One might almost think that the United States is determined to prove that even democracies with a constitution, a Supreme Court, and checks and balances can eventually become a caricature of themselves. With the Supreme Court’s decision to ban nationwide injunctions, that is precisely what has happened – a central protective instrument against authoritarian excesses has been discarded, not out of legal necessity but as a political gift to a president who is notoriously indifferent to human rights. What is being sold as a “judicial correction” is in reality a blanket license for the executive – a Trump wish list wrapped in robes. From now on, any right-wing district judge can locally block a liberal reform – but no progressive judge can stop millions from being stripped of their rights nationwide. Welcome to the unconstitutional one-way street.
And while the president triumphantly hails the ruling as “gigantic” – as if it were a new Trump Tower construction project – one of the central questions of our time remains unanswered: can a child born on U.S. soil be denied citizenship because its parents have the wrong documents? In civilized legal systems, that would not even be debatable. In the United States of 2025, however, it is a legal “maybe.” The conservative majority of the court provides no clarity, only leeway. Leeway for isolationism, disenfranchisement, and a politics no longer guided by law but by resentment. It is another chapter in the decline of a country that once proudly claimed to be the “cradle of freedom.” Today, it resembles more a poorly run border regime with a nuclear arsenal.
That rulings were also handed down the same day on laws protecting children from online pornography, on religious parental rights, and on the funding of school Wi-Fi is clearly meant to create the appearance of judicial balance. But the direction is unmistakable: more control for the state, less protection for the vulnerable. What remains is the image of a democracy that, to the applause of its institutions, casts off its shackles – not to be freer, but to govern more ruthlessly. And a president who, after each dismantling of the rule of law, does not flinch, but demands applause. Anyone still talking about the “American dream” should ask themselves whether it has not long since become a Kafkaesque nightmare – just with fast food, FOX News, and flag-waving patriotism.
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