Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
If only conservatives listened to scholars. Then they might consider a) the intent of the constitution and b) the practical implications of nominating someone so unfit. Alas.
everyone knows scholars lead to education and education leads to a “woke” populace that doesn’t put up with this bullshit. gotta keep everyone dumb as bricks …
If only conservatives listened to scholars
Then they wouldn’t be conservatives. Academia and reality are famous for having left wing bias.
But but originalism
At least the gun parts anyway.
“If you’re ignoring the constitution, it also means others see the second amendment as null and void.”
Maybe that gets their attention.
No, you see, for conservatives, laws are only valid insofar they support them. Laws are for the outgroup.
Lol. They absolutely do listen to scholars, and just like any other political group, they act on what they say when it’s convenient.
Federalist society is covering its bets here - putting up sone legal footholds for old establishment conservatism to use if they become handy - while doing so in such a way they don’t put themselves on the outs too unforgivably if Trump and his ilk weasel this way through this mess like they have so many times before.
It’s absolutely insane that it’s even up for fucking debate.
Is it though? Im not from the US so dont really have a dog in the fight, but hear me out.
On what basis should he not be allowed? Because he’s been indicted? Or because he was impeached? Both? Whatever the reason he would be barred would set a precedent.
Are there proper checks in place to ensure that the precedent set in place cant be met by simply stacking certain departments by a sitting president? The last thing you want is a pathway for a sitting president to effectively disqualify their opponent.
Clearly Trump is a monumental dickhead, but the problem is the people who vote for him more than anything
On what basis should he not be allowed?
Well, this is what the US constitution says:
Amendment XIV, Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The question is whether those words apply to his actions, and who exactly has the responsibility to interpret them.
If he’s guilty of insurrection he should be accused, put to trial, and if convicted it should follow that he can’t run for president anymore.
So your interpretation of the 14th amendment is that “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” is the exclusive responsibility of the judicial system to determine? Maybe that’s a valid interpretation, but it’s not actually written in the text.
Ehm, yes it is. It’s the text.
Laws don’t say “a person who committed a crime, if the fact that this crime has been, in fact, committed by that person, has been decided by a judge, who has previously passed the exam necessary…”. Laws imply a few basic assumptions. One assumption is, that every decision by “the government” is in principle dependent on the judicial system.
If the IRS decides, you’re a millionaire now and taxes you accordingly, you can go to court and they will decide whether you’re actually taxable as a millionaire.
Trump may be deemed a traitor/insurrectionist by Congress/Senate/DOJ or any other body and thus barred from running, but he too can simply go to court and let it be decided - and given that the supreme court is, let’s say, rather in his favor, the result is rather obvious.
Trump will use any loophole, any slight formal error to get around this. So you have to have a really water tight case.
or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Hundreds of rioters and those directly involved with the proud boys have pleaded guilty for their role in the instruction. Many of them giving sworn testimony stating that Trump himself gave them a call to action with his words, tweets and actions.
So even if Trump himself isn’t convicted on the charges that he is facing, him giving aid and comfort to those who have already been convicted should itself bar him from public office. (in my opinion - I am not a lawyer)
So what?
I’m not defending Trump, but convicting him, solely because of how others interpreted his messages is extremely dodgy.
Here, again, it’s up to judges to decide whether these tweets show intent to send these messages. Could Trump reasonably expect that these tweets would be received as an “order” to storm the Capitol?
If the IRS decides, you’re a millionaire now and taxes you accordingly, you can go to court and they will decide whether you’re actually taxable as a millionaire.
Funny enough, no you can’t. The courts don’t have any say in that.
There’s all kinds of government determinations that have no court remedy. Impeachment, for example, is done solely through congress.
Of course they have. If, say, they decide wrongly that the house you sold is worth 50million and not 50k, you can go to court for that.
Impeachment is a bit of a different beast, since it’s done by the governing body - essentially they’re making it legal on the fly. But even then, I’m pretty sure, if Congress would have decided in 2013 that Obama can’t be president because he’s black, there would be an option for the supreme court.
I think a conviction is the only way to get something even some Republicans will have to agree to. The only other methods I can think of would require the Senate and House to vote against him, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.
That too, but note that it doesn’t say “convicted”. There is no requirement for conviction.
So I can just accuse somebody and they’re barred from running?
A conviction means a process was followed, evidence was weighed, arguments pro and con were considered.
