None have been charged, much less convicted, of insurrection. Without any insurrectionists, there was no insurrection -- so Trump didn't incite one. Which he wasn't trying to, either. He wanted a peaceful protest, and almost got it.
The 2020 was stolen. If an election is not free and fair, it is stolen. Censoring the bad truth about one candidate gives that candidate an unfair advantage—if he wins, the loser is right to claim it was unfair, and thus stolen.
Neither John McWhorter nor Arnold Kling accept this principle. They are wrong.
Trump is a jerk, but he fights -- like Grant. And he gets votes. His total went from ~61 million up to ~73 million. Tho the turnout went from 60% up to an unbelievable 65%, which is why I don't believe all that mail-in increase, 65 million envelopes, were properly verified before the ballots inside were counted.
Why weren't all the envelopes from the swing state big counties more thoroughly verified? Because Dems, especially, but also Rep politicians don't really want voter ID and fraud free election.
It should play out in the courts and through the legal process. My point is that it's silly to say that going through the legal process makes it illegitimate and somehow "wrong".
Conservative scholars have made a case for invoking – or really upholding – the Fourteenth Amendment:
W. Baude and M. S. Paulsen, “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Rochester, NY, Aug. 09, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4532751
Abstract: Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion. Because of a range of misperceptions and mistaken assumptions, Section Three’s full legal consequences have not been appreciated or enforced. This article corrects those mistakes by setting forth the full sweep and force of Section Three.
First, Section Three remains an enforceable part of the Constitution, not limited to the Civil War, and not effectively repealed by nineteenth century amnesty legislation. Second, Section Three is self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress. It can and should be enforced by every official, state or federal, who judges qualifications. Third, to the extent of any conflict with prior constitutional rules, Section Three repeals, supersedes, or simply satisfies them. This includes the rules against bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, the Due Process Clause, and even the free speech principles of the First Amendment. Fourth, Section Three covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support as “aid or comfort.” It covers a broad range of former offices, including the Presidency. And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.
Even if the invasion of the Capitol building on January 6th was officially declared an attempted insurrection (without weapons, without leaders, without a plan to replace the government,without a stated end goal at all), Trump did not tell anyone to break into the building or threaten anyone.
Therefore, removing Trump from the ballot is illegitimate.
His opponents continually claim Trump is a threat to democracy, a threat to the Republic, dangerous for everyone who is part of a minority group in the US, and now even a threat to European nations. But who is the real threat? I say it's the people who, weilding the power of the government and law enforcement, have attempted to sidestep the Bill of Rights, particularly Freedoms of Speech, Religion, Assembly, Redress, Due Process, etc. in part by leveraging their regulatory roles to strongarm companies or paying others to censure their opponents and silence them on many social media platforms. (And the people in Great Britain and Ireland who are creating laws against wrongthink and allowing police to enter homes, search electronic devices, and arrest the occupants for possession of unapproved materials such as anti- transgender or anti-migrant cartoons and essays.) I believe the threats are those who had the FBI investigating traditional Roman Catholics and Parental Rights Advocates as domestic terrorists. I believe it is the people who have urged their followers to harass and chase their political opponents from public places, who condoned rioting, theft, arson, and even murder in the name of "social justice", and who had nothing to say about a section of a US city seceeding from the country. I believe it is the people who supported the Senator who stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and threatened Justices by name if they ruled in a way he disapproved. I believe it is the people who have spoken about unilaterally eliminating the Electoral College, the Senate, the Second Amendment, and making drastic changes to the First Amendment and other portions of the Bill of Rights.
Before the 2020 election, Trump did not DO anything that in any way threatened the nation. He did not officially (in an official speech or in official written communication acting in his role as President) say anything that threatened the nation. He unofficially said many rather ridiculous things. He was impeached without being accused of an actual crime. He was hounded, lied about, misrepresented, misquoted, and was even investigated by his own Justice Department on the basis of a document created and supplied by a political opponent.
Trump has unwisely and vociferously maintained that the 2020 elections were "stolen". I have no reason to think he does not believe this. At one point he suggested that, since the Constitution offers no recourse for what he says happened, extra-Constitutional means would need to be used to address it. He did not urge his followers to overthrow the government. He did not attempt to call out the military to "stop the steal" . He did not refuse to leave the Whitehouse.
