. United States, the most sweeping judicial reconstruction of the American presidency in history, secures the monumental historic disgrace of the John Roberts Court. Since last winter, the Supreme Court has intervened directly in the 2024 presidential campaign by effectively shielding Donald Trump from being tried on major federal charges before the November election. No previous Court has protected a political candidate in this way. Far more ominously, in March the Court in Trump v. Anderson openly nullified the section of the Fourteenth Amendment that bars insurrectionists from holding federal or state office, discarding basic lessons about threats to American democracy dating back to the Civil War. Now, in Trump v. United States, handed down on the last day of its 2023–2024 term, the Court has seized the opportunity to invent, with no textual basis, “at least presumptive” and quite possibly “absolute” presidential criminal immunity for official acts, a decision so broad that it essentially places the presidency above the law.

By throwing Trump’s federal indictments into doubt, Trump v. United States all but completes the former president’s immunization from legal accountability for the events of January 6, 2021, at least until after the election. But that is only the decision’s narrowest ambit. Its vague distinction between official and unofficial presidential acts gives any president carte blanche to commit crimes up to and including assassination and treason with virtual impunity from criminal prosecution, as long as he can justify those crimes as part of his “official” duties. In effect it invests the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, repudiating the foundational principle of the rule of law. Trump and his supporters have pledged to wield unfettered executive power and unleash a scorched-earth assault on the “deep state,” which is to say the existing constitutional and institutional order, if he is reelected. In the current crisis, that threat’s most powerful ally is the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Roberts Court has descended to a level of shame reserved until now for the Roger B. Taney Court that decided the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. Just as that Court majority sought to suppress the antislavery Republican Party and to help permanently secure the Slave Power’s control over American law and government, so the Roberts Court majority has sought, thus far successfully, to protect Trump from prosecution and to secure radical changes in American law friendly to MAGA authoritarianism. The Supreme Court has once again willfully placed itself at the center of a presidential election on which the future of American democracy turns.

The Supreme Court is supposed to be independent of politics. Its reputation rests on the premise that its judgments reflect neither fear nor favor regarding the executive or Congress. Its legitimacy depends on its perceived fealty to the Constitution, unsullied by partisanship or other political motives. “Nothing is more to be deprecated,” Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1811, “than the transfer of party politics to the seat of Justice.”
To be sure, the Court has never been able to escape politics, especially in turbulent times when social and political issues have become constitutional issues. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s effort in 1937 to pack the Court to overcome its hostility to his New Deal reforms famously backfired in the midterm elections the following year, when the Republicans picked up eight seats in the Senate and nearly doubled their numbers in the House of Representatives. After the Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ended school segregation and galvanized the civil rights movement, a campaign against the Court driven by the John Birch Society and embraced by southern segregationists erected billboard ads across the South and in several northern states as well, demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

As far back as the stormy early days of the republic, Chief Justice Marshall’s landmark ruling in Marbury v. Madison (1803) arose from vigorous attempts by President Thomas Jefferson and his administration to undo the efforts of opposition Federalists to corrupt the federal judiciary. By shrewdly navigating between the competing interests, Marshall’s opinion in Marbury established the bedrock principle of judicial independence from politics.

Until this Court’s tenure, Dred Scott had been the most notorious example of the Court’s violation of that principle. The case was political dynamite. By deciding the fate of Dred and Harriet Scott, slaves claiming their freedom based on their residence in Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, the Court intervened in the mounting crisis over Congress’s ability to halt slavery’s spread in the territories—the main issue behind the rise of the antislavery Republican Party. President James Buchanan, a Democrat and a northerner of southern sympathies, interfered outrageously in the Court’s deliberations prior to his inauguration, secretly pressuring justices to issue a comprehensive ruling that barred black people, enslaved and free, from national citizenship, which is precisely what those justices ruled. (The full extent of Buchanan’s intervention was hidden for decades.)

