Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him over Capitol attack
Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him over Capitol attack.
Time to violently storm the Supreme Court, then. After all, they approve.
This is a shit take. This ruling is not saying "Trump did nothing wrong", this is specifically saying "States cannot unilaterally decide to remove federal election candidates from ballots", which I completely agree with. As others have noted, it would open the doors to so much bullshit if this were allowed.
The SC could come out tomorrow and say "We're disqualifying Trump", this doesn't preclude that.
Arguably states unilaterally removing a candidate from the ballot is a major paving stone on the road to the civil war, when Lincoln won because of the split pro slave vote the south blew a gasket because it only just hit them then that everyone else had enough electors among them to ignore the south completely.
It's not a State Law they're using to remove him. It's federal election laws. It's in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. They even specifically discussed if a President should have an exception and decided it did not. The Supreme Court is choosing NOT to enforce the US Federal Constitution!
On the other hand, I could definitely see a bunch of red-controlled states deciding to remove Biden (or future Dem candidates) for whatever bullshit reason in the future, so while this ruling isn't necessarily consistent with current practice it at least doesn't open the door to that.
Except that R's are already pretty cool with being inconsistent about what is our isn't allowed, which is how we got certain members of the SC in the first place...
No justice, no peace.
In this case, I don't disagree with their decisions and neither did the moderate justices.
This prevents all of the heavily gerrymandered red States from pulling Biden from the ballot as well.
And if they ruled in favor of pulling Trump from the ballot, you can bet your ass that Biden will be gone from every red and swing state ballot too. Possibly more than we would be able to get Trump pulled from.
Sorry, but this is absolutely a victory for democracy and what little structure our government still has. If the states were to be allowed to remove candidates from the ballot, you could kiss any chance of Democrat candidates showing up on red state ballots goodbye.
States have always had control over federal elections and candidate qualifications. That's been fundamental to American federalism since the very beginning.
It's not like oath-breaking is the only disqualifier, and states decide those too.
‘States rights only apply when not direct conflict with conservative views’
More like states rights only apply when not delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They should really have written that down somewhere.
They also probably should've put something about how the rights explicitly mentioned in the Constitution were not our only rights, and the explicit mention of some rights did not disparage other rights. That way the conservative court wouldn't have been able to say "we can't find a right to xyz in the Constitution therefore it isn't a right".
If only there was a Ninth Amendment or something, and a way to hold the Court accountable to it.
The states explicitly have that determining power according to the constitution, specifically for insurrection.
Fuuuck the Supreme Cowards.
Unanimous? How?
Because the liberal justices are being consistent in their rulings, while the conservatives justices all of a sudden forgot that they think these things should be deferred to the states.
How do you mean the liberal justices are being consistent in their rulings?
The conservatives are being very consistent by pursuing their political agenda regardless of states rights or the rights of the electorate.
Did you read the actual ruling?
Yep and they just handwaive it. They assert the other sections are held against the states so this must be too. They also assert that only Congress has enforcement power for it despite nothing in the amendment saying so. It says "Congress shall have power...", not sole power, not the power. There is no exclusionary language to preclude a state's normal constitutional right to run it's elections. Instead this adds Congress to the list of bodies that can enforce this.
The remedy for a state running an improper election is also not the supreme court. It is Congress, as laid out in the Constitution they supposedly are experts at enforcing. And yet they keep giving themselves major powers not in Constitution.
Fascists use institutions to secure and entrench power. They are not restricted by them.
The question for those cheering this decision as a win for the rule of law or the institution is: how aware of this are you?
That's exactly it though - if the court said state judges can enforce laws keeping people off ballots, then you'd have fascists using the courts to secure and entrench power by keeping democrats off the ballot. There's all sorts of zealots on the state courts, if the Supreme Court said this was legal I have no doubt that at least the AL supreme court would quickly find that Biden is guilty of insurrection against god or something and knock him off the ballot there.
