Hm. So I’m guessing they are going to say that disqualification can only happen at the federal level by a law defined by Congress. They don’t seem too concerned about an insurrectionist becoming president, not surprisingly.
That’s certainly a strange new precedent. I hope Congress gets to work quickly writing legislation for all the other amendments before a president realizes there aren’t laws spelling out how freedom of speech is defined or how to enforce it, etc. etc.
No matter what we might wish were the case, some amendments can be further defined by law. So this isn’t a new precedent by any stretch.
Amendment III comes right out and says law can define the details.
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
So does XIII, section 2
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
And XV, section 2
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
And, most apropos, XIV Section 5.
Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
So there it is right there.
Of course constitutional law is complicated. I don’t know what I don’t know. There are other solid arguments for and against, no doubt. But “unprecedented” isn’t one of them, it seems.
There are mountains of case history on the other amendments. This one is truly new.
That doesn’t mean Congress needs to define it before it’s actionable.
Well, yeah, he’s on team Naz…er Republican and can keep the tax breaks flowing to the top.
Mostly because it’s not SCOTUS’ job to make laws … they’re simply there to interpret what Congress has passed. Which is pretty much how high courts operate everywhere, including Canada, the UK, etc
Right, but as it is their job to interpret laws and the constitutionality of lawsuits and this lawsuit alleges that dumps is constitutionality prohibited from office, this is exactly their job.
The problem is SCOTUS rules with original intent as the prime basis, so any in-depth ruling would take a long time for them to deliver. Kavanaugh said as much when he questioned what the word “insurrection” actually means.
Which is stupid since the original Colorado ruling went into the definition of insurrection in excruciating, originalist-style detail.
Well Bret, it’s nothing like playing quarters.
Cool, then let’s put Ariana Greenblatt on the ballot and make them make a law on how to disqualify children.
Is it worth listening to the conservative majority kiss Trump’s ass?
You can tell they are pissed they even have to do this.
And you could practically see that Thomas popped a chubby when he was called Chief Justice by mistake.
Wait, Clarence Thomas said something? Maybe I should have listened to catch that rarity.
Hes said a couple things lol.
Also it seems they don’t want to find him ineligible because that means they will have to do more work instead of vacations at billionaire retreats.
Isn’t that the general gist of most of their decisions?
Pretty much. They keep circling back to “Well, he might have committed insurrection, but if we find him guilty, republican states said they will declare Biden committed insurrection and we will have to litigate that over and over.” So they are scared of literally enforcing the law because of threats.
“If we seek justice, then the other side will lie, and we are corrupt, so while we don’t want to uphold justice, we will try to uphold the lie.”
republican states said they will declare Biden committed insurrection
Great! All they have to do is point to the live coverage of Biden calling for his supporters to gather in Washington (“It’s going to be wild!”), telling them to “Fight like hell”, and directing them to march on the Capitol.
Hey Court, don’t ya think pretty much anyone doing that stuff SHOULD be banned from holding office?
If you are arguing that Republicans would claim lesser, stupid crap (“he vetoed a bill”, “he stood with union members”, “he asked for a recount”) is the same as insurrection, we want the lower courts to test such claims and make that a hard row to mow.
I was thinking about that today… we’ve reached a point in the US where “fear is speech,” but then I recognized I’m white, so it’s only new to me.
His decade+ of silence ended years ago. Now he has a sugar daddy and he does what he’s told.
It ended basically as soon as they had a conservative majority locked in. Now he doesn’t need to nap anymore.
Trump’s lawyer had to be repeatedly saved by the conservative justices. That was funny. Other than that it was pretty infuriating.
Oh God. They cut to a live reaction of Shit Head himself. What a fucking word salad extraordinaire.
Rambling nonsense about World War 3, Iraq is Iran, Iran was poor now rich, HezBOLlah (that sounds how it should be typed when Fuck Face says it) is strong now and was poor, Biden can’t keep up with Putin and Chi, and we are being laughed at.
Just gross, man. Dude is a fucking mess.
I refuse to watch him anymore cause he makes my brain bleed.
I’ve never once heard him complete one cogent sentence without rambling off on some stupidity.
cause he makes my brain bleed.
Fuck I didn’t realize his brain bleed was contagious.
Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian so haven’t grown up listening to the orange kumquat on tv.
SCotUS is about to throw out the 14th Amendment as written & stick a thumb in the eye of the men that wrote it.
