上周，最高法院维持了一项初步禁令，阻止美国邮政署实施一项拟议计划。该计划将改革美国人的邮寄投票方式。法院驳回了特朗普在中期选举前限制邮寄投票的企图。特朗普将自己在2020年的败选归咎于邮寄投票，并称败选是舞弊和非公民非法投票造成的。去年，他在Truth Social平台上写道：“只要采用邮寄选票或邮寄投票，选举就绝不可能诚实。”
Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a preliminary injunction to block a proposed plan from the United States Postal Service to overhaul the way Americans are allowed to vote by mail, rejecting President Trump’s attempt to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections. Trump blames mail-in voting for his 2020 defeat, which he attributes to fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens. “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform last year.
每逢最高法院让特朗普铩羽而归，人们便会讨论法院与总统之间的关系。法院是否像批评者所指责的那样对总统俯首听命？它是否真的像反对者所指控的那样强化了特朗普的权力？
Whenever the Supreme Court hands Trump a defeat, there is a debate over the court’s relationship to the president. Is it as deferential as critics charge? Has it actually empowered Trump, as his opponents allege?
法院的维护者否认这一点，并援引总统对最高法院的攻击作为证据，称大法官们挫败了他的目标与抱负。如果最高法院一直在阻止总统滥用行政权，那么人们又怎能指责法院偏袒特朗普呢？
Defenders of the court say no, and point to the president’s attacks on the Supreme Court as evidence that the justices have frustrated his aims and aspirations. If the Supreme Court has been an obstacle to the president’s executive overreach, then how could you accuse the court of any pro-Trump bias?
答案是，不能脱离政治背景来分析法院的判决。具体而言，必须考虑大法官们如何影响特朗普自身的决策。
The answer is that you can’t analyze the court’s decisions in a political vacuum. Specifically, you have to take account of how the justices have shaped Trump’s own decision-making.
特朗普以威权方式行使行政权力，只是部分源于他把自己视为强人的自我认知。其余影响则来自最高法院的司法判例，尤其是该院在2024年特朗普第三次竞选总统期间作出的“特朗普诉美国案”判决。该判决使总统不会因“公务行为”而受到刑事起诉。首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨及保守派多数派的辩护者称，这项判决的适用范围相当狭窄：豁免权仅涵盖总统的“核心职责”，超出这些职责的行为，总统仍可能被依法追究责任。但这种拆分式解读忽略了法院判决在现实世界中的实际影响。
Trump’s authoritarian exercise of executive power is only partly a function of his sense of himself as a strongman. The rest comes from the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, specifically its decision in Trump v. United States in 2024, when he was running for president a third time. In that ruling, the court shielded the executive from criminal prosecution for “official acts.” Defenders of Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority say that the ruling is quite narrow — that immunity covers only the executive’s “core duties” and that outside of those, the president can still be held legally accountable. But this parsing ignores how court decisions play out in the real world.
政治生活不是法律研讨会。一项本可能范围狭窄、限制有限的裁决，却被一位候任总统视为一项授权，允许他按照自己最具威权色彩的政治冲动采取行动。上述内容出自我在新闻部门工作的同事玛吉·哈伯曼和乔纳森·斯旺所著的《政权更迭：唐纳德·特朗普的帝王总统任内内幕》。
Political life is not a legal seminar. What might have been issued as a narrow, limited decision was read — by one soon-to-be president — as a mandate to act on his most authoritarian impulses. This is from “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” by my news-side colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
特朗普在掌握和失去权力的那些年中学到了至关重要的经验。而他的第二个任期将与他原本可能在2021年开启的第二个任期截然不同。到了2025年，他已无须再担心调查；这个由他本人亲手改造的最高法院已经赋予美国总统广泛豁免权，使其不会因任内采取的行动而受到刑事起诉。
Trump had learned vital lessons during his years in and out of power. And his second term in office would be nothing like a second term he might have commenced in 2021. In 2025, he wouldn’t have to worry about investigations; the Supreme Court that he himself had transformed had granted the President of the United States broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office.
特朗普对单方面行政权的依赖，以及他强势扩张这种权力的种种企图，都是在“特朗普诉美国案”的背景下展开的。
Trump’s reliance on unilateral executive power, and his aggressive attempts to expand it, play out against the backdrop of Trump v. United States.