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      Trump expected to challenge removal of name from states’ primary ballots

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      Donald Trump is reportedly expected to file legal challenges early next week to rulings in Maine and Colorado knocking him off primary ballots amid mounting pressure on US supreme court justices to rule on whether his actions on 6 January 2021 constitutionally exclude him from seeking a second term in the White House.The New York Times said that Trump’s legal moves could come as early as Tuesday.The impending collision of legal, constitutional and political issues comes after the two states separately ruled that the former US president was ineligible under a constitutional amendment designed to keep Confederates from serving in high office after the civil war.In Maine, the secretary of state, a political appointee, issued the ruling and a challenge will be filed in state court. Meanwhile, in Colorado the decision was made by the state’s highest court and will probably have a swifter passage to the conservative-leaning US supreme court – should it wish to hear the case.The conservative justices on the supreme court are sympathetic to “originalism”, which holds that the meaning of the constitution and its amendments should be interpreted by what its authors wrote. On the other side are justices more in tune with a contemporary application of the spirit of the original wording.The precise wording of the passage in question – section 3 of the 14th amendment – says anyone who has taken the oath of office, as Trump did at his 2017 inauguration, and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”, is ineligible.But at the heart of the anticipated challenges will be whether individual states have the authority to interpret constitutional matters outside their own constitutions. “Every state is different,” Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, said on Friday. “I swore an oath to uphold the constitution. I fulfilled my duty.”The rulings have received pushback from elected officials. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said Trump should be beaten at the polls and back-and-forth ballot rulings in states are a “political distraction”.After Maine’s decision on Thursday, Republican senator Susan Collins said voters in her state should decide who wins the election – “not a secretary of state chosen by the legislature”. Former New Jersey governor and trailing nomination rival Chris Christie told CNN the rulings make Trump “a martyr”.“He’s very good at playing ‘poor me, poor me’. He’s always complaining,” Christie added.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, told Fox News that the Maine decision violates Trump’s right to due process – a jury decision on the now-delayed insurrection case. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said: “It should be up to voters to decide who gets elected.”One Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post that all state appeals court decisions on multiple efforts to kick Trump off state primary ballots – 16 have failed, 14 are pending – have ruled in the former president’s favor.“We don’t love the Colorado ruling, of course, but think it will resolve itself,” the adviser said.According to the New York Times on Saturday, Trump has privately told people that he believes the US supreme court will rule against the decisions. But the court has also been wary of wading into the turbulent constitutional waters of Trump’s multiple legal issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast week, the court denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request to expedite a ruling on whether Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over his alleged crimes following the 2020 election.But the argument that voters, and not courts or elected officials, should decide elections has been under stress since the 2000 election when Republican George W Bush was elected after a stinging legal battle with then vice-president Al Gore over Florida ballot recounts that was ultimately decided by the court.According to the Times, Trump is concerned that the conservative justices, who make up a “supermajority”, will be worried about the perception of being “political” and rule against him.Conversely, the justices might not want to be steamrollered into making decisions on a primary ballot timetable set by individual states that are themselves open to accusations of political coloring.For now, both the Maine and Colorado decisions are on hold. The Colorado Republican party has asked the US supreme court to look at the state’s decision, and Trump is anticipated to repeat that request and has said he will appeal the Maine decision.Maine’s Republican party chair, Joel Stetkis, told the Washington Post that “Shenna Bellows has kicked a hornet’s nest and woken up a sleeping giant in the state of Maine. There’s a lot of people very, very upset that one person wants to take away their choice.”Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the outlet: “We are witnessing, in real time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”Democrats in blue states, he said, “are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from ballots. These partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.” More

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      Trump’s Team Prepares to File Challenges on Ballot Decisions Soon

