In arguments Thursday, the justices will, for the first time, wrestle with a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from reclaiming power.
The case is the court’s most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore, a decision delivered a quarter-century ago that effectively delivered the 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush. It comes to a court that has been buffeted by criticism over ethics, which led the justices to adopt their first code of conduct in November, and at a time when public approval of the court is diminished, at near-record lows in surveys.
The dispute stems from the push by Republican and independent voters in Colorado to kick Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
I’m not expecting much from them, but when I played devil’s advocate with myself to find loopholes or excuses they might say he must remain, I can’t find one. I suppose the only loophole is if they say it wasn’t an insurrection, but everything else seems tighter than a drum.
They could just say “fuck you” and rule 7-3 in Trump’s favor. They don’t need to actually make arguments.
The argumentation they do is mostly just propaganda to keep people from rioting about bad decisions.
Yeah. This. It’s about what I expect.
There are a few choices they have in my eyes.
I doubt they’ll do the right thing.
How dare you give me that much hope
Abandon that hope. Better to have a realistic expectation of a court that he practically got to pick.
I hate holding out hope, too. If it helps I’m sure I’m wrong. They will find some excuse, and it will be horrible precedent.
On the plus side, then Biden could organize a mob to storm the court. And no coy subterfuge this time. Man up and get shit done right.
/s of course
The one major issue I see with this whole endeavor is who gets to make that determination that there was an attempt at insurrection. Yeah, I get it, we all saw it happen in real time. We know he’s guilty.
But this court may say “if some is suspected of being disqualified due to Amendment 14, someone should challenge and have a court decide”. And you know what will happen next. Some idiot Texas judge will declare that Biden and Harris are both leading an insurrection at the border. And Poof! Mike Johnson in now President.
He’s off the ballot in CO because someone challenged and a court decided, and now the case has risen to the Supreme Court because an appeal was made. This is as judicial a process as possible.
Now if the Supreme Court accepts a lower court’s ruling that Biden is ineligible, then it’s a constitutional crisis and people will need to decide who they believe is faithfully executing their duties.
A court didn’t decide when the amendment was created and applied. It applied to people without trial. However I agree with the chaos such a ruling could create and it would probably be worse than having Trump on the ballot.
The nice thing about the 14th Amendment is that nobody has to decide what insurrection is, because there is another option that was clearly breached on Jan 6th.
Here is one: the constitution says nothing about being on the ballot. Only about serving.
Having someone on the ballot who is ineligible to serve has already been tried (before Gorsuch before he was on the SCOTUS) and it turns out if you can’t serve you
can’t be onmay be excluded from the ballot. This from following legal blogs so apologies if I don’t have that quite right.