Today, Americans celebrate Independence Day, commemorating the Declaration of Independence when the colonists threw off the yoke of King George III. When they crafted it, the framers of the Constitution established three co-equal branches of government to check and balance each other.

But the Supreme Court’s shocking decision in Trump v. United States takes us back to the bad old days of the monarchy. The reactionary supermajority held that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for core official acts, and presumptive immunity for all other official acts.

Donald Trump is charged in federal court with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote for his acts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the six right-wingers, assured us that “the president is not above the law.” But he then proceeded to carve out a zone of immunity even broader than the one Trump’s legal team had sought.

Henceforth, a president will have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts done in the course of carrying out his constitutional powers or implementing a federal statute. “We thus conclude,” Roberts wrote, “that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” That includes commanding the armed forces, granting pardons, appointing ambassadors and members of the Supreme Court, overseeing international diplomacy and intelligence gathering, terrorism, trade and immigration.

A president has presumptive immunity for acts committed in “the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” The burden is on the prosecutor to rebut that presumption of immunity by showing that prosecuting such an act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch,” a tall order.

“It is hard to imagine a criminal prosecution for a President’s official acts that would pose no dangers of intrusion on Presidential authority in the majority’s eyes,” Sonia Sotomayor noted in her impassioned dissent, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

John Roberts, assured us that “the president is not above the law.” But he then proceeded to carve out a zone of immunity even broader than the one Trump’s legal team had sought.

Roberts wrote that conversations between Trump and high-ranking Department of Justice (DOJ) officials (in which he pressured them to declare the........

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