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      Trump’s supreme court case hinged on the 14th amendment – what it actually means

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      A former US president could have been kicked off the ballot in his quest to return to the White House because of a rarely used provision in an amendment created in the aftermath of the civil war.A lawsuit out of Colorado that sought to oust Donald Trump in his re-election bid went before the US supreme court, which decided Trump could not be removed from seeking office there over the 14th amendment’s third clause.The clause was intended to ensure that people who participated in the civil war and other acts against the US weren’t allowed to keep or resume holding positions of power in government. In essence, it says that people could not again hold office if they had participated in insurrection or rebellion against the country while they were in office.Trump’s team argued the clause doesn’t apply to him for a handful of reasons, based on both esoteric readings of the clause itself and on larger questions like what constitutes an insurrection.The justices sided with Trump, saying states could not try to keep a federal candidate off the ballot because it was beyond their power. The case involved several issues of legal reasoning the justices had to weigh.Here are the clause’s big questions.
      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 first part of the clause essentially says that a person can’t hold office again if they were an officer of the US when they participated in an insurrection. It specifies that it applies broadly – to the presidency, Congress and “any office … under the United States”.Trump’s team argued, though, that this means he couldn’t hold office again, not that he can’t run for office again, so he can’t be disqualified from appearing on the ballot. The legal question would then be raised anew if he won and therefore “held office” again. The case is therefore premature, they said.In Colorado, the court concluded that because Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president, it would be a “wrongful act” for the secretary of state there to list him as a candidate in the presidential primary.
      … who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States …
      Trump’s arguments related to this part of the clause involve twists of plain language to conclude the president is not an “officer of the United States” and therefore the clause doesn’t apply because anything Trump did happened when he was president.His attorneys argued that because the presidency isn’t explicitly listed in the clause, it wasn’t intended to include the presidency. They’ve also said that the presidency is not “under” the United States because it is the government, and because the president is an officer of the constitution, not of the United States.These arguments go hand in hand with the earlier provision in the clause, about whether someone could hold office. Trump’s team argued that because the presidency isn’t specifically mentioned, like “member of Congress” is, it doesn’t apply to him.The Colorado supreme court essentially said the plain language of the amendment and how the presidency is viewed overall show that the presidency is an office of the US, and the president would be considered an “officer” of the US.“President Trump asks us to hold that Section Three disqualifies every oath-breaking insurrectionist except the most powerful one and that it bars oath-breakers from virtually every office, both state and federal, except the highest one in the land,” Colorado’s ruling says.
      … shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
      The insurrection part of the clause involves perhaps the more political questions of the case: whether the associated events of 6 January 2021 to overturn Trump’s loss would constitute an “insurrection” and, if so, if Trump himself “engaged” in it.In Colorado, the case went before a jury for a trial, with evidence submitted that backed up the claims both that the events of 6 January 2021 were an insurrection and that Trump engaged in it. Among the evidence were many months of claims made by Trump that the election was stolen and specific callouts to his supporters to protest the results.Using definitions of what was considered an insurrection when the clause was written, the Colorado court said basically that it would entail a public use or threat of force by a group of people to hinder some execution of the constitution – in this case, the awarding of electors and the peaceful transfer of power. By that definition, the events of 6 January constituted an insurrection.Trump’s team argued both that the events of 6 January were not an insurrection and that the former president didn’t engage in it anyway. His attorneys instead described the events as a “riot” and said the president’s speech was protected by the first amendment. They also pointed to comments he made telling the mob to go home eventually on 6 January, in which he said they should “go peacefully and patriotically”.Colorado’s justices concluded that free speech rights don’t allow for incitement and that his intent was to call for his supporters to fight his loss, which they responded to.“President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary,” the ruling said. “Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power.”
      But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
      Finally, there’s the matter of what role states play in assessing eligibility for federal offices and whether a state can decide not to put a candidate on the ballot because they haven’t met federal constitutional requirements for running, which include factors like age and citizenship as well as the broader insurrection question.Even for federal elections, states manage the electoral process of who can vote, how they vote and how results are counted.Trump argued that eligibility in this case is a political question that Congress should decide, not one for state courts – and not one for courts in general, which tend to stay away from purely political questions.His team tried to make the case that Congress would need to put the process in motion to keep him off the ballot, saying that the clause is not “self-executing”, or something that goes into effect upon its creation.The clause itself doesn’t say anything about whether Congress would initiate such a proceeding. Instead, it says Congress could remove a finding that kept an insurrectionist off the ballot with a two-thirds vote, thus allowing that person to hold office again.The Colorado court rejected the idea that the clause needs congressional action to be implemented, relying on other Reconstruction-era amendments that went into effect without congressional action. If those other amendments needed Congress to go into effect, it “would lead to absurd results”.“The result of such inaction would mean that slavery remains legal; Black citizens would be counted as less than full citizens for reapportionment; nonwhite male voters could be disenfranchised; and any individual who engaged in insurrection against the government would nonetheless be able to serve in the government, regardless of whether two-thirds of Congress had lifted the disqualification,” the court wrote. “Surely that was not the drafters’ intent.”@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline 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      in US Politics