Something as big as keeping a presidential candidate off the ballot can't be up to the states, because there's a lot of crazy state governments.
Ideally you'd just challenge a ruling like that and have it thrown out for being meritless and the judge who made it sanctioned. But the supreme court has ruled that judges have absolute immunity for their actions no matter how corrupt, so the best you can do is vote them out of office and then do nothing to them like we're doing here.
The justice system is more concerned with protecting itself than justice and it's the supreme court that's been heading that boat for the last 200 years.
Still that doesn't make their argument not stupid as hell. They have chances to fix it here and just refuse to admit that there's a problem.
The difference is that this isnt a whim...he is legit a criminal traitor who engaged in insurrection and is disqualified by the Constitution. States' rights have nothing to do with any of this.
A nonsensical ruling.
The section specifically says congress can allow someone to hold office with a 2/3rds vote. How does it make any sense that it also takes specific congressional action to disqualify someone? A simple majority could stop that.
They even noted on a footnote a case where a 2/3rds majority voted to seat a former confederate. Yet they didn’t bother to outline how he was disqualified to start with. It wasn’t congressional action.
And they exceed legal thoughts as the suppose there needs to be uniformity so the president is president for all. History is filled with candidates that didn’t appear on the ballot is some states. Lincoln wasn’t on the ballot in some southern states. Like it or not, that is how it works.
And while the majority was rightfully chided for going beyond the question presented, shame on the liberals for ruling to protect their federal power rather than protecting the integrity of elections. I hated the oral arguments where they were all saying it “feels” like a federal question. If you want it to be a federal question, amend the constitution so the feds are in charge of elections. Until then, states have the right to decide who is on their ballot.
States should still have full power to tell their own electors who they can and can't vote for, congress deliberately can't control that and SCOTUS can't tell them what rules to use. Ballot access don't matter if votes for the traitor are void by default.
Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Right, and per the opinion, Amendment 14 sections 3 and 5 specifically take rights away from the States to delegate for the federal government.
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What happened to State's Rights? Oh, they only matter when they didn't benefit you. Got it.
What happened to upholding the constitution? He is literally barred from office for his crimes, and his legal defence was that he did those crimes but it shouldn't disbar him (even though it very clearly does).
cue Strum Thurmond spinning in his own grave
It's so wild that the 'but the people have democratic rights to choose among candidates' crowd invoke that argument to make the candidate that's promised to end democracy and rights one of the options they can vote for
You know, because democracy
And also, he never won on the people's democratic right to choose among candidates. Hillary did. He won because the president is chosen by the states, not the people. Don't like it? Abolish the electoral college.
Also it occurs to me that there are other factors that disqualify candidates from being president- the bit about being 35 or older means AOC can't be president right now and the bit about being a natural-born citizen disqualifies Schwarzenegger and isn't it interesting that the court hasn't taken up the issue on how that denies voters their democratic rights? I mean, when you want to understand how to apply the constitution as it pertains to who may not serve in office, don't you want to consider all the disqualifiers and their mechanisms?
If you're under 35 or foreign-born, it doesn't take an act of congress to bar you from office, those things are the law and already in the constitution with plain wording. A plain reading of sec 3 of the 14th amendment basically reads as if the authors of the amendment intended it to take an act of congress (with 2/3rds majorities, in both houses) to allow an insurrectionist that previously took an oath of office to serve again, but the court magically inverted that by asserting the only congress could invoke section 3
Nope, this is the court bending over backwards to deliver a political outcome
I thought a president can do anything with full immunity. So Biden could make it so, according to Trump’s own rules.
Does this case not also show that they will infact say he has immunity as well unless Congress impeaches him and the Senate agrees/dismissed the person. Aka the president has immunity to do anything they want so long as one of the legislative departments will not act. Aka, they can be run by fear of death as well unless they can pass the impeachment and dismissal faster than the president can hear about it or act to stop it.