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      The cases in Colorado, Maine and other states are requiring former President Donald J. Trump to devote resources already spread thin across four criminal indictments.Former President Donald J. Trump’s advisers are preparing as soon as Tuesday to file challenges to decisions in Colorado and Maine to disqualify Mr. Trump from the Republican primary ballot because of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter.In Maine, the challenge to the secretary of state’s decision to block Mr. Trump from the ballot will be filed in a state court. But the Colorado decision, which was made by that state’s highest court, will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is likely to face fresh pressure to weigh in on the issue.On Thursday, Maine became the second state to keep Mr. Trump off the primary ballot over challenges stemming from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that any officer of the United States who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution cannot “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”“Every state is different,” Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, told a local CBS affiliate on Friday morning. “I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. I fulfilled my duty.”Mr. Trump has privately told some people that he believes the Supreme Court will overwhelmingly rule against the Colorado and Maine decisions, according to a person familiar with what he has said. But he has also been critical of the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservative justices, creating a supermajority. The court has generally shown little appetite for Mr. Trump’s election-related cases.Mr. Trump has expressed concern that the conservative justices will worry about being perceived as “political” and may rule against him, according to a person with direct knowledge of his private comments.Unlike with the Colorado decision, which caught many on Mr. Trump’s team by surprise, the former president’s advisers had anticipated the Maine outcome for several days. They prepared a statement in advance of the decision and had the bulk of their appeal filing written after the consolidated hearing that Ms. Bellows held on Dec. 15, according to a person close to Mr. Trump.The people who have filed ballot challenges have generally argued that Mr. Trump incited an insurrection when he encouraged supporters to whom he insisted the election was stolen to march on the Capitol while the 2020 electoral vote was being certified. The former president has been indicted on charges related to the eventual attack on the Capitol, but he has not been criminally charged with “insurrection,” a point his allies have repeatedly made.On his social media site, Truth Social, Mr. Trump has highlighted commentary from Democrats who have suggested discomfort with the ballot decisions.In Maine, the move was made unilaterally by Ms. Bellows after challenges were filed. Trump allies have repeatedly highlighted Ms. Bellows’s Democratic Party affiliation and the fact that she is not an elected official, but an appointed one.The twin decisions have created an uncertain terrain in the Republican nominating contest with elections in the early states set to begin on Jan. 15, with Iowa’s caucuses. Additional ballot challenges may be filed in other states, although so far several have fizzled.This week, a Wisconsin complaint trying to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot there was dismissed, and the secretary of state in California said Mr. Trump would remain on the ballot in that state. According to the website Lawfare, 14 states have active lawsuits seeking to remove Mr. Trump, with more expected to be filed. A decision is expected soon in a case in Oregon.The Colorado and Maine decisions require an additional focus of resources and attention for a Trump team that is already spread thin across four criminal indictments in four different states.But two people close to Mr. Trump, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, described that reality as already baked in for a Trump team that has been focused on legal issues for most of the last two years. They argued that, in the short term, the former president would see political benefits along the lines of what he saw when he was indicted: a rallying effect among Republicans.Mr. Trump and his team have tried to collapse these cases into a single narrative that Democrats are engaged in a “witch hunt” against him, and they have used the election suits to suggest that Democrats are interfering in an election — an attempt to turn the tables given that Mr. Trump’s monthslong effort to undermine the 2020 election is at the heart of legal and political arguments against him.“Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from ballots,” Mr. Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement to The New York Times.The ballot rulings have become another focus for the mainstream and conservative news media, chewing up time and attention that Mr. Trump’s primary rivals, who trail him by wide margins in polls, need in hopes of catching up.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who is among those challenging Mr. Trump for the nomination, told CNN that the decision “makes him a martyr,” adding, “He’s very good at playing ‘Poor me, poor me.’ He’s always complaining.”Because of a number of factors, it is unclear how much of a practical effect the efforts to remove Mr. Trump from primary ballots will have for the Republican nominating contest. In the case of Colorado, where the state’s top court reversed a lower-court ruling and declared Mr. Trump ineligible for the primary, he remains on the ballot while he asks the Supreme Court to intervene. More

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      Maine Bars Trump From 2024 Primary Ballot, Joining Colorado

