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      Kamala Harris kicks off abortion rights tour on 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade

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      Kamala Harris kicked off her much-vaunted abortion rights nationwide tour in Wisconsin on Monday as Joe Biden convened a meeting of his taskforce on reproductive healthcare access, in a tag-team effort to double down on what is likely to be a key campaign issue this year.The vice-president chose the 51st anniversary of the Roe v Wade ruling to begin the Reproductive Freedoms Tour, announced in December, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, which the president won in the 2020 presidential election by just over 20,000 votes.Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that enshrined the federal right to abortion, was overturned in June 2022 after then president Donald Trump nominated three conservative justices to the nation’s highest court.The decision was a major blow to supporters of reproductive rights, but since the ruling seven states – including the conservative strongholds of Kentucky, Kansas and Montana – have held ballot referendums where voters chose to protect abortion rights. The issue also appeared to hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.Wisconsin is a notable starting point for Harris’s reproductive freedoms tour. Last year, abortion rights propelled a Democratic victory in a critical election for the state supreme court.In the first of many similar scheduled events, Harris is expected to announce support for increased access to abortion and contraceptives through the new emergency care law, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).She will also denounce Trump, the runaway frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, for his hand in overturning the federally protected right to abortion.“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Harris will say, according to excerpts from her speech obtained by the Associated Press. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? That doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”The following day, Harris will be joined by Biden for another abortion-focused event, along with their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff.Biden’s re-election campaign also rolled out a new campaign ad Sunday, titled Forced, which aims to tie Donald Trump directly to the abortion issue.In Dobbs v Jackson, the 2022 supreme court case that overturned Roe, a Mississippi law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with certain medical exceptions was upheld, negating the constitutional right to abortion and overruling the precedent set by Roe more than half a century ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement on the 51st anniversary of Roe V Wade, Biden said: “Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor – free from the interference of politicians. Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right.“As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans. Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk.”When announcing her tour in December, Harris said: “Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies – from banning abortion in all 50 states and criminalizing doctors, to forcing women to travel out of state in order to get the care they need.“I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body – not the government.” More

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      in Elections

      Trump lawyers urge supreme court to reinstate him on Colorado ballot

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers urged the US supreme court on Thursday to reverse a judicial decision disqualifying the former president from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot as the justices prepare to tackle the politically explosive case.Trump’s lawyers in court papers presented the former US president’s main arguments against a Colorado supreme court ruling on 19 December barring him from the primary ballot over his actions around the January 6 Capitol attack, citing the 14th amendment of the US constitution.The justices have scheduled oral arguments in the case for 8 February.Trump’s lawyers urged the court to “put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts”, noting that similar efforts were under way in more than 30 states.The lawyers said the 14th amendment provision does not apply to presidents, that the question of presidential eligibility is reserved to Congress, and that Trump did not participate in an insurrection.The brief adheres to an accelerated schedule set by the justices on 5 January when they agreed to take up the case. Colorado’s Republican primary is set for 5 March.Trump is the frontrunner for his party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the November 5 election.The plaintiffs – six conservative Republican or independent voters in Colorado – challenged Trump’s eligibility to run for office in light of his actions before the attack.They now have until 31 January to respond to Trump’s filing.The Colorado ruling marked the first time that section 3 of the 14th amendment – the so-called disqualification clause – had been used to find a presidential candidate ineligible.Section 3 bars from holding office any “officer of the United States” who took an oath “to support the constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.The Colorado lawsuit is part of a wider effort to disqualify Trump from state ballots under the 14th amendment, so the ruling by the justices may shape the outcome of that drive.For instance, Trump also has appealed to a Maine court a decision by that state’s top election official barring him from the primary ballot under the 14th amendment. That case is on hold until the supreme court issues its ruling in the Colorado case.The 14th amendment was ratified in the aftermath of the American civil war of 1861-65 in which southern states that allowed the practice of slavery rebelled in a bid for secession.The Capitol rampage was a bid to prevent Congress from certifying 2020 Biden’s election victory over Trump, who gave an incendiary speech to his supporters beforehand, repeating his false claims of widespread voting fraud.Trump also faces criminal charges in two cases related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcome.The Colorado plaintiffs have emphasized the lower court‘s findings that Trump’s intentional “mobilizing, inciting, and encouraging” of an armed mob to attack the Capitol meets the legal definition in section 3. “This attack was an ‘insurrection’ against the constitution by any standard,” they said in legal papers. More

