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      Biden says it’s ‘self-evident’ that Trump is an insurrectionist

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      Joe Biden has said it is “self-evident” that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist in his first public comments since Colorado’s supreme court removed the former president from the state’s 2024 ballot.The president was speaking before boarding Air Force One to an afternoon engagement in Milwaukee, and said he would not comment on the legal premise cited by the Colorado panel for its majority decision, or the likely intervention of the US supreme court.“Whether the 14th amendment applies or not, we’ll let the court make that decision,” the president said.But he was more forthright when asked directly if he thought Trump was an insurrectionist.“I think it’s self-evident … he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on it, about everything,” he said.Biden has mostly remained silent about the legal troubles that Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, is facing.The president has long been critical of Trump’s conduct surrounding the events of 6 January 2021, when the outgoing president incited a mob of his supporters to overrun the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.Trump was, Biden said at the time, “singularly responsible” for the violence of the deadly riot, in which several people lost their lives, including law enforcement officers and protestors.Among Trump’s legal cases is one in Washington DC, in which he has pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The supreme court is poised to soon hear an appeal that could affect the trial.Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, backed Biden’s comments during a lunchtime appearance on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The big picture, no matter if Donald Trump ends up being on the ballot or off the ballot, is the extent of how dangerous he is to American democracy,” she said.“He tried to steal the presidency from the American people. He incited an insurrection with folks ramming into the US Capitol, some of whom had plans to hang the vice-president, and then he did not stop there. He spent months trying to undermine the peaceful process, the peaceful transfer of the presidency.” More

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      Trump lashes out after Colorado ruling removing him from ballot

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      The Colorado supreme court ruling on Tuesday that bars Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot has kicked off a firestorm among Republicans and legal scholars, and fury from Trump himself.Though the former president did not address the decision during a rally on Tuesday night in Iowa – where he went on abusive rants against immigration – he posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday. “What a shame for our country!!!” Trump wrote. “A sad day for America!!!”Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which brought the suit in Colorado on behalf of Republican and independent voters, praised the decision. It was, he said, “not only historic and justified, but is also necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”.“Our constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government,” he said.Republicans have largely lined up behind Trump, railing against the ruling for allegedly infringing the right of Americans to choose their leaders.Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from New York, said in a statement: “Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot.”The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledged to drop out of the Republican primary in Colorado, piling pressure on his fellow candidates to do the same or be seen as “tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences from our country”.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is also campaigning for the Republican nomination, voiced an unusual theory that the Colorado decision was in fact a move from Democrats to incite Trump’s base and deliberately help him win the primary.“They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election’s going to be all this legal stuff,” DeSantis said on Wednesday, according to NBC News. “It will give [Joe] Biden or the Democrat, whoever, the ability to skate through this thing.”Over the last few months, Trump has been liberally using his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials to further the narrative that Washington is against him, calling on his base for financial support. Trump has already seized on the Colorado ruling for fundraising purposes, posting on Truth Social, “Breaking news: Colorado just removed me from the ballot! Chip in now.”The Colorado court postponed the implementation of its ruling until 4 January, giving room for Trump to make an appeal to the US supreme court. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said on Tuesday night that the campaign has “full confidence that the US supreme court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits”.Despite confidence from Trump’s team that the supreme court would rule in their favor, legal reactions to the Colorado ruling have so far shown just how murky the debate will be.Trump’s Truth Social feed is already reflecting this. On Tuesday night, Trump quoted Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden over nebulous claims of corruption.“This country is a powder keg and this court is just throwing matches at it … for people that say they are trying to protect democracy, this is hands down the most anti-democratic opinion I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Trump quoted Turley as saying on Fox News.But Trump truncated a portion of Turley’s interview where he said that though he believed the Colorado court was wrong, “January 6 was many things, most of it not good”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“In my view, it was not an insurrection. It was a riot,” Turley said. “That doesn’t mean that the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.”The Colorado court ruled that section 3 of the 14th amendment disqualifies Trump from office because the section – referred to as the insurrection clause – bars anyone from holding political office if they took an oath to uphold the constitution but “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. The section was included in the constitution after the civil war to prevent Confederate leaders from holding office in the government they had rebelled against.Turley’s argument is that while Trump incited a riot, it technically does not amount to the insurrection specified in the 14th amendment.“If you dislike Trump, you believe he’s responsible for January 6 … this isn’t the way to do it,” he said.This is just one of the points that will be debated if Trump’s appeal is taken up by the supreme court, which has been facing an onslaught of accusations of politics in the court. As much as the Colorado ruling puts a spotlight on Trump, it will also set up the US supreme court – which has historically tried to maintain itself as a neutral arbiter of the law – to take on yet another case entrenched in politics.Trump appointed three out of the court’s nine current justices, cementing a six-to-three conservative majority in the court that has overturned abortion and affirmative action in the last three years. The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has also been facing criticism over the last year for taking gifts and vacations from billionaires, as well as for the conservative activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas.The court is also set to rule on another Trump appeal, which will decide whether he is immune from prosecution over any charges that come from his Washington DC criminal trial over the January 6 insurrection.Regardless of whether the Colorado ruling is upheld, the debate will probably force close scrutiny of Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attack. Trump maintains that the more than 1,000 people who were arrested after the attack, including 600 who were eventually sentenced, are political prisoners. He also continues to argue that the 2020 election was stolen, a belief that incited those who carried out the January 6 attack in the first place.“Election interference!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday night. More