Chief Justice Taney was the original originalist. He based his majority opinion, he asserted, on the Constitution’s precise meaning at its framing and ratification. In ruling against Scott, Taney not only proscribed black citizenship but also denied Congress any authority over slavery, effectively (and ironically) nullifying Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution, which gave it “Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” Black people had never been considered citizens, he pronounced, and the Constitution explicitly rendered property in humans secure from federal government action.

Both claims—as critics, including two dissenting justices, pointed out—were manifestly erroneous. Apart from degrading the status of black Americans, the decision in effect proclaimed the Republicans’ antislavery program unconstitutional, making Dred Scott the most direct intervention by the Court in partisan politics leading up to a presidential election in American history—at least until now. Lincoln famously refuted Taney’s claims about the founders and the Constitution in his Cooper Union address in early 1860.

Northern outrage at the ruling helped elect Lincoln, but Taney’s decision remained in place until the ratification of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments abolished slavery and declared that all persons born in the United States were citizens of the United States. It informed the proslavery legal order promulgated by the constitution of the Confederate States of America in 1861, which codified Taney’s specious originalism as its cornerstone by explicitly enshrining slavery as an unassailable institution.

Until Trump v. United States, no one decision by the Roberts Court carried significance comparable in magnitude to that of Dred Scott. Numerous other shamefully activist rulings—the Dobbs decision on abortion, the Bruen decision on gun regulation, dozens of others—have been just as egregious in their flawed reasoning and transparent political purposes. But Trump v. United States is distinct as a deliberate attack on the core institutions and principles of the republic, preparing the way for a MAGA authoritarian regime much as Dred Scott tried to do for the slavocracy.

Still, the similarities between what occurred in the late 1850s and the events that led to Trump v. United States are as glaring as they are tragic. Flaunting the bogus doctrine of originalism, members of the Roberts Court’s conservative majority have long deployed fake history to justify predetermined outcomes, much as in Dred Scott Taney relied in part, as Lincoln said, “on assumed historical facts which were not really true.” The Court majority did so again this term, most obviously in the unsigned decision that overturned the Colorado Supreme Court’s disqualification of Trump from its state’s ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment. The conservative justices have not declared the Democratic Party’s program unconstitutional, but their purposeful delays over Trump’s immunity claims have significantly boosted the MAGA Republican Party’s prospects.

In some respects, arguably, the politicization of the Roberts Court has even surpassed that of the Taney Court. President Buchanan prudently applied his extraordinary pressure on the Court in secret. Today Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a co-conspirator in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, thinks nothing of publicly bidding the Court—“many [of whom] I know personally,” he told Fox and Friends in May—to intervene on Trump’s behalf over his hush-money conviction in a New York state court, assuring the Fox hosts and the MAGA faithful that “this will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it, it’s just going to take time do it.”

Neither Taney nor any of his allies on the Court, as far as we know, had members of their households who publicly denounced antislavery forces, as Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has denounced the “fascist left.” Apart, perhaps, from Justice John Archibald Campbell, who resigned in 1861, moved to Mobile, then joined the Confederate government in Richmond, no members of the Taney Court permitted emblems of insurrection to be flown at their private residences after the firing on Fort Sumter, as Justice Samuel Alito has repeatedly done after the assault on the Capitol on January 6. That both Thomas and Alito have refused to recuse themselves from virtually all cases connected to January 6 further stains the Court’s reputation. So does the stream of charges that individual justices, worst of all Justice Thomas, have received lavish gifts or benefits, or both, from wealthy right-wing and conservative individuals, including some with proceedings pending before the Court—charges that, with the assistance of Chief Justice Roberts, those accused have sought to quash summarily with dubious claims about the separation of powers.

Even more grievous, though, than the individual displays of partisanship and dubious ethics has been the majority’s tampering with the Constitution itself. It’s one thing to misinterpret the Constitution in order to reach a predetermined conclusion by contriving fake history, as Taney did and his “originalist” successors have; it’s quite another to use these methods to alter fundamental structures of constitutional government. Yet in the Colorado disqualification case, the Court brazenly gutted Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, inventing the idea that the power to disqualify insurrectionists from office lay entirely with Congress.

