(Originally published by The Mercury News on July 3, 2025.)

Americans are getting ready to celebrate the founding of our country this week. Unfortunately, by then it will be too late. American democracy died last week, just shy of this country’s 249th birthday.

Perhaps you missed it.

That’s easy to do with all the chaos Trump has created in just five months — most recently, dropping bombs in a desperate attempt to distract from his plummeting popularity.

The first critical turning point was easy to miss, because it didn’t announce itself. Rather, it was buried in a Supreme Court case on the so-called “shadow docket” called Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D.

Continue reading the opinion here.