      The Republican party wants to turn America into a theocracy | Robert Reich

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      In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama supreme court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law.As a result, several Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives – not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all).All these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s basic separation of church and state.According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation – either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%).Christian nationalism is also closely linked with authoritarianism. According to the same survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly four in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader powerful enough to keep these Christian values in society.During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (a Republican from Georgia) said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.“We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”A growing number of evangelical voters view Trump as the second coming of Jesus Christ and see the 2024 election as a battle not only for America’s soul but for the salvation of all mankind. Many of the Trump followers who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021 carried Christian symbols and signs invoking God and Jesus.An influential thinktank close to Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration if he returns to power, according to documents obtained by Politico.Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his presidential term and remains close to him.Vought, frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.Those policies include banning immigration of non-Christians into the United States, overturning same-sex marriage and barring access to contraception.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a concurring opinion in last week’s Alabama supreme court decision, Alabama’s chief justice, Tom Parker, invoked the prophet Jeremiah, Genesis and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”Before joining the court, Parker was a close aide and ally of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama supreme court who was twice removed from the job – first for dismissing a federal court order to remove an enormous granite monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building, and then for ordering state judges to defy the US supreme court’s decision affirming gay marriage.So far, the US supreme court has not explicitly based its decisions on scripture, but several of its recent rulings – the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v Wade, its decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District on behalf of a public school football coach who led students in Christian prayer, and its decision in Carson v Makin, requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship – are consistent with Christian nationalism.But Christian nationalism is inconsistent with personal freedom, including the first amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by the government and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others.A society where one set of religious views is imposed on those who disagree with them is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      in Elections

