Richard Stengel, a former official at the State Department and an evidently current political analyst for MSNBC, was among those expressing outrage and alarm this week after the U.S. Supreme Court said that presidents hold a level of legal immunity — meaning protection from criminal consequences — for some actions in office.

“The entire scope of American history has been to escape from the rule of monarchs with divine immunity—and now this Supreme Court turns back 250 years of history,” Stengel wrote on X, formerly called Twitter.

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts,” said the conservative court majority’s holdings.

The court’s decision teed up new proceedings at the trial level before federal Judge Tanya Chutkan on the question of whether some of the conduct alleged of Trump fell, in fact, within the legal protections for the presidency newly outlined by those high court judges. That outcome means more delay, pushing any trial in the underlying case against Trump off even further. If it’s pushed all the way beyond this year’s presidential election and Trump then wins that race, whatever’s left of the proceedings could be put on ice indefinitely.

There is no trial set in Trump’s other federal criminal case, where he is accused of the mishandling of federal government-originating documents. The judge in that case, Trump-nominated federal Judge Aileen Cannon, is facing intensive criticism for the lack of any scheduled trial date, though various courtroom proceedings are continuing.