I'm not wise enough to know whether the Colorado decision was the right one but I kinda wish it would not have happened. Ultimately, this most likely serves to embolden the notion that it's the dems* that are interested in fascism (and/or that's how scarred they are by this super-human America lover).
*even though it's the GOP that made this decision happen.
i believe it is the right decision. anybody that engaged in insurrection against the federal government does not deserve the chance to head that government.
but like i said, the court will not allow itself to appear to be a political arm of the gop, which we all know that it is, but they will not allow 5 individuals to determine the presidency a second time in 25 years.
Here's the problem. The SCOTUS is made up of Textualists. That means they adhere to the specific text of the Constitution with little interpretation or implied meanings considered. If you read the the actual amendment, it calls out Senators, Reps, and ELECTORS of the President and VP. It does not name those offices. Is there a reason why they specifically did not include the two Executive Branch elected officials? This is really the question. If Trump was running for senator, it would be an easier argument. I don't think he will be disqualified when this is adjudicated. I recognize that "hold any office" could be the trump card, but the question remains why the President was not called out specifically.
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 Colorado decision answers your questions and provides reasoning, which is fascinating as they explain their methodology as well as how questions without concise answers have been addressed in the past, including intent and what POOTWH’s meaning would result in.
SCOTUS will be seen as fully bought and paid for if they’re going to toss aside intent, precedent and definition from the time of our founding.
I'm not arguing with the CO reasoning, I'm just saying that the definition of officer is going to be key here. And in 2010, John Roberts noted in another case that the people don't vote for "officers" of the United States. This gets into the "Textualist" makeup of the current SCOTUS. Obviously I would love for him to be disqualified. I think he's a cancer on our Union and a generally horrible, horrible person. But it would not surprise me if the majority goes against Colorado and I won't just chalk it up to "bought" because there is enough evidence in their other decisions and comments about how they view the Constitution. Again, I think the better argument is that "no person shall..... hold any office".
Does the following change your opinion?
2. The President Is an Officer of the United States
¶144 We next consider whether a President is an “officer of the United States.”
U.S. Const., amend. XIV, § 3. The district court found that the drafters of Section
Three did not intend to include the President within the catch-all phrase “officer of the United States,” and, accordingly, that a current or former President can
engage in insurrection and then run for and hold any office. Anderson, ¶ 312; see
U.S. Const., amend. XIV, § 3. We disagree for four reasons.
¶145 First, the normal and ordinary usage of the term “officer of the United
States” includes the President. As we have explained, the plain meaning of
“office . . . under the United States” includes the Presidency; it follows then that
the President is an “officer of the United States.” See Motions Sys. Corp. v. Bush,
437 F.3d 1356, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (Gajarsa, J., concurring in part) (“An
interpretation of the Constitution in which the holder of an ‘office’ is not an
‘officer’ seems, at best, strained.”). Indeed, Americans have referred to the
President as an “officer” from the days of the founding. See, e.g., The Federalist
No. 69 (Alexander Hamilton) (“The President of the United States would be an
officer elected by the people . . . .”). And many nineteenth-century presidents
were described as, or called themselves, “chief executive officer of the United
States.” See Vlahoplus, supra (manuscript at 17–18) (listing presidents).
¶146 Second, Section Three’s drafters and their contemporaries understood the
President as an officer of the United States. See Graber, Our Questions, Their
Answers, supra, at 18–19 (listing instances); see also Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st
Sess. 915 (1866) (referring to the “chief executive officer of the country”); The Floyd
Acceptances, 74 U.S. 666, 676–77 (1868) (“We have no officers in this government, from the President down to the most subordinate agent, who does not hold office
under the law, with prescribed duties and limited authority.” (emphases added)).
¶147 President Trump concedes as much on appeal, stating that “[t]o be sure, the
President is an officer.” He argues, however, that the President is an officer of the
Constitution, not an “officer of the United States,” which, he posits, is a
constitutional term of art. Further, at least one amicus contends that the abovereferenced historical uses referred to the President as an officer only in a
“colloquial sense,” and thus have no bearing on the term’s use in Section Three.
We disagree.
¶148 The informality of these uses is exactly the point: If members of the ThirtyNinth Congress and their contemporaries all used the term “officer” according to
its ordinary meaning to refer to the President, we presume this is the same
meaning the drafters intended it to have in Section Three. We perceive no
persuasive contemporary evidence demonstrating some other, technical term-ofart meaning. And in the absence of a clear intent to employ a technical definition
for a common word, we will not do so. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 576 (explaining that
the “normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning” should be
favored (quoting United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 731 (1931))).
¶149 We also find Attorney General Stanbery’s opinions on the meaning of
Section Three significant. In one opinion on the subject, Stanbery explained that the term “‘officer of the United States,’ within [Section Three] . . . is used in its most
general sense, and without any qualification, as legislative, or executive, or
judicial.” The Reconstruction Acts, 12 Op. Att’y. Gen. 141, 158 (1867) (“Stanbery
I”). And in a second opinion on the topic, he observed that the term “Officers of
the United States” includes “without limitation” any “person who has at any time
prior to the rebellion held any office, civil or military, under the United States, and
has taken an official oath to support the Constitution of the United States.” The
Reconstruction Acts, 12 Op. Att’y. Gen. 182, 203 (1867) (“Stanbery II”).