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      In a written decision, Maine’s secretary of state said that Donald J. Trump did not qualify for the ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.Maine’s top election official on Thursday barred Donald J. Trump from the state’s primary election ballot, the second state to block the former president’s bid for re-election based on claims that his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election rendered him ineligible.In a written decision, the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, said that Mr. Trump did not qualify for the ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, agreeing with a handful of citizens who claimed that he had incited an insurrection and was thus barred from seeking the presidency again under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.“I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.,” Ms. Bellows, a Democrat, wrote.Last week, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled in a 4 to 3 decision that the former president should not be allowed to appear on that state’s Republican primary ballot.The decision in Maine underscores the ongoing tensions in the United States over democracy, ballot access and the rule of law. It also adds urgency to calls for the U.S. Supreme Court to insert itself into the politically explosive dispute over his eligibility.Just weeks before the first votes in the 2024 election are set to be cast, lawyers on both sides are asking the nation’s top court to provide guidance on an obscure constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War, which is at the heart of the effort to block Mr. Trump from making a third White House run.Courts in two other states, Minnesota and Michigan, have ruled that election officials cannot prevent the Republican Party from including Mr. Trump on their primary ballots.Michigan’s Supreme Court concluded on Wednesday that an appeals court had properly decided that political parties should be able to determine which candidates are eligible to run for president.Another court decision is expected in Oregon, where the same group that filed the Michigan lawsuit is also seeking to have the courts remove Mr. Trump from the ballot there, though Oregon’s secretary of state declined to remove him in response to an earlier challenge.And in California, the state’s top election official was expected to announce whether Mr. Trump would remain among the candidates certified for the March 5 primary.Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, faced a Thursday deadline to certify the list of official candidates so that local election officials could begin preparing ballots for the upcoming election. She has indicated in recent days that she is inclined to keep Mr. Trump on the ballot, despite a request from the lieutenant governor to explore ways to remove him.The legal cases are based on a Reconstruction Era constitutional amendment that was intended to bar Confederate officials from serving in the U.S. government. The provision, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, disqualifies people who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.Over the years, the courts and Congress have done little to clarify how that criterion can be met. As the legal challenges mount, election officials and judges across the country find themselves in largely uncharted waters as they wait for the Supreme Court to provide guidance.The case would be the most politically momentous matter before the Supreme Court since it settled the disputed 2000 election in favor of President George W. Bush. Since then, the court has become far more conservative, in large part as a result of the three justices whom Mr. Trump appointed as president.Mr. Trump and his lawyers have called the efforts to bar him from ballots an underhanded tactic by Democrats who fear facing him at the polls.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, assailed Maine’s secretary of state as “a virulent leftist and hyperpartisan Biden-supporting Democrat.” In a statement, he added: “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”Groups leading the disqualification efforts contend that the former president’s attempts to subvert the will of voters in 2020 warrant extraordinary measures to protect American democracy.Ms. Bellows, the official in Maine charged with considering the petition in that state, is the state’s first female secretary of state and a former state senator. She is also the former executive director of the nonprofit Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine and of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.In her 34-page decision, Ms. Bellows wrote that Mr. Trump’s petition to appear on the Maine ballot was invalid because he falsely declared on his candidate consent form that he was qualified to hold the office of president. She found that he was not, she wrote, because “the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on Jan. 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them” to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.She also concluded that Mr. Trump “was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”Legal experts say the scope of a Supreme Court decision on the issue would determine if these challenges will be quickly handled or play out for months.A ruling that Mr. Trump’s conduct cannot be construed as a violation of the 14th Amendment would effectively shut down challenges pending in several states. A narrower ruling on the Colorado case could allow Mr. Trump to remain on the state’s primary ballot, while giving lawyers challenging his eligibility a chance to argue that he should be kept off the general election ballot.The petitioners in Maine included Ethan Strimling, a former mayor of Portland and Democratic state legislator who filed a challenge along with two other former Maine lawmakers.“Secretary Bellows showed great courage in her ruling, and we look forward to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court,” they said in a statement on Thursday. “No elected official is above the law or our constitution, and today’s ruling reaffirms this most important of American principles.”Mr. Trump can appeal Ms. Bellows’s decision to Maine’s Superior Court within five days. Her order will not go into effect until the court rules on an appeal, which the Trump campaign says it intends to file soon. The Republican primaries in Maine and Colorado are both scheduled for March 5, known as Super Tuesday because so many states hold primaries that day.The challenges to Mr. Trump’s ballot access have been brought in more than 30 states in recent weeks, largely through the courts. But because of a quirk in Maine’s Constitution, registered voters there must first file a petition with the secretary of state.Ms. Bellows heard arguments on three such petitions on Dec. 15.After the Colorado decision, lawyers for Mr. Trump argued in new Maine filings that the Colorado ruling should be irrelevant there because the two states had different laws and standards, and because Mr. Trump did not have a fair opportunity to litigate the facts in Colorado. They also maintained that the secretary of state lacked the authority to exclude him from the ballot.“The constitution reserves exclusively to the Electoral College and Congress the power to determine whether a person may serve as president,” they argued in the filing late last week.Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an election law expert, said the Maine decision illustrated the power of the Colorado court ruling to ease the way for similar decisions.“It takes a lot of courage to disqualify a major candidate, but once the Colorado court did it, and thrust the issue into public light, it became easier for others,” he said.Given the “incredible complexity” of the legal questions involved, said Mr. Hasen, the U.S. Supreme Court is best equipped to resolve the issues. If the court opts not to disqualify Mr. Trump, its decision would not be binding for Congress, but it would make it “politically very difficult for Congress to say something different,” he said.In California, where the secretary of state is certifying an approved list of candidates, Democrats have overwhelming control of government, so the state might seem like a likely venue for a ballot challenge similar to the one that was successful in Colorado.But legal experts said that California, unlike many other states, does not explicitly give its secretary of state the authority to disqualify presidential candidates.Nonetheless, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat, asked Ms. Weber last week to “explore every legal option” to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot using the same constitutional justification cited by the Colorado Supreme Court.In response, Ms. Weber suggested last week that she planned to leave the question up to state and federal courts, which have already dismissed at least two lawsuits in the state challenging Mr. Trump’s qualifications. Ms. Weber wrote that she was obligated to address ballot eligibility questions “within legal parameters” and “in a way that transcends political divisions.”Gov. Gavin Newsom of California indicated last week that he did not believe officials in his state should remove Mr. Trump from the ballot. “There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy, but in California we defeat candidates we don’t like at the polls,” he said in a statement. “Everything else is a political distraction.”Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs More

