This is just another way for powerful Republicans to kick the can down to someone weaker and hope they take care of Trump because the actual Republican office holders with the ability to do something useful, like impeach, are nutless shits.
Almost by definition, it is not self-executing, but rather is enforced, if at all, by the Supreme Court. It may not require some process before that, but if Trump stands and people vote for him, short of a literal coup the Supreme Court is going to decide whether he is barred.
I agree "self-executing" is a broad way to put it but one of the implications is a lot more starting points for litigation. Distinct from the only route being through impeachment.
Just one more fantasy scenario. Remember back in the summer and fall of 2016 when some mythical Republican wise men were going to step in?
My money is on 'political question' which was decided by Trump's acquittal on insurrection charges at his impeachment. About which the Republican authors are pretty handwavy.
Actually my money is no one with any authority making any real attempt at this clickbait silver bullet.
Yes. It's just chaff to let Republicans who are waiting for someone else to solve their problem feel warm and fuzzy.
The worst people in America who aren't Donald Trump are waiting for someone else to get rid of Donald Trump so they take his voters by campaigning on the grounds that Donald Trump was wronged.
And how does it even get executed? I suppose some crazy clerk in a blue county/red state (like where EM and I live) refuses his registration. This would be in February 2024. Trump takes it to state district court, and first you have motion practice about whether this is legally permissible (does the clerk have the authority to reject unqualified candidates) and if the answer is yes, then you have a trial about whether what Trump did was insurrection. When is that? June, July, August of 2024? Who's 'prosecuting' the thing? Our county attorney? Assuming there's a district court ruling that he is disqualified, then you go to the Montana Supreme Court -- actually they'll have been involved already both to stay the effect of whatever ruling kept him off the ballot so he can be in the June primary, and also on a writ of supervisory control when the district court rules for the county on motions.
It ends up in the US Supreme Court, but it's hard to see how the timing could work for a ruling before November 2024. If Trump loses, the case is moot. If he wins -- because no appellate court anywhere is going to keep him off the ballot while this thing gets litigated -- there's no way there are 5 votes to say 'sorry, Biden wins after all.' Or whatever loser Trump has tapped for VP is now the President, which is probably the constitutionally sound solution when a president is barred by law from holding office.
I am disappointed that the paper isn't titled, "Save Democracy With This One Weird Trick."
6: That's the actual executive summary from the leaked DeSantis debate strategy.
The second impeachment vote was the last chance to solve this with a legal action. The people who licked Trump's ass will devour (in private, where they have morals) anything that says otherwise.
I like our county attorney well enough, but I'm sure she doesn't know any more about the insurrection than I do, and I sure as hell couldn't put on a winning nationally televised historically unprecedented trial next week.
The 14th Amendment was written in the context of a very specific insurrection, with which January 6 has little in common. When it was written, the enforcement mechanism was the Union Army and there was no need to hammer down the definition of "insurrection" because it was blazingly obvious.
At least no one from my high school was involved in the Civil War.
Another contribution to the vast and bipartisan corpus of "He's someone else's problem" literature.
It's like no one remembers any Saturday morning cartoon lessons in civic duty and patriotism.
I only remember the grammar ones. Conjunctions hook up words.
15: How could you forget bill?
I do sometimes confuse him with Mr. Bill from Saturday Night Live though.
I wish someone could convince New Mexico that barring me from office is unenforceable. I couldn't.
https://apnews.com/article/new-mexico-government-and-politics-5e2fd96d5f698017b974f878398578c8
I do remember that, but that was more process than duty.
Who is responsible for vetting candidates normally? Like if a 29 year old petitions to be on the ballot for president in New York, she is obviously barred on grounds of age. But who actually bins her petition?
Who is responsible for vetting candidates normally? Like if a 29 year old petitions to be on the ballot for president in New York, she is obviously barred on grounds of age. But who actually bins her petition?
Each state enforces its own rules for ballot access, so in this case it would be whatever the department is that runs elections in New York.
