It's easy to keep gawking at the clowns — that's what they're there for. Trump's second-term act is nothing if not loud: the rallies still roar, the tariffs still clatter through the midway, the press still gets pelted with rotten peanuts. The crowd laughs, boos, and hurls popcorn. Same circus, right? Just another summer under the Big Top.

But look past the gaudy banners and spotlights. Underneath, stagehands in solemn black robes are quietly rearranging the tent poles. They're sawing down the supports, pulling out the old pegs, stretching new canvas that bows only to a single ringmaster. The spectacle you're watching is no longer just a circus. It's a soft, velvet coronation.

Because while the clown-in-chief never stops mugging for cameras, it's the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court that's been busy drafting the real program — one that replaces constitutional checks and balances with a gilded sceptre, then slips it neatly into Trump's greasy hands.

The robed riggers and their gift of kingly powers

None of this happened overnight. For decades, the conservative legal carnival — complete with its barkers, policy booths, and dark-money patrons — plotted to reshape the judiciary. They worked tirelessly, not to keep the clown show in check, but to ensure the next ringmaster would stride across a stage cleared of trip wires.

Now their rigging is paying off. This Court undercut Chevron deference, hobbling agencies so thoroughly they can barely interpret their marching orders without risking a judicial smackdown. It's the Court that piled procedural hoops so high that lawsuits against presidential overreach now tumble into the sawdust before ever reaching the trapeze platform. And the Court trimmed back voting rights while nodding approvingly to state legislatures happily redrawing districts into serpentine funhouse mirrors.

For Trump, it's a windfall. Not because he appreciates the finer points of administrative law — he couldn't tell a major questions doctrine from a major hot dog eating contest. No, for him it's simpler: the high court cleared out the tent stakes, flattened the ground, and left him the only performer on the centre ring. He doesn't have to read the script. He just has to sign it.

Lower courts still squeak — sometimes

Not every court has signed up to usher in this grotesque performance. Lower-court federal judges, here and there, still try to sound the alarm. In just the last few months, district courts blocked ICE raids that bulldozed right over statutory procedures, paused a new round of union-busting aimed at federal workers, and scolded efforts to funnel taxpayer cash to handpicked faith contractors without even bothering with public oversight.

But these are the squeaks of mice under the bleachers. The larger machinery — the appellate circuits increasingly packed with Trump's appointees — can wheel around and snuff these rulings faster than a ringmaster stomping on a clown's squeaky shoe. And should any stubborn district decision survive that gauntlet, the Supreme Court is ready with its so-called shadow docket, dispatching unsigned orders in the dead of night that reverse lower courts with all the transparency of a back-alley card game.

The result? A growing resignation among watchdogs, unions, immigration attorneys, and even the occasional civic-minded business group. Why haul your case into the big tent if it's likely to be tripped up in the sawdust, buried by technicalities, or strangled by procedural garlands before the first horn sounds?

Meanwhile, Trump's strategists juggle judges like bowling pins

Of course, Trump's crew isn't just passively enjoying this judicial remodel — they're dancing across the midway, hurling suits and injunctions like confetti. Stephen Miller and his America First Legal troupe, plus a caravan of boutique law firms and think tanks, have become experts at using the courts not just as referees but as participants in the show.

Need to carve out a regulatory loophole? File a challenge in a handpicked circuit. Want to stall a state probe into dubious campaign finances? Sling up an injunction and watch the months drift by. If things get hot, stonewall subpoenas and dare the court to hold you in contempt — odds are the high court's robed stagehands will wave you along anyway.

Consider how Miller's network deftly froze adverse rulings on immigration with carefully plotted filings. Or how they tie up cases so long that, by the time a judgment finally limps out of the funhouse, the policy's already been replaced by some new monstrosity. This legal manipulation isn't deterred by judicial review, because it's a travelling sideshow that knows exactly how to rig the rigging.

The new normal: ignoring court orders outright

More alarming is how outright defiance is fast becoming another act under Trump's Big Top. In Trump's first maladministration, agencies would slow-walk compliance with rulings, perhaps losing a few elephants on the parade route but eventually lumbering into line. Now, they don't even bother with the pretence.

ICE has been caught deporting migrants despite explicit federal stays. The DOJ shrugs off deadlines to produce documents with the lazy disdain of a ringmaster who knows no one's checking the safety net. Cabinet officials stand at press microphones, grin for the crowd, and brush off judges' rulings with a casual wave, secure that enforcing accountability is politically radioactive and judicial self-defence often stops short of a real bite.

This is how the rule of law decays: not by spectacle, but by tedium — the daily grind of ignored orders and unenforced judgments that hollow out public faith until constitutional norms become little more than faded posters flapping on the tent walls.

Meanwhile, polls still show that Americans overwhelmingly believe the president must obey court decisions. That gap between public expectation and executive practice is the absolute void over which the Big Top is being constructed.

The creeping elective monarchy under the tent

Add it all up, and what you have isn't a lurid dictatorship stomped into place by jackboots, but something subtler: a slow conversion from a constitutional republic to an elective monarchy. Trump is the perfect occupant for this new throne. He craves fealty, pageantry, and a crowd to roar at his every pratfall. He has no patience for ideology, which means he's an ideal vessel for others, like Miller, to pour their darker agendas into.

But none would be possible without the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority. They're the real engineers of this transformation, carefully adjusting the tent ropes and slicing away checks and balances that once kept the ringmaster on his high wire.

These justices don't shout. They issue measured, solemn opinions about the separation of powers and original meaning, even as they quietly shear away the very cords that tie presidential power to any democratic accountability. They are the softest-spoken carnies in the lot, which makes them even more dangerous.

The real act behind the clown

So, by all means, keep watching Trump's clown show. It's loud, gaudy, and forever lurching toward new scandalous pratfalls. But know this: the clown is only there to hold your gaze. The true feat happens under dim lanterns, where robed hands rearrange the rigging, swap the safety nets for gilded carpets, and prepare the centre ring for coronation.

If Trump's first presidency was a reckless experiment in how far norms could bend, this encore shows how easily they break when the stage crew actively wants them to. With each new ruling, the Supreme Court's majority hands the executive branch a bigger sceptre, a fancier cloak, fewer barriers, and a wink that says: "Proceed, Your Majesty — we'll sweep up after."

Long after the clown packs up his makeup kit and lumbers out of town, we'll still live under this tent. Only by then will the ticket booth not sell you an entry to a circus. It'll be the admissions desk to a palace, and you'll pay for the privilege of kneeling inside.

~Dunneagin

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🗣 Political satire that stings. Essays, mock memos, and podcasts chronicling the slow implosion of the American Republic — in English.