It says Congress could override it with a 2/3rds majority in both houses, so if Team Red wins a landslide next year, they actually could vote to allow him to run regardless, even if he is actually convicted of something.
That’s a terrible thought.
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We really need to come up with a new system of government, ban the right from participating, and just organize and move on from the broken decaying system they took over.
This is like a kid asking Santa for a pony
The US constitution bans anyone who leads an insurrection against the government from holding public office.
Problem is its not been proven yet
There is a copy of it on YouTube if you’d like a refresher…
I mean yeah he’s 100% guilty. The problem is that legally he hasn’t yet been proven guilty. It would be difficult to take a legal action (like barring him from running) on the basis of a claim that is not yet proven to a degree that is legally sufficient.
He doesn’t have to be found guilty of insurrection at trial for the clause to take effect - the bar is lower than that. All that’s necessary is that he be accepted by the court as having been somewhat involved either directly or indirectly.
That’s an interesting distinction thanks
A lot of us in the U.S. feel very strongly about what happened on January 6th, 2021, and the role he played in that.
Well both, of course.
What I think is insane is that the question of whether an impeached president can run again hadn’t been settled years ago. It’s just obvious. It shouldn’t be precedent setting. it’s something that should have been settled a long time ago.
On what basis? Because he committed a coup isn’t good enough?
Innocent until proven guilty still matters though, even when it seems like the justice system moves at a snail’s pace. His actions are coming down on him, and I think he’ll be behind bars before the election, but until then there’s no legal basis to block him from anything
It’s (legally) not decided whether he actually did.
He’s unfortunately smart enough to not simply say “let’s storm congress by force”. His messaging was vague enough that a trump-leaning judge could make an argument that he never intended this to happen. And letting things spiral out of control is not enough for an insurrection.
Because a vast swath of Americans, including most Republicans, want him to be able to run no matter what he does.
*attempted
Just read the fucking article. The legal reasoning is pretty clearly explained. You’re basically asking people to read it for you.
Dipshit. Because he committed treasonous acts and not only directed but defended those whom would overthrow the US govt. How fucking dense are you? ANYONE who would try to do that shouldn’t be president. That SHOULD be the precedent.
Simmer down dude, he’s just not ignorant, not evil.
Suck my wing-wang bruh.
Ah, but you’re missing an important distinction. He committed treasonous acts with plausible deniability! And he’ll always be able to come up with new lies and new ways to abuse you faster than you’ll be able to disprove his lies or protect yourself, so you may as well restore the monarchy already and put him on top.
EDIT: On a serious note, the comment you replied to is absolutely correct in the point they were making. If Trump is barred from the Oval Office, and the evidence and the way the evidence are presented are anything less than rock solid, then future presidents will absolutely weaponize it as precedent to lock out their political opponents (as happens in every other broken democracy).
“No shit” - the rest of the sane world.
Where is the sane world at the moment?
No democracy is perfect, but with out a doubt most of the world’s population living in democratic countries think what is happening in America with Trump is insane.
They moved on from experimental democracy with FPTP to better forms of representation that isn’t so easily manipulated by the rich.
Example?
“The sane world” is, to be fair, a pretty exclusive club.
Maps with pretty colours and lists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties#Effective_number_of_parties_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficientCross-reference with the maps and lists for proportional representation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#List_of_countries_using_proportional_representationMany of the European states, which tend to use proportional representation, are doing quite well.
According to an aside on Wikipedia, technically most countries never used FPTP in the first place, rather than having “moved on” from it. “Its use extended to British colonies […] mostly in the English-speaking world”. Of those, however, some have indeed “abandoned it in favour of other electoral systems”.
Proportional representation has been tried and tested since at least “its first national use in Denmark in 1855”.¹
A major black mark on its history might arguably be the fact that it contributed to the instability of the Weimar Republic by creating too many parties competing for power— Though, that was only a problem because of the generally disastrous state of inter-war Germany (reparations, debts, loss of industrial zones, restrictions on their military, Treaty of Versailles, fall of the Empire, etc.).
In general, proportional representation has worked out pretty well for the countries that use it, though. It doesn’t magically fix everything, but the US’s two parties currently clearly aren’t working.
