{"id":29975,"date":"2023-12-29T11:58:59","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T18:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/can-trump-still-run-for-president\/"},"modified":"2023-12-29T18:58:59","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T18:58:59","slug":"can-trump-still-run-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/can-trump-still-run-for-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Trump still run for president?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Former
Former President Donald Trump reacts to supporters during a commit to caucus rally, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, in Waterloo, Iowa. (AP Photo\/Charlie Neibergall)<\/span>Charlie Neibergall<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

DENVER \u2013 First, Colorado\u2019s Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump wasn\u2019t eligible to run for his old job in that state. Then, Maine\u2019s Democratic secretary of state ruled the same for her state. Who\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

Both decisions are historic. The Colorado court was the first court to apply to a presidential candidate a rarely used constitutional ban against those who \u201cengaged in insurrection.\u201d Maine\u2019s secretary of state was the first top election official to unilaterally strike a presidential candidate from the ballot under that provision.<\/p>\n

But both decisions are on hold while the legal process plays out.<\/p>\n

That means that Trump remains on the ballot in Colorado and Maine and that his political fate is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Maine ruling will likely never take effect on its own. Its central impact is increasing pressure on the nation\u2019s highest court to say clearly: Can Trump still run for president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the legal issue?<\/div>\n

After the Civil War, the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more. It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war.<\/p>\n

The measure reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo 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, 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, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congress did remove that disability from most Confederates in 1872, and the provision fell into disuse. But it was rediscovered after Jan. 6.<\/p>\n

How does this apply to Trump?<\/div>\n

Trump is already being prosecuted for the attempt to overturn his 2020 loss that culminated with Jan. 6, but Section 3 doesn\u2019t require a criminal conviction to take effect. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed to disqualify Trump, claiming he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 and is no longer qualified to run for office.<\/p>\n

All the suits failed until the Colorado ruling. And dozens of secretaries of state have been asked to remove him from the ballot. All said they didn\u2019t have the authority to do so without a court order \u2013 until Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has never ruled on Section 3. It\u2019s likely to do so in considering appeals of the Colorado decision \u2013 the state Republican Party has already appealed, and Trump is expected to file his own shortly. Bellows\u2019 ruling cannot be appealed straight to the U.S. Supreme Court \u2013 it has to be appealed up the judicial chain first, starting with a trial court in Maine.<\/p>\n

The Maine decision does force the high court\u2019s hand, though. It was already highly likely the justices would hear the Colorado case, but Maine removes any doubt.<\/p>\n

Trump lost Colorado in 2020, and he doesn\u2019t need to win it again to garner an Electoral College majority next year. But he won one of Maine\u2019s four Electoral College votes in 2020 by winning the state\u2019s 2nd Congressional District, so Bellows\u2019 decision would have a direct impact on his odds next November.<\/p>\n

Until the high court rules, any state could adopt its own standard on whether Trump, or anyone else, can be on the ballot. That\u2019s the sort of legal chaos the court is supposed to prevent.<\/p>\n

What are the arguments in the case?<\/div>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers have several arguments against the push to disqualify him. First, it\u2019s not clear Section 3 applies to the president \u2013 an early draft mentioned the office, but it was taken out, and the language \u201can officer of the United States\u201d elsewhere in the Constitution doesn\u2019t mean the president, they contend.<\/p>\n

Second, even if it does apply to the presidency, they say, this is a \u201cpolitical\u201d question best decided by voters, not unelected judges. Third, if judges do want to get involved, the lawyers assert, they\u2019re violating Trump\u2019s rights to a fair legal procedure by flatly ruling he\u2019s ineligible without some sort of fact-finding process like a lengthy criminal trial. Fourth, they argue, Jan. 6 wasn\u2019t an insurrection under the meaning of Section 3 \u2013 it was more like a riot. Finally, even if it was an insurrection, they say, Trump wasn\u2019t involved in it \u2013 he was merely using his free speech rights.<\/p>\n

Of course, the lawyers who want to disqualify Trump have arguments, too. The main one is that the case is actually very simple: Jan. 6 was an insurrection, Trump incited it, and he\u2019s disqualified.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s taken so long?<\/div>\n

The attack was three years ago, but the challenges weren\u2019t \u201cripe,\u201d to use the legal term, until Trump petitioned to get onto state ballots this fall.<\/p>\n

But the length of time also gets at another issue \u2013 no one has really wanted to rule on the merits of the case. Most judges have dismissed the lawsuits because of technical issues, including that courts don\u2019t have the authority to tell parties whom to put on their primary ballots. Secretaries of state have dodged, too, usually telling those who ask them to ban Trump that they don\u2019t have the authority to do so unless ordered by a court.<\/p>\n

No one can dodge anymore. Legal experts have cautioned that, if the Supreme Court doesn\u2019t clearly resolve the issue, it could lead to chaos in November \u2013 or in January 2025, if Trump wins the election. Imagine, they say, if the high court ducks the issue or says it\u2019s not a decision for the courts to make, and Democrats win a narrow majority in Congress. Would they seat Trump or declare he\u2019s ineligible under Section 3?<\/p>\n

Why did Maine do this?<\/div>\n

Maine has an unusual process in which a secretary of state is required to hold a public hearing on challenges to politicians\u2019 spots on the ballot and then issue a ruling. Multiple groups of Maine voters, including a bipartisan clutch of former state lawmakers, filed such a challenge, triggering Bellows\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n

Bellows is a Democrat, the former head of the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and has a long trail of criticism of Trump on social media. Trump\u2019s attorneys asked her to recuse herself from the case, citing posts calling Jan. 6 an \u201cinsurrection\u201d and bemoaning Trump\u2019s acquittal in his impeachment trial over the attack.<\/p>\n

She refused, saying she wasn\u2019t ruling based on opinions. But the precedent she sets is notable, critics say. In theory, election officials in every state could decide a candidate is ineligible based on a novel legal theory about Section 3 and end their candidacies.<\/p>\n

Conservatives argue that Section 3 could apply to Vice President Kamala Harris, for example \u2013 it was used to block from office even those who donated small sums to individual Confederates. Couldn\u2019t it be used against Harris, they say, because she raised money for those arrested in the unrest after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020?<\/p>\n

Is this a partisan issue?<\/div>\n

Well, of course it is. Bellows is a Democrat, and all the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. Six of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump himself.<\/p>\n

But courts don\u2019t always split on predictable partisan lines. The Colorado ruling was 4-3 \u2013 so three Democratic appointees disagreed with barring Trump. Several prominent legal conservatives have championed the use of Section 3 against the former president.<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019ll see how the high court handles it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

president is blocked from the GOP primary ballot in two states<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29975"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}