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      It isn’t ‘anti-democratic’ to bar Trump from office. It’s needed to protect democracy | Steven Greenhouse

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      Over the decades, several US supreme court justices have warned that the US constitution is not a suicide pact – in other words, that the constitution shouldn’t be interpreted in ways that jeopardize the survival of our nation and our democracy.Right now, however, I worry that the supreme court’s rightwing supermajority, in its anticipated rush to prohibit states from kicking Donald Trump off the ballot, will turn the constitution into a suicide pact. By letting an insurrectionist like Trump remain on the ballot – a man who spurned centuries of constitutional tradition by refusing to peacefully turn over the reins of power to the man who defeated him – the supreme court would be putting out a welcome mat to a candidate who has made no secret of his plans to trample all over the constitution and trash our democratic traditions.Many legal experts worry that the rightwing justices will focus on the wrong issue when the high court takes up the historic Colorado case about whether a state can kick Trump off the ballot – a case in which the court might also decide whether Trump should be disqualified from the ballot in all 50 states.When the court considers that case, the six conservative justices might focus on their concerns about infuriating rightwing voters, their political soulmates, if they rule that the constitution requires that Trump be disqualified as an insurrectionist. The justices will also no doubt worry that they’ll be seen as taking a high-handed, anti-democratic step if they deny voters the opportunity to vote for Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee.But the justices’ job is not to worry about angering the Maga crowd. Their job is to focus on enforcing the text of the constitution and, along with it, preserving our democracy. An insurrectionist candidate who stands a good chance of winning the presidency in November could drive a stake through the heart of America’s democracy.The Colorado case centers on the 14th amendment, a post-civil war measure that aimed to ensure all citizens – especially formerly enslaved people – the equal protection of the law. Section 3 of that amendment aimed to bar supporters of the Confederacy who had rebelled against the United States and its constitution from holding office: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”One can’t honestly deny that Trump promoted and aided an insurrection. He unarguably gave “aid or comfort” to the January 6 assault on the Capitol, which was essentially a coup attempt that sought to prevent the rightfully elected president, Joe Biden, from taking office. In disqualifying Trump, the Colorado supreme court wrote: “The record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the US government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”The House select committee on January 6 provided a mountain of evidence showing that Trump had planned and backed that insurrection. Trump not only “summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for Jan. 6”, the committee established, but also urged them to march to the Capitol to “take back” the country. Even as rioters stormed the Capitol and assaulted the police, Trump tweeted messages that whipped up the violent crowd’s animus against the then vice-president, Mike Pence.Trump, the committee wrote, also “refused repeated requests over a multiple-hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol”. Trump also refused to call in the national guard or any federal law enforcement to stop the assault on the Capitol.The Court’s job is to uphold and enforce the Constitution without fear or favor, and it shouldn’t be cowed by anyone, not by Trump’s supporters and certainly not by Trump, who dangerously warned of “big, big trouble” if the justices rule against him in this case.Constitutional scholars say the Supreme Court might engage in some legal legerdemain and search for some escape clause to keep Trump on the ballot and prohibit states from disqualifying him. Some scholars predict the justices will rule that Trump must first be convicted in court as an insurrectionist before he can be disqualified – even though many supporters of the Confederacy were disqualified from holding office without being convicted in court and even though Section 3 says nothing about requiring convictions.Some constitutional experts contend that Section 3 doesn’t apply to presidents and that Trump therefore shouldn’t be disqualified under it. Section 3 specifically mentions disqualifying Senators and House members, but it doesn’t mention the presidency. But that’s undoubtedly because Section 3’s authors never dreamed that a past insurrectionist would ever be running for president. There can’t be any doubt that Section 3’s authors would have insisted on disqualifying Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, if he had become a candidate for the presidency of the United States.If the supreme court’s six rightwing justices allow Trump to stay on the ballot, they can do so only by turning their backs on the methods of constitutional interpretation that they have repeatedly trumpeted: textualism and originalism. Not only is the text of Section 3 crystal clear about barring insurrectionists, but the Radical Republicans who wrote the 14th amendment would have been repulsed by the idea of letting an insurrectionist like Trump run for the highest office of the land.Trump of course complains that the push to disqualify him is a leftist plot. But the two constitutional scholars who led the way in arguing that Trump should be disqualified – William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen – are highly regarded conservative members of the Federalist Society. Moreover, one of the jurists most respected by conservatives, former federal judge J Michael Luttig, has lauded the Colorado supreme court’s decision as “unassailable”.In decades past, the US supreme court did not shrink from issuing decisions that offended and angered millions of Americans, whether it was enraging many white southerners by barring school segregation in Brown v Board of Education, or infuriating millions of women by overturning Roe v Wade, or angering a wide swath of Democrats by cutting short the vote count to deliver victory to George W Bush over Al Gore. In the Colorado disqualification case, the justices should not shrink from angering Trump supporters. The justices should do what they’ve taken an oath to do: enforce the letter of the law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNotwithstanding what Trump’s defenders say, those who seek to disqualify Trump are not suppressing democracy. They are seeking to enforce the constitution’s clear language against the nation’s most prominent insurrectionist. The person who is seeking to suppress democracy is Trump (along with many of his Maga supporters).Trump was anti-democratic in seeking to overturn Biden’s legitimate, 51-47% victory in 2020. Trump was anti-democratic when he called for terminating the constitution. Trump has threatened to be a dictator on day one, and someone who threatens to be dictator on his first day in office might not stop there.Moreover, whenever Trump loses – for instance, when he lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz – he claims that he was cheated and demands that legitimate democratic results be discarded. Trump’s philosophy is to accept election results only when he wins and never when he loses. What can be more anti-democratic than that? That anti-democratic philosophy fueled the January 6 insurrection.There’s no denying that on a certain level it would be anti-democratic to bar a popular candidate like Trump from the ballot, and, yes, that could stir up an ugly and perhaps violent and illegal response from the Maga crowd. Yet let’s not forget that much of the constitution is anti-democratic and counter-majoritarian; it, for instance, prohibits a majority of lawmakers from restricting your freedom of speech or your freedom to practice your religion.Those who warn that it would be anti-democratic to kick Trump off the ballot should realize that Trump’s election as president would be a far graver and longer-lasting risk to our democracy. This is a man who has talked of being a dictator, of terminating the constitution, of using his second presidential term to exact vengeance against his enemies and critics. This is a man who even floated the idea of executing Mark Milley, the general who was chairman of Trump’s joint chiefs of staff.If the supreme court lets Trump remain on the ballot, history may remember John Roberts and company as the court that gave a bright green light to the election of an insurrectionist who would end our democracy as we know it.For the nine justices, the bottom line should be not only that Trump was an insurrectionist, but that Trump has loudly signaled that if he’s elected to a second term, he will trample all over our constitutional and democratic norms. If the justices interpret the constitution to let insurrectionist Trump remain on the ballot, the Roberts court may be taking a giant, highly regrettable step toward turning our constitution into a suicide pact for our democracy.
      Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer More

