The following essay has been adapted and excerpted from Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights , published last month by Bold Type Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

Chief Justice John Roberts has been working for years to ensure that a president’s power is as unchecked as possible. Roberts has advanced the unitary executive theory, which basically envisions a president who can fire anyone in the executive branch at any time at will. Project 2025, which Donald Trump repeatedly denied ties to during his run for the White House in 2024, asserted that a president has absolute authority over the executive branch and all of its employees. It called on Trump to demand that the Roberts court formally overrule

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