• Title of the article now reads:

    Liberal groups seek to use the Constitution’s insurrection clause to block Trump from 2024 ballots

    And the first paragraph:

    As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    My bold in both cases.

    This annoys me. The paper The Sweep and Force of Section Three is what really started all this, and it was written by two members of the Federalist Society. The concept is strongly supported by J. Michael Luttig, a very conservative former federal judge. Why is Associated Press painting this like it’s a course of action only supported by liberal minds?

  • 🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.

    “There’s a very real prospect these cases will be active during the primaries,” said Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University, warning that there could be different outcomes in different states before the Supreme Court makes a final decision.

    That section bars anyone from Congress, the military, and federal and state offices if they previously took an oath to support the Constitution and “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

    Trump argues that any effort to prevent him from appearing on a state’s ballot amounts to “election interference” — the same way he is characterizing the criminal charges filed against him in New York and Atlanta and by federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., and Florida.

    On Wednesday, a long-shot Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, of Texas, filed a complaint in a New Hampshire court contending the 14th Amendment barred Trump from that state’s ballot.

    Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment helped ensure civil rights for freed slaves — and eventually for all people in the U.S. — but also was used to prevent former Confederate officials from becoming members of Congress and taking over the government they had just rebelled against.


    Saved 83% of original text.

  • Ive heard this has been floated in various states (since Trumps actions have clearly violated their state laws when it comes to candidacy)

    … I wonder how this would look if a candidate appeared on a ballot in one state and not in another?

    • It’s a pretty interesting scenario to imagine. What is bothersome is that I can’t see a situation where it wouldn’t lead to more right wing domestic terrorism. Which is just terrible, but almost seems inevitable next year no matter what happens really. Here is hoping we get through this with as little harm as possible.

  • So let me get this straight, instead of using the legal process for gerrymandering, voter suppression, banning books, loading fascists onto the supreme Court, forcing rape victims to bear the children of rapists, etc… actually use the legal system to prevent certain authoritarianism? Fuck me that’s brilliant.