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

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

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      Maine 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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      US supreme court under pressure to rule swiftly on states’ Trump ballot bans

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      A decision by Maine’s secretary of state to prevent former president Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s presidential election ballot will now probably end up before the US supreme court. Maine’s move follows a similar decision in Colorado this month.There is mounting pressure on the conservative-leaning judicial body to swiftly rule on Maine and Colorado’s application of section 3 of the 14th amendment prohibiting anyone who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. But neither decision will be the last ballot eruption in an already convulsive election which is likely to see a rematch of Trump versus Joe Biden.Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot have been filed in about 30 states but more than half have already been dismissed, including in California where this week the secretary of state, Shirley Weber, decided to keep Trump on the certified list of candidates for the state’s 5 March primary, and in Michigan.There are now active lawsuits in 14 states, including Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, seeking to remove Trump ahead of their primaries citing the same constitutional clause.The 14th amendment, ratified three years after the conclusion of the civil war in 1865, covered a range of issues, including guaranteeing rights to former slaves and a provision to disbar anyone who had taken the oath of office to uphold the constitution who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.Like other civil war-era laws that have been utilized to try to contain political extremism – including a failed attempt to prosecute the leaders of a 2017 neo-Nazi Unite the Right torchlight rally under a federal civil statute known as the KKK Act – the section 3 clause was only rediscovered after January 6 riot at the US Capitol.Technically, section 3 doesn’t require a criminal conviction to take effect.Nor is it clear if section 3 applies to the presidency. An early draft mentioned the office, but the final draft did not. If it does apply to the presidency, Trump’s lawyers will argue that it is a political question that should be decided by voters and any effort by judges to get involved is a denial of the candidate’s right to fair legal procedure because it was made without the benefit of a public trial.They may also argue that January 6 was not an insurrection but more akin to a riot that Trump was not himself involved in and that he wasusing his rights of free speech when he cajoled the crowd: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”In Maine, the secretary of state, Democrat Shenna Bellows, broke ranks with other similarly positioned officials in other states. In her decision, she cited the Colorado supreme court ruling that the January 6 attack “was violent enough, potent enough, and long enough to constitute an insurrection”.In her ruling, Bellows said that Trump had “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” and that he “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”.The Maine decision was immediately appealed by the state’s Republican party and must first travel through the state’s court system before it can reach the US supreme court.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut both Colorado and Maine are small players in the electoral college system that decides presidential elections. In Maine, Democrats won in in 2016 and 2020 but Trump won one of four electoral votes under an unusual system that allows the state to split its four votes proportionally. In Colorado, Trump failed to win its nine votes in both elections.Across the political spectrum, private lawsuits aimed at getting Trump off the ballot are being treated as funky, freelance efforts by elected politicians.The California governor, Gavin Newsom, said Trump should be beaten in the polls and warned that while the former president was a “threat to our liberties” the lawsuits and back-and-forth ballot rulings were a “political distraction”.After Maine’s decision on Thursday, the Republican senator Susan Collins said voters in her state should decide who wins the election – “not a secretary of state chosen by the legislature”, adding that the decision would “deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump’s removal from Maine ballot ‘opens Pandora’s box’, DeSantis says

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      The removal of Donald Trump from Maine’s presidential ballot “opens Pandora’s box”, one of his main rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination said, as reaction to the ruling.The comment by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was among many from politicians on the right decrying the decision by Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, to preclude Trump, which the former president’s campaign called the “attempted theft of an election”.Democrats and some legal experts, meanwhile, largely praised Maine’s decision to remove Trump’s name as the correct interpretation of the insurrection clause of the US constitution.DeSantis was one of two Trump rivals for their party’s presidential nomination, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, to immediately accuse Bellows of engaging in partisan politics.“The idea that one bureaucrat in an executive position can unilaterally disqualify someone from office turns on its head every notion of constitutional due process this country has abided by for over 200 years,” DeSantis said on Fox News.“It opens up Pandora’s box. Can you have a Republican secretary of state disqualify Biden from the ballot?”The Florida governor had previously claimed the Colorado supreme court’s decision earlier this month to disbar Trump was a “stunt” by Democrats designed to bolster his position in the Republican primary race.Ramaswamy, who had threatened to withdraw from the Colorado primary in protest, issued a statement following the Maine ruling accusing “the system” of targeting Trump.“This is what an actual threat to democracy looks like. The system is hellbent on taking this man out, the constitution be damned,” it said.Two other Republicans still in the race, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, were more muted. “Nikki will beat Trump fair and square. It should be up to voters to decide who gets elected,” the former South Carolina governor’s campaign said in a statement.A spokesperson for Christie pointed to his earlier position that Trump should remain on the ballot until convicted of insurrection following a trial that featured “evidence that’s accepted by a jury”, according to the New York Times.Among the critics of the ruling in Maine was Susan Collins, one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial for inciting the deadly 6 January Capitol riot. Trump was acquitted, but at the time Collins denounced his “abuse of power” and “betrayal of his oath” to the constitution.Collins said in a tweet that Bellows’s ruling should be overturned. “Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a secretary of state chosen by the legislature,” she wrote. “The … decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice.”Her position was immediately challenged by political commentator Keith Olbermann, who replied: “I want to vote for Bill Clinton again. So by your logic, I can – right?”Maine’s Democratic congressional delegation was split. “We are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should remain on the ballot,” Jared Golden, who voted to impeach Trump in 2021, said in a statement.But Cherrie Pingree, who represents a more strongly Democratic district, was unequivocal. “The text of the 14th amendment is clear. No person who engaged in an insurrection against the government can ever again serve in elected office,” she wrote in a tweet.“Our constitution is the very bedrock of America and our laws and it appears Trump’s actions [on 6 January 2021] are prohibited by the constitution.”John Dean, a former White House lawyer for Richard Nixon, said Bellow’s ruling could lead to Trump’s removal from the ballot in even more states.“The Maine decision is very solid. It was fully briefed, there is ample due process in this proceeding, and they just lost by a straight, honest reading of the 14th amendment,” he said in an interview with CNN.“Trump’s in trouble. He’s in trouble wherever this is legitimately raised and addressed. So yes, the supreme court is going to have to weigh in. I want to see those strict constructionists, the originalists, get around that [insurrection] language. It looks so applicable, I don’t know what they can do with it other than take him off the ballot.” More

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      Trump Rivals Criticize Maine Decision in His Defense

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      Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy were quick to take swipes at the secretary of state’s ballot decision, while the state’s congressional delegation appeared split on the matter.Former President Donald J. Trump’s rivals in the Republican race for president again lined up in his defense on Thursday after Maine barred him from its primary election ballot, the second state to do so.When the Colorado Supreme Court barred Mr. Trump from the primary ballot there last week, all of Mr. Trump’s opponents also criticized the decision, rather than using it as an avenue of attack.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur, made much the same arguments on Thursday night.“It opens up Pandora’s box,” Mr. DeSantis said on Fox News after the Maine decision was announced. “Can you have a Republican secretary of state disqualify Biden from the ballot?”Mr. DeSantis had previously suggested that the ruling in Colorado had been part of a plot to solidify Republican support behind Mr. Trump in the primary. He had also said that Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments had “sucked all the oxygen” out of the race.Mr. Ramaswamy, the candidate who ostensibly is running against Mr. Trump but has most enthusiastically defended the former president, again said he would withdraw from the primary in any state where Mr. Trump was not on the ballot. He also called on the G.O.P. field — Mr. DeSantis, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — to make a similar pledge.“This is what an actual threat to democracy looks like,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in a statement. “The system is hellbent on taking this man out, the Constitution be damned.”A statement from the Haley campaign said that “Nikki will beat Trump fair and square. It should be up to voters to decide who gets elected.”A spokesman for Mr. Christie’s campaign pointed to his previous criticism of the Colorado ruling. Mr. Christie said at the time that a court should not exclude a candidate from the ballot without a trial that included “evidence that’s accepted by a jury.” He has also said that Mr. Trump should be defeated at the ballot box.Other Republicans moved quickly to express their outrage on Thursday. Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 4 Republican in the House, called Mr. Trump’s removal from the ballot in Maine “election interference, voter suppression and a blatant attack on democracy.”Reaction from Maine’s congressional delegation was split. Senator Susan Collins, the lone Republican, said the decision, which she said would “deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice,” should be overturned. Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Representative Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat who is likely to face a close re-election bid, said he disagreed with the decision, arguing that Mr. Trump had not been found guilty of the crime of insurrection and therefore should remain on the ballot. Mr. Golden’s seat has been rated a tossup in an analysis by The Cook Political Report.“I voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. 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.”Representative Chellie Pingree, who is in a safe Democratic seat in Maine’s other congressional district, said she supported the state’s decision.“The text of the 14th Amendment is clear. No person who engaged in an insurrection against the government can ever again serve in elected office,” Ms. Pingree said in a statement, adding that “our Constitution is the very bedrock of America and our laws and it appears Trump’s actions are prohibited by the Constitution.” 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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      Maine’s Secretary of State to Decide Whether Trump Can Stay on Ballot

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      Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, has said she would decide next week whether Maine will join Colorado in disqualifying former President Donald J. Trump from its primary ballot. Maine’s secretary of state is poised to issue a decision next week that could bolster a citizen-led movement to keep former President Donald J. Trump off primary ballots around the country — or contradict a landmark court decision in Colorado this week. In a hearing last week at Maine’s State House in Augusta, Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state, weighed three separate complaints challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility to appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot. Two are based on the same section of the Constitution that the Colorado Supreme Court cited in its 4-to-3 decision on Tuesday that found Mr. Trump cannot hold office again because his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to engaging in an insurrection.Some form of challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility has been lodged in more than 30 states, but many of those have already been dismissed. Most are unfolding in the courts, but in Maine — because of a quirk in its Constitution — the secretary of state weighs in first, with voters filing petitions, not lawsuits. Her decision can then be appealed to the state’s Superior Court.The Colorado ruling was the first in history to disqualify a presidential candidate from a ballot under the 14th Amendment, which was drafted after the Civil War. One section of the amendment bars those who have taken an oath “to support” the Constitution from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,” or had “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Mr. Trump’s campaign has said it will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court; should the high court take the case, the other challenges around the country are likely to be put on hold. After the Colorado ruling, Ms. Bellows, an elected Democrat, invited lawyers on both sides in Maine to file supplemental briefs and said that her decision was likely to come next week.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