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By Bill Walczak
Reporter Columnist
During this year’s campaign, President Trump told voters again and to act as if he were still on the ballot, and they did. But he remains president, and despite the large majority of Democrats in the new Congress, their number is not enough to override a veto.
So, even as Democrats go about creating a new vision for the country that reverses some of the most odious aspects of Trumpism, the re-direction of American politics will likely have to wait until a new president is elected.
What cannot wait is a process to correct the rampant corruption in the executive branch. Polls showed that corruption was the most or second most important reason to vote this year. As we move to the new Congress, we need to determine how it can be corrected. And because this will likely require changes to the Constitution, the process needs to start now. This will involve putting amendments in front of the states for approval, and changes to the Supreme Court.
Reversing the Citizens United decision would be a good place to start. In its 5-4 decision in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of corporations, labor unions, and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent political communications and elections, though it preserved limits on direct contributions to candidates. Thus began the era of the “super PACs,” when millions of dollars pour into Political Action Committees to support or oppose political candidates.
A typical expenditure by a super PAC is an attack TV ad on a candidate that allows the opponent plausible deniability when the ad exaggerates or outright lies. The fact that the money had to be separate from the candidate’s campaign meant that there could not be actual coordination between a candidate’s campaign and the super PAC, though this year the Supreme Court allowed coordination between super PACs and political parties, thus erasing even the flimsy separation of the super PAC and candidate expenditures.
The result? More than $11 billion in the recent midterm election for campaign advertising, up from $2.7 billion in 2024. Most of the money came from billionaires wanting to preserve their tax breaks and their access and control over politicians.
These donations are transactional. In April 2024, Trump met with oil and gas executives at Mar-a-Lago and asked for a billion dollars for his presidential campaign in exchange for rolling back environmental restrictions and favoring the fossil fuel industry. The executives delivered millions to his campaign. This year, the Trump administration allocated $2 billion in tax dollars to eliminate wind power, paying one wind power company $900 million to stop its project.
Among other actions, Trump declared a national energy emergency to allow fossil fuel permitting without environmental review. Though this transaction smells of corruption, it is, in fact, all legal.
Another Supreme Court decision that needs reversal is the 2024 decision that made all official acts of a president immune from criminal prosecution. Trump’s efforts to get then Vice President Pence to alter election results in 2024? Immune. Urging the Jan. 6, 2021, crowd to attack the Capitol? Immune. Create the regulations that allow you to make more than a billion dollars in 2025 from cryptocurrency? Immune.
During the Supreme Court deliberations, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Trump’s defense attorney, D. John Sauer, if ordering the military to assassinate a political rival would count as an official act. Sauer responded that it would “depend on the hypothetical.” Most of us thought that in the United States, no one is above the law. This is clearly no longer the case.
Trump has also made a mockery of the constitutional provision for pardons. He has turned it into an oval office industry. While he’s not the first to abuse this provision (see Joe Biden and Bill Clinton), Trump’s flagrant abuse of the power to pardon should result in its elimination from presidential powers. There are no checks and balances on this monarchial power.
The corruption goes way beyond pardoning the 1,600 people who attacked the Capitol, or the fundraisers, friends, and relatives of Trump. Or even pardoning the former president of Honduras in November of 2025, who had been convicted of drug trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, followed by kidnapping the president of Venezuela the following January on charges that he trafficked cocaine.
Pardoning is now a Trump business. Trump influencers get paid millions of dollars to advocate for a pardon for criminals. The mother of a man convicted of tax crimes and nursing home violations paid $1 million to go to a Trump fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, where she asked for clemency for her son. Three weeks later the son got an unconditional pardon that also eliminated $4.4 million in restitution for his crimes. Another nursing home scoundrel owed $30 million in payroll taxes, left 17 bodies in a morgue, was banned from billing Medicaid, and was sentenced to three years in prison. He hired a Trump influencer for $1 million, was pardoned after serving three weeks of his three-year sentence, was invited to the White House for a party, and didn’t have to pay the back taxes.
Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini sought clemency after being charged with federal felony bribery and pleading guilty to a campaign finance violation in 2025. His family gave $3.5 million to the Trump super PAC and donated to the White House ballroom project, then followed that by hiring Alina Habba, a former Trump personal lawyer and senior advisor to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Habba’s contract will pay her $50 million. A few weeks later, Trump granted Velutini a full and unconditional pardon.
Of course, the Trump administration denies any wrongdoing in all the pardons that Trump has granted. That being said, I can’t imagine what Trump will do with this kingly power in his last two years as president, though I suspect his enablers will all get pardons.
The founders of the United States worried about corruption and created a Constitution with checks and balances that they believed could prevent it. They didn’t anticipate a Supreme Court that would make the president above the law and allow monarchial powers, or the creation of an oligarchy with unlimited financial resources.
We’re in new territory here. This Supreme Court cannot be trusted to guard against corruption wrought by unlimited money from a rising plutocracy. Extending presidential powers has shown to be dangerous for maintaining our democracy.
It’s time to expand the court. Article III of the Constitution does not set a fixed number of Supreme Court justices, which means that Congress can change the number, so long as the president signs it. In fact, during the first century of our republic, the number changed several times from as few as six to as many as ten. It wasn’t at nine until 1869.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed but failed to add up to six additional justices, one for every member of the Supreme Court over the age of 70. There have been recent efforts to increase the number to 13, which relates to the number of federal court circuits.
Corruption is destructive to government. Our current Supreme Court has made decisions that have created corrupt practices and given the president monarchial powers. Trump can order staff to act corruptly and pardon them. It will take several years for constitutional amendments to fix these problems and a new president to change the Court. Again, it’s time to begin the process.
Copyright © 2026 Boston Neighborhood News, Inc. This content may not be re-published or re-used without written permission.