According to the conservative majority’s preposterous account, which is contradicted by all historical evidence, not to mention by common sense, the Fourteenth Amendment’s framers intended that it would not come into effect without specific enabling legislation by Congress. By that logic, none of the so-called Reconstruction Amendments—including the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery—came into effect until Congress passed enabling legislation, thereby granting it the authority unilaterally to nullify a constitutional amendment. (In the absence to date of enabling legislation, perhaps slavery can be restored, should either house of Congress desire it.) By that logic, moreover, an adjudicated insurrectionist is constitutionally entitled to hold any state or federal office, including the presidency, as long as his allies control either the House or the Senate.

Trump v. United States originated in a routine effort by Trump’s lawyers to throw up any motion, no matter how outlandish, to Special Council Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump in the District Court for the District of Columbia on the four-count indictment handed down in August 2023 over his participation in the events of January 6. With any luck, their absurd claim—that presidents and former presidents enjoy blanket immunity from criminal prosecution unless first impeached and removed from office—would stave off the proceedings until after November 5.

The presiding district court judge, Tanya Chutkan, denied the motion in December 2023, all but calling its arguments ridiculous, and affirmed the trial date she had set earlier, March 4 of this year. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia unanimously upheld Judge Chutkan in February in similar terms, at which point Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to put the appeals court panel’s decision on hold to allow them time to petition for the entire Appeals Court to hear the case. But what Trump’s lawyers failed to achieve at the district court and appellate level—postponing the trial long enough to protect their client from prosecution before the election—the Supreme Court did for them.

First, in December 2023, Smith asked the Court to prevent further delay by taking up the case directly. Leapfrogging the appeals court would hardly have prejudiced the case: it was clear that the case would be appealed further to the Supreme Court no matter what the appellate judges decided. The Court refused. Two months later, however, in February 2024, after the appeals court ruled against Trump, the Court dragged its feet as long as possible before deciding, on the last day in February, that it would take up the case after all. It then scheduled oral arguments for the very last slot on the very last day on the schedule for the term, April 25. Even before the case came before them, the Court had made it highly unlikely that Trump’s trial for January 6 would proceed in a timely manner.

The oral arguments then stunned some legal observers into the realization that the Court majority would not stop there. The alleged precedent for presidential criminal immunity, Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), granted past and current presidents absolute immunity from civil litigation over actions within “the outer perimeter” of official acts, on the grounds that without such protection, the executive’s authority would be severely hamstrung. No member of the Court had argued, Justice Byron White noted in his dissent, joined by three of his colleagues, “that the President is immune from criminal prosecution in the courts…. Nor would such a claim be credible.”

The Trump lawyers, however, argued that such a claim was perfectly credible. To prevent hampering the executive, they contended, a president must be immune from criminal as well as civil prosecution for official actions, quite possibly up to and including ordering the assassination of his political opponents on some official grounds. That immunity would end, Trump’s attorney proposed, only if a president was first impeached and removed from office.

As the district and appeals courts pointed out, this completely novel argument was both ludicrous and dangerous. Making criminal prosecution dependent on impeachment and removal—political actions with no criminal implications or penalties—would mangle the Constitution’s impeachment clause and utterly politicize criminal law with respect to the president. Blanket immunity from criminal prosecution as well as from civil suits would invest the presidency with monarchical powers, mimicking the absolutist notion prevalent in Europe, which the British came to share, that the king could do no wrong—precisely what the framers of the Constitution were intent on preventing. It seemed to many impossible that the Court, no matter how much it might delay matters to aid Trump, would take the immunity argument seriously.

