Trump had always been above the law, until it turned on him | Rebecca Solnit

At its best, the US has strived to become a perfect union with equality and justice for all. At its worst, the elite have pursued the opposite goals

If you actually believe the ringing words of the founding document of this country, that all men are created equal, then we must all be equal before the law, neither above it nor below it - neither immune to prosecution nor without the law's protections.

And yet, some have always been below the law since the Declaration of Independence was written. That document speaks of men in ways that exclude women, who in that era were largely controlled by fathers and husbands, and the Black people who were enslaved for another 87 years, and the Native Americans who faced genocide and dispossession into the 20th and, arguably, the 21st centuries.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell's Roses