Theoretically wouldn't it be legal for the president to blow up Congress in session because they couldn't impeach him for doing so until a new Congress is elected.... Which of course cannot happen without them all being scared for their lives. Legal dictatorship. : /
Anyone here watched the video of Saddam and how he rose to power? It's like a scene from Godfather.
Could that happen here? I'd absolutely hope not. But how many committed people do you need in order to make it happen? How many have to die in order for all others to be cowed?
Giffords didn't die and it sent an absolute chill.
This ruling was an inevitability. No matter how strong the case, they weren't going to kick Trump off the ballot. Even if the Court didn't have a conservative majority, the Court generally doesn't like being seen as political. This is a polarizing case that asks them to choose between the election proceeding as usual, or being the ones responsible for disqualifying Trump. They may be willing to dive head first into polarizing issues of their choosing, but this wasn't something they wanted, it was something that they could reasonably ignore. So, forced into ruling on this case, they voted 9-0 to take the easy way out and make an excuse.
The question of total presidential immunity to all prosecution doesn't cause quite the same problem. Hell, they don't even need to rule on presidential immunity, they can just rule that there's no immunity for ex-presidents. It's the obviously correct answer, and it isn't really changing the status quo. Ruling that current and former presidents have total immunity would put the Court in a much worse position, setting a massive game changing precedent and bailing Trump out in a way that looks corrupt. This seems especially implausible given the way the lower courts have explored this issue. A ruling in favor of Trump has very clearly been established to be a ruling that gives presidents a license to kill. I would honestly be surprised if we don't get a 9-0 decision against Trump whenever they get around to deciding the case.
Biden can't do that because he didn't win the election. But Trump still can because he is technically the president. But you might say, then he cant run in 2024, right? Well, he'll just have to change that as president. You've gotta think bigger and dumber.
States rights only applies when it benefits the GQP
Naturally
Correct. States simply don't have this power. The decision was unanimous for a reason.
For anyone wondering if the wording of the Constitution is unclear, this is the provision that constitutionally bars trump from 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."
Here is Article 2 section 1, referring to the office of the President of the United States:
"The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years,..."
Trump engaged in insurrection, violating the oath of office he took. As such, he is constitutionally ineligible to run for office.
Supreme Cowards
What I don't understand about the ruling is that congress has already exercised their power. Donald Trump was impeached by congress in 2021 for inciting an insurrection. The states are only enforcing the law based on the ruling a of the House of Representatives and a majority of the Senate.
Removal from office takes a supermajority in the Senate, so maybe disqualification via the 14th does as well. That would presumably depend on Senate rules that currently don't cover it.
A simple majority ought to be sufficient, but it also ought to be sufficient for just about everything, but it's not.
States rights!!!!! Sometimes.
I mean, the whole argument hinges on the fact that the procedures around Section 3 are ambiguous, but clearly since states haven't tried to do it themselves before, that means they obviously don't have the authority. So, the precedent exists not because it has actually been set, but because it can be inferred to exist by the fact that it hasn't been set.
May as well have signed it in crayon, too. OH WAIT THEY DIDN'T SIGN IT
They have done this before tho. Scotus is corrupt and illegitimate.
It doesn't really make any sense, the SCOTUS expects congress to vote on enforcing laws that they passed 150 years ago every time the issue comes up? Why? They already voted.
"It's not for us to decide. It's up to the Republican controlled Congress to decide to allow Trump and any other Republican candidate and not allow Democrat candidates the same luxury."
They want to leave it to states' rights when it benefits them. Then they want it to Republican-controlled groups.
Short term this is disappointing, but long term I think it is for the best. Being unanimous makes it less likely a state will ignore the rulling, and had they ruled against Trump, then we would have seen decades of retaliation from red states removing all democrats for any reason.
The root of the problem remains that nearly half our voting citizens support electing a violent and hateful criminal.
then we would have seen decades of retaliation from red states removing all democrats for any reason.
You say this with an optimism that I wish I had.
I guarantee you that so long as we have a shit judicial bench, red states are going to fuck around. Not because they can. They always could.
