Good morning. We're covering the Colorado lawsuit involving Donald Trump and the 2024 ballot — as well as Gaza, Harvard and "Home Alone."
The core issuesAt its core, the Colorado lawsuit trying to keep Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot involves a clash between Constitutional textualism and voter empowerment. If you simply read the 14th Amendment, you will understand the argument that Trump should be disqualified from serving as president again. Section 3 of the amendment states that nobody who has taken an oath to support the Constitution should "hold any office" in the United States if that person has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." On Jan. 6, 2021, of course, Trump encouraged a mob that later attacked Congress, and he praised the attackers that day and afterward. There are important legal technicalities, including a debate over whether the authors of the amendment intended for the word "officer" to describe appointed officials rather than elected ones. But many legal scholars, including some conservatives, have concluded that the amendment applies to Trump. "The ordinary sense of the text" and "the evident design to be comprehensive" indicate that it bars Trump from holding future office, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, who are members of the conservative Federalist Society, concluded in a recent law review article. The clearer philosophical argument against the lawsuit is democratic rather than technical: If the American people do not believe Trump is fit to be president, they can vote against him next year. For that matter, the Senate, an elected body of representatives, had the power to convict Trump during the impeachment trial over his Jan. 6 actions and bar him from future office, and it did not do so. Now, though, the seven justices of the Colorado Supreme Court (in a 4-3 vote, no less) have decided that Trump cannot appear on the state's primary ballot. Lawyers are asking other courts to make similar decisions (as this Lawfare page tracks). Ultimately, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are likely to decide the case. Were they to bar a leading candidate from running for president, it could disenfranchise much of the country. It would in some ways be "a profoundly anti-democratic ruling," as our colleague Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court, said on "The Daily." As Adam explained: Donald Trump is accused of doing grave wrongs in trying to overturn the election. But who should decide the consequences of that? Should it be nine people in Washington, or should it be the electorate of the United States, which can, for itself, assess whether Trump's conduct is so blameworthy that he should not have the opportunity to serve another term? The lawyers making the case against Trump have a response to this. For one thing, the Constitution already restricts the voters' judgment in other ways, as Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University, told us. Nobody under the age of 35 can become president, nor can Barack Obama or George W. Bush again, because both have served two terms. And a judge in New Mexico last year barred a county commissioner from holding office because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack. For another thing, Trump may represent a threat to the national interest that no politician in decades has. He has encouraged violence, described his critics as traitors, lied constantly, used the office of the presidency to enrich himself, promised to target his political rivals for repressions and rejected basic foundations of American democracy. He is, according to this argument, precisely the kind of autocratic figure whom the founders wanted the Constitution to prevent from holding power even if voters felt otherwise in the moment. These will be the terms of the debate in coming weeks. Commentary on the case
Times coverage of the case
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2023/12/21
The Morning: Trump, the voters and the Constitution
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