So, unsurprisingly, Trump is still allowed on the ballots, and individual States are not allowed to disqualify anyone from running for Presidency for being an insurrectionist... thus speaks the Supreme Court of the US. Their ruling is that the matter must be decided by Congress. They didn't touch on whether Trump is an insurrectionist, only on the mechanism by which one could be disqualified for such. Their view seems to be that since the majority of the 14th Amendment was about curbing the rights of States, why should section 3 be any different, and therefore the catch-all of section 5 (that states that Congress has the power to enact these matters) should be observed. Not an unexpected outcome, given the bias within the SCOTUS, and their reasoning looks typically... selective.
Yep. The states-rights, anti-federal-government conservatives are suddenly panicked over the idea that states can decide their own ballots.
I suspect that the issue is that DJT has never been charged and convicted for insurrection. It would be bad form to just accuse someone and act without a trial.
If that was the issue then SCOTUS would undoubtedly have referred to the lack of conviction (or the need thereof) in their decision. They didn't. They didn't address at all whether DJT was an insurrectionist or not. It was simply not something they looked at. Instead it was solely with regard who has the power to remove someone from a ballot for President. And they determined that it lies with Congress and not the States.
?? States can bar someone for being under 35 from running for president without a trial. They can bar someone who isn't a US citizen from running for president without a trial. Why is insurrection different?
I suppose the insurrectionists in Congress would also be the ones to decide if they themselves are disqualified for their own federal offices? It doesn't really make much sense to me. Some red states were openly planning that they would keep Biden off their ballots by simply claiming he was an insurrectionist. It would be nice if we didn't have to worry about something like that happening, although I doubt that was considered in SCOTUS' reasoning, (aside from the majority of them thinking that they would like that to happen.)
Because insurrection is a crime. You cannot just claim someone committed a crime. Innocent until proven guilty.
The judges in the lower court, and the state's court of appeal, both said that he was guilty of insurrection, I believe, based on the presented evidence, hence the removal from the ballot. While Trump was not actually charged, and had no trial by jury over that specific charge, the presiding judges (or majority thereof) held him to be guilty of it. It was part of their consideration when removing him from the ballot. So it's not quite true that it was just a claim.
If the Colorado SC found that he had engaged in insurrection and this was not overturned by the SCOTUS does that not say that the SCOTUS left that finding intact? In any event we all saw what he did and now he is to be given a second bite at the cherry. Is the SCOTUS just corrupt?
Yes. The Supreme Court did not consider the question of whether Trump is guilty or not guilty of insurrection. That trial is coming. Trump's aim, however, is to try to get it delayed until after the election. Then, if he wins the election, he can possibly pardon himself for his crimes, or at the very least put the whole thing off until his next term of office ends. So far, Trump has been moderately successful in delaying most of his court appointments. Some Republicans apparently don't care whether he's a criminal or not; they will vote for him regardless. But a certain proportion of them have said, in response to polls, that they would not vote for a convicted felon. Presumably, those Republicans - who are in the minority, it seems - would ideally prefer the question of whether Trump is or is not guilty of a felony to be decided before they have to vote for somebody. The ones who don't care whether the President of the United States is a criminal might welcome the delays, if it helps their preferred narcissistic autocrat to regain office.
Yes. He had not been specifically charged with insurrection, but in their ruling the lower court judges found him to have committed insurrection. I'm sure there's a legal distinction in there somewhere. Yes. Let's just say that many have lost faith in the SCOTUS to be truly impartial. By passing this particular matter to Congress they have effectively said that if someone is that popular that their own party want to have them on the ballot, they should be on the ballot and let the people decide. Only in the event that their own party wanted to stop them from running would they look to go down the route of formal disqualification, but there are likely other means of achieving them not running before reaching that eventuality.
Technically, no, it isn't. Nowhere has he actually been charged with insurrection. It is, unfortunately, not one of the many charges he faces. The closest he comes to it is in what is being referred to as the "insurrection trial" - about Jan 6 and his efforts to overturn the election result - but this covers the following charges: 2 felony counts (including one conspiracy count) of obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. § 1512 1 felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371| 1 felony count of conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. § 241 Insurrection would be a separate charge, as it is a separate felony to the above.
Yep. Federal charges have to be adjudicated in a federal court. So the Co SC only issued an opinion on the evidence they reviewed. And the only actual incitement charge was already adjudicated in Congress and resulted in acquittal in the Senate. Much as I would love to see a simple trapdoor solution for Agent Orange, I actually can't fault the SCOTUS ruling, especially since it would forestall possible RW attempts to define Biden as an "insurrectionist" on highly spurious grounds and kick him off the ballot in a red state. So that way lies madness and dimensions of stupidity that the GOP has only begun to explore.