      US historians sign brief to support Colorado’s removal of Trump from ballot

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      Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.“For historians,” the group wrote, “contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress.”Lawyers for Trump argue that the presidency is not an “office” as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection.Trump was impeached in Congress (for the second time) for inciting an insurrection: the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.Impeached with the support of 10 House Republicans but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, Trump now dominates his party and its presidential primary, 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), civil trials and ballot challenges notwithstanding.Maine has also sought to remove Trump from its ballot, a ruling delayed, like that in Colorado, while the supreme court considers the issue. Oral arguments are set for 8 February.Amicus briefs allow interested parties to make relevant arguments. Earlier this month, nearly 180 Republicans joined a brief in support of Trump.The 25 historians – among them James McPherson of Princeton, the pre-eminent civil war scholar – pointed to 1860s congressional debate.“Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a Democratic opponent of the 14th amendment, challenged sponsors as to why section three omitted the president. Republican Lot Morrill of Maine … replied, ‘Let me call the senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office civil or military under the United States”.’ Johnson admitted his error; no other senator questioned whether section three covered the president.”The historians also cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached, referring to himself as “chief executive officer”.Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that “no former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress”, the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed.“Contemporary information provides direct evidence of the enduring reach of the 14th amendment,” the historians wrote. “Congress … chose to make disqualification permanent through a constitutional amendment.“Republican senator Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said, ‘This is to go into our constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present.’ To this end, the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 did not pardon future insurrectionists.”The historians also said “adverse consequences followed” amnesty, many ex-Confederates winning office and “participat[ing] in the imposition of racial discrimination in the south that vitiated the intent of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect the civil and political rights of the formerly enslaved people.”The historians concluded: “The court should take cognisance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation.”Some political and legal observers have suggested Trump should be allowed to run regardless of the constitution, because to bar him would be anti-democratic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a forthcoming article for the New York Review of Books, seen by the Guardian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton – an eminent historian not part of the supreme court brief – calls such arguments “risible”.“By their reasoning,” Wilentz writes, “Trump’s misdeeds aside, enforcement of the 14th amendment poses a greater threat to our wounded democracy than Trump’s candidacy. In the name of defending democracy, they would speciously enable the man who did the wounding and now promises to do much more.”Trump and allies including Elise Stefanik of New York, a House Republican leader, have refused to commit to certifying the result should Trump lose in November.Wilentz continues: “Whether motivated by … fear of Trump’s base, a perverted sense of democratic evenhandedness, a reflexive hostility toward liberals, or something else, [commentators who say Trump should stay on the ballot] betray a basic ignorance of the relevant history and thus a misconception of what the 14th amendment actually meant and means. That history, meanwhile, has placed the conservative members of the supreme court in a very tight spot.”Wilentz says justices who subscribe to originalism, a doctrine that “purports to divine the original intentions of the framers [of the constitution] by presenting tendentious renderings of the past as a kind of scripture”, will in the Colorado case have to contend with evidence – as presented by the historians’ brief – of what the framers of the 14th amendment meant.Recently used to remove the right to abortion and to gut voting rights, originalism now threatens, Wilentz says, to become a “petard … exploding in the majority’s face.”He also writes: “The conservative majority of the supreme court and the historical legacy of the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump’s lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds … the conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.”If the court does not “honour the original meaning of the 14th amendment and disqualify Donald Trump”, Wilentz writes, “it will trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery’s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the constitution in order to impose a dictatorship of revenge.” More

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      in US Politics

      The supreme court now serves the billionaire donor class – let’s rein it in | Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King

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      There is little doubt 2024 will be a consequential year as we enter a presidential election that will decide the future of American democracy. But while the race for the presidency will capture most of the headlines, a darker and more subtle governmental force continues to churn out devastating decisions that chip away at our fundamental freedoms.We’re talking, of course, about the US supreme court.This court – the governing body intended to safeguard the freedoms that are so crucial to the ideals of civil rights – has been weaponized by an extremist faction. One-third of the supreme court is dangerously political and was appointed by an individual who has repeatedly made clear he seeks to dismantle American democracy. Another three have spent their terms ignoring decades worth of legal precedent and prioritizing the interests of the elite few over the working people, families and communities that drive our nation forward.As a Maga supermajority, these justices have undone established rulings and legal norms in an attempt to reverse the progress of modern America and to systematically unravel Black political power. Those who pose the greatest threat to our freedoms will not only be on the ballot this November – they will be sitting in robes behind the bench.All we have to do is look at their track record to see what they’ll do next. For over a decade, extreme justices have issued legal rulings that force an unpopular and radical agenda on to the American people that is rooted in white supremacy.In just the past few years, these justices’ decisions have opened the door for extreme actors to gut the freedoms of communities of color – from passing anti-voting bills that make it harder for Black voters to cast ballots to abortion bans that disproportionately affect Black women. And the seeds they’ve planted are beginning to take root in the district courts and courts of appeal. The supreme court’s Maga supermajority dismantled affirmative action – taking away our most potent tool to level the playing field in higher education – and opened the door for gun violence to run rampant in the disastrous Bruen case. And this week, the court will hear oral arguments for a case that seeks to destroy the federal government’s ability to confront the most pressing issues of our time.Everywhere you look, you will see the story of a supreme court that has radicalized in service of its billionaire donors at the expense of Black Americans – gutting union power to attack workers’ rights, rolling back the clock on reproductive rights to strip people of the ability to make their own healthcare decisions, decimating environmental protections in service of corporations.After all, Black workers continue to have a higher union membership rate than white workers, despite making up just 14% of the US’s total population. Black women have 2.6 times the maternal mortality rate of white women. Black and Latino voters are disproportionately targeted by state-based voter suppression laws that require ID checks to cast a ballot.Black Americans continue to be targeted by conservative donor interests because our rights are intrinsically intertwined to American progress. If we strengthen our educational system, we increase access to colleges for Black and brown students. If we remove barriers to the ballot box, more elected officials will be elected to fight for civil rights. And that’s bad news for America’s billionaire donor class.The American people are taking notice of the ways in which the supreme court has corrupted the system – its approval rating sits at an all-time low, with three out of four voters supporting an ethics code. Now, we are taking matters into our own hands: after the court’s Dobbs decision shattered federal protections for abortion access, voters turned out in every single state that introduced a ballot measure to enshrine those protections into state constitutions.As the extreme rightwing plot to capture our democracy progresses, we need our elected officials to step in and do their jobs. That’s why we – alongside United for Democracy – are calling on leaders in Congress to rein in the supreme court. Congress must conduct immediate hearings, investigations and reforms to fix the institution that is harming the Americans it is tasked to protect.With the election right around the corner, and in the face of endless attacks aimed at dismantling my father’s legacy, Black voters will again be expected to “save democracy”. As our communities again prepare to out-organize voter suppression, we need those vying for votes to show that – on the other side of the victory speeches – they are committed to building a democracy that no longer needs saving, a democracy that reflects Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s vision.That means restoring integrity to the supreme court. More