As I foresaw, however, the oral arguments on April 25 proved they were wrong. Far from being dismissive, the conservative justices appeared entirely persuaded that the presidency, including former presidents, deserved some kind of criminal immunity. Their reasoning was alarming. Justice Alito raised the specter of the loser of a close presidential election being “criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent,” which would then initiate “a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy”—repeating Trump’s groundless accusations about what the Biden administration has done to him and where it may lead unless former presidents are granted immunity. To hear a Supreme Court justice parrot Trump’s paranoid scenario was shocking, not just for its partisanship but for what it revealed about Alito’s lack of faith in and regard for the existing judicial system and the rule of law.

No less remarkable were Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s remarks concerning the original intentions of the framers regarding the presidency, sympathetically framing the Trump lawyer’s arguments while trying to clarify them. When they declared that “the president’s not a king,” Kavanaugh asked the Trump attorney, did that mean that “the president is subject to prosecution for all personal acts, just like every other American,” but not for official acts? That is, if a president speeds in his car, cheats on his income tax, or murders his spouse, he should be treated no differently than any other American under the law (assuming the speeding, cheating, or murder cannot be justified as official acts). Otherwise, though, for all official acts, is not the president immune? Kavanaugh did not draw the obvious conclusion: by that logic the framers intended for the president to be very much a king when he is in office.

Over strenuous objections from the three liberal justices, the majority spent most of its time conjecturing about where the line might be between private and official acts, parsing how much criminality they ought to permit an American president. Some of the conservatives resorted to flagrant distortions of the evidence or endorsed and augmented the Trump attorneys’ distortions. Trump’s attorneys had maintained that memos on presidential immunity from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel covered their client, a former president. Justice Elena Kagan called them out, asking, “Does it strike you as odd that your understanding of immunity goes way beyond what the OLC ever claimed for a former president?” Kavanaugh, however, stoutly defended the twisting of one OLC memo to mean that the statutes Trump allegedly violated don’t apply to the president because they do not explicitly state that they apply to the president. Trump’s lawyer and Kavanaugh both omitted the OLC’s provision that the exclusion pertains only if applying the statute in question “would improperly interfere with the President’s constitutional duties”—which the federal charges against Trump, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct an official proceeding, in no way do.

After the oral arguments in Trump v. United States and just prior to announcing its ruling, the Court handed down another pro-Trump decision in Fischer v. United States, with a baffling majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts. So objectionable was that opinion’s reasoning concerning the interpretation of a federal obstruction statute that the Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, accused her colleagues of resorting to “textual backflips” to reach the conclusion they desired. Evidently, she said, the majority “simply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said.”

The case was straightforward. On January 6, 2021, Joseph W. Fischer attended the notorious Stop the Steal rally, marched to the Capitol, physically attacked at least one Capitol Hill police officer, encouraged others to breach the building (and did so himself), and said that he wanted to go “to war” and drag “the democratic Congress to the gallows.” He was charged with assaulting a police officer, disorderly conduct, and obstructing an official proceeding, a federal felony. By the time the Supreme Court heard Fischer’s case, more than three hundred individuals, including Trump, had been charged under the obstruction statute.

Fischer’s lawyers came up with a far-fetched defense, claiming that the obstruction statute did not cover the offense their client was accused of committing. That statute, 18 United States Code 1512 (c), is part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed in 2002 after the Enron scandal:

Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

As Justice Barrett wrote, the provision’s meaning could not be plainer: anyone who attempts to obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding, quite apart from tampering with or concealing documents, is liable to a fine, imprisonment, or both. The provision in 1512 (c) 2 is familiarly known as a “catchall,” meant to cover all behavior that leads to the undesirable outcome, in this case corruptly obstructing any official proceeding, not just those concerned with financial improprieties—something Fischer plainly did. The case against him, Justice Barrett wrote, was “open and shut.”

