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Did anyone think for even a moment that this illegitimate "supreme" court would rule in good faith? This court serves only conservatives and billionaires.
This court is a conservative roach motel. It should be tossed into the deepest part of the garbage.
While listening to the hearing this morning, I was taken by the overall consensus and impartiality of ALL the justices (though Barrett does sound like a child who's in way over her head). I was surprised most by Jackson's line of questioning which seemed more opposed to the ballot removal than anyone else.
This isn't about conservatives - conservatives are the one's suing to keep him off the ballot. It's about the Constitution and state rights.
If you're interested in the actual legality of it all, rather than the "politics", I would encourage you to keep away from biased media opinions, click/rage-bait headlines, and (it should go without saying) social media. It's actually an extremely interesting case and this article you are commenting on without reading is a great place to start.
Conservative and liberal justices alike questioned during arguments Thursday whether Trump can be disqualified from being president again
A lot of it appeared super obvious to me over the past few months but the justices and lawyers are bringing up some interesting perspectives I would never have thought of.
Their main concern was whether Congress must act before states can invoke a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again.
Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who wanted to know “why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.”
Chief Justice John Roberts worried that a ruling against Trump would prompt efforts to disqualify other candidates, “and surely some of those will succeed.”
You and I and the internet can argue all we want about whether he should be permitted on every sate ballot (I presume we're in agreement of the preferred outcome) but, I'll assume, neither of us are lawyers, state counsels, or constitutional scholars. And it seems that there's a discussion about 'being on a ballot' and 'being inaugurated as president' are the same or not. Perhaps he's on the ballot and wins the election only to find the electors can't vote for him. Yeah - it's weird AF.
Kagans reasoning is so fucking stupid. No one has the right to run for president and kicking one person off doesn't "decide who is president" it means they're not qualified. If I was 34 and tried to run they would say I'm not qualified...not that the state was deciding I couldn't be president.
Exactly. Saying that one state doesn't have the right to make the call is basically saying they can't enforce constitutionally based rules. If that is the case then everything would have to go to federal court, and the states would have a lot less control over their own electoral process.
Sounds like a win for a conservative stacked judiciary
Not arguing anything other than that the aftermath of him being on the ballot, winning, and then being told he can’t take office would shatter this country
There should be a ruling on what constitutes an insurrection, but this trial is not about that.
And I think that a ruling on that is a long way off.
It's also not only too conservative, it's too religious.
In what warped reality is the President of the United States not "an officer of the US"? The amendment was literally made for this exact situation.
It makes less than zero sense that the drafters and ratifiers of the amendment meant to leave the highest office in the nation out of the purview of the amendment. Absolute horseshit.
Pretty disappointing to see the comments from some of the more liberal justices...
Not only is what you're saying obviously correct, but THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED IN THE FUCKING AMENDMENT was asked about this exact lack of the word "president", and pointed to the officer line, and said that clearly included the president.
It's also worth noting that there was just a single reference in the Senate debate to the fact that the president and vice president were not explicitly mentioned in Howard's draft as "officer(s) of the United States," the way members of Congress and state officials had been itemized in the text. Would the disqualification clause of the amendment not cover the top posts in the executive branch?
"Why did you omit to exclude them?" asked Maryland Democratic Sen. Reverdy Johnson.
Maine's Lot Morrill jumped in to clarify.
"Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,'" Morrill said, ending the discussion on that point.
presidential office is both, its listed twice
It sounds to me like they are going to weasel out of it by saying the Colorado Supreme Court doesn't have the authority to make that decision for everyone.
Which they didn't.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is disqualified and cannot appear on the Colorado ballots. The Colorado Supreme Court does have that authority, because the Colorado state legislature gave it to them and nothing in federal law says they don't. Colorado had previously disqualified another candidate, and the judge who determined they could was Neil Gorsuch.
There is no question as to whether the President is an officer of the United States. There is no question as to whether his oath to uphold and defend the constitution is also an oath to support the constitution. There is no question as to whether the actions on January 6th were an insurrection, as several participants have already been convicted of seditious conspiracy. There is no question as to whether Trump supported them, because he live tweeted his support to the world in real time. There is no question as to whether Trump needs to be convicted, because the amendment never mentions conviction, and none of the other people previously disqualified under this amendment from office were convicted of anything.