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      in US Politics

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

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

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      in US Politics

      Trump expected to challenge removal of name from states’ primary ballots

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      Donald Trump is reportedly expected to file legal challenges early next week to rulings in Maine and Colorado knocking him off primary ballots amid mounting pressure on US supreme court justices to rule on whether his actions on 6 January 2021 constitutionally exclude him from seeking a second term in the White House.The New York Times said that Trump’s legal moves could come as early as Tuesday.The impending collision of legal, constitutional and political issues comes after the two states separately ruled that the former US president was ineligible under a constitutional amendment designed to keep Confederates from serving in high office after the civil war.In Maine, the secretary of state, a political appointee, issued the ruling and a challenge will be filed in state court. Meanwhile, in Colorado the decision was made by the state’s highest court and will probably have a swifter passage to the conservative-leaning US supreme court – should it wish to hear the case.The conservative justices on the supreme court are sympathetic to “originalism”, which holds that the meaning of the constitution and its amendments should be interpreted by what its authors wrote. On the other side are justices more in tune with a contemporary application of the spirit of the original wording.The precise wording of the passage in question – section 3 of the 14th amendment – says anyone who has taken the oath of office, as Trump did at his 2017 inauguration, and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”, is ineligible.But at the heart of the anticipated challenges will be whether individual states have the authority to interpret constitutional matters outside their own constitutions. “Every state is different,” Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, said on Friday. “I swore an oath to uphold the constitution. I fulfilled my duty.”The rulings have received pushback from elected officials. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said Trump should be beaten at the polls and back-and-forth ballot rulings in states are a “political distraction”.After Maine’s decision on Thursday, Republican senator Susan Collins said voters in her state should decide who wins the election – “not a secretary of state chosen by the legislature”. Former New Jersey governor and trailing nomination rival Chris Christie told CNN the rulings make Trump “a martyr”.“He’s very good at playing ‘poor me, poor me’. He’s always complaining,” Christie added.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, told Fox News that the Maine decision violates Trump’s right to due process – a jury decision on the now-delayed insurrection case. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said: “It should be up to voters to decide who gets elected.”One Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post that all state appeals court decisions on multiple efforts to kick Trump off state primary ballots – 16 have failed, 14 are pending – have ruled in the former president’s favor.“We don’t love the Colorado ruling, of course, but think it will resolve itself,” the adviser said.According to the New York Times on Saturday, Trump has privately told people that he believes the US supreme court will rule against the decisions. But the court has also been wary of wading into the turbulent constitutional waters of Trump’s multiple legal issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast week, the court denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request to expedite a ruling on whether Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over his alleged crimes following the 2020 election.But the argument that voters, and not courts or elected officials, should decide elections has been under stress since the 2000 election when Republican George W Bush was elected after a stinging legal battle with then vice-president Al Gore over Florida ballot recounts that was ultimately decided by the court.According to the Times, Trump is concerned that the conservative justices, who make up a “supermajority”, will be worried about the perception of being “political” and rule against him.Conversely, the justices might not want to be steamrollered into making decisions on a primary ballot timetable set by individual states that are themselves open to accusations of political coloring.For now, both the Maine and Colorado decisions are on hold. The Colorado Republican party has asked the US supreme court to look at the state’s decision, and Trump is anticipated to repeat that request and has said he will appeal the Maine decision.Maine’s Republican party chair, Joel Stetkis, told the Washington Post that “Shenna Bellows has kicked a hornet’s nest and woken up a sleeping giant in the state of Maine. There’s a lot of people very, very upset that one person wants to take away their choice.”Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the outlet: “We are witnessing, in real time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”Democrats in blue states, he said, “are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from ballots. These partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.” More

