Chief Justice John Roberts famously promised that he would run the highest court like an impartial umpire calling balls and strikes. Instead, Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees have studiously moved forward a radical agenda. This term, the justices in Roberts’ six-three majority not only advanced their priorities, they accomplished them. As a result, Americans now live in a different constitutional order. The court reshaped the government, shifting it away from a multiracial democracy and toward a racially-stratified autocracy.

The Roberts Court is predictable. Not because it follows the law, but because it never passes an opportunity to push its ideological vision. Once you know where Roberts and his colleagues want the country to go, you can figure out how almost every relevant case will end. The roadmap is simple.

First, Roberts and the majority fundamentally disagree with the premise that we have three co-equal branches of government. They believe in the idea of a “unitary executive” with total control over the machinery of government, with the justices themselves serving as the main check on the president. The biggest loser is Congress. Despite it being designed as be the most powerful branch, the court takes every opportunity to trample legislative authority. Second, this court has allies it seeks to help whenever it can, namely, the Republican Party, President Donald Trump, and the wealthiest Americans and the businesses they run. Finally, this majority is animated by a dislike of the Reconstruction amendments, civil rights laws, and using the laws or the Constitution to protect disfavored groups. If they have a chance to strike a blow to a minority group, they take it.

This term, the court didn’t move the ball down the field, they scored tournament-changing goals. In two major cases, Roberts and his allies can claim victories for the conservative movement decades in the making. The country is already feeling the consequences.

The message to Trump was clear: the law is not binding, and we will not stop you from ignoring it.

First, on April 29, the court effectively killed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law that for 61 years guaranteed racial minorities a political voice. In Louisiana v. Callais, the court ruled that states can gerrymander communities of color so that they never have a shot at electing their choice of representative. Not only did the court deal a death blow to the VRA, its ruling also took away Congress’ ability to enforce the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting. The Reconstruction amendments are worth little if the court won’t enforce them and Congress can’t. Yet the Callais decision all but forecloses Congress’ ability to protect voters of color. “I can’t even imagine what statute Congress would enact protecting racial equality in voting, especially when it comes to dilution, that would survive a Supreme Court judgment that will rely on Callais,” said Berkeley law professor Bertrall Ross.

Some Republican-controlled states immediately set about eliminating majority-minority Congressional districts ahead of this year’s midterm elections, including in Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee. But that’s only the beginning. Not only will Congress grow whiter as GOP states, mostly in the South, draw Black and brown people out of power as they were free to do before the VRA, but so will state and local governments. Legislatures, school boards, municipal councils—states can now cut minorities out of all levels of government, rendering them, effectively, subjects rather than equal citizens.

In another case that is an earthquake to government, the court eliminated independent agencies in Trump v. Slaughter. This case fundamentally shifted the balance of federal powers in America,........

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