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      A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights

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      As 2023 slouches to an ignominious end, some news came Friday that gave me an unexpected jolt of hope. I have spent much of the year watching with horror and trying to document an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary people, and several have barred transgender and nonbinary people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.So it was shocking — in a good way, for once — to hear these words from Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, as he vetoed a bill that would have banned puberty blockers and hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for trans and nonbinary minors in Ohio and blocked transgender girls and women from participating in sports as their chosen gender:“Were House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most — the parents,” DeWine said in prepared remarks. “Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us, none of us, should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions.”DeWine, by situating his opposition to the bill on the chosen battlefield of far-right activists — parents’ rights — was tapping into an idiom that is at once deeply familiar to me and yet has almost entirely disappeared from our national political discourse: that of a mainstream, Midwestern Republican. It is a voice I know well because it is one I heard all my life from my Midwestern Republican grandparents.I did not agree with all of their beliefs, especially as I got older. But I understood where they were coming from. My grandfather, a belly gunner in the Pacific Theater in World War II, believed a strong military was essential to American security. My grandmother was a nurse, and she believed that science, medicine and innovation made America stronger. They made sure their children and grandchildren went to college — education was a crucial element of their philosophy of self-reliance. And above all, they believed the government should be small and stay out of people’s lives as much as humanly possible. This last belief, in individual freedom and individual responsibility, was the bedrock of their politics.And so I am not surprised that defeats keep coming for anti-transgender activists. At the ballot box, hard-right candidates in swing states have tried to persuade voters with lurid messaging about children being subjected to grisly surgeries and pumped full of unnecessary medications. But in race after race, the tactic has failed.Legally, the verdict has been more mixed, which is unsurprising given how politically polarized the judiciary has become. This week a federal judge in Idaho issued a preliminary ruling that a ban on transgender care for minors could not be enforced because it violated the children’s 14th Amendment rights and that “parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children.” The state is expected to appeal the decision.In June, a federal court blocked an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors. “The evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients,” the ruling said, “and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing” of protecting children and safeguarding medical ethics. In 2021, Asa Hutchinson, then the governor, had vetoed the ban for reasons similar to DeWine, but the Arkansas Legislature overrode his veto. (The Ohio Legislature also has a supermajority of Republicans and may decide to override DeWine’s veto.)In other states, like Texas and Missouri, courts have permitted bans to go into effect, forcing families to make very difficult decisions about whether to travel to receive care or move to a different state altogether. The issue seems destined to reach the Supreme Court soon. The A.C.L.U. has asked the Supreme Court to hear its challenge to the care ban in Tennessee on behalf of a 15-year-old transgender girl. Given how swiftly and decisively the court moved to gut abortion rights, it seems quite possible that the conservative supermajority could choose to severely restrict access to transgender health care for children or even adults.But maybe not. After all, the overturning of Roe has deeply unsettled the country, unleashing a backlash that has delivered unexpected victories to Democrats and abortion-rights advocates. Ohio voters just chose by a wide margin to enshrine the right to end a pregnancy in the state Constitution.This is why I think DeWine’s veto speaks to a much bigger truth: Americans simply do not want the government making decisions about families’ private medical care. Polling on abortion finds a wide array of views on the morality of ending a pregnancy at various points up to viability, but one thing is crystal clear: Large majorities of Americans believe that the decision to have an abortion is none of the government’s business.Rapidly changing norms around gender have many people’s heads spinning, and I understand how unsettling that can be. Gender is one of the most basic building blocks of identity, and even though gender variations of many kinds have been with us for millenniums, the way these changes are being lived out feel, to some people, like a huge disruption to their way of life. Even among people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive, there has been a sense that gender-affirming care has become too easily accessible, and that impressionable children are making life-changing decisions based on social media trends.It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalized, care, as many states have done in the United States. