Trump asked the Supreme Court to “reverse” the Colorado state Supreme Court’s “holding that President Trump ‘engaged in insurrection.'”
Hey, Supreme Court. I have some parking tickets…
Trust Colorado, part of our American Union
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Uncle Thomas’ finest hour, and the entire reason Bush I chose such an obedient fuckwit for the court.
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Rehnquist recused because he had a conflict of interest, having been at the DOJ while it was pursuing the Watergate investigation. It was not because he was appointed by Nixon. If that had been the case, Burger, Blackmun, and Powell would have recused too. Kagan did the same thing for cases that had been open while she was Solicitor General at DOJ.
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Thank you.
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I think the SupCt has an even easier glidepath to dispose of this that leaves them even further from anything that could potentially be seen as the merits. The Insurrection Clause bars people who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding any civil, military, or elected office. Colorado removed trump from the primary ballot. That is not an election for any elected office. Thus, the Insurrection Clause does not even apply in the situation that Colorado used it.
ETA: Saying that Congress has to act is potentially thorny, as I see it. It would be an invitation for a President controlling large majorities in the House and Senate to simply refuse to leave office (a bloodless coup, if you will).
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I disagree. Article I, Section 8 enumerates the powers that Congress has, and theoretically, that is a limited list. The purpose of Section 5 of the 14th is to add another power to that list (as do other amendments). But nowhere does it say that that is a power exclusive to Congress. And don’t forget that the 10th Circuit recently affirmed that it was within the States’ perogative to keep constitutionally ineligible Presidential candidates off their ballot because it legitimately protects the State’s interest in the integrity of elections. See Hassan v. State of Colorado.
PS. Unanimous Circuit Court opinion written by some guy named Neil Gorsuch.
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That would just invite states to take him off the general election ballot, or even to prohibit electors from casting their votes for him. SCOTUS will want to nip this in the bud, not just kick the can down the road until after the nomination is official.
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Ugly though.
What country can survive when a guy can send his supporters to sack the capital and because they’re unsuccessful thwart the law long enough to change the law to allow it?
Kind of like what country can survive when the law is so opaque that there is hard cash to be made spreading health misinformation during an international health crisis.
Haven’t seen any class action suits against Fox or OAN. Don’t see hardly any class action suits since the mid-2000s. Wrote around it I guess.
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Except…Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883):
But the power of Congress to adopt direct and primary, as distinguished from corrective, legislation on the subject in hand is sought, in the second place, from the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery. This amendment declares
“that neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,”
and it gives Congress power to enforce the amendment by appropriate legislation.
This amendment, as well as the Fourteenth, is undoubtedly self-executing, without any ancillary legislation, so far as its terms are applicable to any existing state of circumstances. By its own unaided force and effect, it abolished slavery and established universal freedom. Still, legislation may be necessary and proper to meet all the various cases and circumstances to be affected by it, and to prescribe proper modes of redress for its violation in letter or spirit. And such legislation may be primary and direct in its character, for the amendment is not a mere prohibition of State laws establishing or upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or involuntary servitude shall not exist in any part of the United States.
emphasis mine
It wouldn’t be the first time the SCOTUS contradicted itself, but it means that Ex Parte Virginia can’t be used as a punt without overruling later precedent or engaging in twisted legal reasoning saying Section 1 is self-executing, but Section 3 isn’t.
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No person shall …hold any office…under the United States…who, having previously taken an oath, as an officer of the United States, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Pretty straightforward.
So you think that the Colorado Supreme Court has no power to rule on whether Trump is disqualified from being on the ballot in Colorado?
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The USA is not going away anytime soon.
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$CROTUS will rule for tangeranus in every way they can because f*** you that’s why. The law is what any given 5 of them say it is on any given day. I have to laugh at all these so called legal types opining on this and that, thinking that somehow this $CROTUS gives a rat’s ass about any laws or what Congress says or Constitution. They are going to do exactly what they want to do, which is to save tangeranus’ ass. On some level all these lawyers know it too, it just kills them that their life’s work lies in pieces on the ground just like sweet dreams and flying machines.
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I am not necessarily disagreeing with you - it is a close call and this Court’s attitude towards trump is (I think) hard to predict - but I think that the SupCt may want to kick the can a little ways down the road. If trump is convicted in the DC insurrection case, it potentially changes the Court’s calculus. It is not inconceivable that that case may be resolved before the general. If trump is convicted in a trial, or potentially acquitted, it is easier to say whether or not he should be eligible to be President within terms of the Amendment. I also think that people like Roberts and Coney-Barret have already gotten all they ever wanted from trump and that they might be looking for a chance to be shot of him in a way that does not create a potentially dangerous precedent. I really don’t know. I am just spitballing. I guess we will see what happens when the SupCt takes it up (which they might not - again, opportunity to be shot of him and leave in place a state-by-state system instead of creating a national precedent).
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My understanding of what @txlawyer is saying is that the Supreme Court has an easy way out of this by declaring that the meaning of “insurrection or rebellion” is ambiguous and that the ambiguity is something Congress must resolve legislatively.
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“It’s a dangerous one. And at that point, he’s gotta hope that the court agrees,” Schultz said. “Because at that point, the court may very well be bound by the decision by uthe district court in Colorado. That was, in terms of the fact finding at that point, a very risky move for him.”
I don’t know how any Trump lawyer would want to attack the Colorado case in the Supreme Court on the finding of fact that Trump engaged in an insurrection. That indicates a failure to understand what the Supreme Court can and can’t do. I think they may very well bound by the Colorado Court’s finding of fact. Trump’s lawyers better hope they win before they get to that point. txlawyer is probably right, the court will take an earlier off ramp.
Not so easy or obvious. The Amendment indeed provides Congress with a say – it gets to vote by a 2/3 majority of each house to remove the disqualification – it doesn’t have a prescribed role in determining in the first place that the disqualification exists.
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Trump’s whole life has been a series of errors, some forced others not. From the moment of conception. His trip down the escalator was his first mistake in this saga. Instead of trying to keep his crimes out of the spotlight, he stepped into it, then committed many more and more serious ones. This is just the latest. He’s his own worst enemy.
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We’ll see, but too late.
Rehnquist recused because he had a conflict of interest, having been at the DOJ while it was pursuing the Watergate investigation.
Probably not, as Rehnquist joined the Court more than five months before the Watergate break-in.
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But Congress does: separation of powers. It holds all of the legislative power, period. Just because the disqualification clause says Congress can remove the disqualification doesn’t mean Congress can’t use its other legislative powers to otherwise pass laws about the clause.