The Constitution Doesn't Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court

[elleng]

In case after case over the past eight months, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court have acquiesced to President Trump’s lawless and authoritarian actions, often without offering any explanation. The court has allowed the administration to summarily deport migrants to countries where they have no connection. It has condoned racial profiling by federal immigration officers. And it has suggested that it will jettison 90 years of precedent by holding that the president can fire, without cause, the heads of independent agencies.

The combination of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian moves and the Supreme Court’s authorization of them has produced, for many, a deepening despair. But here is the essential fact: The Constitution’s meaning is not the Supreme Court’s alone to define. It belongs to “we the people.” And when we organize collectively, we can change it, even without ratifying formal amendments. The text, structure and history of the Constitution already contain broad commitments to democracy, equal protection and liberty. Collective mobilization can make those promises real. . .

*Skeptics will say that changing the Constitution is unrealistic. History proves otherwise. From abolitionists to suffragists, from labor organizers to civil-rights activists, generations of Americans have transformed the Constitution through vision, struggle and persistence — without waiting for the Supreme Court’s permission. They did not begin with majority support either in the court or across the nation, yet through conviction and politics they reshaped public opinion and, ultimately, the law itself.

Our Constitution is not dying. It is waiting — waiting for us to claim it. The conservative majority on the court may seek to freeze us in a past of hierarchy and exclusion, or to accede to a vision of the executive as king. But the best reading of the Constitution, and the history of the people who have fought to fulfill it, point in another direction: toward a more democratic, more equal, more free America. . .

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/opinion/constitution-trump-supreme-court.html