The Judge Who Opened the Gate - How John Roberts Paved Donald Trump’s Way Back to Power

In the coming years, there will be many explanations for why the United States, at this moment of all moments, once again entrusted power to a man who openly announces that he intends to dismantle the rules of democracy. People will point to social tensions, rising prices, and the growing influence of far right groups. But one name belongs in every single one of these explanations: John Roberts. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has spent the past decade and a half undermining a foundation that once seemed unshakable to millions of Americans. And it is precisely this fading trust, this erosion at the base, that prepared the ground on which Donald Trump was able to rise again in 2024.

The Supreme Court was never just a court, but under Roberts it became a political power center that gradually destroyed key safeguards. Decisions that once would have been seen as intrusions into the democratic order became routine. What began as an exception became the norm, and at some point people realized that the country had quietly changed. The first major turning point came in 2010. The decision to allow corporations and billionaires to spend practically unlimited sums on elections was a blow to the core of the democratic balance. Within a few years, the balance of power shifted dramatically. Campaigns became more expensive, more opaque, and less meaningful to ordinary citizens. The influence of the richest Americans grew beyond measure. The 2024 election pushed this development to its peak: never before had so much outside money flowed into a campaign. And hardly any candidate benefited more from it than Donald Trump. His promises to the biggest financiers of his campaign - softening environmental regulations, fulfilling lobbying wishes, political favors - stood in stark contrast to what was once considered protection against corruption. But the Supreme Court had torn down exactly those protective walls.

Three years later came the next attack on the democratic order. The ruling that eliminated the key protection clause of the Voting Rights Act struck at the heart of American civil rights. The oversight of election changes in states that had spent decades systematically suppressing minorities vanished. The effect was immediate: new barriers, new exclusion, new inequality. Millions of people - especially in cities and communities with large Black and Hispanic populations - suddenly faced elections that no longer felt free, but like discouraging obligations. Many spent hours in lines because polling stations had been closed or moved. It was a quiet but determined step back into a time the country believed it had left behind.

The Supreme Court also intervened where the fundamentals of political competition were at stake. When the opportunity arose to limit extreme gerrymandering, Roberts decided that federal courts should stay out of it. This cleared the way for maps that reflected not the will of the voters but partisan calculations. The effect can be measured: Republicans gained a lasting advantage in the House of Representatives. Competitive districts vanished, extreme candidates rose to the top, and Congress became a place where compromise was increasingly impossible. The consequences became visible in the years that followed - and they prepared the ground for a politics driven only by loyalty, volume, and threats.

But the most consequential decision came only after Donald Trump had already begun his attempt to remain in power despite losing in 2020. The question of whether a president could be held criminally responsible for actions taken while in office had never seriously been in doubt. But the Supreme Court kept delaying the case, giving Trump valuable time. Then, in the summer of 2024, came the ruling that will go down in history: a president enjoys far reaching immunity for so called official acts. The consequence is brutal: even the most serious offenses remain without criminal consequences as long as they can be linked in any way to the office. It was a ruling that paved the way for the idea of an untouchable presidency - and thus for the political comeback of a man who knew exactly how to exploit that gap.

America did not simply elect a politician in 2024. It chose a path that was only possible because trust in the democratic rules had been weakened over many years. A country that leaves its citizens behind when they want to vote, when they seek political participation, when they hope that power will remain limited, eventually creates a mood in which many people say: it does not matter anymore. And it is precisely in that climate that figures like Donald Trump flourish.

But what the current polling shows are fractures - real fractures - in Trump’s support within the Republican Party. His net approval rating among Republicans has fallen by more than 20 points since January. (As of November 21, 2025)

The irony is unmistakable: John Roberts, who wanted to be seen as a defender of the institution, spent years weakening it - and now he is one of the few who could still draw a line in the coming chapter of the country’s history. But anyone who wants to understand how America arrived at this moment cannot avoid one conclusion: Donald Trump’s return is also the work of a jurisprudence that slowly tore away the ground beneath the democracy.

America now faces a future shaped by a president who has more power than any occupant of the office before him. And the judge who enabled this development will be one of the few who might still restrain it. But history already shows where his decisions have led.