But because no one is going to stop them.
Whelp, now I guess Elon can run for president. Be pretty awkward if he won.
Elon still can't run, because the states still have authority over enforcing the qualifications for president enumerated in Article II Section 1. The Supreme Court ruling only covers Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment for federal office holders or people running for federal office. I honestly like this ruling. The conservative justices ruled this way because they wanted to keep Trump on the ballot, but if they are going to do that no matter what, I'll take the win. edit: added clarification
Guess we really are going the route of states ignoring federal rulings and laws. This might get scary in the next few years.
It is already scary now.
Deadly is the word you mean
That isn't at all what this is about. This is asserting the inability for individual states to make rulings on federal matters. This is a good thing. It's not states' place to be ruling on federal cases. Those rulings need to come from the federal level.
Unless I’m misremembering, the scope is more limited. It’s specifically allocating the right to determine federal office eligibility to the federal government and not the state.
Any other rights without precedent currently remain with the states
If that's what you think, you don't understand the situation.
So what happens if the states continue to keep him off the ballot? Does the federal government take over their elections, or do they refuse to recognize the electors?
The supreme clowns are giving an opinion and states are already starting to ignore their opinions. What happens if the states ignore this and say their state rights exceed here?
The bigger news isn't that he's back on the ballot, but the 5-4 split within the unanimous ruling.
They unanimously agreed that a state Court can't ban someone from election to a federal office based on federal rules. There's something to be said for that, which is why the liberal justices were all on board with it.
The 5-4 split with the separate opinions, however, was Thomas, Alito, Robert's, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch saying that federal courts also can't ban someone from holding office for insurrection even if convicted of the crime in a federal court.
They're setting up Trump to be eligible to be elected President even if he loses the insurrection trial prior to the election. They're saying only Congress can ban him from office for insurrection.
The liberal justices wrote a heated rebuke of that in their concurring opinion, and Barrett sided with the liberals, but scolded the liberals for being too mean about it in her standalone concurring opinion.
What a mystery! Who knows what happens when States try and assert their "State's Rights" to ignore the federal government, it's never happened ever in American history, thank you for asking such a deep and intellectually thought-out question!
/s
The US is a weird place. Why can't you just ignore your strange council of all powerful wizards that rule for life? Didn't some other state do that only a few months ago and face no repercussion? Just ignore the geriatric corrupt bastards.
Hawaii already is. Our government is run by honor system. Once enough stop honoring it, it will all come crumbling down.
booooooooooooooo
Tangential to the decision but something for jubilant MAGA types to try out for themselves:
While feeling this happy, stand in front of a mirror. Now, hold your fists up exactly like Donald Trump is doing in this picture, and do your utmost to physically express joy, without deviating from Donald Trump's movement patterns.
If this felt very fucking weird to do, look up ideomotor apraxia.
Did anyone read the opinions?
MidasTouch on YouTube does good analyses of such things
Did any one read the Constitution?
Trump doesn't qualify as an insurrectionist. Just as if he was 34
Why that image, he looks like Dr Evil dancing after getting away with it. It's kind of cartoonishly hilarious.
Boo State’s rights, hooray strong federal government!
Isnt that what everyone wants?
I want choices that aren't false dichotomies
What hilarious is that the Republican agenda was historically for small government afaik
I leave it to legal minds better versed in this but it was a unanimous decision and its not devoid of sense that States (some of whom consistently elect bad-faith actors who are a threat to civil society) should not be able to mix-match disqualify candidates, but rather that a federal mechanism for enforcement needs to be legislated by Congress.
They have literally provided a roadmap to disqualify Trump/future ilk that they cannot turn around and deny when it comes back to them to adjudicate on eventually. The law is iterative so its for the best. In any case, he's gonna lose his state criminal trials so they'll finally be able to put him away or dispose of him. Even Barrett was removed about giving too much of the plot away
LMAO see it came in since months ago, finally they did it..