¶150 Third, the structure of Section Three persuades us that the President is an
officer of the United States. The first half of Section Three describes the offices
protected and the second half addresses the parties barred from holding those
protected offices. There is a parallel structure between the two halves: “Senator or
Representative in Congress” (protected office) corresponds to “member of
Congress” (barred party); “any office . . . under the United States” (protected
office) corresponds to “officer of the United States” (barred party); and “any
office . . . under any State” (protected office) also has a corresponding barred party
in “member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any
State.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 3. The only term in the first half of Section Three
that has no corresponding officer or party in the second half is “elector of President
and Vice President,” which makes sense because electors do not take constitutionally mandated oaths so they have no corresponding barred party. Id.;
see also id. at art. II, § 1 (discussing a presidential elector’s duties without reference
to an oath); id. at art. VI (excluding presidential electors from the list of positions
constitutionally obligated to take an oath to support the Constitution). Save
electors, there is a perfect parallel structure in Section Three. See Baude & Paulsen,
supra (manuscript at 106).
¶151 Fourth, the clear purpose of Section Three—to ensure that disloyal officers
could never again play a role in governing the country—leaves no room to
conclude that “officer of the United States” was used as a term of art. Id. The
drafters of Section Three were motivated by a sense of betrayal; that is, by the
existence of a broken oath, not by the type of officer who broke it: “[A]ll of us
understand the meaning of the third section,” Senator John Sherman stated, “[it
includes] those men who have once taken an oath of office to support the
Constitution of the United States and have violated that oath in spirit by taking up
arms against the Government of the United States are to be deprived for a time at
least of holding office . . . .” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2899 (1866); see also
id. at 2898 (Senator Thomas Hendricks of Indiana, who opposed the Fourteenth
Amendment, agreeing that “the theory” of Section Three was “that persons who
have violated the oath to support the Constitution of the United States ought not
to be allowed to hold any office.”); id. at 3035–36 (Senator John B. Henderson explaining that “[t]he language of this section is so framed as to disfranchise from
office . . . the leaders of any rebellion hereafter to come.”); Powell, 27 F. Cas. at 607
(summarizing the purpose of Section Three: “[T]hose who had been once trusted
to support the power of the United States, and proved false to the trust reposed,
ought not, as a class, to be entrusted with power again until congress saw fit to
relieve them from disability.”). A construction of Section Three that would
nevertheless allow a former President who broke his oath, not only to participate
in the government again but to run for and hold the highest office in the land, is
flatly unfaithful to the Section’s purpose.
¶152 We therefore conclude that “officer of the United States,” as used in Section
Three, includes the President.
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Dude is a fucking clown. why does everyone keep amplifying him? he does not use twitter, yet everyone on twitter keeps posting his truths on there. can't come on here without people sharing it either. its exhausting. one cannot get away from him.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Dude is a fucking clown. why does everyone keep amplifying him? he does not use twitter, yet everyone on twitter keeps posting his truths on there. can't come on here without people sharing it either. its exhausting. one cannot get away from him.
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Dude is a fucking clown. why does everyone keep amplifying him? he does not use twitter, yet everyone on twitter keeps posting his truths on there. can't come on here without people sharing it either. its exhausting. one cannot get away from him.
He's the leading and likely candidate for the Republican nomination for POTUS. Kind of important that people know what shit he's spewing.
Dude is a fucking clown. why does everyone keep amplifying him? he does not use twitter, yet everyone on twitter keeps posting his truths on there. can't come on here without people sharing it either. its exhausting. one cannot get away from him.
He's the leading and likely candidate for the Republican nomination for POTUS. Kind of important that people know what shit he's spewing.
And I would argue the reason he is leading in the polls so much is mostly because he's not being amplified enough. People need to be reminded of how horrible a person he is.
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Who had Maine in their bingo card C’mon Maine 😂😂 this is better than I could have ever imagined! Heinz flying tonight and I feel for the dude that has to clean his arse tonight
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I'll add that the Constitution doesn't say that you have to be charged and convicted of 'insurrection," just to have participated in one after swearing an oath to the Constitution. If the current SCOTUS majority are originalists as they claim, they'll be twisting themselves into knots to rule in POOTWH's favor. I look forward to that. But this guy gets it:
OpinionYes, Trump should be removed from the ballot
The officials in Colorado and Maine who have ruled that Donald Trump should be removed from their state ballots because of the former president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have done the right, courageous thing. They deserve praise for aggressively defending American democracy from Trump, which far too many others — including the Justice Department under President Biden — have failed to do.