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      Supreme Court Urged to Move Fast on Trump’s Ballot Eligibility

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      The Colorado Republican Party asked the justices to decide its appeal by Super Tuesday. The voters who won in the Colorado Supreme Court want to move even faster.The Supreme Court was asked on Thursday to fast-track its review of the stunning Colorado Supreme Court ruling that former President Donald J. Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.The request was made by the six voters who won in the state court, which ruled that Mr. Trump was subject to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. That provision bars officials who promised to support the Constitution from holding office again after engaging in insurrection.The voters also told the justices that they would not oppose review of that decision.There are cases pending in several states challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility on the same grounds. A definitive ruling by the Supreme Court would apply nationwide and settle the matter.The voters’ request to accelerate the case came the day after the Colorado Republican Party asked the justices to review the state court’s ruling. Mr. Trump has not filed a promised petition seeking review of the ruling, and his general practice has been to move as slowly as possible in the legal proceedings against him.But the Colorado Republican Party asked the justices on Wednesday to hear its own appeal of the decision.“The historical significance of this decision cannot be overstated,” the party’s petition said. “The Colorado Supreme Court has removed the leading Republican candidate from the primary and general ballots, fundamentally changing the course of American democracy.”In a motion, lawyers for the party proposed a brisk schedule, asking the justices to resolve the case by March 5, when multiple states hold primaries on a day known as Super Tuesday. If it is not, they said, voters “will face profound uncertainty and the electoral process will be irrevocably damaged.”“Under the standard briefing schedules provided by this court’s rules, the case would not be argued and decided until well into 2024,” the motion said. “Meanwhile, 2024 is a presidential election year, with the first primary elections and party caucuses scheduled to take place in January and more than half of the state primary elections to be concluded by the end of Super Tuesday. ”In their own motion, the six voters who prevailed in the Colorado Supreme Court urged the justices to move even faster. They asked that the U.S. Supreme Court order Mr. Trump to file his petition seeking review by Jan. 2 and that the justices consider whether to hear the case at their private conference on Jan. 5.The voters said that they would not oppose the party’s petition seeking review of two aspects of the state court’s decision: that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to the presidency and that congressional action is not required before the court can act.If the U.S. Supreme Court grants review, the voters proposed that arguments be heard Jan. 19.Voting in Colorado is almost exclusively by mail, and state officials start mailing ballots to in-state voters on Feb. 12. “Having a decision on the merits by Feb. 11 would ensure that every in-state Colorado voter knows of this court’s decision before receiving their ballot and casting their primary vote,” the voters’ motion said.The motion added that the case presents questions of “exceptional national importance.”“Colorado, along with fifteen other states and territories, holds its presidential primary on Super Tuesday, March 5, 2024,” the filing said. “This motion seeks to expedite the court’s consideration of this petition and any petition filed by Trump, and any subsequent review on the merits, so that the important question of Trump’s eligibility can be resolved by this court before most primary voters cast their ballots.” More

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      Lauren Boebert announces change of congressional district for 2024 elections

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      Colorado’s Republican representative Lauren Boebert has announced that she will be changing congressional districts ahead of her 2024 Republican nomination bid for the House.In a Facebook video on Wednesday, the 36-year old, far-right representative announced that she would be moving from Colorado’s third district to its fourth district.The fourth district, which has been categorized as “solidly Republican” according to the Cook Political Report, is currently led by Ken Buck who has served in Congress since 2015. In November, Buck announced that he would not be seeking re-election, citing the Republican party’s reliance “on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen”.Boebert’s current third district has been categorized as a toss-up, according to a Cook Political Report rating from earlier this month. Following her announcement, the Cook Political Report changed its categorization of the third district to a “lean Republican”, the Hill reports.In her announcement on Wednesday, Boebert called her decision a “fresh start”, adding, “I promised I would do whatever it takes to stop the socialists and communists from taking over our country. That means staying in the fight but also not allowing Hollywood elite and progressive money groups to buy the third district, a seat that they have no business owning.”She went on to say: “We cannot lose the third and Colorado’s fourth district is hungry for an unapologetic defender of freedom with a proven track record of standing strong for conservative principles.“I will be moving to the fourth in 2024 and will continue to take my conservative fight directly to them. And the Aspen donors, George Soros and Hollywood actors that are trying to buy the seat, well they can go pound sand. We aren’t going to give them the opportunity to steal the third. Republicans will hold the third and I’ll proudly represent the fourth and Republicans will be stronger for it,” Boebert continued.In 2022, Boebert won her re-election bid for Colorado’s third district by beating her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, by just 546 votes.Earlier this year, Frisch, a 56-year-old former banker, announced that he would be running against Boebert again, tweeting in February that he was launching his campaign to unseat her and “restore dignity to #CO03 representation”.In response to Boebert’s announcement, Frisch said, “From Day 1 of this race, I have been squarely focused on defending rural Colorado’s way of life, and offering commonsense solutions to the problems facing the families of Colorado’s 3rd congressional district,” the Hill reported.“My focus will remain the same, and I look forward to bringing these issues with me to Congress in 2024,” Frisch added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoebert’s announcement follows what she called a “pretty difficult year for me and my family”. In May, Boebert filed for divorce from her husband with whom she has four sons. The former couple also ran a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill which shut down in 2022.In September, Boebert faced widespread backlash after she and a male guest were kicked out from a Beetlejuice production in Denver for inappropriate behavior including vaping, recording video and groping each other.Following Boebert’s announcement on Wednesday, Richard Holtorf, a Colorado Republican state representative who is also running to represent the state’s fourth district in the House, criticized her.“Seat shopping isn’t something the voters look kindly upon. If you can’t win in your home, you can’t win here. I’m in it to win it and I welcome the lady from Rifle to the race,” he said, adding, “She is grossly lacking in understanding the needs of the 21 counties in eastern Colorado that make up this district. She knew she’d lose in her own district and I’ll show her that she’ll lose here too.” More

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      Lauren Boebert, Far-Right Firebrand, Is Switching House Districts in Colorado