¹ (Side note: Danish civil history is really cool! Used to be Vikings, lost their imperial ambitions and mellowed out, democratized willingly, saved nearly all their Jewish people and even sorted preserved their democracy through WWII, then went fully Nordic model, and now have neat randomly sampled citizen’s assemblies that are probably how democracy really should be done.)
² (The US had been hovering barely above the threshold between “Full Democracy” and “Flawed Democracy” for years, based on the EIU’s ranking criteria. It finally crossed the threshold in 2016, and has been falling alarmingly quickly ever since.)
Never forget, Hitler was part of a literal failed coup and imprisoned, and STILL was able to run for political offices. Insane.
Sure, but we shouldn’t need a legal argument.
We only need a reasonable electorate.
We shouldn’t need a legal argument, but we do.
And we certainly do not have a reasonable electorate.
We have a reasonable electorate, inasmuch as Trump has no chance of ever winning the popular vote and never did. What we don’t have is a rational electoral system where all votes are equal.
We have a reasonable electorate
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Trump got something like 74,000,000 votes.
Out of 240,000,000 eligible voters
There are millions of people too lazy/apathetic/inept to vote
Those who don’t vote are essentially choosing to vote for whoever wins. Those ≈120,000,000 people also effectively voted for Trump.
1/3 of the electorate would be happy to have trump rape their kids live on C-SPAN and would line up to suck his asshole as an expression of gratitude.
So should all of these. We can’t just punish Trump but let the rest go.
I said it after the weak jan 6 fallout and I’ll say it again: if Trump is allowed to run for president it doesn’t mean our democracy is in danger.
The very idea of his candidacy is farcical, proof that the rule of law is no longer breaking but broken; proof that our government and the tenets of democracy are in fact dead in the us.
I found the original Atlantic article better written: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
If you want that block quote to format correctly, don’t indent the
. That way it will turn out like this, instead of a single line that can’t fit on the screen without scrolling (some mobile clients like Sync, probably show it alright, but the web client certainly doesn’t.):No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Whoops, the indentation was copied over from the source. Corrected, thanks.
engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Convict him of this and he won’t be able to run.
The amendment doesn’t require conviction, just engagement.
A conviction is the only way to prove engagement legally. Like you can pass a law that says sex offender can’t do X. But you can’t enforce it upon someone whose not on the sex offender list.
Trump doesn’t follow the constitution, nor is he held to its standards by those who have the authority to force him to. This is a non-starter.
At this point it should be illegal for him to even run.
I’m thinking it increasingly likely that those with the power to stop him will do nothing. As evidenced by the traitors still being in Congress.
They had two chances and didn’t do it. Those same scholars still voted for the same candidates in the primary.
Legal scholars VS 49% of Americans, most of whom can’t read a coloring book. One guess who is going to vote for the orange turd anyway.
A little less than half the population doesn’t vote. So, it is more like 26% of Americans.
And since we have had 4 years of COVID festering in the south, I would imagine in 2024 he’ll get maybe 20%
Covid also did a number on Black and Hispanic service workers who were called essential and forced to go to work but not paid hazard pay.
Still a bit salty about that. To put it mildly.
Same here in Germany, service workers were called essential, applauded & called heroes. But they didn’t get the important part, more money.
Covid has been devastating and has likely affected more R voters, but I don’t think it will be enough to cause an electoral shift.
Red states have had a lower life is expectancy for years. Covid just added to that effect, but I don’t think it’s that much worse than any of the other confounding effects (like lower access to affordable health care or healthy food). On the contrary, it’s probably much less than that.
I’d guess electorally it’ll be similar, but by count it’ll be a larger gap this time. Not that popular votes matter in the us
There’s been roughly 1 million Covid deaths in the US since the pandemic started. Given a very gracious split of 70-30% between R-D voters, it means that there was a net loss of 400k Republican voters. (I hate to be talking about 1M lives lost in such a dry way)
During the 2020 presidential elections, Biden won the popular vote by 7 million votes. Even with ignoring the fact that the deadliest part of the pandemic was before the election, it’s not enough to have a big enough impact on the popular vote.
In swing states where the difference is 10k votes, that’s a whole different story. But then I would say that voter turnout is a much bigger thing to focus on.
Thanks for the numbers, looks like you’re probably right.
Turnout ultimately will be the deciding factor again
Sure as shit didn’t help them
Exactly… Saying.that it’s 49‰ vastly overestimates their position.