Even some on the left have criticized the decisions to bar Trump from appearing on Republican primary ballots, describing them as “undemocratic” and an abuse of the 14th Amendment, which Colorado and Maine officials cited in the decisions. The amendment bars people from holding office who have “previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
Those arguments fail to grasp the threat that he poses and the gravity of his previous actions. We know from the House Jan 6. committee’s investigation, extensive media reporting, and state and federal investigations — not to mention our own eyes and ears — that Trump lost the 2020 election and instead of conceding defeat, tried to reverse the election results and remain in office. This was more than an abuse of power; it was an extraordinary, unprecedented violation of democratic values and principles.
We don’t live in a democracy if the loser of an election gets to stay in power — and that’s what Trump tried to do. He should never be allowed to be president again.
This is not a partisan argument. I strongly oppose Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). His record suggests that he is not only more conservative, radical and anti-democratic than Trump, but also that DeSantis would be more effective than Trump in implementing his policies. But I don’t have any problem with DeSantis or any of the other current Republican candidates being on the ballot because none of them havetried to overturn the results of an election.
Regarding concerns that the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban doesn’t apply to Trump, it’s true that members of Congress who wrote the law were addressing the events that led to the Civil War. Their goal was to bar people such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis from future government service. So it’s not clear the amendment was aimed at conduct such as Trump’s.
But I’m generally wary of being too deferential to the views of people who lived decades ago and often supported terrible policies very few do today, such as barring women from voting. Unless there is evidence that the authors of the 14th Amendment would have strongly opposed invoking the provision after a president’s words and actions encouraged an attack on the Capitol that would help him maintain power despite losing the election, we should defer to our present-day views of what counts as rebellion, insurrection and, more broadly, conduct that is unacceptable for a president.
In the 14th Amendment, we have a provision that is already on the books and that might allow us to keep Trump from ever being president again. We should use it.
The argument that doing so would be undemocratic is nonsense. Democracy is not just elections; it’s also a broader system of rules, laws and norms. Even if you think democracy is mostly about elections, you can’t support having Trump as president again, because he only supports elections if he is declared the winner. It cannot be a requirement of democracy that you allow the election of leaders who will then end free and fair elections — and therefore democracy itself.
It’s not ideal that Colorado state Supreme Court judges and Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, have unilaterally acted to remove Trump from the ballot. That feels undemocratic. But in reality, these officials are only stepping in now to enforce democratic principles because for three years, so many others haven’t.
In 2021, the U.S. Senate by a two-thirds vote could have convicted Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” that the House impeached him for. Then, by a simple majority vote, the Senate could have barred Trump from future office (though Trump likely would have contested such a decision in court). Instead, all but seven Republican senators voted against conviction.
Many of these senators claimed that convicting an out-of-office president wasn’t constitutional. In reality, most of them just didn’t want to cross pro-Trump voters in their states.
The Justice Department could have quickly moved to charge Trump with crimes. But Biden entered office determined to show he was above partisanship, so he nominated someone with a similar approach, Merrick Garland, to be attorney general.
The result: The Justice Department conducted a slow-moving, bottom-up investigation of Jan. 6, charging lower-level people who entered the Capitol that day before moving to Trump. I understand that approach; it’s how many investigations go. But it was fairly obvious in 2021 that Trump would run for president again — in part to cast investigations into him as partisan.
The people who have most shirked their responsibility to defend democratic principles are Republican voters. They were presented this year with a slew of presidential candidates, many of whom are just as conservative or perhaps even more so than Trump, but who did not try to overturn American democracy. They could have turned to any of those candidates. Instead, they are overwhelmingly sticking with Trump.
I would never vote for a Democratic candidate who tried to overturn an election that a Republican had clearly won. I wish Republican voters would show similar respect for basic democratic principles and their fellow citizens.
It’s easy to suggest that the Colorado judges, who were appointed by Democratic governors, or Maine’s secretary of state, who is a Democrat, are just partisans. But no one thinks they would have removed DeSantis or former New Jersey governor Chris Christie from the ballot. These officials are correctly recognizing the seriousness of what Trump did nearly three years ago, and unlike Garland, they aren’t ducking their responsibilities to preserve their nonpartisan bona fides. And they aren’t using any means necessary, but instead a means clearly written in the Constitution.
These officials are not partisans, but patriots. I expect the U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, will reverse their decisions. But I sincerely hope that the three Democratic appointees on the court don’t also rule in Trump’s favor. The real affront to democracy is Trump, not officials following laws intended to keep people like him from gaining power.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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We talk about it a lot but it's just incredible how many tens of millions of people in this country are just a lost cause. This is a depressing, but worthwhile read.
Republican loyalty to Trump, rioters climbs in 3 years after Jan. 6 attack
Republicans' increasing loyalty to the former president comes as he simultaneously campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020.
Former president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Coralville, Iowa, in mid-December.Christian Monterrosa / Bloomberg
by Rachel Weiner, Scott Clement, and Emily Guskin, Washington PostPublished Jan. 2, 2024, 9:42 a.m. ET
Three years after the Jan. 6 attack, Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
Republicans' increasing loyalty to the former president comes as he simultaneously campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020. Republicans are now less likely to believe Jan. 6 participants were "mostly violent," less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden's election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.
