On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a Colorado case over whether former President Trump's deep involvement in the deadly events of January 6, 2021, should disqualify him from running again.
Unfortunately, I think it's a good bet that the court's conservative majority will side with Trump and allow his name to appear on the ballot. It is the least complicated solution for the court, mired in scandals that it itself generated and undoubtedly reluctant to add more fuel to the furious American partisan political fire in an election year.
opinion columnist
Robin Abcarian
I have had mixed feelings about this case since the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that allowing Trump on its state ballot would violate Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which, in short, prohibits anyone who participated in or supported an insurrection against the American government. government to occupy the position.
Many of Trump's legal allies have argued that Section 3 does not apply to him, claiming, for example, that the president is not an “official” of the United States, or that Section 3 only bars a candidate tenure office, no searching he. But as the motley group of Colorado voters who brought the case against Trump put it, you have to engage in “pedantic wordplay” to not apply Section 3 to Trump.
The former president, driven by narcissism and power, has demonstrated little respect for the rule of law, the Constitution, or the American people. And yet, part of me thinks that allowing him to remain at the polls would be the healthiest solution for the country.
Trump should take a beating from President Biden in November and then slip away. On the other hand, he already was Beaten in 2020, and by blatantly lying to his followers, he has turned his defeat into a cause célèbre and an ongoing national nightmare.
Not to mention an ongoing civics lesson for most of us, who can be forgiven for not knowing until now what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment even says.
“Let's face it,” Yale historian David Blight told NPR last week. “Section 3 had practically disappeared from history and suddenly rose from the dead.”
Blight, along with Civil War historians Jill Lepore, Drew Gilpin Faust and John Fabian Witt filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Colorado case arguing that Section 3 applies to Trump and disqualifies him from running for office. never more.
“There's no one who likes the idea of Section 3 applying in this case,” Lepore told NPR. “There is no joy, there is no triumph in removing Trump from the polls. But this is what the Constitution says. And this is a court that is committed to respecting the original intent, meaning and public understanding of the Constitution.”
The 14th Amendment, which was introduced in 1866 to address widespread and often violent discrimination against formerly enslaved Americans, promises all citizens equal protection under the law.
At that time, as the historians write in their report, the deep national wounds caused by the Civil War were still raw. Americans on the winning side were in no mood to completely forgive and forget, and the idea that some secessionists could be elected to Congress after betraying the union was disturbing, if not abhorrent.
Could a traitor like Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America and former member of the Senate and House of Representatives from Mississippi, run for office?
There was, Lepore told NPR, “an incredible terror toward Jefferson Davis in particular, that he would run for president.”
Section 3, the “disqualification clause,” was designed to prevent that from happening. Over time, as Blight noted, the section became something of a historical relic. And then the unthinkable happened.
An American president who lost his re-election campaign attempted to overturn the results of a fair election and remain in power against the will of the people, leading to state and federal criminal charges.
In Georgia, Trump has been charged with 13 felony counts of illegally conspiring to change the outcome of the election while engaging in a “criminal enterprise.” Federal prosecutors have accused him of conspiring to defraud the government and disenfranchise voters and of obstructing an official proceeding over his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
All along, Trump has claimed that a president can do whatever he wants and get away with it.
Not so, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously Tuesday. “Any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution,” the court wrote in the federal case against Trump, who has said he will appeal to the Supreme Court.
The high court, whose ultra-conservative majority has repeatedly proclaimed its adherence to originalism, will have to decide both the Colorado electoral question and the limits – or not – of presidential immunity. Will the judges choose Trump or the rule of law?
