Efforts to block former President Donald Trump from being on the ballot next year have yet to score a major win in court. Nobody in power seems willing to decide whether the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause disqualifies him from returning to the White House. Instead, judges and state officials have either pawned off that decision to someone else or determined that there will be some other, better time to make a judgment.
The result is a rapidly shrinking window for that decision to be made. And, based on the standard in a ruling issued in Michigan on Tuesday, we might not know the answer until after all the votes have been cast on Election Day next year. It might be after the presidential electors have met and submitted their ballots. It might come down to Congress on Jan. 6, 2025, to decide whether Trump is even eligible to become president.
We might not know the answer until after all the votes have been cast on Election Day next year.
Earlier this year, legal scholars, including prominent conservatives, came out in support of the idea that Trump is constitutionally ineligible for office and that it fell to election officials to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. (That section bars from federal and state office anyone who previously swore to support the Constitution but then had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”) Since then, much of the energy from democracy activists and lawyers has focused on convincing secretaries of state of the argument, but they’ve met with either hesitancy or outright rejection from officials. At best, as in the case of Michigan’s Jocelyn Benson, there has been an openness to acting — provided, that is, that a court rules whether Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol triggered the insurrection clause.
But one of the cases seeking such a ruling fell short on Tuesday. Judge James Robert Redford rightfully noted in his decision…
Read the full article here