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      Prosecutors are charging Trump using laws made to fight the KKK. Here’s why | Sidney Blumenthal

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      On Tuesday, in response to the federal case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith over Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 insurrection, Trump threatened a new round of violence – or “bedlam” – if he loses the election. In early February, the US supreme court will also rule on the Colorado supreme court’s decision to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot for his part in the insurrection.The two cases might appear to be disconnected, but they are inseparable in law and history. They are united by Congress’s Reconstruction-era action to enforce the 14th amendment’s extension of constitutional rights against the former Confederates’ campaign of racial and political violence – the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870 and 1871.Smith has indicted Trump under the KKK Act, which incorporates the 14th amendment, section 3, of the constitution. The Colorado court’s disqualification comes under the third section of the amendment, which disqualifies from office anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States. There are clear and compelling reasons why Trump has been indicted under the KKK Act and disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3. Those reasons are stated in the indictments and court rulings.Trump has been charged on the same grounds that Klansmen were prosecuted, not only during Reconstruction but also during the civil rights era of the 1960s, and he has been removed from the ballot on the same basis as Confederate traitors were removed from elective office. Complacent commentators have dismissed the charges that Trump has brought on himself, hoping to calm the waters by vainly demonstrating their fair-mindedness. But the law is not somnambulant forever and the historical reality underlying it cannot be erased as it was in the aftermath of the dismantling of Reconstruction in a ‘lost cause’ of false conciliation.Through the civil war amendments, the newly freed slaves began to establish themselves as citizens with equal protection under the law and the right to vote. By 1867, in 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, 80% of eligible black men had registered to vote. Blacks and whites enacted new state constitutions and elected Republicans to state and federal offices, including many African Americans. Almost at once they were subjected to a reign of terror.The Ku Klux Klan, established in 1866 and led by former Confederate officers, mobilized to deprive black Americans of their rights, and spread across the south to reimpose white supremacy. Reconstruction was subverted by a violent counterrevolution proclaimed as “Redemption”. Nearly 10% of the black delegates to those constitutional conventions were murdered.In 1867, the Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, dividing the south into five districts to be governed under the authority of Union generals. No former Confederate state could be considered legitimate or receive congressional representation until it held a democratically elected convention that adopted the 14th amendment. The Military Reconstruction Act excluded from the conventions anyone who fell under section 3 of the 14th amendment, which barred those who had taken an oath to the constitution but violated it by engaging in insurrection from holding many offices in the postwar United States.When states applied for readmittance the Congress authorized each one with legislation stating they had qualified under section 3. Four southern states – South Carolina, Texas, Arkansas and Alabama – incorporated section 3 into their new constitutions.The state of Georgia was readmitted on this basis in 1869. But as President Ulysses Grant stated in his first annual message to the Congress later that year, white Democrats in the Georgia legislature “in violation of the constitution which they had just ratified (as since decided by the supreme court of the State) … unseated the colored members of the legislature and admitted to seats some members who are disqualified by the third clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution – an article which they themselves had contributed to ratify”.As a result, the Congress deprived Georgia of its federal representation until members of the legislature swore an oath of eligibility or had been cleared from the disability by Congress, as stipulated by the 14th amendment. From the start, Congress’s actions made it clear that when section 3 was ratified, it came into force carrying real consequences for violations.Behind these removals and oaths was a surging Klan that staged hundreds of violent nighttime raids, lynchings, rapes, church and school burnings, and whippings of black citizens, as well as assassinations of white Republicans. The Klan is estimated to have killed anywhere from 2,500 to 20,000 people during Reconstruction.The grand dragon of the KKK, the former Confederate general John B Gordon, testified before a congressional committee to disclaim any knowledge of the Klan: “I do not know anything about any Ku Klux organization … We never called it Ku Klux, and therefore I do not know anything about Ku Klux.” By contrast, the Klan’s grand wizard, the former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who ordered the massacre of black troops after their surrender during the war, explained that blacks “were becoming very insolent”, and that “this [Ku Klux Klan] was got up to protect the weak, with no political intention at all”.The KKK Act was Congress’s attempt to stamp out the Klan’s domestic terrorism. It criminalized using “force, bribery, threats, intimidation, or other unlawful means” to interfere with any citizen’s right and ability to vote.Striking at former Confederates who were commanding the Klan, the act then prescribed imprisonment of “any person who shall hereafter knowingly accept or hold any office under the United States, or any State to which he is ineligible under the third section of the fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution of the United States … ” Under the KKK Act, Grant’s attorney general, Amos Akerman, successfully prosecuted more than 1,100 cases against members of the Klan, effectively breaking it up.In the 1872 campaign, a large faction of the national Republican party opposed the KKK Act and advocated reconciliation with the south. They