Are we in a Constitutional crisis right now? At this moment? Have we already crossed the red line signaling the potential end to our democracy? This question has been asked and answered multiple times in the past few months.

Inexplicably, there are those who continue to resist the urge to answer: “Yes.” They claim that, among other things, we must wait for the final judgements of the courts, allow them to adjudicate the lawsuits against Trump all the up to the Supreme Court, and wait and see what Trump does at that point — before making the call. Only if Trump refuses to obey at that point — has the crisis point been reached. For now, they urge caution, lest we overreact. According to them, we are currently only in danger of a crisis. One has yet to arrive.

If only that were true. The truth is that these “head-in-the-sand” political cowards have set an absurdly high bar — especially in reaction to someone as clearly and deliberately disparaging of the law and the Constitution as Trump.

When a President repeatedly does things that are plainly illegal and blatantly unconstitutional — and continues to defend these actions with phony justifications even after courts (including the Supreme Court) have almost universally ruled against him — and subsequently proceeds to issue further illegal executive actions on an almost daily basis, with an almost gleeful disdain — and then threatens prosecution against the very judges opposing his rulings — that is already more than sufficient to declare that we are in a crisis. The threat to our democracy is at our doorstep, with a battering ram.

As J. Michael Luttig lays it all out, in a stunning and frightening new article in The Atlantic, even if Trump ultimately loses in court, and even if he acknowledges those losses, it will be too late. That’s why we cannot not afford to minimize or ignore Trump’s actions — not for even another day:

“No court in the land will ever uphold any of these executive orders, and Trump knows that. He knows he need not win any of these cases in court to achieve what he wants. He will ruin the lives and livelihoods of lawyers and other American citizens and upend these institutions long before the courts render their final decisions on these orders. That’s his whole point.”

Trump has made it crystal clear: When it comes to a contest between the rule of law and the rule of Trump, the President is the unequivocal winner. He, and he alone, gets to decide what is or is not lawful. This is the very definition of a dictatorship.

“Donald Trump may wish he could dictate his unconscionable global tariffs; dispense with due process and deport whomever he pleases, citizen and not; and vanish away huge swaths of the federal government without check or rebuke. He may wish he did not have to contend with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the free press, or the Constitution’s birthright-citizenship guarantee. He may wish he could ignore the Constitution’s elections clauses and run America’s elections from the White House. And he may wish he could intimidate the nation’s lawyers and law firms from challenging his abuse of power and commandeer them to do his personal bidding.”

He may wish that. But we cannot grant him his wishes.

“After these first three tyrannical, lawless months of this presidency, surely Americans can understand now that Donald Trump is going to continue to decimate America for the next three-plus years. He will continue his assault on America, its democracy, and rule of law until the American people finally rise up and say, ‘No more.’ ”