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      US supreme court won’t hear case over bathrooms for transgender students

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      The US supreme court has decided it will not hear a case centering on the debate over bathrooms for transgender students.The decision came on Tuesday despite an appeal from Indiana’s metropolitan school district of Martinsville.Martinsville school district officials hoped the nation’s highest court would not require allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choosing.But the supreme court rejected the case without comment.Federal appeals courts are divided over whether school policies enforcing restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students can use violate federal law or the US constitution.In the 2023 case court brought by the Martinsville metropolitan school district, the Chicago-based US seventh circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of transgender boys, granting them access to the boys’ bathroom.The seventh circuit’s opinion, written by judge Diane Wood, said that she expected the nation’s highest court to eventually be involved.Wood wrote: “Litigation over transgender rights is occurring all over the country, and we assume that at some point the supreme court will step in with more guidance than it has furnished so far.”The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, also has ruled to allow transgender students to use the gendered bathroom with which they identify. But the US appellate court based in Atlanta ruled against granting that legal ability.Court battles over transgender rights are ongoing across the country. And at least nine states are restricting transgender students to bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth.Some claim it’s a move in violation of Title IX, the US civil rights law passed in 1972 which prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.In 2021, the supreme court rejected hearing a similar case involving a Virginia school, upholding a lower court’s ruling that the Gloucester county school board’s decision to prohibit a transgender boy from using the boy’s restroom was unlawful.Battles over transgender students’ right to play for their preferred sports teams are also taking place.Last year, supreme court justices decided against taking up a case that started after a West Virginia school district banned a transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, from competing for a girls’ track and cross-country teams. The decision upheld a lower court’s ruling that Pepper-Jackson could compete for the girls’ teams if she wanted.The Joe Biden administration last year weighed in on the debate, proposing that schools may block some transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that match their gender identities under certain circumstances while arguing against blanket bans.The Department of Education wrote in April 2023: “The proposed rule would establish that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.“The proposed rule also recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report 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

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

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

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

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

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

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