He has been dragged into court in multiple jurisdictions on charges, some of which are flimsy at best, that are clearly motivated by political considerations. Although he (evidently jokingly) said he would have Hillary arrested for violating the law by having an outside mail server she used for official government business, and for destroying evidence on this server and on cellphones, he never persued that prosecution. In fact, the worst he has done to his "enemies" is to call then enemies of the people, despicable, horrible, and several other names. According to accounts from across the political spectrum, these words left no visible or permanent damage on those who were called names. The same sources have confirmed that Trump has never used "Sticks and Stones" against his political opponents.
Former President Donald Trump is uncultured, egotistical, inarticulate, illinformed, a braggart, an unabashed populist, and I do not like him. But there is no reason for a reasonable, thinking person to honestly consider him a threat to democracy. And there is no legal reason to keep him off the ballot.
The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game. There is a chance of violence breaking out from either side because of their actions or rhetoric. But beyond this election and the immediate aftermath, they are opening the door for reprisals. Tit for Tat. What goes around, comes around. You remove the most popular Republican candidate in this election cycle. Your candidates get removed in the next. Democrats have forgotten that the tables can, and eventually will turn. Eventually they will be out of power. If the Republicans are feeling vengeful, it will be a bad time to be a Democrat.
I am no Trumper but it blows my mind that otherwise intelligent people claim to think 1) Jan 6th was an insurrection, and 2) Trump incited it. What you had on Jan 6 was a goofy crowd of deluded hard-core Trump supporters whipped up into a riot. A riot is not an insurrection. That guy in the Viking hat was going to take over the country? It's absurd. Yes there were a few whack-jobs who were cosplaying at revolution. You can find those people peppering demonstrations on both sides. It doesn't make it an insurrection.
Meanwhile Trump asked the crowd to demonstrate peacefully. Some insurrectionist. Democrats played up Jan 6 for political purposes and the media played along as usual. The End.
On reading this exchange on Joe's 2020 election question, my first instinct was the same as JAE's comment, John, like Sam Harris is exhibiting TDS. However, John is expressing a point of view that held widely and deserves a serious response (which Glenn offered in part). I'd invite John to consider the following points from someone who sees Trump as unfit for office:
1. Are you not playing a bit fast and loose with the term "insurrection"? You describe what happened as "They were trying to hold up the procedure." Does that sound like an insurrection? Holding up the process was an attempt to implement John Eastman's and Peter Navarro's whacky "Green Bay Sweep" legal strategy. While that effort was bogus, does it really qualify as an insurrection in the meaning of the 14th Amendment?This would be the only insurrection in history attempted without arms. Isn't the use of the term "insurrection" sophistry intended to open up the possibility of first impeachment and then disqualification? Have you read the 3-judge dissent in the 4-3 Colorado decision?
2. Are your historical analogies really apt? The 1960 and 2000 election problems were examples of shenanigans in Cook County and Dade County, respectively. In 2020 we are talking about what Molly Ball described in Time Magazine as a "shadow campaign": There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans." While these conspirators believed they were "fortifying" democracy even i lifelong Democrat like me can recoil at the sheer audacity...oligarchy much? Then there is the spectacle of national security officials concocting a story and coordinating with tech companies to suppress information, not about Hunter Biden's embarrassing sex and drug escapades, but about potential corruption, and Biden specifically relying on that disinformation in presidential debates. Does that not give you pause?
3. Finally, as you acknowledge, there is a difference between the people like Joe who posed the question and the nutters who think the election was stolen in a "bald, absurd, nasty, incontestable way." What might be the effect on folks like Joe and the millions of others, including Democrats and independents who think (a) there were some very troubling aspects of the 2020 effort to "fortify" the election and (b) the current attempts to boot Trump off the ballot and the coordinated lawfare efforts to get him are illegitimate? While I think civil war or even widespread violence is not a likely, isn't it better, as Glenn suggested, to defeat him in an election than to make him a martyr to millions and further erode the institutional trust of even wider swaths of the electorate?
Legally, how do we decide if a candidate engaged in "insurrection"? For most legal processes like this, there's a trial. With witnesses. And the accused has rights to question the witnesses, etc..
Aside from an impeachment ("not guilty"), Trump has not had a trial. He hasn't even been charged in a court of law.
