2024

[DCHawk1]

Highfrigginlarious.

[zsn]

I don’t think there’s anything remotely complicated about what the founders meant by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

I also don’t think there’s any better than a, say, three-in-nine chance this holds up. Somewhat ironically, I would actually be significantly more optimistic about this case if Trump wasn’t already facing at least four material, die-in-prison-type prosecutions.

Good thing our SCOTUS is rife with originalists, and textualists...

……..or that any of the so-called justices aren’t insurrection-adjacent.

[jfish26]

I don’t think there’s anything remotely complicated about what the founders meant by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

I also don’t think there’s any better than a, say, three-in-nine chance this holds up. Somewhat ironically, I would actually be significantly more optimistic about this case if Trump wasn’t already facing at least four material, die-in-prison-type prosecutions.

Good thing our SCOTUS is rife with originalists, and textualists...

It’s very interesting.

Because there is - and the CO Supreme Court has opened and paved and red-carpeted and floodlit this specific door and put goodie bags on the other side - also an element of this that presents an opportunity for the Court to further enhance states’ rights.

And we know that many of the judges are - and with good reason, to an extent - super, super horny over states’ rights.

I could absolutely see this going 3-6. I could also see it going 5-4 (Roberts and someone). Or 7-2 (everyone but Thomas and Alito). Or 9-0 (the “get off my back” special).

[Shirley]

How ironic is it that Trump gained the public support and confidence to run for president in 2016 partially as a result of his > 4 year "Birther" crusade, questioning the eligibility of Obama to be president, based on the lie that he wasn't born in the US?

According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president must:

Be a natural-born citizen of the United States
Be at least 35 years old
Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years

And now, it's possible that Trump will be judged as ineligible to run in '24 because his attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power after he lost in '20 included attempting an insurrection, which violates Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, as our resident legal expert has already opined: "I don’t think there’s anything remotely complicated about what the founders meant by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Pigeons coming..." much?

"...comes around" much?

[Shirley]

I'd imagine that like me, many of you agree with all of the republican presidential primary candidates running against Trump other than Asa Hutchinson, that it would be much, much more preferable for American voters to decide whether Trump will have the chance to be our next president, rather than the Supreme Court.

And while we're nearly all more comfortable with voters deciding, it's precisely because Trump attempted to keep voters from deciding who our next president would be in the 2020 election, that we're in the horrible situation we find ourselves and our republic today.

Or, is Trump truly, after everything he's done, still above the law? Why?

And, if so, why have a constitution?

[jfish26]

How ironic is it that Trump gained the public support and confidence to run for president in 2016 partially as a result of his > 4 year "Birther" crusade, questioning the eligibility of Obama to be president, based on the lie that he wasn't born in the US?

According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president must:

Be a natural-born citizen of the United States
Be at least 35 years old
Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years

And now, it's possible that Trump will be judged as ineligible to run in '24 because his attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power after he lost in '20 included attempting an insurrection, which violates Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, as our resident legal expert has already opined: "I don’t think there’s anything remotely complicated about what the founders meant by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Pigeons coming..." much?

"...comes around" much?

I have seen mention about the notion of automatic disqualification "disenfranchising" Trump's hordes.

One, that's a fairly narrow view of what it means to be "disenfranchised."

Two, take it up with the Constitution.

Two-point-five, maybe Trump should have had this in mind when he, you know, actually attempted to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters.

[Shirley]

How ironic is it that Trump gained the public support and confidence to run for president in 2016 partially as a result of his > 4 year "Birther" crusade, questioning the eligibility of Obama to be president, based on the lie that he wasn't born in the US?

According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the president must:

Be a natural-born citizen of the United States
Be at least 35 years old
Have been a resident of the United States for 14 years

And now, it's possible that Trump will be judged as ineligible to run in '24 because his attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power after he lost in '20 included attempting an insurrection, which violates Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, as our resident legal expert has already opined: "I don’t think there’s anything remotely complicated about what the founders meant by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Pigeons coming..." much?

"...comes around" much?

I have seen mention about the notion of automatic disqualification "disenfranchising" Trump's hordes.

One, that's a fairly narrow view of what it means to be "disenfranchised."

Two, take it up with the Constitution.

Two-point-five, maybe Trump should have had this in mind when he, you know, actually attempted to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters.