called themselves the Liberal Republican party and aligned with the Democrats against Grant’s re-election. The Amnesty Act of 1872, lifting the disability of section 3, was a sop to outflank the Liberal Republicans and marked the beginning of the end of Reconstruction. Still, Grant was re-elected, winning eight southern states with a black-white coalition.Post-Klan terrorist organizations – the White League in Louisiana, the White Liners in Mississippi and the Red Shirts in South Carolina – sprang up across the South to use paramilitary force to seize state governments. The Republicans lost their House majority in 1874; Democrats cut the justice department’s budget for enforcing the KKK Act. The 1876 presidential election was decided in a literal smoked-filled room through a deal in which the Republican candidate, Rutherford B Hayes, would become president in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the south.The final contemporaneous effort at an enforcement act, the Federal Elections Act of 1890, drafted by Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, would have provided US marshals to secure elections in the states, but was defeated in the Congress. In 1896, the supreme court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson upholding segregation was the capstone on a series of court decisions eviscerating Reconstruction laws. Not until Plessy was overturned in Brown v Board of Education in 1954 with the rise of the civil rights movement did the civil war amendments and their enforcement stir to life again.In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the local police in Neshoba county, Mississippi. The justice department brought the case against 18 killers under the federal conspiracy statutes of the KKK Act before a grand jury presided over by federal judge William Harold Cox, a diehard segregationist. Cox dismissed the charges brought under section 241 of the KKK Act – a “conspiracy against rights”, extending federal criminal jurisdiction over private actors interfering with other citizens’ “free exercise of enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States”.The circuit court upheld Cox on the ground that section 241 does not include rights protected by the 14th amendment. The justice department appealed to the US supreme court, represented in the case by the solicitor general, Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the Brown case for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.On 28 March 1966, in United States v Price, et al, known as the Mississippi Burning case, the court ruled unanimously that section 241 was applicable. The decision, written by Justice Abe Fortas, reviewed the history of the civil war amendments. “We think that history leaves no doubt that, if we are to give Section 241 the scope that its origins dictate, we must accord it a sweep as broad as its language,” he wrote. “In this context, it is hardly conceivable that Congress intended Section 241 to apply only to a narrow and relatively unimportant category of rights. We cannot doubt that the purpose and effect of Section 241 was to reach assaults upon rights under the entire Constitution, including the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and not merely under part of it.”It is precisely under section 241 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, upheld by the supreme court in an opinion that establishes the broadest possible application, that the justice department indicted Donald Trump on 1 August 2023. The indictment was not restricted to Trump’s activities during the January 6 US Capitol riot, but to the period of his conspiracy to stage a coup, a span that began after the election to the day he left office.To wit, count 4: “From on or about November 14, 2020, through on or about January 20, 2021, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators, known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”The special prosecutor then made clear that the law that Trump had violated was the pertinent section of the KKK Act: “In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 241.”Trump’s indictment under the KKK Act is the core of the charges against him. To convict him, there would be no need to determine definitively whether his incitement at the White House rally on 6 January 2021 makes him responsible for the assault on the Capitol, whether he obstructed a federal procedure or his state of mind during the insurrection. He would be held accountable for his centrality in the entire broad conspiracy under section 241 – under an expansive interpretation already decided by the supreme court. Moreover, section 241 does not require an overt act in furtherance of “conspiracy against rights”, though it does require intent. It also does not require an act of violence.The 14th amendment, section 3, provides a disqualification for insurrectionists. It was a self-executing document, just as was the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. The Congress enacted a series of enforcement acts – the first and second Reconstruction Acts, and the first Civil Rights Act. As President Grant and the Congress stated in the crisis over Georgia in 1869, the only means to remove the “disability” of disqualification was by an act of the Congress as stipulated in section 3 – an amnesty. The very existence of a remedy providing for the removal of the disqualification implies that the law is self-executing, as Grant and the Congress understood.The Ku Klux Klan Act, which specifically included section 3, was a further instrument to deal with a new insurrection. During Reconstruction that section was used within the KKK Act to suppress precisely that insurrection. Grant and the Congress knew that the 14th amendment was not limited to the insurrection that forced the civil war, but also was a governing constitutional document applicable to future insurrections.None of Trump’s defenders have suggested pursuing the proper remedy that is given within section 3, namely a congressional amnesty for him. To do so would be an admission that he was guilty of engaging in an insurrection against the United States. There would be no need for an amnesty unless there was a crime. An amnesty would be analogous to a pardon. But, with flagrant irresponsibility, virtually all of the Republican presidential primary candidates have offered that they would pardon Trump. They signaled that he has committed crimes and yet must be unaccountable. Still, despite their own logic, or illogic, they avoid discussing an amnesty.A number of