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The Trump campaign immediately denounced the ruling and said it would appeal to the US Supreme Court, which is stacked 6-3 with conservative justices, three of them appointed by Trump.But it is up to the apex court whether or not it will take up the case before the paperwork for the Colorado primary, scheduled for March 2024, begins in January.
The Supreme Court is already weighing a request from the Biden-appointed special counsel Jack Smith to expedite Trump’s immunity claim in his federal indictment on charges of illegally trying to obstruct President Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump’s fate appears to rest entirely in the hands of the US Supreme Court.
In the meantime, if courts in other Democrat-leaning states also decide to disenfranchise Trump in an array of such cases that anti-Trump activists are bringing, it could scuttle his campaign and throw elections into chaos, potentially bringing the battle to the streets. Already, a Republican grandee in Texas has warned that the state could retaliate by disenfranchising Biden.
“Seeing what happened in Colorado makes me think—except we believe in democracy in Texas—maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing eight million people to cross the border since he’s been president disrupting our state,” Texas’ Republican governor Dan Patrick said.
The 4-3 ruling in Colorado marked the first time a court has kept a presidential candidate off the ballot under a 1868 provision of the US Constitution that prevents insurrectionists from holding office. Adopted three years after the end of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment, in Section 3, barred people from office if they swore an oath to the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection. The measure was aimed at keeping former Confederates, or secessionists, from coming to power.
The Colorado lawsuit was brought by six anti-Trump Republican and independent voters before a district court that initially ruled that he had engaged in insurrection but could remain on the ballot because Section 3 did not apply to those running for president. On appeal, the state’s apex court upheld the former finding and reversed the latter relating to being on the ballot. But it it put a hold on its ruling until January 4 to allow the US Supreme Court to review the issue if it chooses to.
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The ruling is expected to fire up Trump and his supporters who are alreading feasting on a sense of grievance and persecution. At a campaign rally in Iowa, Trump described the indictment by “radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists, fascists” as a “great badge of honor.”
“I’m being indicted for you. Our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away yours…They are not after me, they are after you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” he said, recycling lines he has used many times.
Considering the case was initiated by some anti-Trump Republican voters, the Colorado court’s decision comes as a favor to his GOP rivals for the party nomination, all of whom are trailing him by a wide margin. Publicly though, they railed about the ruling in an effort to win over the Trump base in the event of a final disqualification verdict.
“I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, jumping ahead of the pack. Nikki Haley was more measured in her remarks, saying, “We don’t need judges making these decisions. We need voters to make these decisions.”
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