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      in US Politics

      Colorado’s ruling to disqualify Trump sets up a showdown at supreme court

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      The Colorado ruling disqualifying Donald Trump from the ballot because he incited an insurrection on January 6 sets up another high-stakes, highly controversial political intervention by the US supreme court – a conservative-dominated panel to which Trump appointed three stringent rightwingers.Compromised in progressive eyes by those appointments and rulings including the removal of the federal right to abortion, the court was already due to decide whether Trump has immunity from prosecution regarding acts committed as president.Arising from one of four criminal indictments that have generated 91 charges, that case – concerning elected subversion if not incitement of insurrection – has produced intense scrutiny of Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and a hardline conservative also at the centre of an ethics scandal.Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, is a hard-right activist who was deeply involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, a defeat which according to Trump’s lie was the result of electoral fraud.With the Colorado ruling, calls for Clarence Thomas to recuse from cases involving Trump will no doubt increase – and no doubt continue to be ignored.On Tuesday, the progressive strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Justice Thomas will get to weigh in on whether Trump engaged in insurrection for the same plot his own wife helped organise. Extraordinary.”Earlier, in a scene of extraordinary Washington pageantry, Biden addressed Thomas and the other justices at a memorial service for Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the court.Speaking at the National Cathedral, the president delivered a passage that would within hours assume greater significance.To O’Connor, Biden said, the court was “the bedrock of America. It was a vital line of defence for the values and the vision of our republic, devoted not to the pursuit of power for power’s sake but to make real the promise of America – the American promise that holds that we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”Citing that need for equality before the law, some prominent observers said the supreme court should uphold the Colorado ruling.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified before the House January 6 committee and has written with the Harvard professor Laurence Tribe on the 14th amendment, called the Colorado ruling “historic”, “masterful” and “brilliant”.“It will be a test of America’s commitment to its democracy, to its constitution and to the rule of law,” Luttig told MSNBC, adding: “Arguably, when it is decided by the supreme court, it will be the single most important constitutional decision in all of our history.“… It is an unassailable … decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution.”But others were not so supportive.Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor from George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden on grounds of supposed corruption, told Fox News: “This court has handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections. And it’s very, very dangerous.“This country is a powder keg, and this court is throwing matches at it. And I think it’s a real mistake. I think they’re wrong on the law. You know, January 6 was many things, most of it not good. In my view it was not an insurrection, it was a riot.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t mean the people responsible for that day shouldn’t be held accountable. But to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.“This is a time where we actually need democracy. We need to allow the voters to vote to hear their decision. And the court just said, ‘You’re not going to get that in Colorado, we’re not going to let you vote for Donald Trump.’ You can dislike Trump, you can believe he’s responsible for January 6, but this isn’t the way to do it.”Adopted in 1868, section three of the 14th amendment barred former Confederates from office after the civil war. But it has rarely been used. In Trump’s case, much legal argument has centered on whether the presidency counts as an office, as defined in the text. In Colorado, a lower court found that it did not. The state supreme court found that it did. That argument now goes to the highest court in the land.After the Colorado ruling, many observers also pointed out that Trump has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection, or charged with doing so. He was impeached for inciting an insurrection on January 6 but acquitted at trial in the Senate, where enough Republicans stayed loyal.What is clear is that thanks to Colorado, a US supreme court already racked by politics and with historically low approval ratings will once again pitch into the partisan fight. On Tuesday, Trump seized on the Colorado ruling as he has his criminal indictments: as battle cry and fundraising tool. His Republican opponents also slammed the ruling.Last month, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Eric Foner, an expert on the civil war and Reconstruction, spoke to the Guardian about 14th amendment challenges to Trump, including in Colorado. A successful case, Foner said, would be likely to act on Trump like “a red flag in front of a bull”.So, it seems clear, will anything the US supreme court now does regarding the Colorado ruling.On Wednesday a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, said on his own internet show he expected the court to act quickly, with “the next 10 days … critical in this case” and oral arguments likely by mid-January. His son and co-host, Jordan Sekulow, countered that a slow-moving case could not be counted out. More