None of these arguments holds even the faintest hint of water. They are bad faith arguments made by political hacks with a predetermined agenda to support Trump. The court is illegitimate, and we have no functional justice system.
None of these arguments holds even the faintest hint of water.
And guess how much they care for this? They are not neutral, they don't follow the law, they just "interpret" it to follow their political agenda. Just compare their deposits and transcripts before they were voted into the office, and their deeds afterwards. The three judges called by Trump are a disgrace to the office if there ever was one.
Just the notion that people label them as "conservative" or "republican" judges shows that they are lacking keys requirement for the job: objectivity and neutrality.
They could be taking an absurdly and ultimately pointless stance that primaries aren't covered by the constitution and his presence is meaningless on the ballot of a private group. It would allow Trump on the primary ballot and still give the option for blocking him in the general election, or more likely the electors ballot.
They could go so far as to say being elected is fine, but he would be disqualified from taking the oath and becoming president, so in a Trump victory the vice president is the real winner.
While you're correct, SCOTUS will most likely rule on the basis of this being "too politicized" and write some vague motions to support it. "Officer of the US" is just one of the many avenues they can take. It's not the first time they've skirted controversial rulings this way.
Tbf it's also worked in reverse to uphold lower court rulings affirming civil rights, etc in the past too. Right or wrong, it's a "how the sausage is made" moment for the Judiciary Branch.
To be clear: I personally believe not upholding the Colorado/Maine, etc rulings to be a failure of our systems of checks and balances. Just pointing out the mechanism behind the court's choices.
"Supreme court seems poised to reject efforts to kick insurrectionist Donald Trump off the ballot over the January 6th insurrection, despite the law saying no insurrectionists can be on the ballot"
Funny how no one claims states rights here.
That only seems to be a Republican talking point.
"top constitutional court ready to rule entire constitutional amendment unconstitutional"
wouldn't be the first time. the 9th in particular seems to mystify our corporate evangelicals in the court.
This is why voting matters. The SCOTUS is basically an apparatus of the conservatives now, and will be for most of the rest of our lives.
I agree with everything here other than "This".
This case has been brought to the Supreme Court by of the Colorado republicans who wanted Trump off the ballot.
If you had read the first sentence of the article, you'd see that most of the judges are in agreement.
with conservative and liberal justices in apparent agreement in a case that puts them at the heart of a presidential election.
I do not understand the US judiciary nullifying a portion of the "sacred" constitution. Seems like the beginning of the end, to an outside observer. Thanks for all the fish!!
States that believe he should not be on the ballot should keep him off the ballot regardless of what the Supreme Court says. Fuck them and their corrupt shit.
That's what Republicans in Texas are doing on the border.
Scotus has clearly demonstrated that it is no longer a legitimate institution. It's be fine with both sides ignoring them until they can demonstrate that they've cleaned house.
Yeah, I don't know why liberals get so uncomfortable with the Supreme Court being ignored. It's well and truly corrupt and the institution isn't going to be reformed through just sticking to the process anytime soon. You can dutifully give them absolute power to decide law whenever they feel like it or you can remind them that they need legitimacy to function. Questioning their legitimacy is a good thing. The Court is political and needs to be treated as a political entity.
Any bets on where Clarence Thomas will get to spend his next luxury vacation?
Definitely not Colorado
I mean, yeah it’s disappointing but hopefully a legal case can prove he in incited an insurrection and then states can remove him from the ballot. Then the SCOTUS would have to quite literally just nullify a a part of the Constitution, which would be… not out of the realm of possibilities at this point
The legal case in Colorado already determined he met the definitions of insurrection as known by the authors of the 14th.
Based on a summary of their questions and statements, I suspect SCOTUS will rule that only via a procedure defined by Congress can someone be determined to be ineligible for the Presidency based on the 14th. And only at the federal level.
There was such a procedure defined by law following the Civil War but it was revoked by Congress in the 1940s.