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatments for children through their socialized health systems, in which the government pays for care and has always placed limits on what types are available. In those systems, budgetary considerations have always determined how many people will be able to get access to treatments.But private care remains legal and mostly accessible to those who can afford it.Republicans are passing draconian laws in the states where they have total control, laws that could potentially lead to parents being charged with child abuse for supporting their transgender children or threaten doctors who treat transgender children with felony convictions. These statutes have no analog in free Europe, but they have strong echoes of laws in Russia, which is increasingly criminalizing every aspect of queer life. These extreme policies have no place in any democratic society.Which brings me back to my Midwestern Republican grandparents, Goldwater and Reagan partisans to their core. My grandfather died long before Donald Trump ran for president, and 2016 was the first presidential election in which my grandmother did not vote for the Republican candidate. But she did not vote for Hillary Clinton, choosing another candidate she declined to name to me. Like a lot of Republicans, she really didn’t like Clinton, and one of the big reasons was her lifelong opposition to government health care. She didn’t want government bureaucrats coming between her and her doctors, she told me.I think many, many Americans agree with that sentiment. Transgender people are no different. They don’t want government bureaucrats in their private business.“I’ve been saying for years that trans people are a priority for enemies and an afterthought to our friends,” Gillian Branstetter, a strategist who works on transgender issues at the A.C.L.U., told me. “I’ve made it my job to try and help people understand that transgender rights are human rights, not just because transgender people are human people, but because the rights we’re fighting for are grounded in really core democratic principles, like individualism and self-determination.”Those are core American values, but 2024 is an election year, and even though transphobia has proved to be a loser at the ballot box, many Republicans are sure to beat that drum anyway. Mike DeWine has me hoping that some Republicans will remember what was once a core principle of their party, and embrace the simple plain-spoken truth of my heartland forebears: Keep the government out of my life, and let me be free to live as I choose.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Maine Law ‘Required That I Act’ to Disqualify Trump, Secretary of State Says

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      Barring former President Donald J. Trump from the primary ballot was a hard but necessary call, Shenna Bellows said in an interview.Before she decided to bar former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot, Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state, was not known for courting controversy.She began her career in public office as a state senator in 2016, winning in a politically mixed district. She prided herself on finding common ground with Republicans, an approach she said was shaped by growing up in a politically diverse family.As the former head of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union, Ms. Bellows did not shy away from divisive issues. But her ballot decision on Thursday was perhaps the weightiest and most politically fraught that she had faced — and it sparked loud rebukes from Republicans in Maine and beyond.In an interview on Friday, Ms. Bellows defended her decision, arguing that Mr. Trump’s incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol made it necessary to exclude him from the ballot next year.“This is not a decision I made lightly,” Ms. Bellows, 48, said. “The United States Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Maine election law required that I act in response.”Ms. Bellows, a Democrat, is among many election officials around the country who have considered legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s latest bid for the White House based on an obscure clause of the 14th Amendment that bars government officials who have engaged in “insurrection” from serving in the U.S. government.After holding a hearing this month in which she considered arguments from both Mr. Trump’s lawyers and his critics, Ms. Bellows explained her decision in a 34-page order issued on Thursday night.The ban, which is being appealed in the courts, made Maine the second state to disqualify Mr. Trump from the primary ballot next year. Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled last week that his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election were disqualifying. Opponents of Mr. Trump are pursuing similar challenges in several other states.Lawyers on both sides of the dispute are calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to promptly issue a ruling on how election officials should interpret the insurrectionist clause of the 14th Amendment, which was adopted to bar Confederate officials from serving in the U.S. government after the Civil War.Mr. Trump’s campaign and Maine Republicans have called Ms. Bellows’s decision an overreach. The Maine Republican Party issued a fund-raising appeal that called Ms. Bellows “a biased Democrat Party hack unworthy of the high office she holds.”Maine’s two senators, Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent who generally votes with Democrats, also took issue with the ban, with Mr. King saying that “the decision as to whether or not Mr. Trump should again be considered for the presidency should rest with the people as expressed in free and fair elections.”Ms. Bellows said it was not uncommon for secretaries of state to bar candidates from the ballot if they did not meet eligibility requirements, and noted that she refused to allow Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, to appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot after he failed to get enough signatures.Ms. Bellows, who became a powerful figure in a politically divided state, said she had managed to work collaboratively with Republicans. Though in interviews, longtime colleagues of Ms. Bellows said they were not surprised by her willingness to take a politically risky stance.