Some judge. In Pennsylvania the issue is usually meeting the required number of signatures to get on the ballot. It happens quite often that well-financed tools of the Republican Party cheat. Been that way for decades.
Also, if he's reading, Ralph Nader can go fuck himself.
Yes, if someone gets denied by the elections department they'll typically sue and a state judge will sort it out.
And then someone paid by the Republican Party is arguing "Snow White" was a real Ralph Nader supporter.
24: what about the reverse scenario? If the clerk permits an ineligible candidate on to the ballot?
26: ianaell, that said - a third party sues. they have to establish standing, typically being a registered voter will do. at least some types of pre election challenges in california are entitled to super expedited docket priority bc of the interest in resolution before ballots are printed.
In one of my college classes, a guest lecturer came and talked about his experience in politics and the labor movement. He started a campaign be mayor of his town when he was a college student but it turned out there was an age requirement beyond just being an adult. He said when people asked him about the requirement, his answer was, "If elected, that's the first thing I'll change."
It's an every year thing here. For example, my congresswoman had a primary opponent with a nominating petition bearing forged signatures, including that of a federal judge who said they didn't sign it. And a general election opponent who had the same name as the previous congressman (that is, the Republicans found a guy with the same name as the Democrat they were trying to replace).
Which is the plot of an Eddie Murphy movie.
We recently had an issue locally where a state legislator who had been elected in unusual circumstances wanted to run for another term but was prevented by how the term limits are written in the constitution, in a way that was probably disappointing to him. When he decided not to pursue it and to seek other office, he said publicly that it was a gray area* and he would have had to sue an official - probably the county- or state-level elections official - to test it. So I presume that official had agreed he was ineligible. But if they had agreed with his interpretation and let him on the ballot, I imagine a third party could have sued over that decision.
*In fact the law was clear, he seems to be wishing it wasn't / trying to preserve his dignity on the matter.
More people trying to give this traction, in this case Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/
I guess the more traction it gains, the better the chances of a non-fascist winning the Republican primary. Those odds don't look close to 50 percent for 2024 under any circumstances, though.
When I was saying that I thought there was a chance that the Republican Party could somehow keep him out of the primaries, this is the sort of thing that could work. You'd need a bunch of state party organizations to go for it, which I agree seems super unlikely but it's the kind of unlikely that I think can get likely all of a sudden.
The problem is that you have organizations where anyone with any sense of decency or individual thought has been driven out or sidelined. You don't need a plausible reason to drop Trump. You need a way for a bunch of spineless weasels to believe others will go along with the plan.
36: As we saw with the impeachment effort post-Jan. 6.
But there's a different kind of spineless weaseldom in play here, too. There are a lot of Republicans who lack the courage to acknowledge their own ignorant, dishonest, crooked racist principles. They can square that circle by privately telling people (and themselves) that they aren't really pigs, they just have to support swinery for practical reasons.
(Merriam-Webster does not acknowledge "weaseldom," but does provide a definition for "swinery.")
36: Well put. Someone like Rona McDaniel would turn in an instant if she thought it would work across the party. But I think at this point there is so little trust among folks like that, that outside of very close associates any discussions are so abstract and loaded with plausible deniability that they are effectively useless.
I think a lot of them would love the Iowa/NH caucusers/voters to do it for them.
An interesting poll interpretation is that RW media is doing such a good job of demonizing Biden that R voters no longer think they need an alternative to Trump to beat Biden.
It's a classic collective action problem.
There was a brief window when Fox News started to turn on Trump and the Senate was considering conviction on impeachment, and then Fox panicked that they were going to lose their audience and McConnell misjudged whether Trump would run again, and now it's too late.
Remember back when the first author was most well known as "that guy who blogs at Crescat Sententia"? Those were the days.
35-39: Yeah, I thought I was being clever saying "non-fascist" as opposed to Trump specifically. I can imagine Trump being disqualified from key states for something like this. I can't imagine it not feeding an amazing case of doltschosslegende.
Also if Trump were to be excluded from the primary on the grounds that he is a seditious motherfucker, he would respond by burning the party to the ground.
