WASHINGTON − The U.S. Supreme Court was in an uncomfortable position Thursday as it considered whether former President Donald Trump is disqualified from being president again.
Allowing states to take him off the ballot – as Colorado and Maine have moved to do – would be anti-democratic and violate the rights of the tens of millions of Americans who want to vote for the GOP frontrunner, Trump’s lawyers have told the court.
But allowing him to run again after he refused to accept his 2020 loss − which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol − would violate an anti-insurrectionist provision of the Constitution, the other side argues.
The stakes for this year’s election are enormous: Not since an almost entirely different Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore in 2000, effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush, has the court wielded such potential power over presidential politics.
At issue: whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, an anti-insurrection provision added after the Civil War to keep government officials who sided with the Confederacy from returning to power, applies to Trump. The provision bars people who took an oath to support the Constitution from holding office again if they engaged in insurrection.
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Other Trump issues before the Court
The ballot eligibility issue is not the only time the Supreme Court could decide…