In follow-up interviews, some said their views have changed because they now believe the riot was instigated by law enforcement to suppress political dissent — a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted heavily in right-wing media and by Trump in his speeches and in his legal fight against the four-count federal indictment he faces in Washington, D.C.
"From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts," said Michael J. Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.
But Republican views are more fractured than those of Democrats, who remain largely in agreement that the riot was a violent threat to democracy for which Trump bears responsibility. "In the current context of hyper-partisanship, there seem to be some divisions among Republicans," Hanmer said. Independents, according to the poll, mostly side with Democrats.
As Trump leads the Republican field for president by a wide margin, the poll reveals several key takeaways.
Over a third of Americans believe Biden’s election was illegitimate
Despite audits in multiple states and nationally televised congressional hearings in which state officials and aides to Trump confirmed there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, more Americans question Biden's victory than they did two years ago.
When The Post and UMD asked in December 2021 whether Biden was legitimately elected, 69 percent of Americans said he was. Now, that's down to 62 percent. Slightly fewer Republicans today (31 percent) say Biden's election was legitimate compared with 2021 (39 percent). More than one-third of Americans, or 36 percent, do not accept Biden's victory as legitimate.
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Older Americans are slightly more likely than younger ones to say Biden was legitimately elected, as are voters with college degrees. About 3 in 10 people who get most of their information from Fox News think Biden won legitimately in 2020.
Several voters interviewed by The Post cited what they said was evidence of voter fraud, in particular the long-debunked claim that Georgia election workers were caught on video putting fake ballots into tallies. The two women in that video recently won a $148 million judgment against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for spreading those defamatory claims.
Most Americans, but few Republicans, think Jan. 6 threatened democracy
Most Americans, 55 percent, believe the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was "an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten," with majorities of Democrats and independents holding this view. But most Republicans and Trump voters reject this view.
More than 7 in 10 Republicans say too much is being made of the attack and that it is "time to move on." Fewer than 2 in 10 (18 percent) of Republicans say that Jan. 6 protesters were "mostly violent," dipping from 26 percent in 2021. Currently, 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents say the protesters were mostly violent, little changed from 2021.
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"There were so many people that felt the election was rigged. It was not right for them to break in like that, but they were fed up and frustrated and they were whipped into a frenzy by the FBI and others," said Colleen Michaels, 59, of Woodsfield, Ohio.
A Republican voter, she said she would have attended herself had she not had a stroke. Her sister went, but did not go in the building after seeing people retreat with chemical spray in their eyes. What Michaels heard from the people who went, combined with security footage released to and selectively edited by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, leads her to believe in the conspiracy theory that undercover FBI agents instigated the riot.
Other Trump supporters place more blame on the rioters. Peggy Orr, 67, of North Platte, Neb., is a Republican who thinks the rioters did threaten democracy, even though she did not believe the 2020 election was legitimate.
"I've never joined a protest or tried to break windows because I didn't like the way the election went, and I don't think people should," Orr said. "You have to accept the results."
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The Post-UMD poll finds that 55 percent of Republicans think legal punishments for the people who broke into the Capitol have been "fair" or "not harsh enough," though that is down from 64 percent in 2021. Seven in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats say punishments have been fair or insufficient.
Fewer Republicans blame Trump for Jan. 6 attack
Republicans today also feel more defensive of Trump than they did in 2021. Two years ago, 60 percent of Americans overall said Trump bears "a great deal" or "a good amount" of responsibility for the attack; now, 53 percent do. Again, Republicans are driving that change - 14 percent assign him a great or good amount of culpability, about half as many as did in 2021 (27 percent).
"In the beginning when I heard about it, I was very upset that Trump didn't come out and say, 'Stop,'" said Gloria Bowden of Jacksonville, Fla., a 68-year-old independent voter who leans Republican. But now, having seen video clips of police using tear gas and rubber bullets on rioters, she thinks the attack was instigated by law enforcement.
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"I still wish he would have [told people to leave the Capitol earlier], but I don't know that it would have mattered," Bowden said. "It was planned." She found the House hearings "totally one-sided," and criticism of Trump over the past three years has led her to empathize more with his reluctance to intervene during the riot. "The man had been through so much in four years that at one point you finally say, 'Let them do it,'" she said.
Most Americans think Trump is guilty of a crime over Jan. 6
A 56 percent majority of Americans say Trump is probably guilty of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results through false claims of voter fraud, including 40 percent who believe he is "definitely guilty." Republicans are less united than Democrats. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats believe Trump is guilty, while nearly 7 in 10 Republicans think he is innocent. Among independents, nearly twice as many think Trump is guilty as think he is innocent.
A similar majority of Americans, 57 percent, say the Justice Department is "holding Trump accountable under the law like anyone else" by prosecuting him. A fifth of Republicans agree; the vast majority (77 percent) believe Trump is being targeted for political reasons, as he has repeatedly claimed without evidence.
Two of four criminal prosecutions that Trump is facing are related to attempts to stay in power after the 2020 election. In D.C., he faces a four-count federal criminal indictment of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights - in this case, "the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted." He has been charged in state court in Georgia with allegedly trying to block the election results there.
