With a ruling sure to head to the United States Supreme Court, the Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot in the state due to his participation in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The case is one of several pending around the country but the first to come down in favor of disqualifying Trump’s name from being on the ballot next year.
Whether the decision stands will be up for further judicial appeal. For now, however, the ruling seems to be a boon for Trump and further evidence that it’s Democrats engaged in an insurrection of meddling with democracy, according to NBC News:
The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Donald Trump from the state’s ballot will help the former president in his quest to win the Republican nomination next year, political insiders in both parties say.
Some Democrats fear it could boost him next November, too.
Republican elected officials raced to rally around Trump in the hours after the ruling was released Tuesday — even those not backing him for president in 2024. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has not endorsed Trump, wrote a bill aimed at preventing states from blocking presidential candidates from their ballots. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is competing with Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, even interpreted the decision as an attempt by Democrats to aid Trump.
The events of Jan. 6 can hardly be described as an insurrection. Perhaps a protest turned riot, in some instances. The only shots fired were those of Capital police officers against unarmed protestors. Any criminal behavior should be punished, but calling it an insurrection only makes sense in Liz Cheney’s wildest dreams. Furthermore, there’s no evidence Trump was to blame in full or in part for anything entering the U.S. Capitol Building.
Beyond that, there are differing opinions among legal scholars as to whether the law, as applied in this case, even applies to Trump at all, per the New York Times:
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Congress can remove the prohibition, the provision says, but only by a two-thirds vote in each chamber.
Though the provision was devised to address the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and, most scholars say, continues to have force.
Other scholars, notably Josh Blackman of South Texas College of Law Houston and Seth Barrett Tillman of Maynooth University in Ireland, say that Section 3 does not cover Mr. Trump. There is, they wrote, “substantial evidence that the president is not an ‘officer of the United States’ for purposes of Section 3.”
It doesn’t take a legal scholar to realize what removing Trump from the ballot in Colorado will inevitably set off.
Writing for Slate.com, a bastion of left-wing intellectual garbage, Lawrence Lessig, though he despises Trump, sees the danger ahead:
But even if one assumes that Section 3 was meant to be prospective, there is an obvious reason why the only two nationally elected officers would be excluded from its reach. It took mere moments after the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling to see why, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick threatened to remove President Joe Biden from the Texas ballot as retribution.
These considerations will lead the Supreme Court to reject Colorado’s judgment. For the sake of the institutional integrity of the Supreme Court, I hope it rejects the judgment unanimously. One does not need to like Donald Trump in order to see that the law does not preclude him from being a candidate. Or at least, such must be true, if the rule of law is indeed about law, and not about this awful man.
In other words, opening the process to kick presidential candidates off the ballot could set off a domino effect that would do far more damage to American democracy than anything that happened on Jan. 6.
Furthermore, Democrats scream endlessly that they are the party of democracy yet at every turn, they’re doing what they can to rig the election by trying to put Trump in prison and/or remove him from the ballot.
Trump’s primary opponents wasted little time in jumping on the story with Vivek Ramaswamy pledging to remove himself from the ballot in Colorado if the ruling stands:
I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous… pic.twitter.com/qbpNf9L3ln
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 20, 2023
Nikki Haley said she’s going to defeat Trump without Colorado’s help and that his name should remain on the ballot:
Nikki Haley: "The idea that judges are going to take it upon themselves to decide who can and can't be on the ballot is truly unthinkable … I am going to defeat Donald Trump on my own. I don't need a judge to go take him off the ballot." pic.twitter.com/unB8qwzpQc
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 20, 2023
Ron DeSantis scoffed at the decision as being purely political and destined to be reversed soon:
This is a disappointing answer from Ron DeSantis.
I agree the Colorado decision will most likely be overturned, but shouldn’t the Governor show his solidarity against the weaponization of government on President Trump? pic.twitter.com/MHrFxZTQNv
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) December 21, 2023
There is litigation pending in 13 other states deciding the issue of Trump’s ballot eligibility which is why the U.S. Supreme Court will inevitably and quickly step in to rectify the situation.
