TO: JOHN ROBERTS

FROM: ROOK T. WINCHESTER

Dear John,

You didn’t just bend the law — you throttled it, stuffed it in a shallow grave, and left the dirt loose so everyone could smell the rot.

You once swore you were just an umpire. Now you’re the grave digger of the Republic, whistling hymns while you shovel constitutional rights into the earth. Your robe isn’t a uniform of neutrality anymore — it’s a funeral shroud, and you’re the one sewing it tighter around our throats.

When you handed Trump his golden “get out of jail free” card in Trump v. United States, you didn’t defend separation of powers, you dynamited it. You turned the presidency into a crime syndicate and the Court into its legal laundromat. “Official acts” now cover everything from murder to treason — as long as the orange mob boss signs it with his stubby fingers. That isn’t jurisprudence, it’s a gangster’s IOU scribbled in Latin.

And then you doubled down. Yesterday, you and your co-conspirators slipped the Fourth Amendment into a wood chipper. You told ICE agents they could hunt people like animals, scanning for brown skin, foreign words, or the wrong paycheck. You didn’t just legalize profiling — you industrialized it. You’ve turned neighborhoods into open-air checkpoints and lives into target practice.

Don’t flatter yourself with “shadow docket” mystique. It’s not shadow, it’s sewage. You pumped raw authoritarian runoff straight into the bloodstream of democracy. Emergency orders are supposed to be rare; under you they’re the drive-thru window of tyranny — no arguments, no deliberation, just a bag of grease-stained orders handed out in the dark.

And what’s left of your soul, John? Do you even hear it scream when you hand Trump another weapon? Or has it gone quiet, like a hostage gagged in the basement of your conscience? Maybe you drown it out with Blackstone quotes, pretending you’re a scholar while the rest of us know you’re just the undertaker polishing a corpse to make fascism look respectable.

Mark my words: when history gets to your chapter, there won’t be balance, there won’t be nuance. There will be a single sentence, etched like a curse: John Roberts helped bury American democracy alive.

Sleep tight, John. The Constitution you strangled will be clawing at your coffin lid long after you’re gone.

Unforgivingly,
Rook T. Winchester
Editor-in-Chief, Closer to the Edge

P.S. Wipe that fucking smirk off your face. That isn’t wisdom — it’s the rictus grin of a man watching freedom choke to death and mistaking it for a punchline.

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