“Secretary Bellows has a well-earned reputation for being an extremely hard worker who is willing to follow her conscience,” said Zach Heiden, the chief counsel at the A.C.L.U. in Maine who reported to Ms. Bellows when she led the organization from 2005 to 2013.At the A.C.L.U., Ms. Bellows championed same-sex marriage and expanding voting rights, and fought provisions of the Patriot Act and certain government surveillance programs after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2014, after leaving the organization, Ms. Bellows launched an unsuccessful bid to unseat Ms. Collins, who has been in the Senate since 1997.“At first the Democratic establishment did not take her seriously,” said John Brautigam, a former Maine lawmaker. “But Shenna won the nomination and conducted a credible and issue-focused campaign.”In 2016, Ms. Bellows won a State Senate seat that included her hometown, Manchester. The district is politically mixed: It favored Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and Mr. Trump in 2016.While her politics have been decidedly liberal, Ms. Bellows said she had never seen herself as an extreme partisan. Shortly after becoming a state senator, Ms. Bellows said she found common ground with Republicans on several initiatives, including a bill making it easier to license medical professionals in the state.That approach to politics, she said, was shaped by growing up in a family that was politically split.“The key to my success in working across the aisle has always been the willingness to listen and hear both sides and to be open to what people have to say,” she said.In 2020, Ms. Bellows put herself forward as a candidate for secretary of state, a role that is chosen by the Legislature in Maine. Ms. Bellows said she sought the position because she saw it as an opportunity to safeguard democratic principles, key among them the right to vote.“As a kid, I had a copy of the Bill of Rights on my bedroom wall,” she said. These days, she said, she often carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution in her purse.The aftermath of the 2020 election deeply disturbed Ms. Bellows, who condemned Mr. Trump in posts on social media after an effort to impeach him failed.“He should have been impeached,” she wrote in February 2021. “But history will not treat him or those who voted against impeachment lightly.”Republicans have said that those remarks call into question her objectivity. But Ms. Bellows said her decision to remove Mr. Trump from the ballot was based solely on the facts and the law. She said a motto from her time at the A.C.L.U. had long guided her actions.“We had a saying: There are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent principles,” she said. “That is a philosophy that I try to live my life by.” More

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      In Maine, Questions Over Decision to Push Trump Off the Ballot

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      Some voters were alarmed at the state’s decision to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump. But others applauded it. “I like that Maine took a stand,” said one.A day after Maine became the second state to bar former President Donald J. Trump from its primary ballot, citing his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, voters who found themselves thrust into a national spotlight on Friday voiced reactions as varied and complex as the legal questions threaded through the decision itself.Peter Fickett, 74, who was repairing a car in downtown Kittery under wintry gray skies, said Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, had overstepped her authority in finding that Mr. Trump was not qualified to serve as president.Standing beside him in the gloom, his friend Bob Dodier, 72, firmly but cheerfully disagreed. “I’m happy with it,” Mr. Dodier said of the decision.Both veterans, both former supporters of Mr. Trump who said they had grown weary of the frequent controversy he provoked, the two men said they were leaning toward voting for Nikki Haley, another Republican candidate, in next year’s election.This sprawling, rural state of 1.3 million people is often seen as politically divided, between its wealthier, more liberal-leaning southern and coastal portions, and its less populous, more conservative western and northern expanses. Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016, as President Biden did in 2020. But as one of just two states that can divide its four Electoral College votes between candidates, Maine did so in each of the last two elections, awarding one vote to Mr. Trump in 2016 and one in 2020 based on his robust support in one large voting district.Maine became the second state to bar Mr. Trump from its primary ballot.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesFaced with the ongoing election chaos — and the possibility that Maine’s Superior Court could soon reverse the secretary of state’s ruling on appeal — some residents, like Elizabeth Howard, 21, were opting to stay clear of the fray altogether.“I’m not big into politics because it’s a lot of drama,” she said after the Maine decision was announced, as she worked at the customer service counter at a tractor supply business in Waterville. “I think there’s a lot of people that are going to be upset, because there’s a lot of people that really liked Trump.”Yet many of those upset by the decision said their objections had nothing to do with loyalty to a candidate, but instead reflected their preference for a purely nonpartisan process — a process they now see as tainted by the move to push Mr. Trump off the ballot.Scott McDougall, a 54-year-old Maine native, retail manager and Marine Corps veteran, voted twice for Mr. Trump, but said he was undecided about supporting him again, because he had come to question the candidate’s priorities: “How loyal is he to what the country needs, versus his own needs?” He said Mr. Trump’s actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, were one of his reasons for worry.