commentators opine that Trump must not be held to account because it would arouse his enraged followers and violate the spirit of direct democracy (never mind the spirit of the law). Others assert that liberals who speak about the rule of law are perverse elitists who, by supporting Trump’s disqualification, reveal their true contempt for the people’s will. They urge relief for Trump as a naive gesture of good faith, as if even-handedness will encourage tolerance and pluralism. In short, the mechanism for the preservation of democracy must be withheld in the name of democracy.Meanwhile, at the federal appeals court hearing on his claim that he is immune from all prosecution because he is exempt from the 14th amendment, Trump threatened that if his trials proceed, if he fails to be granted “absolute immunity”, and if he loses the election, there would be “bedlam” – yet another incitement to insurrection.Taking his 14th amendment argument to its logical conclusion, his attorney, D John Sauer, argued before the three-judge panel that Trump could order the military to assassinate an opponent and be protected from indictment unless he was first impeached and convicted by the Senate. His statement attempted to elevate to a constitutional immunity Trump’s notorious remark in 2015: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump’s attorney seemed unaware or indifferent that by the same logic President Biden could with impunity order the assassination of Trump.In 1927, Trump’s father, Fred Trump, 21 years old, was arrested, according to police records, at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York, where 1,000 robed and hooded Klansmen marched through the streets. “This never happened,” Donald Trump said when the story reappeared in 2022. “Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place.”The Trump trials have put the civil war and Reconstruction amendments on trial again – “the results of the war”, as Grant called it. Trump’s indictment under section 241 of the KKK Act tests the federal government’s ability and willingness to secure basic voting rights and defend the constitution. Or else there will be “bedlam”.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Hunter Biden expected to be arraigned on federal tax charges in Los Angeles

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      Hunter Biden is expected to be arraigned on Thursday on federal tax charges in a Los Angeles courthouse.Biden, who has a home in Malibu, is expected to plead not guilty to nine tax-related charges that were filed in December. Three of the charges faced by Joe Biden’s son are felony counts, and he could face up to 17 years in prison if found guilty.“The defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4m in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” the 56-page indictment said, adding that Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills”.Outside the Los Angeles federal courthouse on Thursday afternoon, a line of dozens of reporters and TV cameras stretched along the sidewalk awaiting Biden’s arrival. A handful of passersby stopped to watch the scene unfold. Nearby, a man with a bullhorn stood chanting “USA” and “Hunter Biden’s laptop”.On Wednesday the younger Biden surprised members of the House of Representatives in Washington when he showed up for a hearing in which Republican lawmakers sought to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify. Democrats pointed out that Hunter Biden did offer to testify in public.The California arraignment will be more procedural than Wednesday’s political theater, in which he will formally enter his plea after hearing the full account of his tax charges. The court appearance will also include a discussion over future court dates and filing deadlines.Elsewhere, Hunter Biden is battling a separate case in Delaware. The president’s son has been charged with unlawfully obtaining a revolver by lying on a form about his drug use. He was addicted to crack cocaine at the time. He is also accused of possessing the gun illegally and has pleaded not guilty in that case.The accusations stem from a years-long federal investigation into Hunter Biden‘s tax and business dealings that had been expected to wind down over the summer with a plea deal that would have given him two years’ probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanor tax charges. He also would have avoided prosecution on the gun charge if he stayed out of trouble. The deal, which was pilloried by Republicans, unravelled in July.Now, the tax and gun cases are moving ahead as part of an unprecedented confluence of political and legal drama: as the 2024 election looms, the US justice department is actively prosecuting both the president’s son and Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, who is facing 91 charges in four separate criminal cases.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Sherrilyn Ifill on a Trump win: ‘We will cease to be a democracy’

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      The timing is right for a 14th amendment renaissance, says Sherrilyn Ifill.The 14th amendment, created during the Reconstruction era, carries the promise of equality for Black people and accountability for people engaged in insurrection and white supremacy, though its provisions have never been enforced fully.Pro-democracy advocacy groups are using the amendment’s third section to keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot for engaging in insurrection, a high-profile and novel approach for a presidential candidate. So far, a court in Colorado and a Maine elections official have used these arguments to say Trump can’t appear on the ballot in those states. The cases, which Trump has appealed, are expected to go to the US supreme court.Ifill, a longtime civil rights lawyer, wants a generation of attorneys to be trained on the amendment and for it to enter into Americans’ understanding of their rights. In Washington DC in 2024, she will launch a center focused on the 14th amendment at the Howard University law school, a historically Black university.As a former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Ifill has sued Trump before, alleging that his presidential campaign disfranchised Black voters in 2020. Since she left the NAACP in 2022, she has repeatedly sounded the alarm about US democracy in peril, saying the country is in a “moment of existential crisis”.If Trump returns to the White House in 2024, “we will cease to be a democracy”, she said.The Guardian spoke to Ifill about the stakes of this year’s election, and how to protect civil rights at a critical time. