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“A liberal group on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing he is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the U.S. Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an ‘insurrection.’…
“The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, helped ensure civil rights for freed slaves — and eventually for all people in the United States. But it also was used to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress after the Civil War and taking over the government against which they had just rebelled.” AP News
Last month, two right-leaning law professors released an article arguing that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment bars Trump from office. SSRN
The right is critical of attempts to keep Trump off the ballot.
“Attempting to keep Trump off the ballot in this manner is a bad idea. It is a bad idea because Trump has not yet been convicted of leading an insurrection. It is a bad idea because Trump has not yet been indicted on a charge of leading an insurrection… This is not because prosecutors just forgot to indict Trump on this charge. It is because federal prosecutors ‘can’t prove Trump committed insurrection,’ which, when you think about it, is a pretty darn big stumbling block…
“If you start bending and twisting the interpretation of the Constitution and the definition of terms under the law to get the candidate you oppose off the ballots, then the conspiracy theorists win. Because under that scenario, you really are altering the law to ensure that a certain candidate loses.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
“If the 14th Amendment is used to bar Trump, what's to stop Republicans from using the 14th Amendment to disqualify anyone who endorsed or condoned riots following events like George Floyd's killing? This would inject an unprecedented level of subjectivity into the electoral process…
“Moreover, courts have ruled that the Disqualifications Clause is not self-executing, meaning that Congress must enact specific legislation to establish the process for disqualifying individuals under Section 3. To date, no such legislation exists, further underlining the limited scope and intent of the amendment.”
Ryan Fournier, Newsweek
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger writes, “For a secretary of state to remove a candidate would only reinforce the grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt. Denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American…
“Since our founding, Americans have believed that a government is just when it has earned the consent of the governed. Taking away the ability to choose—or object to—the eligibility of candidates eliminates that consent for slightly less than half of the country…
“The 2024 election won’t be decided by prosecutors. It won’t be decided by John Eastman. And it won’t be decided by the vice president, whose role is simply to oversee a joint session of Congress in which each state’s electors are counted. The American people will make their own decisions.”
Brad Raffensperger, Wall Street Journal
The left is divided over attempts to keep Trump off the ballot.
The left is divided over attempts to keep Trump off the ballot.
“The history behind the 14th Amendment proves its general applicability. Conspiring, whether by violence or coercion, to overturn the outcome of an election is precisely what Confederate officers and officeholders did. They didn’t like the outcome of the 1860 election, so they tried to dismantle the United States, first by walking away, then by force…
“It’s hard to argue that the same thing didn’t happen in the aftermath of the 2020 election. For symbolic measure, insurrectionists carried the Confederate battle flag into the Capitol on Jan. 6, marching in lock step with an earlier generation of Americans who aspired to end our system of government. That it was a bungled attempt, and that it didn’t work, doesn’t make it different.”
Joshua Zeitz, Politico
“This is not a theoretical bit of technical law. This provision of the 14th Amendment was, in fact, extensively used after the Civil War to keep former Confederate leaders from serving in the federal government without being tried or convicted of any crime…
“[The Georgia indictment] exhaustively details extensive acts of lying, manipulation, and threats against Georgia officials, as well as a fraudulent fake elector scheme to illegally subvert the legitimate 2020 Georgia presidential vote tally and resulting elector certification. Trump's failure to accomplish what is tantamount to a coup in Georgia and other swing states set the stage for the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021… This outcome is not about politics—it's about protecting democracy and the rule of law.”
Joseph Ferguson and Thomas A. Durkin, Newsweek
Critics note, “If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race…
“Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating the state House’s rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats ‘rebels’ forbidden ever to run for office again?… This summer’s wish for a constitutional anti-Trump magic wand is an unfeasible, unhelpful fantasy. Let it go.”
David Frum, The Atlantic
Bird photographer of the year 2023 winners.
The Guardian