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      Facing a strong primary challenger and the fallout from the “Beetlejuice” scandal, Ms. Boebert is turning to a more conservative district in hopes of victory.Representative Lauren Boebert, a far-right House Republican, announced on Wednesday that she would run in a more conservative district in Colorado — seeking to increase her chances after a strong primary challenger emerged in her district.The move — from the Third Congressional District to the Fourth — will thrust Ms. Boebert into a crowded primary to replace Representative Ken Buck, a conservative who is not seeking re-election. She has fervently promoted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. Mr. Buck attributed his decision not to run in part to the widespread belief in his party of these false claims — as well as to the refusal of many of his Republican colleagues to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.In a video posted on social media, Ms. Boebert said that the move was a “fresh start,” alluding to a “pretty difficult year for me and my family,” pointing to her divorce. “It’s the right move for me personally, and it’s the right decision for those who support our conservative movement,” Ms. Boebert said.In September, then in the midst of finalizing the divorce, she was caught on a security camera vaping and groping her date shortly before being ejected from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” for causing a disturbance.A primary challenger has since emerged with significant backers among prominent former Republican officials in the state. Jeff Hurd, a 44-year-old lawyer from Grand Junction, has been endorsed by former Gov. Bill Owens and former Senator Hank Brown. The editorial board of the Colorado Springs Gazette also endorsed Mr. Hurd over Ms. Boebert this month.Mr. Hurd, in a statement after Ms. Boebert’s announcement, played up the support he has received from Republicans across the state, vowing that he “will fight every day to ensure this seat stays in Republican hands.”Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District is significantly more conservative than the Third, and securing the Republican nomination would place Ms. Boebert in a strong position to win in a seat where Mr. Buck earned 60 percent of the vote in 2022. Ms. Boebert barely won re-election that year, pulling ahead of her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, with roughly 500 votes.Mr. Frisch, who is running again in the Third District, said that Ms. Boebert’s withdrawal from that race changed little for his campaign.“From Day 1 of this race, I have been squarely focused on defending rural Colorado’s way of life,” he said in a statement, adding that “my focus will remain the same.”An earlier analysis by the Cook Political Report had rated the race for Ms. Boebert’s current seat in 2024 as a tossup. By contrast, the race in the general election in the Fourth Congressional District is not considered competitive.The other Republicans running in the primary to replace Mr. Buck include two former state senators, Ted Harvey and Jerry Sonnenberg; Richard Holtorf, a state representative; Trent Leisy, a Navy veteran and business owner; and Deborah Flora, a radio host.Mr. Leisy asserted on social media soon after Ms. Boebert’s announcement that she was giving Democrats an advantage in the race for her current district by making the switch.“Lauren should be a fighter and keep her district red,” Mr. Leisy said, adding that he was “running in a district that I actually live in.”Charles Homans More

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      Michigan Supreme Court Decides Trump Can Stay on Ballot

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      After Colorado’s top court ruled that the former president was disqualified for engaging in insurrection, justices in Michigan considered a similar challenge.The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday paved the way for Donald J. Trump to appear on the state’s primary ballot, a victory for the former president in a battleground state. The state’s top court upheld an appeals court decision that found that the former president could appear on the ballot despite questions about his eligibility to hold elected office because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The Michigan decision followed a bombshell ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which on Dec. 19 determined in a 4-3 opinion that Mr. Trump should be removed from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Mr. Trump applauded the Michigan ruling in a statement posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “We have to prevent the 2024 Election from being Rigged and Stolen like they stole 2020,” the statement said. Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, a group seeking to have Mr. Trump disqualified from running in the 2024 election, said the Michigan Supreme Court ruled narrowly, sidestepping the core questions at the heart of the case. The decision, he said, leaves the door open to challenge whether Mr. Trump can appear on the general election ballot in Michigan. “The Michigan Supreme Court did not rule out that the question of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage,” Mr. Fein said in a statement. Michigan’s primary will be held Feb. 27.The question of Mr. Trump’s eligibility is widely expected to be answered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Some form of challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility has been lodged in more than 30 states, but many of those have already been dismissed.The challengers’ arguments are based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone from holding federal office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.A lower-court judge previously decided the ballot eligibility case in Mr. Trump’s favor. Judge James Robert Redford of the Court of Claims in Michigan ruled in November that disqualifying a candidate through the 14th Amendment was a political issue, not one for the courts. A lower court in Colorado had also ruled in Mr. Trump’s favor before the Supreme Court there took up the case.Judge Redford also ruled that Michigan’s top elections official does not have the authority alone to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot. Free Speech for People, a liberal-leaning group that filed the lawsuit, appealed the ruling, asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case on an accelerated timetable.Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state and a Democrat, echoed the request for a quick decision, citing approaching deadlines for printing paper primary ballots. She wrote that a ruling was needed by Dec. 29 “in order to ensure an orderly election process.”Jan. 13 is the deadline for primary ballots to be sent to military and overseas voters; absentee voter ballots must be printed by Jan. 18. The state’s presidential primary is set for Feb. 27.Mitch Smith More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene among US public figures hit by threats and swatting

