The Supreme Court will consider whether Colorado can remove Trump from the ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Here I offer the radical idea that the Trump-ballot issue is not easy or straightforward.
Click here to read.
https://terikanefield.com/section-3-and-the-spirit-of-liberty/
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Teri, you raise good points as always. I'm not sure that I know what the right answer is either. But I do believe that to treat Trump as any other political candidate despite all that he's done and said is dangerous to the country. Which is why I am thinking perhaps SCOTUS should use a Bush-v-Gore move and say, "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of [insurrection and rebellion] generally presents many complexities."
Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny lists as the first rule: "Do not obey in advance." I believe that giving Trump a pass on qualification, despite the language in the 14th Amendment (and again, despite all that he did to incite the mob - the facts of which were almost universally undisputed on January 6, 2021 (let's roll the tapes on what Republican leaders said at that time) - b/c we are concerned that Republican governors will, in bad faith, do the same to Biden, is to give in to the tyranny of Trump and Trumpism.
SCOTUS should not do that.
Let's play this out: if SCOTUS says that Trump is eligible to run for election, despite all that he has done (and continues to say and do), and wins the general election, why couldn't Biden do the same thing and incite his supporters to stop the transfer of power? He could justify it (in the view of millions of Americans, including myself) that it would be more dangerous to allow Trump to assume power.
American democracy and the rule of law would seem to have died. Is an anti-democratic move ever justified in support of democracy and the rule of law? We are in uncharted waters. . .
Or let's play out another scenario - what if Trump is not on the ballot but another Republican candidate wins and pardons Trump et al? Millions of us would not like that, but those would be constitutional acts, wouldn't they? Yes, Trump would still retain some level of power, and I guess we would have to see how much power that President Haley/De Santis cede to him (they might distance themselves from him once they have their own power). The whole scenario would be awful for the country (in my view), but it would be within the bounds of the law.
The best answer, as always, is that we need to defeat not just Trump but Trumpism at the ballot box. But it also seems that perhaps the better path for SCOTUS is to uphold the plain (I believe) text of the Constitution and hold that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from the ballot.