Why I'm worried.

In Trump v. United States (603 U.S. 593, 2024), the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that a President is fully shielded from criminal charges for "core" presidential actions, and mostly shielded for everything else he does in office. The Court also said judges can't even look at what the President was thinking when he acted. And they can't call an act "unofficial" just because it broke a law.¹

Here's why that's a big deal. Before this ruling, the rule was simple: the President had to follow criminal law like everyone else. After this ruling, that's only true for a narrow set of clearly personal actions. Anything that even looks like part of the job sits in a protected zone the courts haven't figured out yet.

"With fear for our democracy, I dissent."Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson²

The dissent said the decision "reshapes the institution of the Presidency" and "makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law." Justices don't write like that unless they think something serious just happened.

The Constitutional Accountability Center, a legal group that filed a brief in the case, said the President's immunity claim has "no basis in constitutional text and history or Supreme Court precedent."¹ The Markkula Center at Santa Clara University pointed out the strange spot the ruling puts judges in: they can't look at what the President was thinking, and the fact that an action broke a law isn't enough by itself to make it unofficial.³

This isn't just theory. In practice, the ruling makes it much harder to charge a former President with a crime. And it leaves lower courts trying to figure out, case by case, what counts as "official" job conduct. That's a lot of weight on a question nobody has a clean answer to.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution gives Congress, not the President, the power to decide how federal money is spent. A 1974 law (the Impoundment Control Act) made it crystal clear: the President can't decide on his own to skip spending money Congress approved. The Supreme Court backed this up in Train v. City of New York in 1975.

This administration is testing that directly. Executive orders in early 2025 froze payments under federal grants, loans, and assistance programs without asking Congress.¹ In August 2025, Russ Vought (head of the White House budget office) tried a trick called a "pocket rescission." He sent Congress a request to cancel funding within 45 days of the fiscal year ending, hoping to run out the clock so the money would expire by default.² The Government Accountability Office, the federal watchdog that oversees government spending, said the move is illegal.³

"Article I of the Constitution makes clear that Congress has the responsibility for the power of the purse. Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law."Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Chair, Senate Appropriations³

Stanford Law Review (July 2025) said there's no real legal case for the President controlling spending this way, and warned that letting him do it would gut the separation of powers.⁴ The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities documented Republican senators having to ask White House officials "to release funds they themselves appropriated."¹

This is the most basic separation-of-powers question we have. If the President can decide not to spend money Congress approved, then the power of the purse moves to the President in practice, no matter what the Constitution actually says.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act passed Congress in November 2025 with support from both parties and was signed into law. It required the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files within 30 days, with only narrow exceptions (to protect victims, for example).

The deadline (December 19, 2025) came and went. DOJ released less than 10% of the roughly 100,000 files it has, and most of what they did release was already public and heavily blacked out.¹ Before the deadline, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced DOJ would miss it and would release documents on its own schedule instead.^1, 2

Austin Sarat, a professor at Amherst College, wrote that the refusal "was intentional and open."¹ Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called for an Inspector General audit, saying "by the Department's own admission, it is in violation of the law."³ The DOJ Inspector General opened that investigation in April 2026.⁴

Some scholars defend a narrow version of the idea that the President can ignore certain laws, but only when there's a real constitutional conflict. That's not what's happening here. The administration is just refusing to do what a law says and daring anyone to stop them. And it's working. As of May 2026, more than 150 days past the deadline, three million pages of Epstein files still haven't been released.⁵

This matters beyond the Epstein files. If the President can refuse to enforce a law just by saying he won't, then "law" stops meaning what it's supposed to mean. It becomes something the President can ignore whenever he feels like it. That's a much weaker thing than what the Constitution says we have.

This problem isn't new. Hamilton called courts the "least dangerous branch" in Federalist 78 because they have "neither force nor will, but merely judgment." Court rulings get enforced by the President's people: the U.S. Marshals, the Department of Justice. When the President refuses to enforce a ruling that goes against him, the courts have very few real tools left.

Here are some examples. In the National Guard cases, a federal judge ruled in August 2025 that deploying troops to Los Angeles broke a 150-year-old law that keeps the military out of civilian policing (the Posse Comitatus Act). A second judge issued another order against it in December 2025.^1, 2 The administration appealed each time and kept the troops deployed while the appeals worked their way through the courts.

"[An] argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government."Judge Charles Breyer²

In the Mark Kelly case (more on this in point 07), a federal grand jury refused to approve sedition charges. Judge Richard Leon ruled that Defense Secretary Hegseth's actions against Sen. Kelly were illegal retaliation. Hegseth's response on X: "This will be immediately appealed. Sedition is sedition, 'Captain.'"³ DOJ's argument in court was that Hegseth's actions were "unreviewable by federal courts or, at the very least, owed a great deal of deference by judges."³

The pattern is the same every time. Courts rule. The administration appeals and keeps doing whatever it was doing. By the time the appeals are over, the situation on the ground has already changed. The only formal way to force the President to follow a court order is to hold him in contempt. And contempt is also enforced by the President's people. There's no clean answer to this when the President just refuses to follow the rules.

Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution gives states the power to run elections (the "times, places, and manner" of voting), with Congress only able to override on how elections are administered. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council that "nothing in the Constitution lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress."¹

The SAVE Act (H.R. 22) would require proof-of-citizenship documents to register to vote in federal elections. Acceptable documents include passports and birth certificates. A driver's license, even a REAL ID, doesn't count by itself.^2, 3 The House passed the bill in February 2026.¹

The Brennan Center estimates 9% of eligible voters, about 21.3 million Americans, don't have easy access to citizenship documents.⁴ Almost half of Americans don't have a U.S. passport.⁴ In West Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama, more than 70% don't.³

The basic idea, that only citizens should vote, is fine. Both parties agree on that, and it's already federal law under a 1996 statute.² The problem is how this bill does it. Once you require federal documents to vote, the states still technically run their voter rolls, but the federal government decides who's allowed to register. The feds control who gets a passport, and they set the standards for REAL ID. Tie voting to those documents and real control over who can vote moves from the states to federal agencies.

The League of Women Voters and Center for American Progress have both flagged this. The bill flips the usual rule on its head: instead of the government having to prove you can't vote, you have to prove you can. And prove it with federal paperwork.^3, 5

The Posse Comitatus Act (1878) keeps the military out of policing Americans on U.S. soil. But the agencies inside Homeland Security, like ICE and Border Patrol, aren't covered by that law. Border Patrol has unusual legal powers within 100 miles of any U.S. border, an area that includes about two-thirds of all Americans.

The funding has gone through the roof. The 2025 reconciliation bill gave $75 billion to ICE alone.¹ In May 2026, Senate committees released a follow-up $72 billion package, with $38 billion more for ICE and $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection.² The American Immigration Council pointed out that the combined funding makes ICE's budget about eleven times what it was in 2025, and CBP's about 3.5 times.¹

"The amounts provided in the legislation significantly exceed annual appropriations provided in the past for similar activities and would be made available for a longer period of obligation."Congressional Budget Office³

And troops have already been deployed inside the U.S. On June 7, 2025, for the first time in American history, a President used a federal law (10 U.S.C. § 12406) to take control of a state's National Guard against the governor's wishes. He moved 4,000 California National Guard members under federal control to do civilian policing in Los Angeles.⁴ Similar deployments followed in Chicago and Portland.⁵ Federal courts ruled the LA deployment broke the Posse Comitatus law. The administration kept doing it anyway while it appealed.

What's being built is a militarized police force for use inside the United States, sitting outside the rules designed to prevent exactly that. Whether you trust this President, or a future one, to use it responsibly is a separate question. The force is now there, at scale, no matter who's in charge.

Under military law (Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) and the rules that came out of the Nuremberg trials, service members must obey lawful orders. They are not required to carry out unlawful ones. This is bedrock. It's taught at every level. It's built into the oath every officer takes.

In November 2025, six members of Congress, all veterans of the military or intelligence community, released a video reminding service members of this duty. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) was one of them. The President publicly called the video "seditious" and said the lawmakers' conduct was "punishable by death."¹ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the group the "Seditious Six."¹

Hegseth then opened an investigation into Kelly, sent him a letter of censure, and announced he would cut Kelly's military retirement rank and pay. Hegseth's reason: that Kelly "characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders."²

A federal grand jury refused to approve sedition charges in February 2026. Judge Richard Leon ruled that Hegseth's actions were illegal retaliation, going after "unquestionably protected speech" that is "entitled to special protection" under the law.³ Hegseth said he would immediately appeal.

Here's what matters. Nobody had to order anyone to stop refusing illegal orders. Instead, the message went out: bring this up in public, and you could lose your career or face prosecution. That's harder to fight than a direct order. There's no one clear moment to refuse. The duty just wears away under the pressure.

"He is going to prosecute me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for reciting the Uniform Code of Military Justice?"Sen. Mark Kelly, on Jimmy Kimmel Live⁴

Courts hear one case at a time. Agencies push back one issue at a time. Congress moves slowly on purpose, so big changes don't happen in a panic. When the number of fights piles up faster than the system can deal with them, court rulings start arriving after the fight on the ground is already over.

People inside the administration have openly said this is the strategy. The "flood the zone" approach was first laid out by Steve Bannon years ago, and now it's being run at full scale. The plan is simple. Do a lot of things at once. Move faster than courts can rule. Move faster than Congress or the media can respond. By the time anyone catches up, the changes have already become the new normal.

Here's the problem this exposes. Our constitutional checks and balances were built for a slower pace. Courts can stop one thing at a time. By the time a judge rules on action A, actions B through M have already happened. The Supreme Court takes months to hear a case, and longer to decide it. Congress can't pass a law to fix anything in less than a few months on a good day, and basically not at all on a bad one.

What you end up with is a new normal that nobody ever ruled on. It's not technically precedent (that requires a court ruling). But it works like one. The new way of doing things just sticks because the system can't keep up with challenging it. And once it sticks, going back to the old way requires somebody actively putting it back. Nobody does.