Suppose some Republican person in charge of elections decided that Biden engaged in an insurrection and is ineligible to be on the ballot. You may laugh, but isn't that the legal theory we're putting forward -- that an election official gets to decide if the 14th amendment applies?
Professor Loury, you write, "An election in which legal maneuvering keeps a candidate preferred by half (and maybe more than half) of the electorate off the ballot would not, in my view, be legitimate."
Upholding the rule of law is not "legal maneuvering". We either live by our Constitution or we do not. We can't decide to not uphold the rule of law because Trump is popular with a lot of people. He's popular with them because he lies to them and they believe it, and actually, it doesn't even matter why they like him. There's no "electability" or "likeability" clause. If he is found to have engaged in insurrection, then he is ineligible. The fact that a lot of people will throw a tantrum is irrelevant. And yes, it may lead to violence in the streets. That will have to be dealt with by the rule of law also. Since Trump was first elected we have been heading in this direction. Liberals have not helped matters, but the fault of this insurrectionist mood is almost entirely on the shoulders of Trump. If it takes a civil war and violence in the street to finally break that fever, then I'm afraid that John is right. It may just have to happen. That scares me mightily, but the alternative of Trump as President again scares me even more.
The 14th Amendment was written specifically to deny the vote to those who would send insurrectionists to Washington by rendering those rebels ineligible. The reason it is written that way is because the post civil war south voted to return insurrectionists right back into office after they lost the civil war. The congress passed a constitutional amendment to prevent that, taking that coice off the table for the majority populations in the south and for any other people who were so inclined to elect persons who would not respect the rule of law.
The constitution also grants the states the right to run their own elections. It is completely legitimate for states to determine that candidates that are not eligible to hold office by being too young, not native born, not citizens or INSURRECTIONISTS cannot appear on the ballot.
Hey Chief, I thought your piece on Dec31 about "the nazi problem" on Substack perfectly addressed the issue, and was so impressed that i subscribed (unintentionally paid btw).
I've seen enough! Thank-you!
I like impartial, thoughtful black writers, you ain't it! 'Race Doesn't Matter' x Duckr Colonial Vest 🤔😒🤨
'The real threat to the Republic... ? Ethnocentric morons? Collectivists?
"Thank God I never went to school
To be flogged into the style of a fool " Wm Blake. Cheers!
Professor Loury, as always, I deeply respect your thinking on this subject, and I was of a similar mind. However, after listening to the arguments posited by both sites of this argument - whether to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot - I am now convinced that Colorado's Supreme Court is well within its right, under the Constitution, to decide as they have done.
I would like to point you to the works of constitutional scholars who have dedicated their lives to studying that founding document and who argue that indeed, Colorado can remove Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment's Section 3.
We're talking about the people who now vilify Liz Cheney and her father, John Bolton, and scores of other hard-core conservatives as traitors. They ARE morons, or they are just fascists, if they aren't morons, and that includes perhaps the majority of the people commenting below. I don't even have to read it because I know by now. It's the same type of person who does the work with Ibram X Kendi and condemns Israel right after the Hamas atrocities we saw, only on the right wing of the spectrum. And Lowry catering to that type of idiot is frankly disgusting.
In 2020 the Democrats weaponized all 3 letter American institutions. The genie is out of the bottle and we will never be able to put it back. This is the new normal, deal with it.
Come this July or August, Google will switch on the algorithm, Zuckerberg and the like will dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the race. Sometime after midnight you know who will squeek out a win for a second term.
I'm at the point where I am accepting of the reality, but with the long game in view:
Don't prevent Trump from being on the ballot. He will win. We grit our teeth for four years and put all this behind us for once and for all on January 20, 2029.
Otherwise, HE WILL RUN AGAIN IN 2028 and we'll never be rid of that mf.
None have been charged, much less convicted, of insurrection. Without any insurrectionists, there was no insurrection -- so Trump didn't incite one. Which he wasn't trying to, either. He wanted a peaceful protest, and almost got it.
The 2020 was stolen. If an election is not free and fair, it is stolen. Censoring the bad truth about one candidate gives that candidate an unfair advantage—if he wins, the loser is right to claim it was unfair, and thus stolen.
Neither John McWhorter nor Arnold Kling accept this principle. They are wrong.