“But I don’t think the secretary of state has the right to decide for us who we’re going to vote for,” he said. “The state doesn’t have that type of power.”Elected officials in Maine voiced a similar mix of concerns. Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat who represents Lewiston and a vast area of rural northern Maine, said that while he had voted to impeach Mr. Trump over his actions before the Jan. 6 attack, he still believed that Mr. Trump should be allowed on the ballot for now.“I do not believe he should be re-elected as president of the United States,” Mr. Golden said in a statement. “However, we are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.”But the state’s other House member, Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who represents Portland, signaled her support for the decision.“The text of the 14th Amendment is clear,” she said in a statement, adding, “Our Constitution is the very bedrock of America and our laws, and it appears Trump’s actions are prohibited by the Constitution.”Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who represents Portland, supported the decision to push Mr. Trump off the ballot.Robert F. Bukaty/Associated PressEthan Strimling, a former Democratic Portland mayor who teamed up with two former Republican lawmakers to file one of the successful challenges to Mr. Trump’s ballot access, said the reaction on Friday had been passionate and largely respectful, “even on Twitter.”“There are a lot of folks weighing in, and that’s as it should be,” he said. “There are people with politics close to mine who have real questions about the decision, and people very different from me who agree with it.”The outcome had seemed to bring about one key consensus, he said: “I think both sides are realizing that it’s a legitimate question that needs to be answered.”In the small town of Blue Hill, about halfway up Maine’s jagged, meandering coastline — not far from Hancock, where Ms. Bellows, the secretary of state, grew up — Richard Boulet hesitated before revealing his opinion of her decision. As director of Blue Hill’s public library, he is officially “apolitical,” he said; he wants all people, including Mr. Trump’s supporters and his detractors, to use the library and feel welcome there.“As a private citizen, however, there’s not much doubt in my mind that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6,” said Mr. Boulet, 51, sitting at his desk upstairs in the brick library. “That is a real source of concern for me.” He cited Ms. Bellows’s former position as director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, and added: “I don’t think she came to this decision lightly. It’s hard for me to see it as a partisan decision.”Three miles to the north, on the outskirts of town, Donald Bowden, 52, leaned against a door frame outside the automotive repair shop where he has worked for 37 years, R.W. Bowden & Sons Garage.Taking a short break, his hands black with grease, Mr. Bowden, who goes by Donny, said he learned the trade as a teenager under his father’s guidance; he is now the president of the company. His values, he said, are family first, then work, then rest and recreation.He said he was not political, but he was troubled by Ms. Bellows’s action.“It’s insane,” he said. “I think it’s a little unconstitutional, but they’re trying to use the constitution to defend it. It’s painfully obvious that it’s a witch hunt for anyone they don’t like. First and foremost, it’s very childish. If you don’t like someone, what do we do? Hound them and hound them and hound them nationwide. Common sense tells you this is not productive.”He said he would like to see Mr. Trump win again. The former president isn’t perfect, he said, “but he’s a businessman, and the country is a business, for better or worse.”Both Maine senators opposed the decision. Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, said in a statement that it would “deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice,” and that it should be undone.Senator Angus King, an independent, said in a statement that without a judicial determination that Mr. Trump was barred by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the clause on insurrection, the former president should remain on the ballot.“I like that Maine took a stand,” Michelle Bourne, 52, said. “It makes me proud. I think we took a stand for the good of the country.”Sophie Park for The New York TimesNear the town wharf in Kittery, however, Michelle Bourne, 52, was quietly celebrating a decision she saw as a win for a state that she said had not always been known for progressive thinking and leadership.“I like that Maine took a stand,” she said. “It makes me proud. I think we took a stand for the good of the country.”Ms. Bourne, a resident of New Gloucester and a registered independent, said she voted for Mr. Biden in the last election and was undecided about whom to support this time. But she saw no gray area in Ms. Bellows’s decision to keep a candidate accused of insurrection off the ballot.“It makes all the sense in the world to me,” she said. “I don’t even know why it’s a question.”Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs More

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      How the Supreme Court May Rule on Trump’s Presidential Run

