Former President Donald Trump has been ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot and was declared by a divided Colorado Supreme Court. This will set up a showdown in the nation’s highest court, to decide whether they think he should be removed from the ballot or not. This has been creating an extreme amount of frustration with Trump’s supporters.
Democratic Governors were the ones to make the decision to ban Trump. This was the first time in American history that the 14th Amendment was used to disqualify a presidential candidate. A ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capital was overturned by Colorado’s highest court. She said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency.
The Oregon Supreme Court ended up declining to hear a bid to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot, based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban,” saying it’s waiting for the US Supreme Court to rule on the issue.
The ruling comes after Colorado and Maine kicked Trump off the ballot, after judges and officials determined that his role in the January 6 insurrection renders him ineligible for office. Those decisions have been paused to allow for appeals.
Trump has prevailed in other states, where courts dismissed lawsuits on procedural grounds and never grappled with the questions about January 6. He has beaten back challenges in Minnesota, Michigan, and Arizona – and California’s top election official recently decided to keep him on the ballot there as well.
While interviewing Saugus students about this situation, I have been finding that many people find what’s happening insane. Hailey McCracken said that “I think that this whole situation is crazy, because the 14th amendment was to ban Donald Trump for the first time in history.”
We will continue to see what happens with the election.