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Are we in a crisis point for democracy, unlike we’ve seen in our lifetimes?Absolutely. No question about it. We are in a crisis. Any time members of Congress say, as many apparently told Senator Mitt Romney, that they’re afraid to cast the vote they believe they should cast on impeachment because they worry about their children and their wives, we have a problem. We are in an authoritarian moment. Unfortunately, it’s a global authoritarian moment, which makes it even more challenging.What can we do about it?All the things that we’re doing. When litigating, we’re trying to hold people accountable to the rule of law, which is critical. We have to be educated ourselves about the tools that are available for us. We can stop telling fairy stories about this country. That’s what I find so beautiful about the architecture of the 14th amendment is that recognition, even amid the soaring promises, that the stubbornness of white supremacy and insurrection will remain and that we will need to confront it with power.Tell me about the idea behind the 14th Amendment Center. Why the 14th amendment?The first constitution obviously left a lot of things unsolved, kicked the can down the road on slavery and is deeply flawed without question. The second constitution, which is the one created after the civil war, is really bound up first and foremost in the civil war amendments: the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Those amendments reimagined a new America precipitated by, of course, the civil war and the need to finally fulfill the promise of equality, of Black people becoming full citizens of this country.It’s a powerful, powerful amendment. And yet, most of us, even as lawyers in law school, study only a fraction of it. Most citizens in our country don’t even know about it. I always say that if you walk up to a guy who’s got an AR-15 on his back in a McDonald’s, and you ask him, why do you have that long gun on your back just to get a quarter-pounder? He’s gonna say, because it’s my second amendment right. We’re having a conversation right now about what people can say on college campuses, and people feel very comfortable articulating their first amendment rights. We don’t talk about “my 14th amendment rights”, even those of us who are civil rights lawyers and litigate predominantly under the 14th amendment or statutes that come from the 14th amendment.As a result, we tend to talk about discrimination in terms of feelings or morality or the goodness of a person or whether they have a racist bone in their body or whether they see race, not that equality is a constitutional imperative. We talk about it as though it is optional, depending on how good the person is. That is not the spirit of the 14th amendment. I think it has been, I’ll go as far as to say, hijacked. At this time in our country, I think we need to re-engage it, particularly because the 14th amendment was created by a group of legislators and those who influenced them who had stared into the face of insurrection and into the face of violent white supremacy. Both of those very dangerous elements are elements that we are confronting today.Do you believe that the US has ever really met the full promise and strength of the 14th amendment?I don’t. That’s not even my opinion, it’s objectively true. The supreme court set about cutting back the promise of the 14th amendment pretty early on in the 19th century, in US v Cruikshank, in the civil rights cases and in Plessy v Ferguson. Even though the 14th amendment, section 5 gives Congress the power to enforce the guarantees, Congress is silent for the first half of the 20th century until forced to begin legislating by a grassroots activist wave that we call the civil rights movement.What kind of work do you envision the center will do? Training other lawyers on the 14th amendment, scholarly work, taking on cases?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI see the goal of the center, first and foremost, to train a generation of lawyers who are fully conversant with and equipped to utilize the 14th amendment as advocates – whether they are legislative advocates, whether they are litigators, whether they are educators, whatever they choose to do with their law degree.We’re seeing it right now with the section 3 challenges to Trump appearing on the ballot, which I find very exciting. The finest lawyers in our country did not learn about section 3 of the 14th amendment in law school. One of the reasons you’re seeing the controversies between different law scholars about whether Trump can be on the ballot is because it’s not been tried before. Fortunately for us, we have not faced an insurrection at the national level of this sort.You mentioned the section 3 cases. Why do you think there is this reluctance on the part of judges to intervene on this specific section in some instances?It hasn’t been done at this level, certainly at the presidential level. I think that judges are afraid. They’re afraid because of the political consequences, but I think given the particular nature of this candidate, it would not surprise me if judges were not at least pausing to consider personal consequences for them and their families. That is a sure sign that we are a democracy in peril. Mostly, it is fear.You hear people say all the time, let the voters decide. You don’t just ignore sections of the constitution because the voters can decide. That isn’t how it works. It isn’t that we could have state-sanctioned racial segregation in our schools because we put it to a vote. That’s not how it works. It’s trying to offload what was clearly an obligation that the framers of the 14th amendment believed had to be undertaken.What happens if Trump returns to the presidency?In very short order, we will cease to be a democracy. Trump has made clear what his plans are – a country in which the Department of Justice is weaponized against the perceived enemies of the president, a country in which the guarantees of civil service are destroyed, a country in which favors of governmental largesse and support are handed out based on personal allegiance to the president, the hijacking of the courts, and the encouragement of random political violence. It’s not a recipe for democracy.If he does win, then how do you and others who are engaged in all of this work try to rein him in, keep him accountable?You fight. It’s not even a question at that point of me and other people who do this