John Adams, father, lawyer and patriot, first called for an annual festival to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He predicted fireworks and games, bonfires and bells, “pomp and parade” on the Fourth of July. But he also famously told his wife, Abigail, there should be a moment for “solemn acts of devotion.” As we look to celebrate this critical milestone 248 years later, we would highlight one such opportunity.

Perhaps after the picnics or trips to the community pool and before we gather to watch any spectacle in the night sky, we take a moment to consider the words of another who loves this country. She was born in the South Bronx, the daughter of a nurse and tool-and-die worker. In elementary school, she decided she wanted to be a judge and eventually became the first Latina to serve on this nation’s highest court.

In her illuminating recent dissent in the presidential immunity case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision she regarded as a “five alarm fire” had not only limited the scope of potential criminal charges facing former President Donald Trump but potentially allowed him or any president to become “king above the law.” This was clearly not as the founders intended, this possibility of a “law free zone around the president,” she wrote. Yet, the conservative majority had not only set this new standard but also dragged out the proceedings, so it is now unlikely that Trump will face a trial for the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising prior to the election.

“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she wrote.

Was Sotomayor alarmist? Her example of a president ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival (a hypothetical that came up during oral arguments) would seem highly unlikely. Still, the court’s newly broadened view of a president’s “official actions” certainly makes it within the realm of possibilities if the person in authority were truly unscrupulous. A president designates someone as an enemy of the state, a terrorist, or a national security risk, and he then authorizes a military unit to deal with the threat. How easily can such behavior now be judged outside official duties and thus open to criminal prosecution?

Yes, this sounds like the plot of a cheap paperback thriller, the kind you read once and pass along. But what if, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, democracy ends not with a bang but with a whimper? How can this court’s continued rightward shift and disinterest in precedence not be observed by Trump as a sign of approval? How can it not embolden someone so frequently unbound by convention (and sound judgment)? Whatever one may think of President Joe Biden’s shaky performance in last week’s debate, his statement hours after the court’s ruling rang true and loud, clear and forceful, beginning with the words, “I dissent!”

The very idea that there would be no accountability for Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election ought to enrage the electorate. Not just Democrats. Not just those who hold the 45th president in disdain. But anyone who cares about the future of our democracy. What’s happening now, right before our eyes, is clear enough: An ex-president with an authoritarian streak need only drag out legal proceedings, get help from a compliant court, and then return to office with the help of his faithful supporters to grant pardons to himself and others. And what happens next? There is already talk of vengeance on political enemies and a Project 2025 purge of career civil servants replaced by political loyalists. Deportations and detention camps, a deepening assault on reproductive rights, and an unholy alliance with Vladimir Putin. In short, a Trump unbound.

“Now the American people will have to do what the court should have been willing to do and would not: Americans will have to render a judgment about Donald Trump’s behavior,” Biden said in his Monday night address. But will they, given how so many voters now see Biden as weak and in need of a last-minute replacement? Is his message being heard?

That is why spending a few minutes reading Justice Sotomayor’s words — including her plea simply to require presidents to operate within the parameters of federal criminal law — might be the best way to spend a holiday, a day to ponder history in the making. “Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory,” Adams once wrote. Sotomayor’s reasoned call to action is a fine place to find that illumination today.