A Denver nugget against Trump?: The 14th Amendment may keep him off the Colorado ballot
There are many ways to deny demagogic, anti-democratic Donald John Trump a second presidential term, which is an American imperative. When Trump was running for a first term in 2016, this newspaper ran the longest editorial in its history urging his defeat. When he was running for reelection in 2020, we outlined 99 reasons he had to be beaten. Fortunately, that time he was, and soundly so.
Trump should’ve been convicted in his second impeachment trial in 2021. If he had been, the Senate could have disqualified him from serving as president again. He wasn’t.
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Trump quite possibly will be convicted of charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that he conspired to defraud the United States and to disrupt official proceedings — the peaceful transfer of power — on Jan. 6. If he is found guilty, his dreams of a second term will almost surely vanish. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Is there another way? Tempted though we are to say yes, we cannot. Colorado’s Supreme Court has removed Trump from that state’s ballot, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to deem him ineligible for having participated in an insurrection against the nation.
That language states: “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.”
Trump unquestionably spread lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He undoubtedly riled up the crowd on Jan. 6, then sat back while they defiled the Capitol. But it is yet to be determined if he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Conviction on the charges Smith has brought in federal court would be close to formal legal confirmation of that claim, but that may or may not come to pass — and even that is an inexact fit.
There are other looming questions: Does that provision of the 14th Amendment even apply to presidents? Some scholars say no. Is it legitimate to apply language crafted in the wake of the Civil War, intended to apply to Confederate traitors, to a modern-day sore loser who never took up arms but wanted to rile up his aggrieved supporters?
Such a consequential interpretation of the nation’s highest legal document shouldn’t happen state by state. It should be made by the U.S. Supreme Court. If a majority of that conservative-leaning bench deems Trump disqualified, we’ll take it. If not, Democrats or someone else will have to defeat him at the ballot box — or his criminal conviction will effectively remove him from contention.
Trump must not be president again. In a second term he would persecute his political enemies, divide the nation along demographic lines, abandon America’s allies and make a wreck of our economy. But chances are, he’ll have to be defeated at the ballot box — not by having higher powers remove him from ballots.
— New York Daily News
