Liberal groups are trying to end Donald Trump's attempt to return to the White House by arguing he's ineligible to be president after trying to overturn the 2020 election.

As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.

Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.

The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.

  • @treefrog@lemm.ee
    107•10 months ago

    The first lawsuit to keep Trump off the ballot was filed in New Hampshire this week.

    By a GOP presidential hopeful.

    • @knotthatoneEnglish
      45•10 months ago

      Exactly. It would be beyond stupid for “Liberal groups” to try to disqualify him now. He’s on track to sail through the primaries and lock up the Republican nomination. Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.

      • AFK BRB Chocolate
        31•10 months ago

        I keep thinking this, though it makes me nervous at the same time. Trump has way more support among Republicans than any of the others, but I think and hope he’d have real problems in the general election. The reason that thought makes me nervous is because I didn’t think he had a real shot in 2016, and that turned out to be disastrously wrong. I would so hate to end up with another Trump term.

        If he’s excluded, then one of the other candidates will win the Republican primary. That person isn’t going to have as much support in the primary - that’s likely to be a closer race - but night not have as much problem in the general. Ultimately, by and large, Republicans are going to vote for the Republican candidate.

        I’m going to be anxious until next November.

        • norb
          9•10 months ago

          You should still be nervous because he only won due to Electoral College numbers, not votes. He just needs to win in the right places and it’s a done deal. And if anything, quite a few of those “right places” are firmly on his side already. He only lost last time because a few of the “right places” didn’t go his way, which they still probably can.

          • Evie
            4•10 months ago

            This is what scares me… we are powerless in a sense to the electoral votes… and the packed supreme court is equally as scary should these lawsuits fall on their feet… we already know the outcome of that…

            • @escapesamsara@discuss.online
              2•10 months ago

              We aren’t ‘powerless,’ but we really don’t want to do the solution. Just 300,000 blue-voting california residents in the right states would ensure Democrat control of the executive for at least the next 10 election cycles; around 2 million moving to the right states and districts would ensure at least a blue majority in congress as well. But I ain’t signing up to move. And the DNC isn’t offering relocation vouchers. And it’s probably not legal for them to offer to pay for relocation for political purposes.

          • AFK BRB Chocolate
            4•10 months ago

            Hey, good plan. Saves having to know if it’s an anxiety day when you get up in the morning.

        • BraveSirZaphod
          3•10 months ago

          What (slightly?) soothes me a tiny bit is knowing that a DeSantis presidency would almost certainly be significantly worse. Trump, for all his flaws, can be relied on for exactly one thing: he cares only about himself. He doesn’t really have any significant policy objectives beyond inflating his own ego. That would still be disastrous in a lot of ways, but there’s a raw vindictiveness to DeSantis that Trump doesn’t really have.

          We also have the benefit of knowing that Biden can and has beaten Trump before, and he hasn’t really gained any new fans. A Trump nomination is probably the clearest shot we have to a good 2024 (yes, I know we’ve heard this one before).

          • norb
            5•10 months ago

            Trump doesn’t need his own policy objectives. He has republican think tanks to do that work for him. He just signs his name. It’s not like it was his idea to pack the supreme court. That came from Heritage Foundation or some such place.

            I think this is ultimately worse than DeSantis because Trump will allow ALL THE CRAZIES to get around him (Sydney Powell anyone?) and that is what he’ll do. DeSantis will bring your average GOP talking points with extra racism on top, but he’s probably not going to bring insurrectionists into the conversation.

      • @SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
        5•10 months ago

        That’s what people said when he was nominated the first time. When are we going to learn our lesson? In a two party system, we need both candidates to be minimally acceptable. Trump can, sadly, win.

        • @knotthatoneEnglish
          9•10 months ago

          None of the republican candidates are minimally acceptable. All of them are authoritarian and wish to end democracy. I think it’s more dangerous if one of the less crazy-sounding ones gets the nomination. Biden is unpopular and there’s a very real chance anybody who’s not Trump will win simply by virtue of being somebody “new.”

          The ideal scenario is that Trump gets the nomination but can barely campaign in the general because of all of his court obligations. It gets even better if he’s knocked off a few state ballots and/or the republican party tries to take the nomination away from him after the fact and they tear each other apart with infighting.

          • @SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
            1•10 months ago

            No candidate is minimally acceptable, but there is a huge difference between Trump and the others. The others are normal bad, and most of the horrible things they do can be reversed democratically in 4 years. I genuinely don’t know if American democracy can survive another 4 years of Trump.

            Also, your assumption that Trump is less electable than other Republicans is not obvious to me. We don’t like him, we think he’s obviously bad, but I think, just like in 2016, this is clouding people’s judgment. He has high unfavorables, but so does Biden, and Trump also has cult-like popularity.

      • Alien Nathan Edward
        3•10 months ago

        Don’t let’s get arrogant now. He can win the presidency, but only through the complacency of decent people. Remember that his campaign spent money convincing Democrat voters to stay home in 2016 for various reasons from “she’s got this locked up, your vote won’t make a difference” to “they’re all the same anyway”. He paid Cambridge Analytica to research the best ways to make you not care.

    • Alien Nathan Edward
      4•10 months ago

      Same thing happened in PA. This is the GOP eating itself, and to cast is as the doing of some nebulously-defined “liberals” is irresponsible journalism.