Justices on the Minnesota Supreme Court greeted arguments to disqualify President Trump from the ballot with a mixture of skepticism and interest at a Thursday hearing, leaving the path forward for the effort an open question.
trump might actually petition for certiorari before judgment on the jurisdictional issues if they order an evidentiary hearing.
Legislative branch already passed the 14th Amendment. That’s why it’s an Amendment. They did their job. Time for Minnesota Judicial Branch to do theirs.
Does the former president’s attorney assert that the $2.6 billion in costs to U.S. taxpayers for the January 6, 2021 attack on US Capitol are insufficient to constitute an offense actionable under the 14th A? Do the insurrectionists have to wear matching outfits? Do MAGA hats and Confederate flags count?
Could you please translate that into plain English for those of us non-lawyers out here in the sticks? Thanks
If so, I would think he was have already done so for the case in Colorado. Also, aren’t elections explicitly run by the states?
Sorry, IANAL…
an attorney for the former president remarked at one point during the hearing that “if this were to be the first decision that someone engaged in an insurrection, it might not be the last.”
Tipping their hand that they expect more insurrections in the future.
That doesn’t make it judicially enforceable. Indeed, section 5 reserves to Congress alone the power to enforce the 14th by legislation. The only reason you can sue for deprivation of Due Process or Equal Protection rights is because Congress passed a statute authorizing such suits in 1871.
If SCOMN blows past the question of whether they have jurisdiction to reach the merits by holding an evidentiary hearing, there is a procedure available for trump to try to take it up to SCOTUS right away without having to wait for the whole case to conclude in Minnesota.
What do we want to happen here, politically? I find it hard to come down where I arguably should on this one. The real problem isn’t just an insurrectionist candidate, but a major US political party poised to nominate said candidate, on the strength of broad rank-and-file support.
No one should be above the law or the Constitution, and it’s beyond wearying to watch exception after exception made. I don’t think they should be, not in the arena of the many criminal prosecutions and civil cases. But the nature of the problem means any kind of administrative denial of ballot access to the presumptive GOP nominee–even if predicated on clear Constitutional grounds–will just fuel the Dolchstosslegende excuse/lie machine for the next cycle of cheating and violence.
Granted, MAGAworld already can’t even accept losing an election the standard way. But such a result would still be a lot more defensible if he’s on the ballot in all 50 states and gets trounced than if it comes with a big asterisk because some blue state(s) he’d never have won anyway kept him from running there officially. Or, worse, because some major component of his “safe red” EV tally was denied him by DQ.
Of course, I haven’t accounted for the nightmare outcome where he actually wins the EC (with or without the popular) outright. But if disqualifying him made the difference in that scenario–one where he demonstrably had the votes, or where his supporters ignored the state rulings and wrote him in (as FOX et al. would surely advocate)–then I think we’d be headed towards a civil war, or something close.
I want Joe Biden to beat trump’s electoral ass so definitively that all the trump superfans who never gave a shit about anything other than their Orange-Faced Messiah go straight back to not participating in civil society at all.
Well have a divided country as long as the Right maintain media monopolies and there is money in it.
I think the election outcome is a realistic goal, but even so DFG would be running around with his electoral map showing his suckers how many empty acres voted for him, and as usual many would fall for it.
Trump’s lawyers’ arguments on the issue are falling apart, as they should. As typical for lawyers, they think they are cleverer than the rest of us, but my experience is that they just accept their own circular reasoning.
Was there an “insurrection” on Jan 6, 2021? Given the time, place, mode and purpose, it was far more extreme that firing upon Fort Sumter. So that’s a pretty easy question to answer unless you talk yourself into a corner and refuse to turn around and realize that you aren’t trapped there at all.
Did Trump participate in that insurrection as described in 14.3? His words and actions before, during and after are, at minimum, clear and convincing that he did. He picked the time, place, mode and purpose, then directed the mob to the Capitol. Then he stood back and cheered on the result. Of course he did!! The whole point was to serve his desire to remain president despite what the voters said and the courts said about his challenges, and the states certified about their results and so forth. Again, not a difficult factual question for an unbiased finder of fact.
For Trump and his lawyers, NO standard of proof would be sufficient to determine he insurrected because in Trump’s world, only he gets to decide everything.
Two Trump arguments are particularly weak, but some lawyers appreciate the ability to hide the circular reasoning, a continual fallback for defendants who don’t have a straightforward argument.
First, should it be left to voters to decide? The Constitution explicitly says NO. Certainly, if given the opportunity Southerners and former Confederates would gladly put someone denied under 14.3 into power with their votes. 14.3 says they have to find someone else.
Second, does Congress have to pass legislation or act to enforce the Constitution? Again, the answer is NO. 14th Amendment says Congress “may” pass legislation, but to remove the ineligibility Congress must act. Hence, the plain text of the 14th Amendment does NOT require Congress to act to enforce.
Most cases are simple and this is one of them. If Trump wanted to hold office again, all he had to do is leave the office without launching an insurrection for the first time in history by a sitting president or ANY candidate for president. But Trump is impatient and didn’t want to be seen as a loser, so he decided to try a coup instead. Of course he doesn’t want accountability.
And the righthand picture is the largest Inauguration crowd evah!
Donnie’s gonna lie, there’s just no two ways about it.
And a large part of the American electorate is predisposed towards believing him, even if it means taking antiparasitic medications to treat a viral infection.
Sure, if you skip right over the obvious jurisdictional infirmity.
But Hudson, along with Associate Justice Paul Thissen, was careful to grill both sides.
Minnesota nice?
Fine by me if they want to sit around smelling their own farts all day, so long as they’re not trying to do it in civil society.
The problem is they won’t go back in the bottle, they think they have ben granted the right by God to rule this Christian nation, and if they can’t do it the nice way they will lie, cheat, steal, and coup their way to it. If Trump gets thrown off the ballot, that probably just makes things worse, it will feed into their martyr complex that the nation is being taken away from them. And, with Johnson’s elevation, we now have them openly putting people in who truly want a Christian theocracy, making all of this into a religious war, and those suck. They really think this is the last chance to fight back against the rest of us, and that Trump is their savior.
Biden won’t win in a landslide, the system is rigged against that, and any victory is going to be discounted by the true believers anyways…and Biden might lose the same way Hillary lost, the same crap is happening all over again. Our only hope is that Biden does win, Democrats take the House and hold the Senate, and the idiots manage to unravel themselves without too much violence…if that all comes to pass then maybe things get easier, going forward it looks like Democratic power should grow as Republicans drive younger people and non-white males away from them.
I think there are two distinct groups following Trump. One group was the existing Christian Theocrats (the focus of your post) who were already voting and probably will increasingly turn to lying, cheating and stealing as you allude. They hitched their horse to Trump because they believed he could get them what they want finally (ACB and Dobbs being evidence that he could deliver on that).
But there is a second group of feral incels who aren’t particularly religious and they weren’t particularly involved in politics either. When Trump showed up on the scene, they started coming out of the woodwork to vote for the guy saying “what ‘everyone’ is thinking.” Trump received more votes in 2020 than any presidential candidate ever, except of course for Biden in 2020. So that means there were a lot of nonstandard voters who came out to vote on both sides. I think that @txlawyer is mainly focused on the Trump voters in this group.
And I agree with him. I think that if Trump is trounced again, since they already had a really tenuous connection to voter participation, they are more likely than not going to turn their backs on the whole deal and go away. They don’t know enough to be able to lie, cheat or steal the election (as 2020 aptly demonstrated). And further failures will more probably discourage them, unlike the Xians you are talking about who were always engaged and are more politically savvy in general.