"I think he should be held accountable," said Ed Quigley, a 65-year-old retiree from outside Myrtle Beach. He is a registered Republican, but he voted against Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and sees Trump as a would-be autocrat responsible for the events of Jan. 6. "Nobody should be above the law."
Despite most believing Trump is guilty, the poll finds fewer than half of Americans, 46 percent, say his actions related to Jan. 6 should disqualify him from the presidency - a question that is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court now that multiple states have determined that he engaged in insurrection and should be barred from appearing on primary ballots. Another 17 percent say they cast doubts on his fitness to serve, while 33 percent say they are not relevant.
About 7 in 10 Americans believe Trump will not concede if he loses in 2024
Just over a quarter of Americans are confident that Trump would accept the results of the election if he loses the next presidential race, while 65 percent think President Biden would. A 71 percent majority are not confident Trump will accept losing in 2024, which is more than twice the share who say this of Biden. Nearly half of Republicans doubt Trump will accept the election if he loses, rising to 73 percent among independents and 93 percent of Democrats.
For many Republicans, refusal to adhere to that democratic norm is not a dealbreaker.
"He's a fighter - he loves to get in that courtroom and would appeal anything that's up against him, and I think that's what people really like about him," said Michael Bettger, 49, of Austin, Ark. Biden "would accept defeat" because "he's a political person, and he does basically everything everybody tells him to do," Bettger said. "He doesn't think outside the box."
He doesn’t see a post-election battle over the legitimacy of the results as a threat to democracy, because after 2020 he no longer believes that voting matters, saying, “We chose Donald Trump, but we didn’t get him.”
Comments
2. The President Is an Officer of the United States
¶144 We next consider whether a President is an “officer of the United States.” U.S. Const., amend. XIV, § 3. The district court found that the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include the President within the catch-all phrase “officer of the United States,” and, accordingly, that a current or former President can engage in insurrection and then run for and hold any office. Anderson, ¶ 312; see U.S. Const., amend. XIV, § 3. We disagree for four reasons.
¶145 First, the normal and ordinary usage of the term “officer of the United States” includes the President. As we have explained, the plain meaning of “office . . . under the United States” includes the Presidency; it follows then that the President is an “officer of the United States.” See Motions Sys. Corp. v. Bush, 437 F.3d 1356, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (Gajarsa, J., concurring in part) (“An interpretation of the Constitution in which the holder of an ‘office’ is not an ‘officer’ seems, at best, strained.”). Indeed, Americans have referred to the President as an “officer” from the days of the founding. See, e.g., The Federalist No. 69 (Alexander Hamilton) (“The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people . . . .”). And many nineteenth-century presidents were described as, or called themselves, “chief executive officer of the United States.” See Vlahoplus, supra (manuscript at 17–18) (listing presidents).
¶146 Second, Section Three’s drafters and their contemporaries understood the President as an officer of the United States. See Graber, Our Questions, Their Answers, supra, at 18–19 (listing instances); see also Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 915 (1866) (referring to the “chief executive officer of the country”); The Floyd Acceptances, 74 U.S. 666, 676–77 (1868) (“We have no officers in this government, from the President down to the most subordinate agent, who does not hold office under the law, with prescribed duties and limited authority.” (emphases added)).
¶147 President Trump concedes as much on appeal, stating that “[t]o be sure, the President is an officer.” He argues, however, that the President is an officer of the Constitution, not an “officer of the United States,” which, he posits, is a constitutional term of art. Further, at least one amicus contends that the abovereferenced historical uses referred to the President as an officer only in a “colloquial sense,” and thus have no bearing on the term’s use in Section Three. We disagree.
¶148 The informality of these uses is exactly the point: If members of the ThirtyNinth Congress and their contemporaries all used the term “officer” according to its ordinary meaning to refer to the President, we presume this is the same meaning the drafters intended it to have in Section Three. We perceive no persuasive contemporary evidence demonstrating some other, technical term-ofart meaning. And in the absence of a clear intent to employ a technical definition for a common word, we will not do so. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 576 (explaining that the “normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning” should be favored (quoting United States v. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716, 731 (1931))).
¶149 We also find Attorney General Stanbery’s opinions on the meaning of Section Three significant. In one opinion on the subject, Stanbery explained that the term “‘officer of the United States,’ within [Section Three] . . . is used in its most general sense, and without any qualification, as legislative, or executive, or judicial.” The Reconstruction Acts, 12 Op. Att’y. Gen. 141, 158 (1867) (“Stanbery I”). And in a second opinion on the topic, he observed that the term “Officers of the United States” includes “without limitation” any “person who has at any time prior to the rebellion held any office, civil or military, under the United States, and has taken an official oath to support the Constitution of the United States.” The Reconstruction Acts, 12 Op. Att’y. Gen. 182, 203 (1867) (“Stanbery II”).