work; it’s a question of every American who wants to live in a free democracy. What do you do? Do you acquiesce? Or do you resist? You show up, and you resist. Just as it’s happened in countries around the world, some of whom we admire tremendously. We are not immune and we have allowed too many guardrails to be breached. If we all ultimately end up having to pay that price, then we go back to the drawing board and we keep pushing to make this country a democracy again.What are you most concerned about in 2024?People checking out, deciding they don’t want to vote. It’s just not the time for that. People need to be all in and need to understand what the stakes are and need to get comfortable with what it means to vote for president, which is not that you’re necessarily voting for the perfect candidate or the candidate that you love. You’re voting for a candidate who is responsible, mature, who is sane, who is not merely using the government for their own ends, who understands government and who is prepared to actually govern and implement policies that are in the best interests of the people in this country, who is prepared to use the levers of power in ways that are democratic, open, transparent, that allow for dissent without retaliation.Those choices seem very clear to me. More

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      US supreme court allows Idaho’s strict abortion ban to stand pending hearing

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      The US supreme court on Friday allowed Idaho to enforce its strict abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, while a legal fight continues.The justices said they would hear arguments in April and put on hold a lower court ruling that had blocked the Idaho law in hospital emergencies, based on a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.Hospitals that receive Medicare funds are required by a federal law to provide emergency care, potentially including abortion, no matter if there’s a state law banning abortion, the administration argued.The legal fight followed the court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and allow states to severely restrict or ban abortion. The Joe Biden White House issued guidance about the law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act – or Emtala – two weeks after the high court ruling in 2022. The Democratic administration sued Idaho a month later.US district judge B Lynn Winmill in Idaho agreed with the administration. But in a separate case in Texas, a judge sided with the state.Idaho makes it a crime with a prison term of up to five years for anyone who performs or assists in an abortion.But the administration argues Emtala requires healthcare providers to perform abortions for emergency room patients when needed to treat an emergency medical condition, even if doing so might conflict with a state’s abortion restrictions.Those conditions include severe bleeding, pre-eclampsia and certain pregnancy-related infections.“For certain medical emergencies, abortion care is the necessary stabilizing treatment,” the solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, wrote in an administration filing at the supreme court.The state argued that the administration was misusing a law intended to prevent hospitals from dumping patients and imposing “a federal abortion mandate” on states. “[Emtala] says nothing about abortion,” Idaho’s attorney general, Raul Labrador, told the court in a brief.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust on Tuesday, the federal appeals court in New Orleans came to the same conclusion as Labrador. A three-judge panel ruled that the administration cannot use Emtala to require hospitals in Texas to provide abortions for women whose lives are at risk due to pregnancy. Two of the three judges are appointees of Donald Trump, and the other was appointed by another Republican president, George W Bush.The appeals court affirmed a ruling by US district judge James Wesley Hendrix, also a Trump appointee. Hendrix wrote that adopting the Biden administration’s view would force physicians to place the health of the pregnant person over that of the fetus or embryo even though Emtala “is silent as to abortion”.After Winmill, an appointee of Democratic president Bill Clinton, issued his ruling, Idaho lawmakers won an order allowing the law to be fully enforced from an all-Republican, Trump-appointed panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals. But a larger contingent of ninth circuit judges threw out the panel’s ruling and set arguments in the case for late January. More

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      US supreme court to hear appeal of Colorado ruling removing Trump from state ballot

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      The US supreme court will hear Donald Trump’s appeal of the Colorado ruling that he should be removed from the state ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.The court issued a brief order on Friday, setting up a dramatic moment in American history.The case will be argued on 8 February. As the Republican presidential primary will then be well under way, with Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada having voted – and as Trump has also been disqualified from the ballot in Maine, a ruling appealed in state court – a quick decision is expected.The Colorado primary is set for 5 March. The state government must begin mailing ballots to overseas voters on 20 January and to all others between 12 and 16 February. The ruling suspending Trump is stayed, however, as long as the supreme court appeal is ongoing.In the year of a high-stakes presidential election, the case is set to move rapidly, under a fierce spotlight. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said that with “oral argument set for 8 February, the appeal will be extremely expedited … thus, briefs will probably be due as soon as possible, maybe [in] a week or 10 days for each side.”The 14th amendment was approved after the civil war, meant to bar from office supporters of the rebel Confederate states. But it has rarely been used. Cases against Trump were mounted after he was impeached but acquitted by the Senate over the attack on Congress by his supporters on 6 January 2021, then swiftly came to dominate the Republican presidential primary for 2024, all while maintaining the lie that his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud.Fourteenth-amendment challenges to Trump in other states have either failed or remain undecided.The Colorado supreme court ruled against Trump on 19 December but stayed the ruling until 4 January, pending appeal. That appeal came earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers arguing that only Congress could arbitrate such disputes and saying the relevant text in the 14th amendment – in section 3 – did not apply to the presidency or vice-presidency as they are not mentioned therein.ABC News has reported debates from the passage of the amendment, in 1866, in which the presidency was said to be covered.Prominent legal scholars including Laurence Tribe of Harvard and the retired conservative judge J Michael Luttig have said Trump should be disqualified from seeking the presidency under the 14th amendment.Luttig, who testified memorably before the House January 6 committee, called the Colorado ruling “historic … a monumental decision of constitutional law … masterful and … unassailable”. He has also said the US supreme court ruling will be “arguably … the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history”.Other voices, including conservative lawyers and professors and all Trump’s major opponents for the Republican nomination, have questioned whether section 3 applies to the presidency, or to someone not convicted of insurrection. Most (and some senior Democrats) have also said the Colorado ruling is anti-democratic, because only voters should decide Trump’s fitness for office.Luttig has countered such arguments, saying: “The 14th amendment itself, in section 3, answers the question whether disqualification is ‘anti-democratic’, declaring that it is not. Rather, it is the conduct that gives rise to disqualification that is anti-democratic, per the command of the constitution.”Trump also faces extensive legal jeopardy: he faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments, 17 concerning election subversion, and civil threats including cases over his business affairs and a defamation suit arising from an allegation of rape a judge said was “substantially true”.Nonetheless, he leads Republican polling by vast margins. Were the supreme court to rule against him in the Colorado case, the US would find itself in uncharted waters.On Friday, Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, said the campaign welcomed “a fair hearing at the supreme court to argue against the bad-faith, election-interfering, voter-suppressing, Democrat-backed and Biden-led, 14th amendment abusing decision” in Colorado.Cheung also claimed the Colorado case and others like it were “part of a well-funded effort by leftwing political activists hell-bent on stopping the lawful re-election of President Trump this November, even if it means disenfranchising voters”.Writing on his blog, Richard Hasen, an election law professor at the University of Los Angeles, California, pointed to uncertainties about how the supreme court case will unfold, given what he called a “blob” of a filing from Trump’s lawyers, while saying lawyers for Colorado “raised three questions, which somewhat overlap with Trump’s claims”.“This seems like it could be a free-for-all in arguments and briefing,” Hasen wrote, adding: “Buckle up; it’s going to be a wild ride from here on out.”That seems assured. The supreme court is not just dominated 6-3 by rightwingers who have delivered historic rulings including removing the federal right to abortion. It includes three justices installed when Trump was president.On Thursday, a Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, caused controversy when she told Fox News one such appointee, Brett Kavanaugh, would now “step up” for the man who put him on the court.Controversy also surrounds Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice whose wife, the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas, was involved in Trump’s election subversion.On Friday, Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said Thomas should not take part in the Colorado case.“The American people deserve a fair and impartial review … free from any conflicts of interest,” Harvey said. “Justice Thomas’s continued refusal to recuse himself from this case and others related to the efforts to overthrow the 2020 election … raises questions about the integrity of the judicial process and the influence of political bias.“As trust in the supreme court reaches new lows, decisions like these only reinforce Americans’ belief that supreme court justices are politicians in robes. To begin to restore public confidence in our nation’s highest court, Thomas must recuse himself.” More

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      Kavanaugh will ‘step up’ to keep Trump on ballots, ex-president’s lawyer says

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      Brett Kavanaugh, the US supreme court justice, will “step up” for Donald Trump and help defeat attempts to remove the former president from the ballot in Colorado and Maine for inciting an insurrection, a Trump lawyer said.“I think it should be a slam dunk in the supreme court,” Alina Habba told Fox News on Thursday night. “I have faith in them.“You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up. Those people will step up. Not because they’re pro-Trump but because they’re pro-law, because they’re pro-fairness. And the law on this is very clear.”Kavanaugh was the second of three justices appointed by Trump, creating a 6-3 rightwing majority that has delivered major Republican victories including removing the federal right to abortion and loosening gun control laws.Habba’s reference to Trump “going through hell” was to a stormy confirmation during which Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault, which he angrily denied. Trump reportedly wavered on Kavanaugh, only for senior Republicans to persuade him to stay strong.Observers were quick to notice Habba’s apparent invitation to corruption.Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said: “Legal ethics alert. If … Kavanaugh feels in any way that he owes Trump and will ‘step up’, then [Habba] should be sanctioned by the bar for saying this on TV and thus trying to prejudice a proceeding.”Last month, the Colorado supreme court and the Maine secretary of state ruled that Trump should be removed from the ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war to stop insurrectionists holding office.Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress in 2021, an attempt to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. Impeached but acquitted, he is now the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination this year.Trump has appealed both state rulings. In a supreme court filing in the Colorado case, lawyers argued that only Congress could resolve such a dispute and that the presidency was not an office of state as defined in the 14th amendment.The relevant text does not mention the presidency or vice-presidency. ABC News has reported exchanges in debate in 1866 in which those positions are covered.The supreme court has not yet said if it will consider the matter.Norm Eisen, a White House ethics tsar turned CNN legal analyst, said: “It’s likely … the supreme court will move to resolve this. They may do it quickly. They may not do it quickly because by filing this petition … Trump has stayed the Colorado proceedings. So at the moment he remains on the ballot. The supreme court does have to speak to it.”Habba said:“[Trump] has not been charged with insurrection. He has not been prosecuted for it. He has not been found guilty of it.”She then made her prediction about Kavanaugh and other justices “stepping up”. More

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      Trump appeals ruling that would keep him off Maine 2024 primary ballot

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      Donald Trump formally appealed a decision by Maine’s top election official to remove him from the ballot on Tuesday, asking a superior court to reverse the decision.Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, removed Trump from the ballot on 28 December, saying the former president had violated section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars officials from holding office if they engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.The filing in the superior court for Kennebec county, which includes the state capitol of Augusta, accuses Bellows of bias, says that Trump did not have an adequate opportunity to present a defense, and claims Bellows did not have the authority to exclude him from the ballot.“The secretary’s ruling was the product of a process infected by bias and pervasive lack of due process; is arbitrary, capricious, and characterized by abuse of discretion; affected by error of law; ultra vires, and unsupported by substantial evidence on the record,” the filing says. “The secretary had no statutory authority to consider the challenges raised under section three of the 14th amendment.”Trump’s lawyers ask the court to vacate Bellows’ ruling and immediately place Trump on the ballot.Bellows has said her personal views played no role in her decision to remove Trump from the ballot. She reached her decision after holding an hours-long hearing on 15 December on the issue, during which Trump’s attorneys, as well as those challenging Trump’s eligibility, made their case before her.Trump is also expected to appeal a separate decision from the Colorado supreme court blocking him from the ballot for similar reasons. Both the Colorado Republican party and the voters who brought the case have asked the US supreme court to hear it.Section three of the 14th amendment, which was passed after the civil war to bar confederates from holding office, has never been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. The US supreme court is widely expected to ultimately decide the novel legal issue.Maine has four votes in the electoral college. Unlike nearly every other state, it does not award all of them to the winner of the statewide vote. Instead, the statewide winner gets two electoral votes, and the other two are allocated based on which candidate wins in each of the state’s two congressional districts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden earned three of Maine’s electoral votes in 2020 and Trump earned one. More

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      The major tests US gun control activists face in 2024

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      The grim statistics around mass shootings underscore a haunting reality for the US: despite recent legislative efforts at the state and federal levels, gun violence remains alarmingly common across the country.But gun safety groups say they remain undaunted in 2024, when they plan to push for more change through state legislatures and executive actions. And as voters turn their attention to a crucial election year, gun safety groups are also prepared to press candidates on their plans to curb gun violence.The simple statistics demonstrate what a weighty task it is. In December, a gunman carried out a shooting spree across two communities in central Texas, killing six people. The attack was the 39th mass shooting in the US last year, marking a new single-year record for the country. The previous record of 36 mass shootings had been set just one year prior.Gun reform groups will still face steep hurdles as they attempt to reduce the carnage.Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives, have shown little appetite for passing another federal gun safety bill, following the enactment of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. The supreme court’s conservative majority has similarly embraced a rather expansive definition of second amendment rights, jeopardizing gun safety laws passed at the state and federal level.For gun safety groups, the first significant test of 2024 will come in June, when the supreme court is expected to decide its next major second amendment case.United States v RahimiThe case centers on Zackey Rahimi, who was placed under a domestic violence restraining order after allegedly assaulting his then girlfriend and firing a gun in front of bystanders in 2019. Per federal law, those under such restraining orders are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms, but Rahimi is now challenging that statute based on another supreme court decision.In 2022, the supreme court overturned New York’s century-old regulation requiring that anyone seeking to carry a handgun in public must show “proper cause” to do so. The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, established a new test to determine the constitutionality of gun regulations. The conservative justices ruled that any gun regulation must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”.The ruling has sparked a flurry of challenges to firearm regulations and forced gun safety advocates to search the historical record for analogous laws from the nation’s founding to defend their proposals. In the case of Rahimi, the conservative-leaning US court of appeals for the fifth circuit agreed with his argument that the law blocking those under domestic violence restraining orders from accessing firearms is inconsistent with historical gun laws and is thus unconstitutional.That ruling has now been appealed to the supreme court, which held oral arguments in the case in November. The justices’ decision could have far-reaching implications for the future of gun rights as well as the safety of survivors of domestic violence. According to a 2023 study, more than half of domestic violence homicides involve firearms.