^^^

It's different when bigoted white Christo-Fascists, i.e., republicans, do it.

[jfish26]

I'd imagine that like me, many of you agree with all of the republican presidential primary candidates running against Trump other than Asa Hutchinson, that it would be much, much more preferable for American voters to decide whether Trump will have the chance to be our next president, rather than the Supreme Court.

And while we're nearly all more comfortable with voters deciding, it's precisely because Trump attempted to keep voters from deciding who our next president would be in the 2020 election, that we're in the horrible situation we find ourselves and our republic today.

Or, is Trump truly, after everything he's done, still above the law? Why?

And, if so, why have a constitution?

I genuinely don't know how I, personally, feel about this point.

Because I understand the sentiment, BUT I think the framing is wrong. It would not be the US Supreme Court deciding...it would be the Constitution.

The same Constitution the hopeful-candidate once swore to preserve, protect and defend, the same Constitution that is the basis for all of the laws that the hopeful-candidate once swore to "take Care [...] be faithfully executed."

I don't think the US Supreme Court declining to overturn the CO Supreme Court's decision would represent the US Supreme Court taking the choice away from voters any more than the Supreme Court would have been taking a choice away from voters had it been proven that Obama was not "a natural born citizen," or were it to be proven that, stumbles and mumbles aside, Biden is actually thirty-four years old.

And it is here that the genesis of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is so critically important: the whole freaking PURPOSE of it was to ensure that sworn officers of the United States who took the South's side in the Civil War would simply be automatically disqualified from future office. The whole freaking PURPOSE of the language, which is now the highest law in the land, was to result in the voters NOT having the choice.

Honestly, it seems sorta purpose-built for this precise scenario, where someone who has clearly violated his oath of office has such cultural sway that electoral victory is even plausible.

[Sparko]

There should be no question. I also blame the House for not starting this procedure in 2020.

[jfish26]

There should be no question. I also blame the House for not starting this procedure in 2020.

I blame the Senate for not convicting when it had the chance.

But if your post is about this disqualification item…the whole point is there’s nothing any body or court needs to DO. It is self-executing (and none of the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment would make any sense, or have any teeth, if the provisions were not self-executing).

[Sparko]

Self-executing is something I have heard; but that requires a consensus that doesn't include nutty crisis actor believing hypocrites.

[jfish26]

Self-executing is something I have heard; but that requires a consensus that doesn't include nutty crisis actor believing hypocrites.

From the opinion:

The self-executing nature of that section has never been called into question, and in the reapportionment following passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress simply treated the change as having occurred (apportioning Representatives to the various states based on Section Two’s command without mentioning, or purporting to enforce, the Fourteenth Amendment). Similarly, Congress never passed enabling legislation to effectuate Section Four...

...Furthermore, we agree with the Electors that interpreting any of the Reconstruction Amendments, given their identical structure, as not self-executing would lead to absurd results. If these Amendments required legislation to make them operative, then Congress could nullify them by simply not passing enacting legislation. The result of such inaction would mean that slavery remains legal; Black citizens would be counted as less than full citizens for reapportionment; non- white 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. Surely that was not the drafters’ intent.

[randylahey]

So much for democracy. Removing political opponents from the ballot

Even tho it's obviously going to be overturned

[jfish26]

So much for democracy. Removing political opponents from the ballot

Even tho it's obviously going to be overturned

You wanna do the Second Amendment, then, next?

[jfish26]

The politics of this are fascinating, too, because (performative pander-bleating aside) every adult-thinking R knows that the Rs’ 2024 hopes would skyrocket in the case Trump is out. And this is one of the only ways that can occur WITHOUT losing too many of his voters.

[randylahey]

Removing an opposition candidate from a ballot is what an actual attack on democracy looks like

Doesn't matter who the candidate is, it should be frowned upon in any country

[jfish26]

Removing an opposition candidate from a ballot is what an actual attack on democracy looks like

Doesn't matter who the candidate is, it should be frowned upon in any country

Take it up with the Constitution.

[Overlander]

Removing an opposition candidate from a ballot is what an actual attack on democracy looks like

Even if said candidate tried to throw Democracy away because he was butt hurt?

[TDub]

I say we remove both candidates from the ballot and start over.

[jfish26]

I say we remove both candidates from the ballot and start over.

Probably would have been the result if this had moved up the ladder more quickly.