¶150 Third, the structure of Section Three persuades us that the President is an officer of the United States. The first half of Section Three describes the offices protected and the second half addresses the parties barred from holding those protected offices. There is a parallel structure between the two halves: “Senator or Representative in Congress” (protected office) corresponds to “member of Congress” (barred party); “any office . . . under the United States” (protected office) corresponds to “officer of the United States” (barred party); and “any office . . . under any State” (protected office) also has a corresponding barred party in “member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 3. The only term in the first half of Section Three that has no corresponding officer or party in the second half is “elector of President and Vice President,” which makes sense because electors do not take constitutionally mandated oaths so they have no corresponding barred party. Id.; see also id. at art. II, § 1 (discussing a presidential elector’s duties without reference to an oath); id. at art. VI (excluding presidential electors from the list of positions constitutionally obligated to take an oath to support the Constitution). Save electors, there is a perfect parallel structure in Section Three. See Baude & Paulsen, supra (manuscript at 106).
¶151 Fourth, the clear purpose of Section Three—to ensure that disloyal officers could never again play a role in governing the country—leaves no room to conclude that “officer of the United States” was used as a term of art. Id. The drafters of Section Three were motivated by a sense of betrayal; that is, by the existence of a broken oath, not by the type of officer who broke it: “[A]ll of us understand the meaning of the third section,” Senator John Sherman stated, “[it includes] those men who have once taken an oath of office to support the Constitution of the United States and have violated that oath in spirit by taking up arms against the Government of the United States are to be deprived for a time at least of holding office . . . .” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 2899 (1866); see also id. at 2898 (Senator Thomas Hendricks of Indiana, who opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, agreeing that “the theory” of Section Three was “that persons who have violated the oath to support the Constitution of the United States ought not to be allowed to hold any office.”); id. at 3035–36 (Senator John B. Henderson explaining that “[t]he language of this section is so framed as to disfranchise from office . . . the leaders of any rebellion hereafter to come.”); Powell, 27 F. Cas. at 607 (summarizing the purpose of Section Three: “[T]hose who had been once trusted to support the power of the United States, and proved false to the trust reposed, ought not, as a class, to be entrusted with power again until congress saw fit to relieve them from disability.”). A construction of Section Three that would nevertheless allow a former President who broke his oath, not only to participate in the government again but to run for and hold the highest office in the land, is flatly unfaithful to the Section’s purpose.
¶152 We therefore conclude that “officer of the United States,” as used in Section Three, includes the President.
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Barron did, he hardly had to reach at all...
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
and you don't have to open the thread
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LMAO what a loser
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/opinions/colorado-removes-trump-from-ballot-linker/index.html
www.headstonesband.com
Maine too. Ca, Mi have said he will be on thier primary ballots
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Opinion Yes, Trump should be removed from the ballot
The officials in Colorado and Maine who have ruled that Donald Trump should be removed from their state ballots because of the former president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have done the right, courageous thing. They deserve praise for aggressively defending American democracy from Trump, which far too many others — including the Justice Department under President Biden — have failed to do.Even some on the left have criticized the decisions to bar Trump from appearing on Republican primary ballots, describing them as “undemocratic” and an abuse of the 14th Amendment, which Colorado and Maine officials cited in the decisions. The amendment bars people from holding office who have “previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
Those arguments fail to grasp the threat that he poses and the gravity of his previous actions. We know from the House Jan 6. committee’s investigation, extensive media reporting, and state and federal investigations — not to mention our own eyes and ears — that Trump lost the 2020 election and instead of conceding defeat, tried to reverse the election results and remain in office. This was more than an abuse of power; it was an extraordinary, unprecedented violation of democratic values and principles.
We don’t live in a democracy if the loser of an election gets to stay in power — and that’s what Trump tried to do. He should never be allowed to be president again.
This is not a partisan argument. I strongly oppose Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). His record suggests that he is not only more conservative, radical and anti-democratic than Trump, but also that DeSantis would be more effective than Trump in implementing his policies. But I don’t have any problem with DeSantis or any of the other current Republican candidates being on the ballot because none of them have tried to overturn the results of an election.
Regarding concerns that the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban doesn’t apply to Trump, it’s true that members of Congress who wrote the law were addressing the events that led to the Civil War. Their goal was to bar people such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis from future government service. So it’s not clear the amendment was aimed at conduct such as Trump’s.
But I’m generally wary of being too deferential to the views of people who lived decades ago and often supported terrible policies very few do today, such as barring women from voting. Unless there is evidence that the authors of the 14th Amendment would have strongly opposed invoking the provision after a president’s words and actions encouraged an attack on the Capitol that would help him maintain power despite losing the election, we should defer to our present-day views of what counts as rebellion, insurrection and, more broadly, conduct that is unacceptable for a president.
In the 14th Amendment, we have a provision that is already on the books and that might allow us to keep Trump from ever being president again. We should use it.
The argument that doing so would be undemocratic is nonsense. Democracy is not just elections; it’s also a broader system of rules, laws and norms. Even if you think democracy is mostly about elections, you can’t support having Trump as president again, because he only supports elections if he is declared the winner. It cannot be a requirement of democracy that you allow the election of leaders who will then end free and fair elections — and therefore democracy itself.