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      Banned in Colorado? Bring it on – in the twisted logic of Donald Trump, disqualification is no bad thing at all | Emma Brockes

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      Ten days out from the end of the year, and who could have foreseen the latest Trump plot twist? On Wednesday morning, Americans woke to absorb the fallout from the previous day’s news that Colorado – of all places – had ruled via its supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. There are many sober things to say about this, but in the first instance let’s give way to an unseemly squeal. How completely thrilling!Colorado leans Democrat – both its senators are blue – but it’s a western state with large conservative enclaves that is not exactly Massachusetts or Vermont. The decision by the state’s top justices is unprecedented in US electoral history. According to their ruling, Trump is in breach of section 3 of the 14th amendment, the so-called “insurrectionist ban”, in light of his behaviour during the 6 January storming of the Capitol.“President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection,” the judges said in a statement. “Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully under way, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice-President [Mike] Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”Well, it could hardly be less ambiguous. The 14th amendment, adopted in the wake of the civil war to obstruct Confederate lawmakers from returning to Congress, has never been implemented in a presidential race and, of course, Trump’s lawyers immediately challenged it. The ban will swiftly go up to the US supreme court for judgment, until which time Trump’s candidacy in Colorado will remain legitimate.Given the conservative super-majority of the US’s highest court, we have to assume that Colorado’s challenge will be unsuccessful. It might also be assumed that, catching on, other states will follow Colorado’s lead and vote similarly to exclude Trump from the primaries. Apart from childish delight, what, then, might this week’s events achieve?The wider backdrop isn’t encouraging, and glancing at the polls this week is a quick way to shunt the smirk from your face. In a survey commissioned by the New York Times on Tuesday, US voters were found to be largely unhappy with President Biden’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he scored a 57% disapproval rating. Given how divided Democrats are over fighting in the Middle East, that figure isn’t surprising. What, to use the technical term, blows your mind is that in the same poll, 46% of voters expressed the opinion that Trump would be making a better job of it than Biden, with only 38% more inclined to trust the president. Overall, Trump leads Biden by two points in the election race, a slender margin but, given the 91 felony counts currently pending against Trump, a hugely depressing one.Trump doesn’t need Colorado to win. In the 2020 election, he lost the state by 13 percentage points. And there is a good chance that, following the Alice in Wonderland logic that seems to determine Trump’s fortunes, the ruling in Colorado might actually help him. The narrative Trump has crafted for himself of being a Zorro-type outsider pursued by deep state special interests is as absurd as it is apparently compelling to large numbers of his supporters. At a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday night, Trump avoided the subject of Colorado’s decision, which came in just before he stepped out on stage. That won’t hold. By the end of the evening, an email sent out by his campaign team had already referred to the ban as a “tyrannical ruling”.And so we find ourselves in the perfect catch-22. The greater Trump’s transgressions and the more severe the censure from his detractors, the more entrenched his popularity with Republican voters appears to grow. It may not win him the presidency next November – there are too many variables around undecided voters in the middle – but it seems increasingly likely that it will ensure he beats his Republican rivals to get on the ballot.A four-count indictment for election interference, brought by special counsel Jack Smith and covering Trump’s actions in the run-up to 6 January, is set to be heard in the District of Columbia in March. Countless other civil and criminal suits work their way through the system. And now his viability as a candidate will probably go before the supreme court. It’s like a grim parlour game, with the same question going round and round: what will it take to make any of this stick?
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Why did Colorado kick Donald Trump off the ballot? – podcast

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      In a shock decision overnight, the Colorado supreme court ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for the White House again in that state.
      The 4-3 decision cited a rarely used provision of the US constitution, arguing that Trump should be disqualified for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. So what does it all mean? Will this historic decision actually prevent Trump from running? Or, like most hurdles the Republican frontrunner faces, will it just bolster his appeal?
      Jonathan Freedland speaks to Devika Bhat about how this might play out in 2024

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Why did Colorado disqualify Trump from the state’s 2024 election ballot?