Trump is a jerk, but he fights -- like Grant. And he gets votes. His total went from ~61 million up to ~73 million. Tho the turnout went from 60% up to an unbelievable 65%, which is why I don't believe all that mail-in increase, 65 million envelopes, were properly verified before the ballots inside were counted.
Why weren't all the envelopes from the swing state big counties more thoroughly verified? Because Dems, especially, but also Rep politicians don't really want voter ID and fraud free election.
It should play out in the courts and through the legal process. My point is that it's silly to say that going through the legal process makes it illegitimate and somehow "wrong".
Conservative scholars have made a case for invoking – or really upholding – the Fourteenth Amendment:
W. Baude and M. S. Paulsen, “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Rochester, NY, Aug. 09, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4532751
Abstract: Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids holding office by former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion. Because of a range of misperceptions and mistaken assumptions, Section Three’s full legal consequences have not been appreciated or enforced. This article corrects those mistakes by setting forth the full sweep and force of Section Three.
First, Section Three remains an enforceable part of the Constitution, not limited to the Civil War, and not effectively repealed by nineteenth century amnesty legislation. Second, Section Three is self-executing, operating as an immediate disqualification from office, without the need for additional action by Congress. It can and should be enforced by every official, state or federal, who judges qualifications. Third, to the extent of any conflict with prior constitutional rules, Section Three repeals, supersedes, or simply satisfies them. This includes the rules against bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, the Due Process Clause, and even the free speech principles of the First Amendment. Fourth, Section Three covers a broad range of conduct against the authority of the constitutional order, including many instances of indirect participation or support as “aid or comfort.” It covers a broad range of former offices, including the Presidency. And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.
Also, see this Atlantic article by George Conway:
G. T. Conway III, “The Colorado Ruling Changed My Mind,” The Atlantic. [Online]. Available: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/dont-read-the-colorado-ruling-read-the-dissents/676920/
Legally there was no insurrection.
Even if the invasion of the Capitol building on January 6th was officially declared an attempted insurrection (without weapons, without leaders, without a plan to replace the government,without a stated end goal at all), Trump did not tell anyone to break into the building or threaten anyone.
Therefore, removing Trump from the ballot is illegitimate.
His opponents continually claim Trump is a threat to democracy, a threat to the Republic, dangerous for everyone who is part of a minority group in the US, and now even a threat to European nations. But who is the real threat? I say it's the people who, weilding the power of the government and law enforcement, have attempted to sidestep the Bill of Rights, particularly Freedoms of Speech, Religion, Assembly, Redress, Due Process, etc. in part by leveraging their regulatory roles to strongarm companies or paying others to censure their opponents and silence them on many social media platforms. (And the people in Great Britain and Ireland who are creating laws against wrongthink and allowing police to enter homes, search electronic devices, and arrest the occupants for possession of unapproved materials such as anti- transgender or anti-migrant cartoons and essays.) I believe the threats are those who had the FBI investigating traditional Roman Catholics and Parental Rights Advocates as domestic terrorists. I believe it is the people who have urged their followers to harass and chase their political opponents from public places, who condoned rioting, theft, arson, and even murder in the name of "social justice", and who had nothing to say about a section of a US city seceeding from the country. I believe it is the people who supported the Senator who stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and threatened Justices by name if they ruled in a way he disapproved. I believe it is the people who have spoken about unilaterally eliminating the Electoral College, the Senate, the Second Amendment, and making drastic changes to the First Amendment and other portions of the Bill of Rights.
Before the 2020 election, Trump did not DO anything that in any way threatened the nation. He did not officially (in an official speech or in official written communication acting in his role as President) say anything that threatened the nation. He unofficially said many rather ridiculous things. He was impeached without being accused of an actual crime. He was hounded, lied about, misrepresented, misquoted, and was even investigated by his own Justice Department on the basis of a document created and supplied by a political opponent.
Trump has unwisely and vociferously maintained that the 2020 elections were "stolen". I have no reason to think he does not believe this. At one point he suggested that, since the Constitution offers no recourse for what he says happened, extra-Constitutional means would need to be used to address it. He did not urge his followers to overthrow the government. He did not attempt to call out the military to "stop the steal" . He did not refuse to leave the Whitehouse.