Looks like we can't agree with the (unanimous) SCOTUS decision without invoking the downvote brigade. But for all of those wishing for Trump to be kept off the ballot, consider what will happen in four years when Texas comes up with some bullshit reason to keep the democrat frontrunner off the ballot.
I understand and completely agree that Trump started an insurrection and deserves to be kicked off the ballot. But we all know Texas, Kansas, or whatever other godforsaken backward red state will not play by the rules next time.
It's funny you think this ruling will stop fascist states from kicking non republicans off the ballots. Lets look at gerymandering. States submit illegal maps, play the waiting game, courts decide they're illegal, states run illegal districts anyway because its too close to the election.
Im willing to bet they’re gonna try it anyway.
I'd rather do what right now instead of doing what's wrong in hopes it doesn't get weaponized. There isn't a politician I care about enough that I'm willing let trump get away with insurrection in fear that red states might try to fuck with a dem nominee
If someone has done something that a state can even remotely argue inssurection, we should just dump that person and move on to the next. Maybe it'd force some new blood into the system
So tired of letting Republicans get away with shit out of fear of them abusing. They are already abusing everything and at some point we might need step up and stand on buisness
Fuck you. Kansas voters voted to keep abortion legal and we regularly have democrat governors. Try Oklahoma or something.
This assumes the Republicans will respect precedent and play by the rules. But when do they ever do that? Are they going to start playing fair as soon as their chosen dictator is installed? You don't beat fascists this way. You have to keep them from seizing power in the first place.
Good. Democracy means that it can be democratically dissolved. If you're holding on to a piece of paper written by slave owners to save your democracy, then you've missed the point of democracy.
If a majority of voters want racist, sexist fascism, that's what you'll get. No amount of social media posts will change that. Ask the slaves, Indigenous Peoples, women, poor men, non-Christians, and children of the United States for the majority of its history.
Vote. And get others to do it too. Change people's minds--and, no, posting on social media isn't changing anyone's mind. You have to actually go out and do the work of talking to people, understanding them, and then changing minds. Yelling at people, digitally or actually, isn't doing anything. Sorry.
Now all the people that want to sit in their room doing nothing and act like it is doing something can downvote.
It's the only form of "democracy" you know: cheap and easy. "I NO LIKE."
Well that would be great if we had a democracy. No Republican has won the popular vote for something like 20 years, but we've had more than one Republican president since then.
Voting is super important, but we also need a better democracy because we know the majority don't want a bigot in office. But we're still getting one every couple years
Yeah GW Bush won in 88 and since then there's only been one GOP population vote win when W won in the middle of the war in 04. Only one republican win in the past 35 years, and this coming election will be no different. There's no way in hell the popular vote goes against Biden in November.
The United States is HUGE. Do you feel like population centers should get to dictate the terms to everyone that doesn't live in a populous state? If so, then, again: vote. If you don't like the current election process then change it.
You Americans complain so much about your electoral processes, but you do nothing to change them.
You get bigots and violent offenders in office either way you cut it. Obama normalized the massive, largely remote kill operations in non-battlefield engagements. He authorized the death of several thousand people exclusively through remote kill actions. As he noted himself, "turns out I'm really good at killing people. Didn't know that was going to be my strong suit."
The popular vote for an overpowered executive isn't the answer. And I think you know that. The answer is harder and requires more work. But it's nice to think it's just about voting once every four years to fix it, isn't it?
Good luck.
I don’t like the guy, but I like even less the government deciding to take candidates off the ballot.
The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdf
We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.
To be fair, the government has always set criteria for being on the ballot. For example, to be US president you have to be at least 35, a natural citizen, and have live in the states for at least 14 years.
Not being an insurrectionist is also part of that criteria. We’ve just never had a presidential candidate that has needed us to consider that part of the constitution.
Think of it this way. It’s not that the government is trying take an eligible person off the ballot, but it’s clarifying the ineligibility criterion.