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      The Colorado supreme court has ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for the White House again, citing his role in the January 6 attack, in a 4-3 ruling that will probably have major legal and political ramifications for the 2024 election.The decision removes Trump from the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot, and stems from a rarely used provision of the US constitution known as the insurrection clause.Trump’s campaign promised to immediately appeal to the US supreme court, which could well strike it down. Similar lawsuits are working their way through the courts in other states.Here’s what we know so far, and what it might mean for the former president and current Republican frontrunner.What is the insurrection clause and why was it used?The decision by the Colorado supreme court is the first time a candidate has been deemed ineligible for the White House under the US constitutional provision.Section 3 of the 14th amendment, also referred to as the insurrection clause, bars anyone from Congress, the military, and federal and state offices who once took an oath to uphold the constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it.Ratified in 1868, the 14th amendment helped ensure civil rights for formerly enslaved people, but also was intended to prevent former Confederate officials from regaining power as members of Congress and taking over the government they had just rebelled against.Some legal scholars say the post-civil war clause applies to Trump because of his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and obstruct the transfer of power to Joe Biden by encouraging his supporters to storm the US Capitol.“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3,” Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, told the Guardian in a recent interview. “Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse.”How did this happen?The case was brought by a group of Colorado voters, aided by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), who argued Trump should be disqualified from the ballot for his role in the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol.Noah Bookbinder, the group’s president, celebrated the decision as “not only historic and justified, but … necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”.Colorado’s highest court overturned an earlier ruling from a district court judge, who found Trump’s actions on January 6 did amount to inciting an insurrection, but said he could not be barred from the ballot, because it was unclear that the clause was intended to cover the role of the presidency.A majority of the state supreme court’s seven justices, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors, disagreed.Has this happened before?The provision has rarely been used, and never in such a high-profile case. In 1919, Congress refused to seat a socialist, contending he gave aid and comfort to the country’s enemies during the first world war.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast year, in the clause’s first use since then, a New Mexico judge barred a rural county commissioner who had entered the Capitol on January 6 from office.What does this mean for the election?The Colorado ruling applies only to the state’s Republican primary, which will take place on 5 March, meaning Trump might not appear on the ballot for that vote.It temporarily stayed its ruling until 4 January, however, which would allow the US supreme court until then to decide whether to take the case. That’s the day before the qualifying deadline for candidates.Colorado is no longer a swing state – Biden won it by a double-digit margin in 2020, and the last time a Republican won it was 2004 – but the ruling could influence other cases across the US, where dozens of similar cases are percolating. Other state courts have ruled against the plaintiffs; in Michigan, a judge ruled that Congress, not the courts, should make the call.Advocates hoped the case would boost a wider disqualification effort and potentially put the issue before the US supreme court. It’s unclear whether the court might rule on narrow procedural and technical grounds, or answer the underlying constitutional question of whether Trump can be banished from the ballot under the 14th amendment.The case could have significant political fallout as well. Trump allies will paint it as an anti-democratic effort to thwart the will of the American people, lumping it in with the numerous legal cases he faces in state and federal court.“Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot,” the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a close Trump ally, posted on social media.Trump didn’t mention the decision during a rally on Tuesday evening in Iowa but his campaign sent out a fundraising email calling it a “tyrannical ruling” and a statement saying:“Democrat Party leaders are in a state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls. They have lost faith in the failed Biden presidency and are now doing everything they can to stop the American voters from throwing them out of office next November.”Trump’s attorneys, meanwhile, have argued that the 14th amendment’s language does not apply to the presidency. A lawyer for Trump has also argued that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was not serious enough to qualify for insurrection, and that any remarks that Trump made to his supporters that day in Washington were protected under free speech. More

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      in Elections

      An Explosive Trump Ruling, and a Chaotic Congo Election

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.Colorado’s Supreme Court was the first in the nation to rule that former President Donald J. Trump was disqualified on the basis of the 14th Amendment.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Colorado Ruling Knocks Trump Off Ballot, by Adam LiptakNearly a Quarter of Trump Voters Say He Shouldn’t Be Nominated if Convicted, by Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Ruth IgielnikAfter Years of Wrangling, E.U. Countries Reach Major Deal on Migration, by Matina Stevis-GridneffF.A.A. to Investigate Exhaustion Among Air Traffic Controllers, by Emily Steel and Sydney EmberInside a Chaotic Billion-Dollar Election in a Pivotal African Nation, by Declan WalshNASA Streams Cat Video From Deep, Deep Space, by Sopan DebJessica Metzger and More