The US Supreme Court has some tough choices to make. On one hand you have a piece of the constitution that, at least to this layperson, would seem to clearly disqualify Trump - but absent any clarifying law from Congress it’s really hard to figure out how to implement it. Do you let States do it? What if a Republican state official says Biden is an insurrectionist? How would Biden challenge that? What court would hear that challenge? If it’s the state supreme courts, then what if one court disqualifies him and another doesn’t? Do you allow for some states to disqualify candidates and others not, or does the Supreme Court have to take up these cases each election year? What’s the threshold for insurrection? Should it require a criminal conviction? What if Trump were charged with insurrection and later acquitted - can he now run again?
Maybe they might punt it off to Congress and say that it’s Congress’ responsibility when counting electoral college votes to decide if a candidate is qualified or not, but now you’ve just given cover to Republicans to reject presidential election results they don’t like if they happen to win enough seats in Congress.
Tl;dr - from my perspective they have to either ignore the constitution and invite the chaos of another possible Trump presidency, or acknowledge the constitution and invite (additional) chaos into the election system. If Congress functioned maybe a decent law could be written but fat chance of that.
Biden would go to court to challenge it. Just like Trump did. That’s the answer. Not enforcing laws for fear of bad faith actors is appeasement and ends badly everytime.
Also states DQ people all the time. Not old enough, Not a citizen, etc…
but absent any clarifying law from Congress it’s really hard to figure out how to implement it.
OK yeah but that’s literally the supreme court’s JOB.
But if they rule it as self executing (which it almost certainly is), we can expect a clusterfuck stateside for the foreseeable future from Republicans. Though, that may be a feature for them, not a bug.
Best case scenario, I guess, would be the SC deciding eligibility is a federal thing not a state thing, AND that trump is ineligible to run.
Though that’d make him a martyr… But allowing him to run after a coup attempt is a terrible precident as well…
I don’t think we’re winning no matter how this turns out, boys.
Allowing him to run after a failed coup attempt would invite others to attempt another coup. Good points.
It absolutely is self-executing. From the text of the 14th Amendment:
But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
So it follows that Trump would be disqualified absent any action from Congress, since they can only vote to lift such a restriction, not on whether or not to impose it.
The US Supreme Court has some tough choices to make.
😂
You actually really think they give a shit?
This person pays attention folks.
I think Kagan summed up the concerns pretty well. I will also say that this probably suggests SCOTUS won’t hear the immunity case though. If the 14A can only be enforced by the federal courts or congress then the president can’t be immune to the federal courts as a matter of definition. I also won’t be shocked if she writes the opinion, either.
The conservative argument boiled down to trump didn’t do it.
If he did do it then the president isn’t accountable to the Constitution.
And if the President is accountable then a single state can’t disqualify him. (Even though they routinely do so for other job requirements.)
If states can disqualify him then they can’t do it until he wins the election because Congress could maybe, in an alternate universe, vote by 3/4 to remove his bar to office.
So according to conservatives we have to let a traitor win the election and then have the moral fortitude to DQ him and re-run the election. Because that’s not nightmare fuel that will instantly cause a civil war at all.
They also ran a parallel argument saying nobody can do anything until Congress passes a law about an enforcement regime for the amendment. A requirement not in place for any other Constitutional bar to the office and with no text in the 14th requiring it.
Why the fuck are we bending over backwards for this humanoid?
“Humanoid” is very generous.
It’s as low as I could go. Even he’s still a human.
Ehhh… 🤷🏼♂️ Really?
For those who missed it (or didn’t watch) the AP has a pretty concise page with what happened.
https://apnews.com/live/trump-supreme-court-arguments-updates
Good summary. Apparently even the Democratic judges are skeptical of upholding the Colorado Supreme Court decision.
When faced with murky or complex legal issues surrounding elections, I think the court pretty much always tries to come down on the side of letting voters decide. And I’m not sure that’s a bad philosophy. This has been my expectation from day one, though I’ve tried to keep an optimistic view and challenge myself to look for reasons they might rule differently.
I’m not surprised in the least, but I’m glad we at least the challenge was made. I’m not sure if any country can withstand self-sabotage by a nearly 50% party. If we can’t defeat Trump at the ballot it doesn’t really matter whether we can keep him off on a legal issue because there are still all those folks he has won over. Authority in our nation comes from the people, and the people decide. I just wish so many of us weren’t so fucking stupid and hateful.
“Let the voters decide” Just like in Bush v. Gore! Oh, wait…
And the 2nd Amendment!
