In the aftermath of the Roberts Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, it’s clearer than ever that the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority is willing to use its power to halt the coming backlash to the second Trump regime’s catastrophic first two years in power. Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues are all in: They’ll do whatever it takes to guard the Republican Party against the political consequences of their shameful capitulation, and the accelerating authoritarian entropy of the moment.

Kate Ertmann of Dame Magazine wrote back in September 2025 about authoritarian regimes and the cults of personalities that drive them. Every authoritarian regime in modern history has started its reign with maximum energy that can make it appear invulnerable. The second Trump regime has been no different.

“When a system is relatively new, like the Trump regime, there’s a lot of energy that keeps its pendulum slowly swinging on the functional side,” Ertmann wrote, nine months after Trump was sworn in for a second term and four years after his failed attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. “But, as it is in the lifecycle of all systems, as time passes, a regime’s pendulum swing will begin to have diminishing returns.”

These regimes, bucking or outright ignoring small-d democratic norms, need people to believe they do not have a “sensitive underbelly,” as Ertmann writes. They know they have one, however, and like an animal fighting for its life, they will do anything and everything to protect that vulnerable underbelly, or to make their opponents believe there is no underbelly at all.

In the summer of 2026, we are seeing the entropy of the Trump regime in real time. Federal courts defying the regime at every turn: Trump’s name being torn off the Kennedy Center, for instance, and congressional Republicans refusing to confirm the president’s choice to lead U.S. intelligence. Trump and his goons have drastically overplayed their hand, interpreting the results of the 2024 election as an ironclad mandate from the American people to eviscerate constitutional governance and reshape the nation in the image of the man who wants you to believe he is sovereign.