4/7: Actually my money is no one with any authority making any real attempt at this clickbait silver bullet. ... And how does it even get executed? I suppose some crazy clerk in a blue county/red state (like where EM and I live) refuses his registration. This would be in February 2024.
I'm not sure it's fair to think of this as just clickbaity fantasy. Disclaimer: the first author, WB, was a college friend of mine, back when I was part of the Vast Ring Wing Conspiracy (and on his blog!), but I haven't read the article -- life's too short for 90 pages of footnotes.
First, some deadlines are a bit earlier than 2/2024 -- the earliest appears to be 10/2023. So that gives a bit more time for the process to run -- and like DQ said, states already have super-expedited procedures for dealing with these issues. *This particular* challenge to qualifications is a new, but the idea of challenging candidates' qualifications is totally normal.
Second, I'm not so sure there aren't 5 votes on the SC for this. First, I don't know if anyone on the court are really Trumpers; the conservatives are Fed Soc people, and that's really not the same. And in the hands of a conservative judiciary, this method of disqualification could be a powerful weapon for cementing permanent Republican rule: WB & MSP argue that "giving aid or comfort to the enemies" of the United States disqualifies someone, and that this controls and takes precedence over (because passed subsequent to) the 1st Amendment, when necessary. AOC has totally given aid or comfort to Antifa and BLM, and they're totally enemies of the United States, amirite? Disqualified! Etc etc.
More seriously, I think we will definitely see this litigated to the highest level, and I worry that the conservatives on the court will come up with a doctrine that will be abused against the left in a really ugly way within our lifetimes.
I agree that the Supreme Court may disqualify Trump. We keep hearing that lots of "remasonable" Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, are really really hoping that Trump isn't on the ticket, but they aren't willing to risk making that happen. The shlubs running in Republican primaries and not criticizing Trump also are hoping this happens. "Let's have the Surpeme Court take care of this" is an obvious solution. From the Supreme Court perspective, the Bush and Trump appointees might see personal political advantage in ruling against Trump, to rebut arguments that they are all political hacks. OK, not Thomas, but any of the others.
Three Nixon appointees ruled agaisnt Nixon in the Watergate Tapes case (Rehnquist recused), and both Clinton judges ruled against Clinton in Clinton v Jones.
Anyone responsible for approving names on ballots in any state or county would have standing to force the case, and in some places all registered voters have standing to challenge a name on a ballot. The.
A county judge in Otrero County New Mexico has already ruled that participation in Jaunary 6 required removing from office a county commissioner. Cuoy Griffin, who had been convicted of trespassing in the Capital, based on the same constitutional provisioin.
Pretty informative article in TPM on the processes that could lead to disqualification.
I think Thomas and Alito are Trumpers, but the rest of them aren't.
"remasonable" Republicans
Because they are brick-headed fucks who believe it is still their party.
49 I guess they really are going to try this. And obviously, the timing in earlier states is going to be earlier. D'oh! There's already a case in ED Ark, I guess, brought by a disbarred lawyer? https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/disbarred-and-disgraced-lawyer-sues-trump-and-his-attorney-allies-asks-judge-to-declare-them-insurrectionists-who-may-not-lawfully-seek-or-occupy-any-office/ Can this guy put on a winning case, and win at the 8th Circuit? Maybe!
47 last -- BLM and Antifa might not qualify as enemies for this purpose, but you don't have to look hard to find people using words like 'uprising' to describe post-Floyd actions in Minneapolis and other places. It seems to me that there's a narrow faction of the left who think an insurrection would be a good thing, and maybe a still narrow but a bit larger faction that thinks the language of insurrection is motivating even if an actual insurrection might not be a good idea.
48 Justices may not stick to the politician/party that appointed them, especially those who respect the rule of law, but I'm not willing to put Barrett and Kavanaugh into the same category as Breyer and Ginsburg on this axis. Gorsuch is an oddball.
Has anyone been able to read all the way through the decision in Griffin's Case?
It's pretty clearly distinguishable, I think. https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0011.f.cas/0011.f.cas.0007.html