He has been dragged into court in multiple jurisdictions on charges, some of which are flimsy at best, that are clearly motivated by political considerations. Although he (evidently jokingly) said he would have Hillary arrested for violating the law by having an outside mail server she used for official government business, and for destroying evidence on this server and on cellphones, he never persued that prosecution. In fact, the worst he has done to his "enemies" is to call then enemies of the people, despicable, horrible, and several other names. According to accounts from across the political spectrum, these words left no visible or permanent damage on those who were called names. The same sources have confirmed that Trump has never used "Sticks and Stones" against his political opponents.
Former President Donald Trump is uncultured, egotistical, inarticulate, illinformed, a braggart, an unabashed populist, and I do not like him. But there is no reason for a reasonable, thinking person to honestly consider him a threat to democracy. And there is no legal reason to keep him off the ballot.
The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game. There is a chance of violence breaking out from either side because of their actions or rhetoric. But beyond this election and the immediate aftermath, they are opening the door for reprisals. Tit for Tat. What goes around, comes around. You remove the most popular Republican candidate in this election cycle. Your candidates get removed in the next. Democrats have forgotten that the tables can, and eventually will turn. Eventually they will be out of power. If the Republicans are feeling vengeful, it will be a bad time to be a Democrat.
I hope you’re never had to use your bear spray and never will.
I almost excluded the “sir” for that very reason but I had the image of an offended British aristo in my head and of course he’d say that.
I am no Trumper but it blows my mind that otherwise intelligent people claim to think 1) Jan 6th was an insurrection, and 2) Trump incited it. What you had on Jan 6 was a goofy crowd of deluded hard-core Trump supporters whipped up into a riot. A riot is not an insurrection. That guy in the Viking hat was going to take over the country? It's absurd. Yes there were a few whack-jobs who were cosplaying at revolution. You can find those people peppering demonstrations on both sides. It doesn't make it an insurrection.
Meanwhile Trump asked the crowd to demonstrate peacefully. Some insurrectionist. Democrats played up Jan 6 for political purposes and the media played along as usual. The End.
On reading this exchange on Joe's 2020 election question, my first instinct was the same as JAE's comment, John, like Sam Harris is exhibiting TDS. However, John is expressing a point of view that held widely and deserves a serious response (which Glenn offered in part). I'd invite John to consider the following points from someone who sees Trump as unfit for office:
1. Are you not playing a bit fast and loose with the term "insurrection"? You describe what happened as "They were trying to hold up the procedure." Does that sound like an insurrection? Holding up the process was an attempt to implement John Eastman's and Peter Navarro's whacky "Green Bay Sweep" legal strategy. While that effort was bogus, does it really qualify as an insurrection in the meaning of the 14th Amendment?This would be the only insurrection in history attempted without arms. Isn't the use of the term "insurrection" sophistry intended to open up the possibility of first impeachment and then disqualification? Have you read the 3-judge dissent in the 4-3 Colorado decision?
2. Are your historical analogies really apt? The 1960 and 2000 election problems were examples of shenanigans in Cook County and Dade County, respectively. In 2020 we are talking about what Molly Ball described in Time Magazine as a "shadow campaign": There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans." While these conspirators believed they were "fortifying" democracy even i lifelong Democrat like me can recoil at the sheer audacity...oligarchy much? Then there is the spectacle of national security officials concocting a story and coordinating with tech companies to suppress information, not about Hunter Biden's embarrassing sex and drug escapades, but about potential corruption, and Biden specifically relying on that disinformation in presidential debates. Does that not give you pause?
3. Finally, as you acknowledge, there is a difference between the people like Joe who posed the question and the nutters who think the election was stolen in a "bald, absurd, nasty, incontestable way." What might be the effect on folks like Joe and the millions of others, including Democrats and independents who think (a) there were some very troubling aspects of the 2020 effort to "fortify" the election and (b) the current attempts to boot Trump off the ballot and the coordinated lawfare efforts to get him are illegitimate? While I think civil war or even widespread violence is not a likely, isn't it better, as Glenn suggested, to defeat him in an election than to make him a martyr to millions and further erode the institutional trust of even wider swaths of the electorate?
Legally, how do we decide if a candidate engaged in "insurrection"? For most legal processes like this, there's a trial. With witnesses. And the accused has rights to question the witnesses, etc..