Fischer’s lawyers, though, claimed that the word “otherwise” in the second part of the provision does not mean what, as Barrett showed, dictionaries define it as: anything other than the thing just mentioned. Instead, they contended that the “otherwise” confined the second part of the provision to variations of the specific behavior outlawed in the first part, impairing or concealing evidence. The Court bought this nonsensical line of argument, thereby overruling what fourteen of fifteen district court judges along with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had previously decided. To do so required that the justices forego an exact reading of the provision under consideration—the “textualist” method conservatives normally assert is sacrosanct—in favor of a series of fanciful hypotheticals, suggesting, for example, that according to the prosecution’s definition of “otherwise,” a lobbyist who persuaded a congressman to vote a particular way could be fined, jailed, or both for influencing an official proceeding. As a result, virtually all the January 6 convictions obtained under the statue may be voided, and all the indictments still to be adjudicated may be dropped—including, not incidentally, two of the January 6 indictments against Trump.

As a preview of the Court’s disposition, the Fischer decision, combined with the oral arguments in Trump v. United States, seemed to signal that it would find grounds for some sort of presidential criminal immunity in the Trump case and remand it back to the district court, thereby, at the very least, preventing Smith from bringing Trump to trial before the election. At one level this is what the Court majority has done. But far from splitting the difference between absolute immunity and no immunity at all, as some early press reports suggested, the Court has gone the full distance and then some, giving Trump, as Justice Sotomayor observes in her withering dissent, “all the immunity he asked for and more.” It has also created a precedent that, although no more settled law today than Dred Scott was in 1857, could well be, if left to stand, the vehicle for the destruction of American democracy by an unaccountable and corrupt chief executive.

The decision relies on two basic maneuvers, both of which Justice Sotomayor identifies in her dissent. The first is its sonorous declaration that “with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers…immunity must be absolute.” It is difficult to understand why the Court mentioned this point, let alone presented it as a holding, except as a way of smuggling in the notion of absolute immunity, which it could then extend to other presidential actions. At the Trump immunity oral arguments, the government’s lawyer, Michael Dreeben, spelled out that a handful of specific core duties granted exclusively to the president by the Constitution, such as vetoing legislation or appointing members of the cabinet, enjoy any kind of immunity, civil or criminal. The indictment’s allegations concerning Trump’s actions around January 6, however—the allegations pertinent to this case—had nothing to do with these core responsibilities. By attempting to apply its holding on absolute immunity to those actions, as Sotomayor puts it, the majority “expands the concept of core powers beyond any recognizable grounds.”

The Court then decided that all of a president’s official actions, as opposed to his personal actions, are close enough to being core powers that they should at least be presumed immune to criminal prosecution and might well be absolutely immune. The claim has no basis at all in any of the texts over which the conservative majority usually obsesses. As Sotomayor’s dissent discusses at length, however, there is abundant evidence both from the framers and from subsequent constitutional authorities that indicates entirely the opposite.

The Constitution’s impeachment clause, for example, clearly allows a former president to be prosecuted for crimes that might have led to his impeachment and removal, including treason and bribery. The Court correctly rejected Trump’s wild idea that a president may be subject to criminal prosecution only after impeachment and removal, but it then ignored the clause’s text. Authorities since the Constitutional Convention in 1787 have directly rejected the idea of presidential immunity. In Federalist Paper 69, Alexander Hamilton stated that former presidents would be “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of the law.” Justice Joseph Story, in his influential Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), wrote that when federal officials commit a crime while in office, “the common tribunals of justice” should be able to take up the matter “for the purpose of inflicting, the common punishment applicable to unofficial offenders.” Without such trials, he added, “the grossest official offenders might escape without any substantial punishment, even for crimes, which would subject their fellow citizens to capital punishment.”

Modern history, too, confounds the notion that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official acts. The case of Richard Nixon, who accepted a pardon from Gerald Ford to avoid criminal prosecution for what would easily be construed by the Roberts Court as official acts, is the outstanding example in living memory. At Trump’s second impeachment trial, his lawyers insisted that failing to remove their client from office for his involvement in January 6 would not render him “in any way above the law” and that a former president “is like any other citizen and can be tried in a court of law.”