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      in Elections

      Prosecutors gain access to majority of Trump ally Scott Perry’s phone

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      A federal judge ordered the top House Republican Scott Perry to turn over nearly 1,700 records from his phone to special counsel prosecutors that could inform the extent of his role in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including removing justice department officials.The move by the chief US district judge James Boasberg, who oversees grand jury matters in federal court in Washington DC, means prosecutors can access the majority of the records that the FBI pulled from Perry’s phone. The device was seized in response to a court-approved warrant.Boasberg ordered Perry to produce 1,656 out of 2,055 records. The US court of appeals for the DC circuit directed Perry to individually review which materials were protected by the speech or debate clause, which shields members of Congress from legal peril connected to their official duties, and allowed him to withhold those records.The records include some of Perry’s discussions about efforts to influence the executive branch and state officials, some communications about influencing the conduct of executive branch officials – including that of the former vice-president Mike Pence, according to Boasberg’s 12-page memo.What the special counsel Jack Smith will do with the records remains unclear, given his office previously charged Trump with conspiring to reverse his 2020 election defeat without the materials back in July. Perry can also still appeal the way Boasberg applied the speech or debate clause to his communications.A defense lawyer for Perry declined to say what determinations the Pennsylvania congressman might challenge.The ruling marks the latest twist in the constitutionally fraught case. Last year, the previous chief judge, Beryl Howell, ordered Perry to turn over 2,055 of 2,219 records after finding that speech or debate protections did not apply to informal fact-finding done by members of Congress.Perry appealed to the DC circuit, which overturned Howell’s ruling in September. The court decided that “informal fact-finding” that was not part of a committee investigation, for instance, did in fact qualify as official legislative business as protected by the speech or debate clause.The three-judge panel at the DC circuit of Neomi Rao, Gregory Katsas and Karen Henderson – nominated by Trump and George HW Bush – directed Boasberg to individually re-review the records using their stricter interpretation of speech or debate protections.According to his memo, Boasberg broke down the records into three broad categories: Perry’s communications with people outside the US government, Perry’s communications with members of Congress and staff, and Perry’s communications involving members of the executive branch.The records not withheld in category one most notably included communications about procedures that Pence had to follow at the joint session of Congress to certify the election results and communications about what occurred during the January 6 Capitol attack, the memo said.Category two had more items that were withheld, such as Perry’s discussions about whether to certify the electoral votes on January 6. But Boasberg turned over Perry’s discussions about working with the executive branch and state officials on election fraud issues and influencing their conduct.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe records not withheld in category three most notably included communications that tried to influence executive branch officials’ conduct, discussions about non-legislative efforts to combat alleged election fraud, and again, procedures that Pence had to follow on January 6.Perry was the subject of special interest by the House select committee investigation into the Capitol attack because of the outsize role he played in introducing to Trump a justice department official, Jeffrey Clark, who was sympathetic to Trump’s claims about alleged election fraud.The introduction led Clark to propose sending a letter to officials in Georgia that falsely said the justice department was investigating election fraud in the state. When the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, balked, Trump suggested he would replace him with Clark so the letter would be sent.Trump only relented when he was told by Rosen that the justice department leadership would resign and the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, said he and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, would also quit if Trump followed through. Clark never became the acting attorney general.In August, Trump and his top allies – including Clark – were charged by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with violating the Georgia racketeering statute over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state. Trump and Clark have both pleaded not guilty. More