Norma Anderson He was watching the news from his home in Colorado when images of a mob trying to break into Congress caught his attention. “They’re trying to overthrow the government,” he thought as he watched the attack on the Capitol unfold before his eyes on January 6, 2021. Anderson is 91 years old and a Republican. He is not a stranger to politics. She was the first woman to lead the Colorado House of Representatives and then the state Senate. She is also one of the six architects of the lawsuit seeking to be barred from the 2024 election in that state Donald Trumpand accused him of his alleged role in instigating this “uprising.”
“As old as I am, I was born during the Great Depression, lived through World War II and remember Hitler,” Anderson has told media in the past. For them, joining the lawsuit is a way to protect democracy.
Today in Washington, that task lies in the hands of the Supreme Court, which heard the oral arguments of the plaintiffs, but also the defense of the former president and main candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House. There was just over two hours of debate and questions from the jury. At the end of the sharp questioning, all the justices – liberal and conservative – appeared to indicate their skepticism about efforts to remove Trump from the vote over the attack on the Capitol.
The Supreme Court’s nine justices are examining the case after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in a lower court that Trump “participated in an insurrection” and was ineligible to be president. For that reason, and taking advantage of Magna Carta’s 14th Amendment, the state’s highest court ruled that Trump should not appear on the ballot for the state’s March 5 Republican primary.
The case is relevant because if the Colorado justices’ decision is upheld, it would be tantamount to a declaration by the Supreme Court that Trump participated in an insurrection and that the 14th Amendment prohibits him from holding office again. That would allow states like Colorado, Maine and others to keep him out of the polls and jeopardize his campaign.
The Supreme Court has indicated, after careful scrutiny carried out as supporters of the former president gathered outside the venue, that it will seek to act quickly and extend the period in which it receives written reports and presents arguments in the courtroom. to shorten drastically. Although this conservative-majority court includes three of Trump’s own nominees, the justices have regularly ruled against the former president.
One moment that drew attention during the televised trial, which many in Washington watched with coffee in hand, was the intersection between the judge Ketanji Brown Jackson – liberal in nature – and Trump’s lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell.
“For there to be an insurrection, there needs to be an organized effort to overthrow the government,” Mitchell said. Then the judge replied: “So a chaotic attempt to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?”… In response, the lawyer ruled that what happened on January 6th was “a riot.” “It wasn’t a riot.”
For much of the argument, the Supreme Court examined primarily preliminary matters that would condemn the various challenges to a policy decision such as removing Trump from the ballot.
The 14th Amendment in question was originally designed after the Civil War to prevent the return of former Confederates to power, and has remained inactive as a clause for decades until today. No one knows exactly how to apply it to a president. The Constitution says that if it is proven that the official took part in an “insurrection,” he or she cannot seek public office unless Congress votes to lift his or her disqualification. There are those who believe that, as in the abortion case, the Supreme Court might prefer to let the states decide.
So far, however, this is just one of many analyses. Several justices appeared to agree with Trump’s argument that states do not have the power to disqualify candidates, while some also questioned whether the clause applied to the presidency. “What does a state do that decides who other citizens can vote for president?” the judge said. Elena Kagan.
Until the Supreme Court makes its decision, Trump’s name will remain on the ballot for now, even in the two states where he was disqualified.
Trump, who has no serious competition to win his party’s nomination, did not attend the hearing in Washington but defended himself in Florida. “If you analyze my speech and my tweets, you must realize that my message was a message of love,” the former president said, rejecting any argument that he was encouraging his supporters to commit violence.
Given the current electoral calendar, the Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision in the coming weeks. The so-called Super Tuesday is just around the corner, when several states (including Colorado) vote on the candidate selection.