Aside from an impeachment ("not guilty"), Trump has not had a trial. He hasn't even been charged in a court of law.
Suppose some Republican person in charge of elections decided that Biden engaged in an insurrection and is ineligible to be on the ballot. You may laugh, but isn't that the legal theory we're putting forward -- that an election official gets to decide if the 14th amendment applies?
Professor Loury, you write, "An election in which legal maneuvering keeps a candidate preferred by half (and maybe more than half) of the electorate off the ballot would not, in my view, be legitimate."
Upholding the rule of law is not "legal maneuvering". We either live by our Constitution or we do not. We can't decide to not uphold the rule of law because Trump is popular with a lot of people. He's popular with them because he lies to them and they believe it, and actually, it doesn't even matter why they like him. There's no "electability" or "likeability" clause. If he is found to have engaged in insurrection, then he is ineligible. The fact that a lot of people will throw a tantrum is irrelevant. And yes, it may lead to violence in the streets. That will have to be dealt with by the rule of law also. Since Trump was first elected we have been heading in this direction. Liberals have not helped matters, but the fault of this insurrectionist mood is almost entirely on the shoulders of Trump. If it takes a civil war and violence in the street to finally break that fever, then I'm afraid that John is right. It may just have to happen. That scares me mightily, but the alternative of Trump as President again scares me even more.
The 14th Amendment was written specifically to deny the vote to those who would send insurrectionists to Washington by rendering those rebels ineligible. The reason it is written that way is because the post civil war south voted to return insurrectionists right back into office after they lost the civil war. The congress passed a constitutional amendment to prevent that, taking that coice off the table for the majority populations in the south and for any other people who were so inclined to elect persons who would not respect the rule of law.
The constitution also grants the states the right to run their own elections. It is completely legitimate for states to determine that candidates that are not eligible to hold office by being too young, not native born, not citizens or INSURRECTIONISTS cannot appear on the ballot.
How am I wrong?
Hey Chief, I thought your piece on Dec31 about "the nazi problem" on Substack perfectly addressed the issue, and was so impressed that i subscribed (unintentionally paid btw).
I've seen enough! Thank-you!
I like impartial, thoughtful black writers, you ain't it! 'Race Doesn't Matter' x Duckr Colonial Vest 🤔😒🤨
'The real threat to the Republic... ? Ethnocentric morons? Collectivists?
"Thank God I never went to school
To be flogged into the style of a fool " Wm Blake. Cheers!
Traditionally you arrest the opposition. "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."
The rest of us simply muddle through.
Professor Loury, as always, I deeply respect your thinking on this subject, and I was of a similar mind. However, after listening to the arguments posited by both sites of this argument - whether to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot - I am now convinced that Colorado's Supreme Court is well within its right, under the Constitution, to decide as they have done.
I would like to point you to the works of constitutional scholars who have dedicated their lives to studying that founding document and who argue that indeed, Colorado can remove Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment's Section 3.
Professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote this influential SSRN article on Section 3: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751
Additionally, Professors Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar wrote this amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court on the Trump vs. Norma Anderson, et al. case: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-719/295994/20240118094034746_Trump%20v%20Anderson.pdf
We're talking about the people who now vilify Liz Cheney and her father, John Bolton, and scores of other hard-core conservatives as traitors. They ARE morons, or they are just fascists, if they aren't morons, and that includes perhaps the majority of the people commenting below. I don't even have to read it because I know by now. It's the same type of person who does the work with Ibram X Kendi and condemns Israel right after the Hamas atrocities we saw, only on the right wing of the spectrum. And Lowry catering to that type of idiot is frankly disgusting.
In 2020 the Democrats weaponized all 3 letter American institutions. The genie is out of the bottle and we will never be able to put it back. This is the new normal, deal with it.
Come this July or August, Google will switch on the algorithm, Zuckerberg and the like will dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the race. Sometime after midnight you know who will squeek out a win for a second term.
I'm at the point where I am accepting of the reality, but with the long game in view:
Don't prevent Trump from being on the ballot. He will win. We grit our teeth for four years and put all this behind us for once and for all on January 20, 2029.
Otherwise, HE WILL RUN AGAIN IN 2028 and we'll never be rid of that mf.