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Ballot battle: Colorado vs Trump
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
Is the Colorado Supreme Court going to block Trump from appearing on the ballot there?
The answer is probably not, but they might. The Colorado Supreme Court, this week, ruled that former President Trump, cannot appear on the Colorado ballot on the grounds that he engaged in insurrection against the United States, which under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, bars a political candidate from appearing for federal office. Now, the Supreme Court is almost certainly going to take this issue up. This is a precedent that will be set for other states who are also trying to bar Trump from appearing on the ballot at all. And this puts the Supreme Court in a really difficult position. The court does not want to be in a position to intervene in what it sees as very political questions.
The most prominent example of them getting involved was, of course, the Bush v. Gore case in 2000, which basically handed the presidential election to then President Bush as they had to resolve a very narrow set of differences over what counted as a legitimate ballot in Florida. And in this case, the court is once again going to be asked to make a very political decision about who can run for president. The courts would much prefer that the political branches of the government make this determination, including Congress. And one legal argument they've made is that the 14th Amendment is not self-executing, but would in fact require Congress to step up and define what it means to commit insurrection against the United States.
There are multiple paths for the court to defer on this question, including the idea that the Senate has already acquitted President Trump of inciting an insurrection against the United States. But this is not an obvious position for the court to be in. They are certainly going to come out of this looking more politicized one way or the other. Either they bar the most popular and prominent Republican candidate from appearing on the ballot, which Republicans are going to say, suggest that we live in a banana republic, or they're going to say that Trump can go ahead and appear on the ballot, which will make Democrats to say, well, the court is completely politicized because the six Republican-appointed judges will always obviously going to side with the Republican presidential nominee.
A decision in this case could come quite quickly as the Colorado ballot deadline is approaching in early January and the court is going to need to weigh in here in order to set precedent for other states that are looking at doing something similar to what Colorado did.
So yet another unprecedented piece of a Trump presidential story is this case and Trump's norm, destroying political career continues to challenge the very foundations of the American Constitution. So lots to watch here. Stay tuned.
Interpreting SCOTUS: guns, abortion, history, tradition & constitutional law
The day before the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, it affirmed the right to carry guns.
Why?
New York Times columnist Emily Bazelon explains that the justices think that the right to bear arms is enshrined in the 2nd Amendment is individual and rooted in the nation's history and tradition, while abortion is neither.
The thing is, she tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, "the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that they claim is rooted in the nation's history and tradition is actually correct."
At the end of the day, Bazelon says that abortion decisions today depend "on what you think of the idea that abortion is fundamental to women's liberty and equality" — a hard sell for what she calls a "maximalist" conservative majority on the court.
Why Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace voted against impeachment
"I voted to certify the electoral college for the same reason that I voted against impeachment, for Constitutional reasons." Freshman Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace is not your typical conservative. Though a longtime supporter of President Trump, not only did she vote to certify Joe Biden's electoral win, she also strongly condemned his role in the January 6th Capitol riots. But when it came to impeaching the former president a second time, that, Rep. Mace said, was a bridge too far. She tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World why a vote against impeachment was consistent with her guiding principle of "constitutional conservatism." This episode of GZERO World also features an interview with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.