Comments like that help them solidify their beliefs that they could even have a majority… “Silent majority” my ass… They need to shut their loud fuckin mouths for a change actually
In practice, it goes eventually to the Supreme Court which, like the Republican Party, has been Trumpified and therefore will see no problem, case closed.
Even that would be an improvement on the up-in-the-air situation we’re in right now. They would have to provide guidelines for what exactly constitutes insurrection in order to make a ruling.
Would they? No really I am asking. Couldn’t they just say this doesn’t count and not define what would.
No it wouldn’t. The Supreme Court is corrupted and therefore illegitimate, so all they’ll do is make matters worse. The abortion bans aren’t legitimate and neither would them doing something like that.
All that really fundamentally matters for the purposes of this discussion is stopping Trump from being elected again.
Systems exist to serve us and we can dispose of them and set up new ones as we please and as the need arises. This is one of those times. It has been for the entire 21st century.
I think the trick is going to be, based on the other guy who got disqualified for 1/6, is that someone actually has to challenge the nomination. It’s not something that happens automatically.
“The decision came in a lawsuit brought by a group of New Mexico residents represented by the government accountability group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other lawyers.”
It’s a good thing that it is very difficult to stop somebody from running for office.
The act of running for office, or more accurately the act of the people to chose whom represents them, should not be easy to take away.
In banana republics the new guy or the guy with the most power at the moment regularly uses tactics to stop their opponents in the courts. Sometimes the charges are legitimate, but sometimes they are totally fabricated.
Take for example the case of Pita, 42 years old, the leader of the move forward party in Thailand. His party swept the recent election and by many accounts average Thai people see his ideas as the most welcome path forward. Yet the old guys and their friends, who were part of the coup 6-7 years ago, are still in power. They have been able to completely shut Pita’s party down in the courts, and despite the people having made a choice by voting, they, will not get the government they wanted.
If there was another political party in the USA that was more successful than Trump’s at breaking the laws, and the American courts were to set a precedent that some opponents can’t run for office given legal charges, I’m afraid the risk of politicians looking to defeat their opponents in court would become much more common than trying to defeat them in the polls.
I agree with this, but can we stop referring to every rigged democratic system and autocratic government as a Banana Republic?
It just makes people posting look less knowledgeable about government and politics because it’s meaning is tied to something very specific that doesn’t apply to your overall well thought out comment.
Thailand is not an example of a Banana Republic and neither is the US, nor could it ever be, as it’s not a country tied to very limited export of natural resources.
Well, I mean. There was that one time we overthrew the incumbent monarchy of Hawaii and annexed it so we could grow sugar cane on it.
I’ll give you that one.
Is there another, more relevant term to describe governments that use sham strategies to subvert the people to obtain their goals? If so I’ll changw my vocabulary. I just didn’t know of another better term at the moment of writing my post.
Perhaps junta governments?
No that’s totally fair, but that term is just misused as it applies to something very specific which deserves to be remembered and recognized as it’s own unique threat. I think the closest thing to what you might be referring is aligned to a faux democracy of Russia, which is just a form of an autocracy.
Okay but repeatedly and blatantly trying to subvert democracy should mean that you don’t get to participate in democracy anymore for the same reason that you should be banned from a chess tournament if you kick the board over and pull out a gun the first time someone puts you into check.
What if that is legitimately what the people “want” and see voting that way to cast their belief in such a major change?
It’s a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The people get to make the rules at the chess tournament. The courts… work for the people.
I know that would be a particularly bad change, but if the majority of people truly want a pathway for it, what other way is available?
If ¾ of the population wishes to enslave the remaining ¼, should they be able to?
it’s also a government where “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”. when the will of the people conflicts with human rights, humans rights are supposed to win.
It doesn’t matter. The corrupt Thai government was going to do that whether it was legal or not just as fascists here will do what they want whether legal or not, so they have to be forcibly stopped at the gate. That’s why that constitutional provision is even there.
Yes, I agree. Unfortunately the old guys are pro at playing that game and Pita just wasn’t there yet.
I think the old guys do care if their domestic authority appears plausible on the international scene. Otherwise they run into problems .
But the Thai people have definitely spoken. How serious they feel about it will come out over time, I suppose.
The act of running for office, or more accurately the act of the people to chose whom represents them, should not be easy to take away.
You don’t vote for president. You vote for electors. It isn’t “the people”.