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      in Elections

      ‘The Daily’: Why A Colorado Court Just Knocked Trump Off the Ballot

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      Rob Szypko and Lisa Chow and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump is barred from holding office under the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies those who engage in insurrection, and directed Mr. Trump’s name to be excluded from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot.Adam Liptak, who covers the court for The New York Times, explains the ruling and why the case is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.On today’s episodeAdam Liptak, who covers the United States Supreme Court for The New York Times.Former President Donald J. Trump campaigned in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesBackground readingTrump Is Disqualified From Holding Office, Colorado Supreme Court RulesColorado Ruling Knocks Trump Off Ballot: What It Means, What Happens NextRead the Colorado Supreme Court’s Decision Disqualifying Trump From the BallotThere are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam. More

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      Colorado Voters Share Sense of Unease After Court Disqualifies Trump

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      Whether for or against the decision, many voters said they felt unsettled by the prospect of a presidential campaign fought with legal briefs and court arguments.Underlying the celebrations and condemnations of the Colorado Supreme Court decision that struck former President Donald J. Trump from the primary ballot on Tuesday was a sense among voters in the state that it was only a prelude of the rancor to come.Whether for or against the ruling, many voters said they felt uneasy at the prospect of months of electioneering that would ricochet between the courts and the campaign trail.“I think it disenfranchises voters,” said Jeremy Loew, a longtime defense lawyer in Colorado Springs who described himself as a progressive who had never voted for Mr. Trump. “Our whole system is built around people running for office and letting the voters decide.”“We can’t just kick people off the ballot because they have been accused of something,” he added.In its 4-to-3 decision on Tuesday, Colorado’s top court ruled that Mr. Trump had engaged in insurrection leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol and was ineligible to contest the state’s Republican primary.For some left-leaning voters in the state, that outcome was welcome.Richard McClain, a 37-year-old repair technician living in Erie, Colo., who voted for President Biden in 2020, said he thought Mr. Trump “deserved it.”“He did an insurrection,” Mr. McClain said. “He clearly goaded those people.”Republicans in the state treated the decision with disdain, describing it as an undemocratic move by a court with a liberal majority.“I’m shocked. I’m really shocked,” said Chen Koppelman, 72, a retired attorney and teacher in Denver. “To decide that we don’t have the right to vote for whom we want for the president of the United States? Excuse me.”Randy Loyd, the owner of an audio video design company, called the decision “ridiculous.”“Our country’s a mess in so many ways,” he said at the Cherry Creek mall in Denver, as Christmas carols played in the background. “The only hope we have is to get Trump back in. It’s a totally political move that the Colorado Supreme Court did that.”But the decision also laid bare the deep divisions and turmoil in the state’s Republican Party.One of the petitioners in the case, a former Republican majority leader of the Colorado House and Senate, Norma Anderson, said in a statement on Tuesday that she was “proud” to have taken part in the case that disqualified Mr. Trump.“My fellow plaintiffs and I brought this case to continue to protect the right to free and fair elections enshrined in our Constitution and to ensure Colorado Republican primary voters are only voting for eligible candidates,” she said. “Today’s win does just that.”Before the ruling, Dave Williams, who presides over a state Republican Party that often seems at war with itself, had warned ominously about not being able to resolve differences through the ballot box. “It will be done in a civil war,” he said last month. “No one wants civil war.”On Tuesday, Mr. Williams said he was confident that the ruling would be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Other voters said they were exhausted by partisan sniping and saw little to like from either camp.As he waited on a balmy evening for a table at a restaurant in Lafayette, Colo., Tyler Chambers, 27, made it clear that even before Tuesday’s ruling, he was not impressed by the current slate of candidates.“There’s got to be a better candidate than Donald Trump or Joe Biden,” said Mr. Chambers, a wildland firefighter who lives in the nearby Denver suburb of Westminster.The State Supreme Court’s decision was the first in the nation to find that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which disqualifies people who engage in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it — applied to Mr. Trump. Democrats cheered the notion that courts in other states might follow suit.At the same time, there was a widespread sense that Colorado would not have the last word on the matter.Erin Trendler of Louisville, Colo., anticipated that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court would reverse the decision.Chet Strange for The New York TimesErin Trendler, a public school occupational therapist who lives in the Denver suburb of Louisville, said she was “100 percent” in support of Tuesday’s ruling. “Colorado has taken a stand,” she said. “I hope that other states will follow suit.”But she anticipated that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court would reverse the decision.And Tuesday’s decision seemed to do little to ease the stress and apprehension that many voters said they felt about the election, now less than a year away.“I hope the country is strong enough to live through this crisis in our democracy,” said Arthur Greene, of Lafayette, Colo.Chet Strange for The New York Times“I hope the country is strong enough to live through this crisis in our democracy,” said Arthur Greene, 74.Kathi Patrick, a 55-year-old construction operations manager from Broomfield, north of Denver, took a moment after dining out with friends to say that the Tuesday decision changed little for her.“There’s so much anger in the country now that we’re all dealing with, and this just perpetuates all of that anger,” she said.“Nobody’s going to be happy.”Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs More