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      Trump Team, Burned in 2016, Looks to Close Out Iowa

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      The former president is leading by impressive margins in the state, but his campaign wants to make sure his supporters turn out.As former President Donald J. Trump campaigned in Iowa in the fall, he projected the utmost confidence. He told his supporters during speeches that his advisers had constantly warned him not to take the state for granted. Buoyed by his dominance in state polls, Mr. Trump insisted he had no reason to worry.“We’re going to win the Iowa caucuses in a historic landslide,” Mr. Trump predicted in speeches in September and October.But as he returned to Iowa last month, with the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15 fast approaching, Mr. Trump injected a note of concern. Though he retained his confidence, he warned his supporters of a rising threat: complacency.“The poll numbers are scary, because we’re leading by so much,” Mr. Trump said on Dec. 19 in Waterloo during his final trip to Iowa of 2023. “The key is, you have to get out and vote.”“Don’t sit home and say, ‘I think we’ll take it easy, darling. It’s a wonderful day, beautiful. Let’s just take it easy, watch television and watch the results,’” Mr. Trump later added. “No, because crazy things can happen.”With just two weeks until Iowa’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest, Mr. Trump’s campaign is dedicated to meeting high expectations and avoiding a repeat of 2016, when Mr. Trump narrowly came in second in Iowa despite being ahead in polls.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

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      Sununu Says Christie Should Drop Out Ahead of New Hampshire Primary

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      Mr. Sununu, the state’s governor, expressed concern that Mr. Christie would pull support from his preferred candidate, Nikki Haley.Just weeks before New Hampshire holds its Republican presidential primary, the state’s governor, Chris Sununu, said on Sunday that Chris Christie’s presidential bid was “at an absolute dead end” and suggested that he drop out to pave way for Mr. Sununu’s preferred candidate, Nikki Haley.Mr. Sununu, who this month endorsed Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, told CNN that “the only person that wants Chris Christie to stay in the race is Donald Trump.”He framed the race as a “two-person contest” between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump, whom she now trails in New Hampshire by an average of 20 percentage points.“There’s no doubt that if Christie stays in the race, the risk is that he takes her margin of the win,” Mr. Sununu said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” In a campaign ad last week, Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, explicitly addressed calls from some in the party for him to drop out to consolidate support around a non-Trump candidate. “Some people say I should drop out of this race,” he said. “Really? I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar.”In response to Mr. Sununu’s remarks, a spokesman for Mr. Christie’s campaign doubled down on that message: “The events of the last few days fully solidifies the point that Christie has been making for six months: that the truth matters, and if you can’t answer the easy questions, you can’t fix the big problems.”Mr. Sununu’s comments were in response to questions from Dana Bash, the CNN anchor, about Ms. Haley’s recent gaffe involving the Civil War, for which she has faced significant criticism from Mr. Christie and others.Mr. Sununu endorsed Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, in December.Sophie Park/Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, when she received a question at a New Hampshire town hall about the cause of the Civil War, Ms. Haley’s answer did not mention slavery. The next day, she walked back her remarks, telling a New Hampshire interviewer, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery.” She suggested that the question came from a “Democrat plant.”Mr. Sununu acknowledged that Ms. Haley had made a mistake in her remarks, but dismissed them as a “nonissue,” saying she had “cleared it right up and everyone’s moving on.”Mr. Christie and Ms. Haley have maintained a complicated relationship throughout the primary cycle. Mr. Christie defended Ms. Haley during the fourth Republican debate after she was attacked by Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur running for office. Yet earlier this month, in the first ad released by his campaign, Mr. Christie blasted Ms. Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for attacking each other more than they do Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley has made headway in New Hampshire in recent weeks, climbing to a solid second place. (Mr. Christie is polling third in the state). But securing the nomination remains a daunting task: She continued to battle Mr. DeSantis for second place in Iowa, and remains behind Mr. Trump, her former boss, in national polls by around 50 points.While Ms. Haley was campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, an attendee at a town hall in Cedar Falls asked her why she was behind in polls in South Carolina, her home state. Ms. Haley said that her support there would grow, should she perform well in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states on the nomination schedule. “South Carolinians are the type that they want to see you earn it,” she explained.Her response did not directly address specifics — that Mr. Trump is immensely popular in the state and has received endorsements from many top officials, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Senator Lindsey Graham.On Sunday, Mr. Sununu also told CNN of his disapproval of the Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, removing Mr. Trump from the state’s primary ballot last week. He called the decision “very politically motivated,” saying of Ms. Bellows, “This is a politician who I think has political aspirations down the road and is trying to make a little bit of a name for herself.”Mr. Sununu said that Mr. Trump’s removal would “only boost his opportunity to play that victim card down the road.” More

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      Living and Struggling With Long Covid

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      More from our inbox:Being Jewish in AmericaBlack Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Liz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Students Know We Need Free SpeechHolly StapletonTo the Editor:Re “What Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me,” by Ed Yong (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 22):As a Covid long-hauler (going on three years now!), I found it validating and even supportive to read Mr. Yong’s essay. It was particularly validating to have the acknowledgment of post-exertional malaise (PEM). This so aptly describes much of my life.For example, I apologize to my dog before going on a shorter-than-usual walk. I have to plan for seemingly mundane tasks of self-care and home care: taking a shower, changing clothes, doing the dishes, sweeping my apartment, doing laundry, etc. I put these tasks in my calendar, and even then the expectation of the aftermath makes me feel incapable, desperate and overwhelmed.I appreciated Mr. Yong’s astute acknowledgment that symptoms are often dismissed because of sexism (I’m transgender). And I was denied disability because it was determined that I was functional enough to wrap silverware in napkins. Yes indeed, treatment is not only a medical issue, but also a social one.Mr. Yong made it clear that his journalism has been transformed by doing research in a more integrative manner, especially actually being with current long-haulers. I’m immensely grateful to him for his journalism and to The Times for publishing it.(I earned my Ph.D. in 2012, and it’s taken me two days to write this.)River Jackson-PatonDallasTo the Editor:Ed Yong’s guest essay is right on point. Long Covid is real, and the public needs to be educated about it.My experience with Covid is that of a former registered nurse in the thick of it. I watched so many patients and co-workers get sick, some dying, some getting better, and some who are still struggling with long Covid.It is very hard for me to hear someone, usually an anti-vaxxer, say, “They should just let everyone get Covid and get it over with.”I hear this quite often and my response is always, “Are you familiar with long Covid?” I always get one of two responses: “No” or “That’s made up.” Then I try to educate.Donna HuntAtascadero, Calif.To the Editor:I appreciate Ed Yong’s extraordinary reporting on long Covid and his opinion piece about the health care system’s failure to take chronic illness patients seriously. What many do not realize is that years and even decades before the pandemic caused long Covid, many patients, including me, struggled to find doctors and treatments for many of the same health problems that long Covid patients face.I cannot give you a single name for our illness because it does not yet exist. I and countless other patients have a slew of diagnoses, including autoimmune diseases, mast cell disorders, connective tissue disorders and dysautonomia. Many of us are disabled and homebound or bedbound.Doctors for these disorders were already hard to find, and the surge of long Covid patients has made accessing knowledgeable care more difficult. I hope the increased demand will inspire more doctors to study and treat these conditions. Now that even more patients are suffering, we need to stop dismissing this constellation of illnesses.Rachel GravesTacoma, Wash.Being Jewish in AmericaPhotographs of some of the hostages captured by Hamas on display by the Western Wall in Jerusalem.Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Why I Can’t Stop Writing About Oct. 7,” by Bret Stephens (column, Dec. 20):American democracy has promised a land, as Mr. Stephens says, “in which you didn’t have to hide.” Mr. Stephens writes despairingly about the loss of this promise, and there’s no doubt that, today, America’s promise feels remote to many. For Jews, an eroding democracy brings with it a profound sense of trauma and fear.Yet the most appropriate Jewish response to this challenge is not despair, but determination. If our institutions are buckling, let’s reinforce them with forums for civic learning. If our civic culture is fraying, let’s repair it with opportunities for dynamic and respectful conversation. If our democracy is under threat, let’s take actions that strengthen it — right now, and in communities across the country.For nearly two and a half centuries, even amid painful setbacks, the United States has offered one of the last, best places to be Jewish — not because it catered to Jews, but because its democratic pluralism, albeit aspirational and imperfect from the beginning, allowed minorities like ours an opportunity to live freely.When that democratic pluralism struggles, we shouldn’t prematurely mourn its loss. We should repair it instead. This is not naïveté; it’s the agency our parents and grandparents came here looking for.Aaron DorfmanNew YorkThe writer is the executive director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, a network of synagogues and Jewish groups.Black Voters, Beware the G.O.P.Kshaun Williams says he has seen his life become harder because of rising inflation under President Biden.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Black Voters in Georgia Say Biden Has Forgotten Them,” by Mara Gay (Opinion, Dec. 24):Ms. Gay cautions that Black voters in Georgia feel ignored and abandoned and may desert the Democratic Party in the coming presidential election. While her conclusions are highly debatable, there is no such doubt regarding the alternative.The Republican Party of Donald Trump has rolled back voting rights, gerrymandered predominantly Black districts, eliminated or scaled back social programs that aid the poor and sent federal troops to crack down on anti-racism protests.Should Georgia’s Black voters leave the Democrats for the Republicans, they will quickly learn the real meaning of abandonment.Tom GoodmanPhiladelphiaLiz Cheney’s Book: ‘Too Little, Too Late’Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:It’s with some relief that I read Carlos Lozada’s Dec. 21 column, “Liz Cheney’s Checkered History of the Trump Era.”Ms. Cheney worries about the prospect of another Donald Trump tenure in the White House, but I worry just as much about Ms. Cheney’s rush to sainthood as she plugs her new book and her ostensibly revised views.As Mr. Lozada reminds us, Ms. Cheney, right along with other Trump molls and henchmen in the G.O.P., long pledged obeisance to Mr. Trump. She — no less than the people she now criticizes — got us to this awful, scary time and place, and she shouldn’t get a pass now for what is at best a clear case of “too little, too late.”Beth Z. PalubinskyPhiladelphiaStudents Know We Need Free SpeechTim EnthovenTo the Editor:Re “Students Can Show Us the Way to Free Speech,” by Sophia Rosenfeld (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 18):Ms. Rosenfeld’s essay thoughtfully reminds us that we, as the parenting, teaching and older generations, don’t always have better answers to questions about free speech than our children and students. Indeed, as Ms. Rosenfeld writes, “The sky really isn’t falling.” Our youth are more capable of finding reasonable solutions than we think.I recently attended my son’s college graduation. For weeks before going, I loathed what I thought would surely be a depressing carnival of elite righteousness. Instead, I experienced something far more reassuring about our future.I conversed with my son’s classmates to hear their views about free speech, wokeness and education. Not surprisingly, they are intelligent, insightful, compassionate, but most of all, keenly aware of what is broken. They are respectful and friendly to each other, even when they disagree.Now is the time for the preachy older generations to step aside and trust the younger generations. They can and are navigating the treacherous waters of our time just fine.Nao MatsukataBethesda, Md. More

