Most polls suggest former President Donald Trump is on track to square off against President Joe Biden in next year's general election. However, some officials have a plan to keep that from happening.
According to Breitbart, there is a growing movement to have Trump disqualified from appearing on state ballots.
That fact was touted in an opinion piece this week by anti-Trump Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who pointed to arguments recently raised by legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stoked Paulsen.
It’s asking a lot from elected officials to take a politically controversial position knowing full well a decision to follow the dictates of Section 3 very likely will be reversed. But public office and fidelity to the Const are not for the fainthearted. https://t.co/BGZObQ1ccC
— Jennifer Now at Threads Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) August 29, 2023
In an article written for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, they pointed to Section 3 of the Constitution's 14th Amendment. It provides that
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Baude and Paulsen contend that the 14th Amendment precludes Trump from running for president because his connection with the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill amounts to "insurrection."
Rubin noted that Baude and Paulsen are not alone in making that case, as legal scholars J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe did as well in an article for The Atlantic called, "The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again."
"Section 3 is no anachronism or relic from the past; rather, it applies with the same force and effect today as it did the day it was ratified — as does every other provision, clause, and word of the Constitution that has not been repealed or revised by amendment," they wrote.
The idea of barring Trump from the ballot isn't simply being discussed by legal academics, as Rubin pointed out how secretaries of state in Michigan and New Hampshire are looking at it as well.
She insisted that any official who is "seriously wrestling with this issue deserves praise and support — just as those MAGA voters placing them and the country in this untenable position deserve our scorn."
Still, even some of Trump's fiercest opponents are skeptical of this approach. They include former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum, who responded with an Atlantic article of his own.
No, the Fourteenth Amendment won't save the country from a Donald Trump presidential candidacy. Latest in @TheAtlantic https://t.co/DXauGPlKVG
— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 29, 2023
"The project to disqualify Trump from running for president is misguided and dangerous. It won’t work. If it somehow could work, it would create problems worse even than Americans already face," Frum declared.