It’s not ideal that Colorado state Supreme Court judges and Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, have unilaterally acted to remove Trump from the ballot. That feels undemocratic. But in reality, these officials are only stepping in now to enforce democratic principles because for three years, so many others haven’t.
In 2021, the U.S. Senate by a two-thirds vote could have convicted Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” that the House impeached him for. Then, by a simple majority vote, the Senate could have barred Trump from future office (though Trump likely would have contested such a decision in court). Instead, all but seven Republican senators voted against conviction.
Many of these senators claimed that convicting an out-of-office president wasn’t constitutional. In reality, most of them just didn’t want to cross pro-Trump voters in their states.
The Justice Department could have quickly moved to charge Trump with crimes. But Biden entered office determined to show he was above partisanship, so he nominated someone with a similar approach, Merrick Garland, to be attorney general.
The result: The Justice Department conducted a slow-moving, bottom-up investigation of Jan. 6, charging lower-level people who entered the Capitol that day before moving to Trump. I understand that approach; it’s how many investigations go. But it was fairly obvious in 2021 that Trump would run for president again — in part to cast investigations into him as partisan.
The people who have most shirked their responsibility to defend democratic principles are Republican voters. They were presented this year with a slew of presidential candidates, many of whom are just as conservative or perhaps even more so than Trump, but who did not try to overturn American democracy. They could have turned to any of those candidates. Instead, they are overwhelmingly sticking with Trump.
I would never vote for a Democratic candidate who tried to overturn an election that a Republican had clearly won. I wish Republican voters would show similar respect for basic democratic principles and their fellow citizens.
It’s easy to suggest that the Colorado judges, who were appointed by Democratic governors, or Maine’s secretary of state, who is a Democrat, are just partisans. But no one thinks they would have removed DeSantis or former New Jersey governor Chris Christie from the ballot. These officials are correctly recognizing the seriousness of what Trump did nearly three years ago, and unlike Garland, they aren’t ducking their responsibilities to preserve their nonpartisan bona fides. And they aren’t using any means necessary, but instead a means clearly written in the Constitution.
These officials are not partisans, but patriots. I expect the U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, will reverse their decisions. But I sincerely hope that the three Democratic appointees on the court don’t also rule in Trump’s favor. The real affront to democracy is Trump, not officials following laws intended to keep people like him from gaining power.
Opinion | Yes, Trump should be removed from the ballot - The Washington Post
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https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/trump-jan-6-rioters-loyalty-20240102.html
Republican loyalty to Trump, rioters climbs in 3 years after Jan. 6 attack
Republicans' increasing loyalty to the former president comes as he simultaneously campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020.
by Rachel Weiner, Scott Clement, and Emily Guskin, Washington PostPublished Jan. 2, 2024, 9:42 a.m. ET
Three years after the Jan. 6 attack, Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
Republicans' increasing loyalty to the former president comes as he simultaneously campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020. Republicans are now less likely to believe Jan. 6 participants were "mostly violent," less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden's election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.
In follow-up interviews, some said their views have changed because they now believe the riot was instigated by law enforcement to suppress political dissent — a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted heavily in right-wing media and by Trump in his speeches and in his legal fight against the four-count federal indictment he faces in Washington, D.C.
"From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts," said Michael J. Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.
» READ MORE: Jan. 6 rioter from Pa. whose proceedings were secret gave information to authorities in exchange for a reduced sentence
But Republican views are more fractured than those of Democrats, who remain largely in agreement that the riot was a violent threat to democracy for which Trump bears responsibility. "In the current context of hyper-partisanship, there seem to be some divisions among Republicans," Hanmer said. Independents, according to the poll, mostly side with Democrats.
As Trump leads the Republican field for president by a wide margin, the poll reveals several key takeaways.
Over a third of Americans believe Biden’s election was illegitimate
Despite audits in multiple states and nationally televised congressional hearings in which state officials and aides to Trump confirmed there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, more Americans question Biden's victory than they did two years ago.
When The Post and UMD asked in December 2021 whether Biden was legitimately elected, 69 percent of Americans said he was. Now, that's down to 62 percent. Slightly fewer Republicans today (31 percent) say Biden's election was legitimate compared with 2021 (39 percent). More than one-third of Americans, or 36 percent, do not accept Biden's victory as legitimate.
Older Americans are slightly more likely than younger ones to say Biden was legitimately elected, as are voters with college degrees. About 3 in 10 people who get most of their information from Fox News think Biden won legitimately in 2020.
» READ MORE: Nobody’s ever lost their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Will Trump be the first?
Several voters interviewed by The Post cited what they said was evidence of voter fraud, in particular the long-debunked claim that Georgia election workers were caught on video putting fake ballots into tallies. The two women in that video recently won a $148 million judgment against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for spreading those defamatory claims.
Most Americans, but few Republicans, think Jan. 6 threatened democracy
Most Americans, 55 percent, believe the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was "an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten," with majorities of Democrats and independents holding this view. But most Republicans and Trump voters reject this view.
