This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, The Fallout.

It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the lawlessness of the current Donald Trump administration. Whether it’s Elon Musk’s attempted hostile takeover of the Treasury Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming leadership over USAID, or the baker’s dozen of outrageously unconstitutional executive orders signed by Trump so far, the first three weeks of his administration have been intentionally, dangerously chaotic.

It’s a power grab and heist of the federal government. And its foundations lay firmly in the anti-abortion and conservative legal movements.

Authoritarianism doesn’t take hold overnight, and in many ways the Supreme Court paved the way for it to solidify here through its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The entire case is a study in how the conservative movement soft-launched authoritarianism. First, the Court allowed Mississippi and the conservative legal movement to change their argument from upholding the state’s 15-week abortion ban within the confines of Roe v. Wade to overturning Roe altogether. This happened once Justice Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the bench and it was clear the Court had a conservative supermajority to overturn precedent. Then, when it was clear Chief Justice John Roberts was trying to broker a compromise opinion that would preserve at least some of Roe—and what was left of the Court’s integrity—someone leaked a draft of the opinion to the press.

That move wasn’t about changing minds or whipping up public outrage. It was about sending a signal to Roberts and other conservatives that it was time to get in line. And when the opinion was finally, formally released? Nothing in it had changed. It was full of the same shoddy logic and bad writing as its draft. Justice Sam Alito didn’t even bother to clean it up at all.

The Dobbs playbook rewrote the rules and the law by overturning Roe. And doing so helped to soft launch the constitutional assault we’re living through in these first weeks of the second Trump administration. Conservatives made it very clear with Dobbs that they don’t think the rules apply to them, and that they would govern accordingly. Trump, Musk, and their minions are doing the same now.

Brute force and bad thinking: These are the hallmarks of both the Roberts Court and the Trump/Musk administration.