The only hope America has is that Trump is convicted in one of his trials and receives jail time (hopefully a LOT of jail time). NAL but I’m pretty sure SCOTUS would back that scenario fully.
That would be wonderful. But it isn’t the only hope. We can just defeat the fucker at the ballot box the old fashioned way. It isn’t sexy and it doesn’t stop conspiratorial thinking and it doesn’t give the satisfaction of slapping him with consequences he has never faced in his life, but a mic drop is a mic drop. I would love to defeat him by an irrefutable margin. Might just be a pipe dream, though.
not ‘fully’. not this scotus.
They would probably stay his sentence pending presidency, at which point he would self pardon and go full dictator, dooming the country
The only hope for this country is either a senile genocide supporter winning in November, or a Big Mac induced heart attack
Not just winning, but winning decisively so the Court can’t give a victory to Trump anyway like they did for Bush. If there is any doubt, at all, about the election then Trump will probably be the next president.
And rather than rallying his base to fight fascism, he’s browbeating them to vote blue no matter who. The president can’t fail, he can only be failed. 🙃
He can’t pardon state crimes, only federal, and he can still run for president if he’s in jail.
It would be interesting to have the sitting president do his term in jail though
The problem is they’re going to have to come up with a reason for that and it’s going to get bandied about and completely rewrite the 14th Amendment.
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But as much as I hate Trump and think he should not be put on the ballot and should definitely be in prison, I do see how removing someone from the ballot could be a bad thing. In my opinion all it would do is set a precedent for removing people from the ballot just because they don’t like them. Is that why states are trying to remove Trump? Probably not. But if this is allowed I can clearly see other states trying to remove Biden from the ballot (If they haven’t tried already). And eventually it would just be another way for politicians to exercise this dick measuring contest they love so much by just removing each other from the ballot any reason they can think of. They already do absolutely batshit crazy things like gerrymandering to get votes. This would just turn into another version of voter suppression.
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But let’s be honest here. Republicans are doing a speed run to impeach Biden so they can do the whole “SeE?! He WaS iMpEaChEd ToO!”
While it’s simple for us normal people to understand that one crime doesn’t pale in comparison to the other “crime”, for the alt right, they aren’t going for fair. They are going for power by any means necessary.
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Remove Trump or not, this originalist SCOTUS might remove Biden just because he is a Democrat.
Yes and I agree with you. Trump does not belong on the ballot. But you and I know for a fact that this is just going to give people an excuse to try and remove people from the ballot out of revenge. Trump and his followers attempted an insurrection so we all know how far they would go. You really think they wouldn’t just try and remove opponents from the ballot because they want to?
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My sweet summer child, they impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job.
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“Biden staged an insurrection by taking away Texas’ power to police their own border!”
FFS, did you think this thing had to be logical? Look at how, having their man lose twice, the GOP is trying to impeach Biden. For nothing. They got nothing. Yet they’re trying.
Let me argue the conservative side a moment. And again, it doesn’t have to be logical.
“If Trump’s clearly guilty of insurrection, why has no court found him guilty in 3 years since 01/06? All I’m seeing is 3 years of wasted time trying to prosecute an innocent man, a political target. Show me where exactly he called for insurrection.”
I could go on all night, too exhausting thinking that way.
Hang Trump out to dry, let the chips fall where they may, but this is Pandora’s Box. Either way it rolls out, America will never be the same.
Y’all may find this PBS documentary interesting (below). Trump is in more trouble than you may think.
Commoners like us may find it obvious that Trump’s guilty as sin, but here they lay out how the January 6th Commission methodically nailed his ass to the wall. Jack Smith’s prosecution relies on the evidence brought out. The findings here are the blueprint for his case. I didn’t intend to watch it all at once, got sucked in for the duration.
Truly outstanding reporting. They presented the case honestly and without bias. Even though experienced lawyers like Ken White presented legitimate questions/hesitations, in the end those same experts basically said Trump is screwed.
I’m not really sure what point you’re making, but really do appreciate the documentary shared.
I look at this in the same way that I deal with dementia patients. Oh wow, that’s very interesting, hey I think “price is right” is on TV, let’s get you to the couch, and I’ll go get your lunch.
Why are we letting illogical opinion carry the same weight as tenured legal expertise and documented objective evidence?
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Is it over already? That Livestream just streamed for 10s before ending.
It was going for 2hrs 19 mins. Started at 10am EST