Indeed, at least some of the conservative justices are on record to the same effect. During his confirmation hearings, when questioned about presidential immunity, Justice Kavanaugh stated, “I do not think anyone thinks of immunity. And why not? No one is above the law. And that is just such a foundational principle of the Constitution and equal justice under law.” He repeatedly quoted the passage from Hamilton’s Federalist Paper 69 cited above.

What does a textualist majority do when the texts are against it? In Trump v. United States, the majority took refuge in Fitzgerald v. Nixon, the ruling that first guided the Trump lawyers and that, not incidentally, invented a form of presidential immunity out of thin air, a mortal sin according to originalist doctrine. Like the Trump lawyers, the Court bypassed the Burger Court majority’s explicit rationale for granting immunity in civil cases, which is that there is far less public interest at stake in “actions for civil damages” than “in criminal prosecutions.” It ignored a point both Chief Justice Warren Burger in the majority and the four dissenting justices emphasized: that, as Justice White’s dissent put it, a “contention that the President is immune from criminal prosecution in the courts” would not “be credible.” Instead, it asserted that exposure to criminal prosecution, with its potentially weightier outcomes, would do more to intrude on “the authority and functions of the Executive Branch” than exposure to civil litigation. This would, in turn, have a chilling effect, preventing a president from taking the “bold and unhesitating action” his job requires.

Here the Court majority took a position similar to the one Justice Alito took during oral arguments. It is a position that reflects little faith in (or simply disregards) the protections afforded criminal defendants as opposed to civil action defendants, beginning with the requirement that the prosecution gather sufficient evidence to convince a grand jury to indict. It also weighs the necessity of broad executive authority as more important than the public interest; indeed, it equates the public interest with the need to immunize the president from criminal prosecution, so that the president can do whatever he thinks he needs to do. This is the essence of authoritarianism.

Of course, as the majority opinion insists in a footnote, the Constitution offers a president “no protection from prosecution of acts taken in a private capacity.” Here the Court returns to a point broached by Justice Kavanaugh in oral arguments—that the Constitution is vindicated as long as the president is liable for private crimes like any other citizen. But this merely underscores what a quasi-monarchical presidency the majority has in mind: of all Americans, only one, the president, cannot be prosecuted for crimes undertaken in his official capacity.

And there was one more outrageous kicker. Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, fancifully argues that, based on the appointments clause in Article II, Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel is unconstitutional. In fact, attorney generals, including William Barr, who served under Trump, have long appointed special counsels. But Thomas’s nonsense has suddenly become the pretext for Judge Aileen Cannon to dismiss the case against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Cannon’s groundless partisan judgment, timed for the first day of the Republican National Convention, is bound to be appealed. Just don’t count on this Supreme Court to adhere to the Constitution and reverse it.

The ruling is every bit as radical, as detrimental to the rule of law, and as authoritarian as Justice Sotomayor states in her dissent. With this decision, she writes,

the Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like 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…. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.

To belabor the cynicism and intellectual shoddiness of the ruling in Trump v. United States would be simply to say it is typical of the Roberts Court. But it is crucial to stress this decision’s stakes. The Roberts Court has not just protected Donald Trump so that he might advance his own agenda or appoint young replacements for Alito and Thomas and perhaps one of the liberal justices, consolidating a hard-right majority for a generation at least. It has not just ignored the central principle of stare decisis to overturn long-settled law, as it did in the Dobbs decision. It has radically changed the very structure of American government, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism just as the Taney Court tried to pave the way for enshrining the Slave Power.

All of which makes Trump v. United States the Dred Scott of our time.

—July 17, 2024

This article was originally published online on July 4, 2024, in slightly modified form. —The Editors

Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton. His books include No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding. (August 2024)

The ‘Dred Scott’ of Our Time | Sean Wilentz The majority opinion in Trump v. United States, the most sweeping judicial reconstruction of the American presidency in history, secures the monumental