US Election 2024

Without a conviction, SCOTUS have got to decide for themselves whether he's guilty of insurrection, haven't they? My guess is that once they've weighed up all the evidence and read the constitution again, they'll decide that putting him on the ballot is the outcome that is less likely to get them shot and go for that.

Regarding winning clearly - with a republican majority in the house, I don't think it's clear, at all, what will happen if they have to ratify a Biden win in January. Seems more than likely they'll thrown out however many of his close wins they need for Trump to win.

Not sure. I think the states who barred him decided that he was guilty of it, so their reasoning is probably up for appeal. They can potentially overturn that and just stop there.. which might be the quickest and easiest way to weasel out of things. But it leaves the bigger question unanswered, which they may not want.

I guess they may have the ability to define insurrection so narrowly as to be pointless in order to try to nullify the whole question forever.

I think you also have to bear in mind that SCOTUS is not beholden to Trump but to the forces that put Trump in power, and it's not a given that they want him back.

100% all the people who think those are Trump judges don’t know what they are talking about. All he did was appoint the people he was told to appoint, and did it gleefully cos it pissed off the people who hate him and threw a juicy bone to the religious right.

They are products of a decades-long establishment republican project, they are not ideologically aligned with Trump or MAGA, and they don’t need to pander to him.

Trump wins New Hampshire by a margin but, again, 43% for Haley hardly marks him out as universally loved, even by Republican voters.

These white men only get older and more deranged. The last thing we need is old man Patterson with his finger on the button.

He seems to have gone more orange.

Seems like the attempt to remove Trump from various ballots on the grounds of being an insurrectionist is going to fail.

9-0. Seems like the right decision. If he'd been convicted, maybe. But for it to be an arbitrary decision who has committed insurrection doesn't sit right (however obvious it is).

It wasn’t entirely arbitrary. The Colorado court decided that he did based on the evidence they had of what happened. But, having not read the actual SCOTUS reasons, it does instinctively seem like having individual states able to knock people off the ballot is a recipe for disaster.

It wasn't open to the Colorado court to do what it did. Insurrection is a criminal offence, and they were hearing the matter on a civil basis and according to the civil standard of proof (which is lower). I have a lot of sympathy for the view that Trump is a dangerous tyrant, but trying to remove him from the ballot is conduct pretty similar to some of the complaints about Trump.

I'm not a legal expert but it's my understanding that an offense under the 14th Amendment is not per se a criminal act requiring a conviction; in fact, the Supreme Court ruling that for them to uphold the Colorado decision would require Congress to find him guilty would seem to support that.

Check out Sam Seaborn here.

That might be the nicest thing you've ever said about me.

Slightly odd Nottingham link from the Republicans in Ohio...

twitter.com/OhioHRA/status/1755939612361429421?t=JkFNOX8Ao5cXtEYhUscsVg&s=19