A liberal group filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot in Minnesota, the second major lawsuit in two weeks that hopes to invoke the 14th Amendment’s arcane “insurrectionist ban.”
The cases are seen as legal long shots. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to fight to remain on the presidential ballot. The new Minnesota lawsuit was filed in state court by Free Speech For People, one week after another group initiated a similar challenge in Colorado.
A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the US Constitution is disqualified from holding future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.
However, the Constitution doesn’t spell out how to enforce this ban, and it has been applied only twice since the late 1800s, when it was used against former Confederates.
The first of these lawsuits was filed 16 days ago. By a GOP presidential candidate in New Hampshire.
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of that one, I did see the one in Colorado.
I might need to add them to the criminal case count.
Aha… New Hampshire officials are “aware of the discussion” but no legal action has been taken yet:
So Colorado and Minnesota are #1 and #2. We’ll see where it goes from there.
https://www.wmur.com/article/republican-candidate-files-lawsuit-trump-nh-ballot/44943129
Hence GOP pressing them to keep him on the ballot.
Someone already sued, a GOP candidate.
Yup, I see it now, he’s also doing it in 11 states:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/5/john-anthony-castro-write-gop-presidential-candida/
Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
That says that cases have been dismissed due to lack of standing. How does any American not have standing when it is a presidential election we’re talking about? The harm isn’t to Republicans, it’s to Americans.
Yes, virtually any normal American should have standing here, since what donnie Bin Laden and his collaborators were trying to do was to steal our votes from us.
Dismissal looks like it was in Florida:
"Rosenberg ruled that the plaintiffs, Boynton Beach attorney Lawrence Caplan and two others, lacked ‘standing’ to bring the challenge.
"‘Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge Defendant’s qualifications for seeking the Presidency,’ Rosenberg wrote, adding that ‘the injuries alleged’ from the insurrection on Capitol Hill more than two years ago ‘are not cognizable and not particular to them.’
Rosenberg also added that ‘an individual citizen does not have standing to challenge whether another individualis qualified to hold public office.’"
In this guys case, having Trump on the ballot if he’s legit not qualified does damage his own candidacy.
I don’t understand why literally following the Constitution is seen as a long shot, but that’s the absurd fucked-up timeline we are on…
Because like so many things Trump/MAGA related, we’re in untested territory. No judge wants to be the one to figure out how to prosecute some law that was last invoked in the 1800s, if ever at all. There has to be a trial of some sort, otherwise what’s to stop one political party from declaring the other “insurrectionists” in areas where they have a supermajority?
We already blew past all the “right” ways of handling this shit, but spineless dipshits refused to convict him in either impeachment, which would have been the sanest way to keep him off the ballot. They literally lived through the evidence, but here we are. (Ok maybe not all the ways, there’s obviously trials in process for Jan 6, and he could actually face jail time, but we’re still in untested territory because that may not actually preclude him from holding office)
Could you imagine how it would affect the turnout down ballot if Trump tells his supporters to boycott the election in any state that bans him off the ballot? Heck, if Wisconsin bans him, they might elect a majority democrat state congress - which requires like 75% of the vote to go to democrats.
The thing that makes me worry about this is that if he isn’t kept off the ballot completely and I mean nationwide his followers will feel like the evil government has stolen their hero and believe their only recourse at that point will be violence
Some of them will likely be violent regardless if he “wins” (the EC), loses both EC and the popular vote or if we adhere to the Constitution and keep him out of office that way, so we should not really try to follow the law based on what we think the very worst elements of society might do as a consequence of that.
Oh I 100% agree that he should be kept off, not arguing to let them have their way, I’m just genuinely worried about what is coming
Fuck 'em, let them. Our institutions have held up pretty well all things considered. It’ll hold. If they want to die on that hill it isn’t worth our democracy to keep them off it.
You can’t get fired from McDonald’s then send your stupid violent friends to kill you former co-workers and then try to get your job back.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The new Minnesota lawsuit was filed in state court by Free Speech For People, one week after another group initiated a similar challenge in Colorado.
A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says any American official who takes an oath to uphold the US Constitution is disqualified from holding future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.
“Donald J. Trump, through his words and actions, after swearing an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution, then engaged in insurrection as defined by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the new lawsuit says.
“For the sake of Minnesota’s voters, we hope the court resolves this issue to allow for orderly administration of the elections in 2024,” Simon’s office said in a statement after the new lawsuit was filed Tuesday.
But experts on both sides have also expressed concern that blocking Trump from the ballot could lead to a backlash and would deprive voters the chance to decide for themselves who should be president.
“Just because a constitutional provision hasn’t been needed in a long time doesn’t make it any less critical,” Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People, told CNN.
The original article contains 855 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Keeping him off the ballot in solidly blue states is a rather irrelevant effort, even for a just a moral victory
Minnesota is not a “blue” state, Biden only carried 52% of the vote with trump claiming 45%- much of that were moderate Republicans simply skipping the vote.
While yes, the dems control things on a state level, that control is very tenuous, with democrats mostly being carried by the urbanized areas- the twin cities and Duluth, but it’s all still very close to 50/50.
It would practically guarantee that a Trump victory would again be without the popular vote — which he’d hate.
It would also probably be enough to get a substantial number of morons that would otherwise vote for him, vote for some other idiot.
This could have the most impact in a battleground state,
Might convince Trumpers to not vote at all, which could help other elections/measures on the ballot
A “liberal group” filed a lawsuit, or was it really a group of true American patriots fighting to protect our democracy from facism.
