{"id":31366,"date":"2024-01-29T12:03:12","date_gmt":"2024-01-29T20:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=31366"},"modified":"2024-01-29T12:03:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T20:03:12","slug":"us-historians-sign-brief-to-support-colorados-removal-of-trump-from-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/01\/29\/us-historians-sign-brief-to-support-colorados-removal-of-trump-from-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"US Historians Sign Brief to Support Colorado’s Removal of Trump From Ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Martin Pengelly\/Guardian UK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"USDonald Trump. (photo: Intercept)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

29 january 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Twenty-five civil war and Reconstruction scholars support invoking 14th amendment to bar Trump from ballot over January 6<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed<\/a> a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor historians,\u201d the group wrote<\/a>, \u201ccontemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawyers for Trump argue<\/a> that the presidency is not an \u201coffice\u201d as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump was impeached in Congress (for the second time) for inciting an insurrection: the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impeached with the support of 10 House Republicans<\/a> but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, Trump now dominates his party and its presidential primary, 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), civil trials and ballot challenges notwithstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maine has also<\/a> sought to remove Trump from its ballot, a ruling delayed, like that in Colorado, while the supreme court considers the issue. Oral arguments are set for 8 February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amicus briefs allow interested parties to make relevant arguments. Earlier this month, nearly 180 Republicans joined<\/a> a brief in support of Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 25 historians \u2013 among them James McPherson<\/a> of Princeton, the pre-eminent civil war scholar \u2013 pointed to 1860s congressional debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSenator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a Democratic opponent of the 14th amendment, challenged sponsors as to why section three omitted the president. Republican Lot Morrill of Maine \u2026 replied, \u2018Let me call the senator\u2019s attention to the words \u201cor hold any office civil or military under the United States\u201d.\u2019 Johnson admitted his error; no other senator questioned whether section three covered the president.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historians also cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached<\/a>, referring to himself as \u201cchief executive officer\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that \u201cno former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress\u201d, the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cContemporary information provides direct evidence of the enduring reach of the 14th amendment,\u201d the historians wrote. \u201cCongress \u2026 chose to make disqualification permanent through a constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRepublican senator Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said, \u2018This is to go into our constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present.\u2019 To this end, the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 did not pardon future insurrectionists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historians also said \u201cadverse consequences followed\u201d amnesty, many ex-Confederates winning office and \u201cparticipat[ing] in the imposition of racial discrimination in the south that vitiated the intent of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect the civil and political rights of the formerly enslaved people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historians concluded: \u201cThe court should take cognisance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some political and legal observers have suggested Trump should be allowed to run regardless of the constitution, because to bar him would be anti-democratic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a forthcoming article for the New York Review of Books<\/a>, seen by the Guardian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton<\/a> \u2013 an eminent historian not part of the supreme court brief \u2013 calls such arguments \u201crisible\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy their reasoning,\u201d Wilentz writes, \u201cTrump\u2019s misdeeds aside, enforcement of the 14th amendment poses a greater threat to our wounded democracy than Trump\u2019s candidacy. In the name of defending democracy, they would speciously enable the man who did the wounding and now promises to do much more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump and allies including Elise Stefanik of New York, a House Republican leader, have refused to commit<\/a> to certifying the result should Trump lose in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilentz continues: \u201cWhether motivated by \u2026 fear of Trump\u2019s base, a perverted sense of democratic evenhandedness, a reflexive hostility toward liberals, or something else, [commentators who say Trump should stay on the ballot] betray a basic ignorance of the relevant history and thus a misconception of what the 14th amendment actually meant and means. That history, meanwhile, has placed the conservative members of the supreme court in a very tight spot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilentz says justices who subscribe to originalism, a doctrine that \u201cpurports to divine the original intentions of the framers [of the constitution] by presenting tendentious renderings of the past as a kind of scripture\u201d, will in the Colorado case have to contend with evidence \u2013 as presented by the historians\u2019 brief \u2013 of what the framers of the 14th amendment meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently used to remove the right to abortion and to gut voting rights, originalism now threatens, Wilentz says, to become a \u201cpetard \u2026 exploding in the majority\u2019s face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also writes: \u201cThe conservative majority of the supreme court and the historical legacy of the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump\u2019s lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds \u2026 the conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the court does not \u201chonour the original meaning of the 14th amendment and disqualify Donald Trump\u201d, Wilentz writes, \u201cit will trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery\u2019s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the constitution in order to impose a dictatorship<\/a> of revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Pengelly\/Guardian UK Donald Trump. (photo: Intercept) 29 january 24 (RSN.org) Twenty-five civil war and Reconstruction scholars support invoking 14th amendment to bar Trump from ballot over January 6 Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31367,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31366\/revisions\/31367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}