It's a sad state of affairs when a SCOTUS decision is being found reasonable because it prevents subsequent abuse by one of the parties. The founding fathers would surely be appalled that accusations of insurrection could potentially be weaponised by one party, and that preventing that could allow an insurrectionist potentially taking office! At what point did the US start to weaponise their judicial system in such a manner? Was it only since Trump? Or did this sort of thing happen previously? I know walking-orange-jumpsuit has explicitly (iirc?) stated that he would do just that in a wave of revenge and retribution, but to what extent has this been seen in history?
That's actually not correct. Even conservative Justice Barrett dissented on the Majority's ambitious reach. The functional problem with the Court's decision is that now the States are obliged to include people on their ballot who are known to have rebelled against the State. Splitting the difference, individual states might try setting a higher standard before trying to disqualify. The evidence so far is that courts have accepted discussion of Trump's role in the insurrection, and maybe that would be sufficient for an elector or county council seat, the Majority pretty much disqualified that discussion. Disqualifying Trump from Colorado isn't disqualifying him from any other state. Out west, there are California and Washington, where he's just not going to win. Disqualifying Trump from those two states wouldn't actually change his electoral total; while there might then arise a question about states where Trump might win, the Majority has precluded discussion of the subtleties. The decision they've handed down, now, means Trump cannot be disqualified even if convicted of election-related charges in Georgia. As a political maneuver, the point is to forestall any conviction until after he is president, and then require impeachment to remove; the problem with the Majority opinion, though, is that they've added to the Constitution in order to achieve their outcome: XIV.3 is self-executing, and the only congressional action required is to undo the disqualification; the Majority didn't like that, so they just made something up.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! One mystery that remains is who you think these so-called moderates are. Here, a reminder: Bill Kristol is the least bad of the never-trumpers; it might be a bit subtle, from half a world away, to feel the punch of the moment when my daughter was explaining how people in her social media feed were in a trend of answering the nostalgic with Reagan: ¿What ever happened to the days when you could …? ¡You elected Reagan! But, yeah, that's the world Kristol wants. Y'know, all the racism and religious supremacism, but just on the down-low. The Reagan years, when the economy went wrong because voodoo economics were just to dazzling. It's one thing if the song says, "You quoted Ecclesiastes, and brought all our hopes to their knees," but, yeah, the least bad of the so-called moderates want to go back and do the breaking of hope all over again. One of the more mainstream nevertrumpers is an old Republican campaign hand named Rick Wilson. And it's true, he's funny because he's a foul-mouthed rat bastard who speaks a lost dialect. But he's also a rat bastard, the guy who went after Cleland, like that. Rick Wilson has his place in the history of how excrementally low the conservative conscience is willing to go. It's an intersting thought that Donald Trump is somehow a bridge too far, but it's not a matter of morality. Similarly, Nikki Haley's dissent only means so much outside conservative circles. She's a former governor of South Carolina who can't deal with the Civil War, and wants to be counted among Nazi sympathizers. It's kind of been this way for a long time. Atwater may have brought the Southern Strategy to the Reagan years, but it reaches back to Nixon. Over fifty years later, the conservative playbook hasn't really changed; the hardliners just aren't capable of actually doing it right, these days. The so-called moderates among Republicans, these days, are simply the folks who understand there is a quiet part they're not supposed to say out loud. Meanwhile, what will Trump do to his detractors? I don't know, they would probably have to rely on Democrats to save them. But that's the thing: Haley's whole point has been to posture herself to run in 2028. In recent days, though, there has also been chatter about Republican voter enthusiasm. Look at the election, or look what happens afterward. That is, if the so-called moderates turn out to elect Trump, we have our answer, that they weren't really moderates. And if Trump loses, well, not only look in the detail of which voters abandoned him and how, but also watch what happens after the election, because it doesn't seem like Republicans will be coming away from this stuff so much as trying to go back to the old way of pretending that's not what they're on about. Spoiler
The moderates are the non-political people who end up voting for Trump only because they don't like Biden. Reagan wasn't a bad President. He didn't focus on religion, the evangelicals came later. Newt Gingrich is a piece of crap. Bush 1 and 2 brought in the evangelicals. Reagan was about deregulation, was against unions, wanted lower taxes, smaller government. He didn't accomplish all of that but he was about right, IMO, on most economic issues. He laid it on a little thick, wasn't the brightest guy but his vision was about right. He did less harm than most everyone since then.