More than 7 in 10 Republicans say too much is being made of the attack and that it is "time to move on." Fewer than 2 in 10 (18 percent) of Republicans say that Jan. 6 protesters were "mostly violent," dipping from 26 percent in 2021. Currently, 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents say the protesters were mostly violent, little changed from 2021.
"There were so many people that felt the election was rigged. It was not right for them to break in like that, but they were fed up and frustrated and they were whipped into a frenzy by the FBI and others," said Colleen Michaels, 59, of Woodsfield, Ohio.
A Republican voter, she said she would have attended herself had she not had a stroke. Her sister went, but did not go in the building after seeing people retreat with chemical spray in their eyes. What Michaels heard from the people who went, combined with security footage released to and selectively edited by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, leads her to believe in the conspiracy theory that undercover FBI agents instigated the riot.
Other Trump supporters place more blame on the rioters. Peggy Orr, 67, of North Platte, Neb., is a Republican who thinks the rioters did threaten democracy, even though she did not believe the 2020 election was legitimate.
"I've never joined a protest or tried to break windows because I didn't like the way the election went, and I don't think people should," Orr said. "You have to accept the results."
The Post-UMD poll finds that 55 percent of Republicans think legal punishments for the people who broke into the Capitol have been "fair" or "not harsh enough," though that is down from 64 percent in 2021. Seven in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats say punishments have been fair or insufficient.
Fewer Republicans blame Trump for Jan. 6 attack
Republicans today also feel more defensive of Trump than they did in 2021. Two years ago, 60 percent of Americans overall said Trump bears "a great deal" or "a good amount" of responsibility for the attack; now, 53 percent do. Again, Republicans are driving that change - 14 percent assign him a great or good amount of culpability, about half as many as did in 2021 (27 percent).
"In the beginning when I heard about it, I was very upset that Trump didn't come out and say, 'Stop,'" said Gloria Bowden of Jacksonville, Fla., a 68-year-old independent voter who leans Republican. But now, having seen video clips of police using tear gas and rubber bullets on rioters, she thinks the attack was instigated by law enforcement.
"I still wish he would have [told people to leave the Capitol earlier], but I don't know that it would have mattered," Bowden said. "It was planned." She found the House hearings "totally one-sided," and criticism of Trump over the past three years has led her to empathize more with his reluctance to intervene during the riot. "The man had been through so much in four years that at one point you finally say, 'Let them do it,'" she said.
Most Americans think Trump is guilty of a crime over Jan. 6
A 56 percent majority of Americans say Trump is probably guilty of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results through false claims of voter fraud, including 40 percent who believe he is "definitely guilty." Republicans are less united than Democrats. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats believe Trump is guilty, while nearly 7 in 10 Republicans think he is innocent. Among independents, nearly twice as many think Trump is guilty as think he is innocent.
A similar majority of Americans, 57 percent, say the Justice Department is "holding Trump accountable under the law like anyone else" by prosecuting him. A fifth of Republicans agree; the vast majority (77 percent) believe Trump is being targeted for political reasons, as he has repeatedly claimed without evidence.
Two of four criminal prosecutions that Trump is facing are related to attempts to stay in power after the 2020 election. In D.C., he faces a four-count federal criminal indictment of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights - in this case, "the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted." He has been charged in state court in Georgia with allegedly trying to block the election results there.
"I think he should be held accountable," said Ed Quigley, a 65-year-old retiree from outside Myrtle Beach. He is a registered Republican, but he voted against Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and sees Trump as a would-be autocrat responsible for the events of Jan. 6. "Nobody should be above the law."
Despite most believing Trump is guilty, the poll finds fewer than half of Americans, 46 percent, say his actions related to Jan. 6 should disqualify him from the presidency - a question that is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court now that multiple states have determined that he engaged in insurrection and should be barred from appearing on primary ballots. Another 17 percent say they cast doubts on his fitness to serve, while 33 percent say they are not relevant.
About 7 in 10 Americans believe Trump will not concede if he loses in 2024
Just over a quarter of Americans are confident that Trump would accept the results of the election if he loses the next presidential race, while 65 percent think President Biden would. A 71 percent majority are not confident Trump will accept losing in 2024, which is more than twice the share who say this of Biden. Nearly half of Republicans doubt Trump will accept the election if he loses, rising to 73 percent among independents and 93 percent of Democrats.
For many Republicans, refusal to adhere to that democratic norm is not a dealbreaker.
"He's a fighter - he loves to get in that courtroom and would appeal anything that's up against him, and I think that's what people really like about him," said Michael Bettger, 49, of Austin, Ark. Biden "would accept defeat" because "he's a political person, and he does basically everything everybody tells him to do," Bettger said. "He doesn't think outside the box."
He doesn’t see a post-election battle over the legitimacy of the results as a threat to democracy, because after 2020 he no longer believes that voting matters, saying, “We chose Donald Trump, but we didn’t get him.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/politics/trump-properties-china-foreign-payments/index.html
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