“The stakes are incredibly high in Rahimi because it would be the first time the supreme court strikes down a federal law on gun safety in decades. And of course, it’s a particularly important federal law,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice-president of law and policy for the gun safety group Everytown.The Rahimi ruling may also help clarify lower courts’ apparent confusion over applying the Bruen test. Thus far, courts have reached conflicting decisions over how to interpret the “historical tradition” of gun laws, said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and a constitutional scholar focusing on the second amendment.“I certainly think that confusion is only growing,” Charles said. “We see circuit courts even disagree with one another and are kind of all over the place, the same way that the district courts have been. So I don’t think we’re having any more guidance until the [supreme] court weighs in more.”During the oral arguments, some of the court’s conservative justices appeared skeptical of the fifth circuit’s decision, seemingly hesitant to stretch gun rights to the point of protecting alleged domestic abusers. Even if the supreme court rules against Rahimi, the decision will probably not mark a sea change in conservative justices’ overall approach to the second amendment. Charles, who filed an amicus brief in the Rahimi case, suggested the justices may issue a narrow ruling that upholds the law regarding domestic violence protection orders but leaves the Bruen test intact.“That will still leave lots of other cases, like assault weapons bans, outside the scope of this new kind of revisionary guidance,” Charles said.That dynamic could complicate gun safety groups’ efforts to strengthen the nation’s gun laws, including their campaign to re-enact a federal assault weapons ban.‘A political issue that doesn’t need to be’The country’s worst mass shooting of 2023 unfolded in October in Lewiston, Maine, where a gunman killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar. The devastating attack prompted a change of heart for congressman Jared Golden, the conservative Democrat who represents Lewiston in the House of Representatives. Reversing his previous position, Golden announced he would now support reinstating the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war,” Golden said. “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles.”Gun safety groups praised Golden’s announcement, while noting that his new position brings him closer in line with voters’ stance on an assault weapons ban. According to a Fox News poll conducted in April, 61% of voters support banning assault weapons. Other proposed gun regulations, such as enacting universal background checks and mandating safe storage of firearms, enjoy even more widespread support among voters.“We’re hopeful that [Golden’s announcement] will spur others to be able to take some of that political courage and step out there,” said Vanessa Gonzalez, vice-president of government and political affairs for the gun safety group Giffords. “It’s a political issue that doesn’t need to be. We just need more folks to have the courage to say that and to step out on those issues.”The 2024 elections will provide gun safety groups with many opportunities to push sitting lawmakers and first-time candidates on enacting more firearm regulations.“We are continuing to look for younger elected officials or candidates who are not afraid to say gun violence in America has to stop and then actually see it through,” Gonzalez said. “And then on the flip side, what does it look like once [they are] elected to really hold them accountable for what they said they were going to do?”Suplina predicted that gun safety will play a prominent role in campaign ads and messaging in 2024, partly because the issue might help Democrats sway the independent voters who will be crucial in determining the outcomes of close races. An AP/Norc poll conducted over the summer found that 61% of independents believe gun laws should be made more strict.“If you want to win the middle of the American electorate, you have to be strong on gun safety,” Suplina said. “And being strong on gun safety means recognizing that assault weapons should not be in the hands of your average citizens.”So far, efforts to reinstate an assault weapons ban have met consistent resistance from Republicans in Congress. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, most recently reintroduced the assault weapons ban bill in December, but Republicans blocked the legislation from advancing. Even if Senate Democrats could get the bill passed, it would almost certainly fail in the Republican-controlled House.Despite the obstacles presented by a divided Congress, gun safety groups have found recent success at the state level, and they hope to build upon those wins in 2024. According to Everytown, state legislatures passed a record-breaking 130 gun safety bills in 2023 while blocking 95% of the gun lobby’s agenda.Gun safety groups are also exploring options beyond Congress as it pushes for change at the federal level. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed a new rule aimed at closing the so-called “gun show loophole”, which allows some private gun sellers to perform transactions without completing background checks on prospective buyers. Hundreds of thousands of gun safety proponents have already submitted comments in support of the proposed rule, according to Everytown.That campaign reflects gun safety groups’ overall goal to put more pressure on sellers and manufacturers of firearms in the year ahead. Such efforts may face resistance from conservative courts, but gun safety advocates fervently believe that the political momentum is on their side heading into 2024.“The state of the gun violence prevention movement in our country is strong and stronger than it’s ever been,” Suplina said. “Courts or no courts, Congress or no Congress, we’re going to really do a lot to animate the public to understand who it is that’s flooding the streets with guns and making money off of it while the rest of us suffer.” More