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      The legal issues are novel and tangled, experts said, and the justices may be wary of knocking a leading presidential candidate off the ballot.The Supreme Court, battered by ethics scandals, a dip in public confidence and questions about its legitimacy, may soon have to confront a case as consequential and bruising as Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush.Until 10 days ago, the justices had settled into a relatively routine term. Then the Colorado Supreme Court declared that former President Donald J. Trump was ineligible to hold office because he had engaged in an insurrection. On Thursday, relying on that court’s reasoning, an election official in Maine followed suit.An appeal of the Colorado ruling has already reached the justices, and they will probably feel compelled to weigh in. But they will act in the shadow of two competing political realities.They will be reluctant to wrest from voters the power to assess Mr. Trump’s conduct, particularly given the certain backlash that would bring. Yet they will also be wary of giving Mr. Trump the electoral boost of an unqualified victory in the nation’s highest court.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will doubtless seek consensus or, at least, try to avoid a partisan split of the six Republican appointees against the three Democratic ones.He may want to explore the many paths the court could take to keep Mr. Trump on state ballots without addressing whether he had engaged in insurrection or even assuming that he had.Among them: The justices could rule that congressional action is needed before courts can intervene, that the constitutional provision at issue does not apply to the presidency or that Mr. Trump’s statements were protected by the First Amendment.“I expect the court to take advantage of one of the many available routes to avoid holding that Trump is an insurrectionist who therefore can’t be president again,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard.Such an outcome would certainly be a stinging loss for Mr. Trump’s opponents, who say the case against him is airtight. But the Supreme Court would be attracted to what it would present as a modest ruling that allows Mr. Trump to remain on the ballot.“This is a fraught political issue,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “I think there will be an effort for the court to coalesce around a consensus position for a narrow, unanimous opinion. That probably means coalescing around a position where Trump stays on the ballot.”If there is a consensus among legal experts, it is that the Supreme Court must act.“For the sake of the country, we need resolution of this issue as soon as possible,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Republican primary voters deserve to know if the candidate they are considering supporting is eligible to run. Otherwise they waste their votes on an ineligible candidate and raise the risk of the party nominating an ineligible candidate in the general election.”Mr. Trump was disqualified in Colorado and Maine based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars officials who have taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding office if they then engage in an insurrection.Professor Stephanopoulos said those determinations were legally sound. But he added that he was “highly skeptical” that the Supreme Court, which has a six-justice conservative supermajority, would agree.“I think Roberts very much doesn’t want the court disrupting a presidential election, especially based on a novel legal theory that doesn’t have years of support from conservative judges and academics,” Professor Stephanopoulos said. “I also doubt that the court’s conservative justices want to start a civil war within the Republican Party by disqualifying the candidate whom most Republican voters support.”Tara Leigh Grove, a law professor at the University of Texas, said the court has no options that will enhance its prestige.“Although many members of the public would of course embrace a decision affirming the Colorado Supreme Court,” she said, “others would recoil at the decision. I don’t think there is any way for the Supreme Court to issue a decision on this issue that will clearly enhance its legitimacy with the public as a whole.”Former President Donald J. Trump was disqualified from the Republican primaries in Colorado and Maine based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesShe proposed a general rule of thumb: “Whenever the Supreme Court considers a truly extraordinary constitutional case, it must confront at least two issues: first, what is the better answer to the legal question; and second, how confident are the justices in that answer.”“When it comes to cases that will have a massive impact on society,” she said, “one might assume that the confidence level has to be particularly high.”In her ruling on Thursday, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows of Maine wrote that the facts about Mr. Trump’s conduct were “not in serious dispute.”“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 the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” she wrote, adding: “The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multimonth effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.”Like the Colorado Supreme Court, Ms. Bellows put her ruling on hold while appeals move forward. That means the U.S. Supreme Court has some breathing room.The Colorado case is already before the justices in the form of a petition seeking review filed by the state’s Republican Party, which urged the court to resolve the case by March 5, when many states, including Colorado and Maine, hold primaries. Otherwise, they said, voters “will face profound uncertainty and the electoral process will be irrevocably damaged.”The six voters who prevailed in the Colorado case asked the justices to move even faster, culminating in a decision on the merits by Feb. 11.Professor Hasen said the ruling from Maine added to the need for prompt resolution.