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      A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights

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

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

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      The legal issues are novel and tangled, experts said, and the justices may be wary of knocking a leading presidential candidate off the ballot.The Supreme Court, battered by ethics scandals, a dip in public confidence and questions about its legitimacy, may soon have to confront a case as consequential and bruising as Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush.Until 10 days ago, the justices had settled into a relatively routine term. Then the Colorado Supreme Court declared that former President Donald J. Trump was ineligible to hold office because he had engaged in an insurrection. On Thursday, relying on that court’s reasoning, an election official in Maine followed suit.An appeal of the Colorado ruling has already reached the justices, and they will probably feel compelled to weigh in. But they will act in the shadow of two competing political realities.They will be reluctant to wrest from voters the power to assess Mr. Trump’s conduct, particularly given the certain backlash that would bring. Yet they will also be wary of giving Mr. Trump the electoral boost of an unqualified victory in the nation’s highest court.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will doubtless seek consensus or, at least, try to avoid a partisan split of the six Republican appointees against the three Democratic ones.He may want to explore the many paths the court could take to keep Mr. Trump on state ballots without addressing whether he had engaged in insurrection or even assuming that he had.Among them: The justices could rule that congressional action is needed before courts can intervene, that the constitutional provision at issue does not apply to the presidency or that Mr. Trump’s statements were protected by the First Amendment.“I expect the court to take advantage of one of the many available routes to avoid holding that Trump is an insurrectionist who therefore can’t be president again,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard.Such an outcome would certainly be a stinging loss for Mr. Trump’s opponents, who say the case against him is airtight. But the Supreme Court would be attracted to what it would present as a modest ruling that allows Mr. Trump to remain on the ballot.“This is a fraught political issue,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “I think there will be an effort for the court to coalesce around a consensus position for a narrow, unanimous opinion. That probably means coalescing around a position where Trump stays on the ballot.”If there is a consensus among legal experts, it is that the Supreme Court must act.“For the sake of the country, we need resolution of this issue as soon as possible,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Republican primary voters deserve to know if the candidate they are considering supporting is eligible to run. Otherwise they waste their votes on an ineligible candidate and raise the risk of the party nominating an ineligible candidate in the general election.”Mr. Trump was disqualified in Colorado and Maine based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars officials who have taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding office if they then engage in an insurrection.Professor Stephanopoulos said those determinations were legally sound. But he added that he was “highly skeptical” that the Supreme Court, which has a six-justice conservative supermajority, would agree.“I think Roberts very much doesn’t want the court disrupting a presidential election, especially based on a novel legal theory that doesn’t have years of support from conservative judges and academics,” Professor Stephanopoulos said. “I also doubt that the court’s conservative justices want to start a civil war within the Republican Party by disqualifying the candidate whom most Republican voters support.”Tara Leigh Grove, a law professor at the University of Texas, said the court has no options that will enhance its prestige.“Although many members of the public would of course embrace a decision affirming the Colorado Supreme Court,” she said, “others would recoil at the decision. I don’t think there is any way for the Supreme Court to issue a decision on this issue that will clearly enhance its legitimacy with the public as a whole.”Former President Donald J. Trump was disqualified from the Republican primaries in Colorado and Maine based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesShe proposed a general rule of thumb: “Whenever the Supreme Court considers a truly extraordinary constitutional case, it must confront at least two issues: first, what is the better answer to the legal question; and second, how confident are the justices in that answer.”“When it comes to cases that will have a massive impact on society,” she said, “one might assume that the confidence level has to be particularly high.”In her ruling on Thursday, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows of Maine wrote that the facts about Mr. Trump’s conduct were “not in serious dispute.”“The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on Jan. 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” she wrote, adding: “The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multimonth effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.”Like the Colorado Supreme Court, Ms. Bellows put her ruling on hold while appeals move forward. That means the U.S. Supreme Court has some breathing room.The Colorado case is already before the justices in the form of a petition seeking review filed by the state’s Republican Party, which urged the court to resolve the case by March 5, when many states, including Colorado and Maine, hold primaries. Otherwise, they said, voters “will face profound uncertainty and the electoral process will be irrevocably damaged.”The six voters who prevailed in the Colorado case asked the justices to move even faster, culminating in a decision on the merits by Feb. 11.Professor Hasen said the ruling from Maine added to the need for prompt resolution.“The fact that a second state, at least for now, has ruled Trump ineligible for the ballot puts major pressure on the Supreme Court to intervene in the case and to say something about how to apply Section 3 to Trump,” he said. “The plaintiffs bringing these lawsuits are relentless, and they will keep trying to get Trump removed.”Agreeing to hear the case is one thing. Resolving it is another. As the Colorado Supreme Court recognized, there are at least eight discrete issues in the case, and the voters challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility must prevail on all of them.“For Trump to win, he only needs to win on one issue,” Professor Muller said. “There are many options at the court’s disposal.”On the other hand, leading conservative law professors who have examined the original meaning of Section 3, which was adopted after the Civil War, have recently concluded that it plainly applies to Mr. Trump and bars him from another term. Such originalist arguments generally resonate with the court’s most conservative members.But other considerations may prevail.“As much as the court may want to evade politics in its decisions, it’s unavoidable,” Professor Muller said. “The best it can do right now is try to achieve consensus to avoid the appearance of partisanship.” More

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      The 14th Amendment Disqualification Was Not Meant for Trump

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

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

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