President Trump’s recent declaration that he would “just kill” so-called “narco-terrorists” without seeking a congressional declaration of war, as reported by Al Jazeera (2025) and The Hill (2025), must be understood in the context of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States (2024). That decision granted presidents absolute immunity for core constitutional acts and presumptive immunity for other official actions. While Chief Justice Roberts, as explained by the Constitution Center (2024), framed this immunity as necessary to protect executive independence, dissenting justices warned, as analyzed in the Harvard Law Review (2025), that it effectively placed presidents above the law.
This declaration cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric. According to CBS News (2025), the administration has already authorized lethal strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, resulting in dozens of deaths without congressional approval or judicial oversight. Legal experts cited by Jurist (2025) have warned that such actions may constitute war crimes, particularly when survivors of initial strikes were deliberately targeted. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires congressional approval for hostilities beyond 60 days absent a declaration of war, yet these strikes bypassed Congress entirely, undermining constitutional checks and balances.
The Court’s ruling must therefore be seen as a catalyst for this erosion of accountability. By granting immunity, the judiciary has emboldened the executive to act without restraint. This immunity does not stop at the president himself; it extends to cabinet members, advisors, and military officials, who now act with impunity under the protective umbrella of executive authority. What is most alarming is that many of these officials have not only embraced impunity but have deliberately defied court orders. Their refusal to comply with judicial directives demonstrates a systemic lawlessness that undermines the judiciary’s role as a coequal branch of government. This defiance is woven into the administration’s exercise of power: when cabinet officials openly disregard court rulings, they magnify the chaos created by presidential immunity, normalize authoritarian practices, and entrench executive dominance over both Congress and the judiciary. In this way, the Court’s decision has not only shielded the president but has also emboldened his inner circle to reject constitutional limits outright, creating a culture of defiance that corrodes the rule of law from within.
Even more troubling, the Supreme Court itself is becoming lawless by issuing decisions that undermine existing statutory protections and voting rights, further destabilizing the constitutional order. First, by weakening or disregarding civil service laws, the Court erodes long-standing frameworks designed to safeguard neutrality and stability in the federal workforce. When civil service protections are undermined, the door opens to partisan loyalty tests and political purges, consolidating unchecked power and diminishing professional accountability. Second, and equally consequential, the Court’s recent willingness to uphold Texas’s gerrymandering maps—maps that are plainly designed to dilute the voting power of people of color—signals judicial tolerance for intentional disenfranchisement at precisely the moment the Latino population is becoming the state’s majority. That is no coincidence; it is a predictable design. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the denial or abridgment of the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” When district lines are drawn to fracture Latino and Black communities’ voting strength, the practical effect is an abridgment of those communities’ political power on account of race. The Court’s posture here does not merely interpret law; it functionally licenses racial vote dilution. Logically, if the Court blesses maps whose foreseeable and intended effect is to weaken the electoral influence of people of color, it undermines the Fifteenth Amendment’s protection and signals that partisan advantage can trump fundamental rights. In combination with eroded civil service safeguards, this judicial permissiveness accelerates a broader transformation: government becomes more partisan, less accountable, and structurally tilted against communities of color.
At this juncture, it is critical to recall the constitutional role of the Supreme Court. The Court is charged to be an arbiter of existing law, not a creator of law. Article III of the U.S. Constitution states: “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish” (U.S. Const. art. III, §1). Furthermore, Article III, Section 2 makes clear that “The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made” (U.S. Const. art. III, §2). The Constitution imbues the legislative branch, under Article I, with the authority to create laws. When the Court expands immunity beyond the text of the Constitution and simultaneously undermines statutory protections and voting rights guarantees, it steps into the legislative domain and unsettles the balance of powers. The logical outcome is a judiciary that enables executive overreach and partisan entrenchment, rather than a judiciary that enforces constitutional limits.
This overreach raises a deeper question: was the chaos unleashed by the Court’s decisions truly accidental, or was it intentional? By shielding presidents and their administrations from accountability, by eroding civil service neutrality, and by permitting racial vote dilution through gerrymandering, the Court effectively provides the wealthiest and most powerful—the so-called one percent—with the unchecked authority they feel entitled to wield. As the Harvard Law Review (2025) observed, the immunity ruling risks normalizing authoritarian practices. When safeguards are stretched beyond their constitutional bounds and democratic mechanisms like fair districting are weakened, protections cease to function as intended. Instead, they become instruments for entrenching privilege, allowing those at the highest levels of government and society to operate above the law while marginalizing communities whose voting power is essential to representative democracy.
Taken together, the convergence of unchecked executive violence, judicially sanctioned immunity, the deliberate lawlessness of cabinet officials who defy court orders, and the Court’s willingness to undermine civil service protections and uphold racially dilutive maps has wrought chaos. It destabilizes the separation of powers, undermines Congress’s constitutional role in declaring war, and signals to the world that the United States tolerates extrajudicial killings under the guise of executive authority. International observers, including Mexico and Colombia, have already condemned these strikes as violations of international law (Al Jazeera, 2025). Moreover, the precedent risks normalizing authoritarian practices. Future presidents may interpret the Court’s immunity ruling as license to employ lethal force without oversight, while partisan mapmaking continues to dilute the voices of people of color, eroding democratic governance and exposing U.S. officials to prosecution in international tribunals.
The Court’s decisions have unintentionally—or perhaps intentionally—enabled a constitutional crisis. By granting expansive immunity, undermining civil service protections, blessing racially dilutive gerrymandering, and emboldening the executive and its cabinet to bypass Congress, defy court orders, and disregard international law, the judiciary has overstepped its constitutional role as arbiter rather than legislator. No one—including the president, his cabinet, the Court, or the elites they empower—should be above the law. The Court must restore constitutional balance and reaffirm accountability.
Respectfully submitted,
DeMecia Wooten-Irizarry, MPA, MSW, LSW
Social Work Policy Practice 
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