“The fact that a second state, at least for now, has ruled Trump ineligible for the ballot puts major pressure on the Supreme Court to intervene in the case and to say something about how to apply Section 3 to Trump,” he said. “The plaintiffs bringing these lawsuits are relentless, and they will keep trying to get Trump removed.”Agreeing to hear the case is one thing. Resolving it is another. As the Colorado Supreme Court recognized, there are at least eight discrete issues in the case, and the voters challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility must prevail on all of them.“For Trump to win, he only needs to win on one issue,” Professor Muller said. “There are many options at the court’s disposal.”On the other hand, leading conservative law professors who have examined the original meaning of Section 3, which was adopted after the Civil War, have recently concluded that it plainly applies to Mr. Trump and bars him from another term. Such originalist arguments generally resonate with the court’s most conservative members.But other considerations may prevail.“As much as the court may want to evade politics in its decisions, it’s unavoidable,” Professor Muller said. “The best it can do right now is try to achieve consensus to avoid the appearance of partisanship.” More

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      The 14th Amendment Disqualification Was Not Meant for Trump

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      Challenges to disqualify Donald Trump from the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment are popping up all over the country. On Thursday, the secretary of state of Maine ruled that Mr. Trump would be ineligible for the state’s primary ballot, a decision that can be appealed to the state’s Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled narrowly that the state will allow Mr. Trump to stay on the primary ballot — but left open a potential future challenge to his inclusion on a general-election ballot.But so far only one — the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that bars Mr. Trump from the primary ballot — has reached the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court.The Supreme Court should take the case and reverse the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, and do so for the very reason cited by the Colorado judges. According to the Colorado court (itself quoting an earlier, unrelated case), Section 3 should be interpreted “in light of the objective sought to be achieved and the mischief to be avoided.”That is exactly right. The Colorado court failed, however, to follow its own advice.When Congress passed the 14th Amendment, there wasn’t a person in the Senate or House who worried about loyal Americans electing a former rebel like Jefferson Davis as president. Instead, Republicans feared that the leaders of the late rebellion would use their local popularity to disrupt Republican Reconstruction policy in Congress or in the states. Section 3 expressly addressed these concerns and did so without denying loyal Americans their right to choose a president.To date, much of the debate over Section 3 has focused on whether the president is an “officer” who takes an “oath.” This is an issue in the second part of the provision. What neither scholars nor courts have yet focused on is first part of Section 3. The threshold issue is whether the framers and ratifiers thought that the president holds a “civil” office “under the United States.” This is a much more specific and historically difficult question.Here are the key opening words of Section 3: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State …”The text begins by expressly naming offices that rebel leaders might conceivably secure for themselves on the basis of their local popularity. The greatest fear was that these rebels would return to Congress and join Northern Democrats in thwarting Republican Reconstruction policy.As Representative Thaddeus Stevens warned his colleagues, without a properly worded Section 3, “that side of the House will be filled with yelling secessionists and hissing copperheads” — a reference to Northern Democrats who had opposed the Civil War. It was possible that a coalition of Southern and Northern Democratic presidential electors would nominate a “hissing copperhead.”Congressional Republicans were so concerned about mischief in the Electoral College that they delayed the passage of the 14th Amendment in order to make sure the issue was properly addressed. The Joint Committee’s draft of Section 3 prohibited rebels from voting for presidential electors, but this left open an enormous loophole. As Representative John Longyear pointed out, this prohibition would be “easily evaded by appointing electors of President and Vice President through their legislatures.”Senator Jacob Howard agreed that Section 3 would not “prevent state legislatures from choosing rebels as presidential electors,” and he led the effort to rewrite Section 3 in a manner that closed the loophole. The result is the final version that prohibits leading rebels from serving as presidential electors, whether elected or appointed.The only reason to secure a trustworthy Electoral College is in order to secure a trustworthy president. So Section 3 focuses on state-level decision making. It expressly addresses three key positions where leading rebels might use their remaining popularity to disrupt Republican Reconstruction: the Senate, the House of Representatives and state-selected presidential electors.Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens would have gone further and completely disenfranchised anyone who had participated in the rebellion, leader or not. Moderate Republicans, however, were more optimistic. As Senator Daniel Clark noted, once leading rebels were removed, “those who have moved in humble spheres [would] return to their loyalty and to the Government.”The strategy worked. In 1868, despite the scattered participation of former rebel soldiers as presidential electors, Southern Black voters helped elect the Republican Ulysses S. Grant over the Democrat Horatio Seymour.It is possible to read Section 3 as impliedly including the office of president as one of the “civil” offices “under the United States” covered by the general catchall provision. It would be odd to stuff the highest office in the land into a general provision that included everything from postmasters to toll takers, but the text is ambiguous enough to make this a possible reading.However, if the framers meant the catchall provision to include both presidents and postmasters, they were remarkably negligent. According to longstanding congressional precedent and legal authority, the phrase “civil office under the United States” did not include the office of president of the United States. As Joseph Story explained in his influential “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” the congressional precedent known as “Blount’s Case” established that the offices of president, senator and representative were not civil offices under the government of the United States — they were the government of the United States. The phrase “civil office under the United States” referred to appointed offices.In addition to legal authority, there is also common sense to guide us. The text of Section 3 is structured in a manner that moves from high federal office to low state office, and the apex federal political offices are expressly named. As the former Attorney General Reverdy Johnson explained, “the specific exclusion in the case of Senators and Representatives” led him to initially presume that the framers excluded the office of president. Johnson accepted a colleague’s suggestion to the contrary, but if the text created such a presumption in the mind of a former attorney general, it is reasonable to think it may have created the same presumption in the minds of ratifiers.Actually, we have no idea whether the ratifiers shared Johnson’s initial presumption. This is because no one has discovered a single example of any ratifier discussing whether Section 3 included the office of president of the United States. Despite extraordinary efforts by researchers, no one has yet found evidence that any ratifier even considered the possibility that Section 3 abridged the people’s right to choose their president.The silence of the ratifiers on this point is important. Those favoring the disqualification of Mr. Trump insist that there is nothing “anti-democratic” about constraining the presidential choices of the national electorate. The Constitution, after all, contains a number of provisions that deny the people the right to elect whomever they wish. Article II, Section One, for example, prevents the people from electing anyone who is under age 35 or who is a foreign-born candidate.Those qualifications are expressly declared in the text and they received robust vetting and debate in the ratifying conventions. In the case of Section 3, the Supreme Court is being asked to impose new constraints on the democratic process by way of textual implication and in the absence of any public debate whatsoever.Such a reading is neither democratically appropriate nor textually necessary. And it was most certainly not “the objective sought to be achieved [or] the mischief to be avoided” by Section 3.At best, the text of Section 3 is ambiguous regarding the office of president. The Supreme Court should limit the clause to its historically verifiable meaning and scope.Let the people make their own decision about Donald Trump.Kurt Lash, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, is the author of, most recently, “The Reconstruction Amendments: Essential Documents” and the forthcoming “A Troubled Birth of Freedom: The Struggle to Amend the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. 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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      The Supreme Court and Donald Trump

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      More from our inbox:A Push Away From Political Despair‘The Real Battle for American Education’Dinners With ChurchillLeah Millis/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Barring Trump From the Ballot Would Be a Mistake,” by Samuel Moyn (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 24):Despite the vast difference in our academic credentials (me: B.A. from Miami University, Professor Moyn: J.D. from Harvard), I dispute the author’s conclusion that American democracy will suffer if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court to bar Donald Trump from the primary ballot in that state.Professor Moyn cites the fact that many Americans dispute Mr. Trump’s culpability in inciting the riot of Jan. 6, and states that barring him from the ballot will incite more violence. But Mr. Trump’s rhetoric urging followers to “fight like hell” that day is construed by all but the most rabid MAGA supporters as clear incitement and should disqualify him. If Mr. Trump is not punished, how can we expect any disgruntled election loser to graciously accept defeat?The court, Professor Moyn asserts, should pay attention to public opinion when crafting a decision. The court did not, however, pay the slightest bit of attention to public opinion when it overturned Roe v. Wade or when it struck down the New York State law enacting strict gun control measures.I believe the court will overturn the Colorado decision, not because it is the proper legal action, but because the court has devolved into a partisan political body fraught with corruption, a majority of whose members would like to see Mr. Trump back in office. Most Americans, according to some opinion polls, agree with me.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More