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      The political became personal over the Christmas holiday as the homes of politicos and judges were targeted by threats, protests and “swatting” hoaxes by pranksters who call in fake emergencies to authorities in the hopes of prompting a forceful police response.A swatting hoax targeted the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Authorities said they were investigating threats against the Colorado supreme court justices who ruled that Trump could not appear on the state’s ballots in the 2024 presidential election because he incited an insurrection on the day of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.And protesters staged demonstrations outside the home of two Joe Biden White House military advisers as the Israel-Gaza war continued.On Tuesday, police in Rome, Georgia, said a man in New York called a suicide hotline claiming that he had shot his girlfriend at the home of Greene and was going to kill himself next.Authorities said they contacted Greene’s security detail to confirm she was safe and that there was no emergency. Police also confirmed that Greene had been the target of about eight such “swatting” attempts.The Rome police department said it quickly verified that the call was a hoax and did not send officers to the house.In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Greene said: “I was swatted this morning on Christmas Day and a few days ago – Thursday Dec 21st. We received this death threat where this man is saying I will be shot in the head and skinned to make a ‘parasol’.”She said the person was making a reference to Ed Gein, “a psychopath killer who would make things out of his victims’ skin”.Greene added that the person also said “he would like to smash” the heads of her and her boyfriend, the far-right television broadcaster Brian Glenn, “on a curb”. Greene published the text of the threat, which named the purported sender of the message.Meanwhile, in Denver, local police as well as the FBI said they were investigating threats to the Colorado supreme court justices after they ruled that the January 6 attack made Trump ineligible to appear on the state’s ballots as he seeks a second presidency in 2024.A spokesperson at the FBI’s field office in Denver told the Guardian and other outlets that the agency “is aware of the situation and working with local law enforcement”.“We will vigorously pursue investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation,” the FBI’s statement said.A Denver police department spokesperson told Axios it was “investigating incidents directed at Colorado supreme court justices”. The spokesperson also said police “would thoroughly investigate any reports of threats or harassment”, and officers were “providing extra patrols around justices’ residences”.Separately, CNN reported that the names of the four Colorado supreme court justices who ruled to disqualify Trump from the ballot had since appeared in “incendiary” posts on online forums.In an apparent reference to the justices, a correspondent on a pro-Trump site posted: “All … robed rats must … hang.”According to CNN, analysis by a non-partisan research group working for US law enforcement said that the justices had not been specifically targeted, but “there remains a risk of lone actor or small group violence or other illegal activities in response to the ruling”.The intensifying political climate has given rise to increasing threats to government, judicial and public officials, according to experts. Bloomberg Law reported that the US Marshals Service – which is assigned to keep federal judges safe – cannot fully assess the security risks they face because of failures in its tracking system to cross-reference information.The number of substantiated threats against federal judges climbed in recent years – from 178 in 2019 to 311 in 2022, according to the marshals service. In the first three months of 2023, there were more than 280 threats.The marshal’s service, Bloomberg noted, attempts to distinguish between a “hunter” – someone who attacks a judge – and a “howler”, who threatens but does not act.“It’s not tenable for a democracy to have people expressing their grievances and lacing that discontent with threats of violence at this volume,” Peter Simi at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska Omaha, told the outlet, adding that the behaviour suggested “a certain lawlessness is acceptable and is becoming normalized”.Elsewhere on Monday, pro-Palestinian protesters staged a demonstration near the homes of the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.Near Austin’s home, they held signs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has been waging war since Hamas attacked it on 7 October.The protesters chanted: “Austin, Austin, rise and shine – no sleep during genocide.”A crowd of protesters later adopted a similar tactic outside the home of Sullivan.Posting on X, the activist group named the People’s Forum said it “woke up … Lloyd Austin as he tried to go on with his [Christmas] while arming & supporting zionist genocide against the Palestinian people. Now, we disrupt ANOTHER war criminal: [Jake Sullivan]. The people say NO XMAS AS USUAL!” More