I have never been more concerned about the rule of law in the United States.

I was born in 1969 — five years after the Civil Rights Act was passed — and I have no memory of the legal system operated in the Jim Crow South, when there was one code of justice for white Americans and a different set of laws for Black Americans. The very idea of justice in the old Confederacy was a sad joke. The white establishment took care of its own.

There was a distinct moment on Monday night when I stopped taking various legal notes on President Trump’s executive orders and realized that we may well be facing a different game entirely — one far more reminiscent of the Old South than any system of American justice I’ve experienced in my lifetime.

We’re still far from those dark days, but we’re walking in that direction. Trump’s mass pardons and commutations of Jan. 6 insurrectionists and his revocation of John Bolton’s security detail have changed the calculus.

Let’s be clear about what Trump did here. Bolton has faced threats from an American enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, he was the target of an assassination plot by a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in 2022. At the same time that he was taking away Bolton’s Secret Service protection, Trump granted absolution to men and women who violently attacked the seat of American government and tried to foment a rebellion against the lawful, constitutional government of the United States.

Trump’s pardon broke with recent presidential precedent in two important ways. First, while numerous presidents have issued embarrassing, abusive and potentially corrupt pardons, Trump pardoned people who committed acts of political violence on his behalf. He pardoned the seditious shock troops of an attempted coup.

Second, he issued the pardons on Day 1. The worst presidential pardons are typically issued when a president is on his way out the door. They’re a last-minute indulgence for family, friends, fund-raisers and political allies, granted when the president’s political career is over.