Four Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Trump and the 14th Amendment
It's depressing.
As I was writing today’s Triad, the Supreme Court released its ruling in the Colorado Fourteenth Amendment ballot-disqualification case, so I junked what I was working on. Let’s talk about this.
No surprise: The Court reversed the state supreme court’s decision and declared that individual states do not have the authority to disqualify presidential candidates from the ballot, but only the power to disqualify state-level candidates.
The decision was unsigned and there was no dissent, so I guess we can take this as a 9–0 ruling.
Four observations:
(1) Speed. Does this mean that the SCOTUS can move and rule quickly on matters of urgency? Colorado needed a ruling by March 5 for the Republican primary. Let’s walk through the timeline:
January 3: Trump appeals the Colorado decision to the Supreme Court.
January 5: SCOTUS agrees to take Trump’s appeal.
February 8: SCOTUS hears oral argument on the appeal.
March 4: SCOTUS issues decision in Trump’s favor.
That’s eight weeks from the filing of Trump’s appeal to the written decision.
By contrast, in the D.C. Circuit immunity case, Trump filed his appeal on February 12 and SCOTUS did not even agree to hear the case until February 28.
And it won’t be argued until April 22. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 10 weeks from the filing of appeal to the arguments. With no decision in sight.
(2) The rule of law. Please note the response of Colorado’s secretary of state:
In a statement, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold acknowledged the court ruling “that states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. In accordance with this decision, Donald Trump is an eligible candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary.”
That’s right: She immediately and respectfully accepted the court’s ruling and the rule of law.
This is why we’re the good guys.
None of this is good by the way. In fact, it’s all pretty bad. But around here we try to embody a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the will.
Get The Bulwark mainlined every day, almost all of it for free.
(3) He’s an insurrectionist. Ian Bassin notes that the biggest piece of this decision is what’s not there:
This is the world we live in. The Supreme Court of the United States took up the question of whether or not the former president could be removed from a presidential ballot because he fomented an insurrection . . .
And the Court could not say “this is ridiculous because Trump did no such thing.”
(4) Unanimity. I’m not a lawyer so while I find the Court’s ruling logically inconsistent, maybe it’s legally consistent.1
But here is a question: Do you think the SCOTUS will rule unanimously when it upholds the D.C. Circuit ruling on presidential immunity?
It should make that ruling unanimously, both as a matter of law and a matter of politics. The Court should not leave any opening whatsoever on the idea that presidents have total immunity for any actions they take.
And maybe the SCOTUS will uphold the immunity decision unanimously.
But I expect there to be at least one and possibly two dissents.
The “grownups” in favor of stability and norms will only be unanimous when it’s to Trump’s advantage.
Take a look at Philip Rotner’s piece on the homepage about the immunity case. His conclusion: “Bottom line: It looks like the Supreme Court is on a path to place Trump beyond the reach of the criminal law while at the same time piously declaring that no person is above the law.”
Bonus: F1 and the Ultra-Rich
The Nation’s Kate Wagner (who is a real-deal commie) wrote a piece for Road & Track about F1 and the result is even better than what you’re imagining.
Unfortunately, Road & Track seems to have disappeared the piece without explanation. But the Internet Archive grabbed it for us.
Most of us have the distinct pleasure of going throughout our lives bereft of the physical presence of those who rule over us. Were we peasants instead of spreadsheet jockeys, warehouse workers, and baristas, we would toil in our fields in the shadow of some overbearing castle from which the lord or his steward would ride down on his thunderous charger demanding our fealty and our tithes. Now, though, the real high end of the income inequality curve—the 0.01 percenters—remains elusive. To their great advantage, they can buy their way out of public life. However, if you want to catch a glimpse of them, all you need to do is attend a single day of Formula 1 racing. . . .
I think if you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. No need for corny art singing tribute to the worker or even for the Manifesto. Never before had I seen so many wealthy people gathered all in one place. If a tornado came through and wiped the whole thing out, the stock market would plummet and the net worth of a country the size of Slovenia would vanish from the ledgers in a day. I used to live in Baltimore and remembered the kind of people who would go to the Preakness in their stupid hats and Sunday best while the whole swath of the city it was situated in starved and languished for lack of funds. This was like that, but without the hats. I saw $30,000 Birkin bags and $10,000 Off-White Nikes. I saw people with the kind of Rolexes that make strangers cry on Antiques Roadshow. I saw Ozempic-riddled influencers and fleshy, T-shirt-clad tech bros and people who still talked with Great Gatsby accents as they sweated profusely in Yves Saint Laurent under the unforgiving Texas sun. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever. People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body. I stood there among them in a thrift-store blouse and shorts from Target.
Not logically consistent because our “presidential elections” are not nationalized. They are 50 separate state elections with some rules being uniform, but many rules being determined by the states.
SCOTUS seems to be saying that actually there is only a single presidential election.
In which case maybe it would be nice to have some uniform voting rights laws that apply to every state!
But as I said: I assume that legally the SCOTUS is on solid ground.
Still, the law’s got nothing to do with anything here: The SCOTUS is an expressly political body and if they decided that you cannot have states doing their own thing on ballot access for political reasons, that’s nothing exceptional. That’s par. That’s what SCOTUS does, has always done, and will always do.
I would amend JVL's assertion that the Supreme Court is a political body by noting that its legitimacy depends on keeping the mask in place that it is not a political body. Their actions in the immunity case have let the mask slip down at least half way. In my eyes, its all the way off.
Curious how the USSC is so mindful to get this decision out in time for an election/primary. It makes the slow-walking of the insurrection case seem more deliberate (as opposed to "we do things at the law's pace, without consideration of the election").