I wouldn't count this as over just yet. it makes sense that the judges would reserve their harshest questioning for the side that feels they must upend an election. Even the Liberal justices were wary of that.
They spent very little time on the topic of whether Trump was engaged in insurrection. To me, that means their minds are made up on that, one way or the other. You would think if they were going to let him off the hook based on that, though, they would ask more questions.
I think they will rule that individual states can't use the amendment to keep candidates off of primary ballots. That much is clear. I wonder if they rule that Trump must remain on the ballot, but cannot serve if he wins -- unless waived by Congress. It would make the discussion of Trump's VP much more interesting.
I hope you're correct in your analysis.
To me the argument was leaning more into the idea that it would be a violation of Stinky's rights to prevent him from being in the ballot. I think it's nuts to say, allow a traitor to run and be elected, then they can attempt to have their disability removed by Congress.
If they rule to overturn Colorado's decision, they will have essentially nullified section 3.
I don't think the reconstructionists ever imagined that a large number of people would look at someone who pointed a cannon at the Constitution and say that person should definitely hold office. If section 3 is not self-executing I struggle to see how it could be effectively used in any scenario.
I think they will rule that individual states can’t use the amendment to keep candidates off of primary ballots. That much is clear.
But the challenge isn't that he's not eligible to run in the primary. The challenge is that he's not eligible to run for President. So if they rule that he isn't, and they do it quickly, states will have to leave him off the ballot in September(ish) when early ballots are printed.
I wonder if they rule that Trump must remain on the ballot, but cannot serve if he wins – unless waived by Congress.
If he's eligible to be on the ballot, he's eligible to run for President. There's no mechanism where SCOTUS can say "yes you can run, but we say you can't be sworn in." Their only opening is on the eligibility question, which is a simple yes or no.
Their only opening is on the eligibility question, which is a simple yes or no.
It can't be a simple yes or no, though, because the eligibility restriction can be waived. And the amendment says "No person shall ... hold any office", which says nothing about running for office. There's nothing that says that waiver has to come before declaring any candidacy.
I would not put it past them to say something like "He is currently ineligible. If he runs anyway, then Congress can wait to decide to waive it until after the election". Kicking the can as far down the road as possible, in the hopes that Trump loses and none of this is necessary.
The nuance you're missing is that Congress by 2/3rds majority can vote to essentially nullify ineligibility part of the 14th amendment. So he could theoretically get elected and Congress could vote that he could still serve despite leading an insurrection.
Would Congress ever vote on that? Not a chance. But it still leaves open eligibility, which is the issue. If he could be eligible to be president, can he really be kept off the ballot?
Tldr:
Their excuse is he wasn't personally there.
So it's not saying an insurrection is ok, they're saying trump hasn't been proven to have participated yet.
Which is why not holding presidents accountable while in office is bullshit. This shit takes so long thru the courts, a lot can change.
We can't take a decade to prosecute an insurrection
Except it's been proven by the courts already.
100% not suprising
Looks like 248 years is the cutoff for a democratic United States. We'll soon see if the Christians can contain their collective erection for destroying societies for 2 years so we can at least say 250.
Roberts basically layed it all out in saying other States will set up their own reasons to remove a candidate. (ie. Texas, Idaho)
We need a nationwide popular vote.
dEmOcaRY
👏 We did it guys! We called it! 👏
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Conservative and liberal justices alike questioned during arguments Thursday whether Trump can be disqualified from being president again because of his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, ending with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Their main concern was whether Congress must act before states can invoke a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded like she might vote to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that found that Trump “engaged in insurrection” and is ineligible to be president.
Lawyer Jason Murray, representing the voters, pressed the point that Trump incited the Capitol attack to prevent the peaceful handover of power “for the first time in history.”
Trump, speaking to reporters after the proceedings, called the Supreme Court argument “a beautiful thing to watch in many respects,” even as he complained about the case being brought in the first place.
They have considered many Trump-related cases in recent years, declining to embrace his claims of fraud in the 2020 election and refusing to shield tax records from Congress and prosecutors in New York.
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