A republic imperiled Elie Mystal captured the tenor of our times in a single Formerly Twitter post Monday afternoon: On the first ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday thankfully and logically ruled unanimously that former U.S. presidents, Donald “91 Counts” Trump specifically, are not immune from criminal prosecution. “SAVE PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY!” the would-be potentate declared immediately on his social network. You first have to have it to save it, Donald. Yes, Trump will appeal to “his” justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, and must by Monday, the Appeals Court ruled. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write at Slate: The justices must now decide whether to halt the new ruling—an act that seems likely to push Trump’s criminal trial past the 2024 election—or allow proceedings at the trial court to move forward at a pace that might affect the election’s outcome. In theory, this call is purely procedural; in reality, due to the compressed timeline here, it may well determine Trump’s fate. If the former president persuades the justices to freeze the case before Judge Tanya Chutkan for months, then wins the election, he will undoubtedly exploit his office to scrap the prosecution. Once again, SCOTUS holds his fate in its hands. It does so on the very same week it will hear a different case about his removal from the ballot. Which references the second part of Mystal’s quip. But we’ll come back to that. While it’s impossible to predict how the…