BAD PRESIDENT
Does the 14th Amendment Bar Trump From Being President?
States across the nation are determining whether or not former President Donald Trump can appear on ballots in upcoming primary elections—and if Trump is even eligible to serve. Most of these arguments hinge on the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
But with some states—like Maine and Colorado—moving to strike Trump from the ballot, while others—including California, Minnesota and Michigan—deciding to keep Trump in the primaries, is there a clear answer as to whether or not the 14th Amendment actually applies? Let’s take a look at the arguments, for and against.
What is the 14th Amendment?
The 14th Amendment lays out the rules for being an elected official in the federal government, and is also the home of the equal protection clause. While the equal protection clause—which sets up due process—is important, most of the focus in this particular fight is on Section 3.
Section 3 reads as follows:
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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 3 was passed shortly after the Civil War, and ratified in 1868. It was intended to keep former Confederates out of Congress and the electoral college. In 1872, Congress invoked the last clause of the section to give immunity to most former Confederates, except for those high up in the Confederacy—for example, General Robert E. Lee or President Jefferson Davis.
Prior to Trump, Section 3 has been invoked only once after the Civil War. Victor Berger, a Socialist Party of America member from Wisconsin was barred from his elected seat in the House of Representatives in 1919 and 1920. Berger had been convicted in 1919 of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for speaking against the U.S.’ entry into World War I. The Supreme Court ruled in 1921 that Section 3 did not apply to Berger, and he served three more terms in the House, from 1923 to 1929.
Why The 14th Amendment Disqualifies Trump
Both Maine and Colorado have barred Trump from their primary ballots, citing the 14th Amendment. In Maine’s ruling Thursday evening, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said that Trump “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol Building in order to stop the confirmation of the 2020 election results in Congress.
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote, according to the AP. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
On December 19, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Trump was ineligible to appear on the primary ballot due to the 14th Amendment, according to the AP. The court ruled that Trump indeed engaged in an insurrection, and thus, was not able to be president.
Other politicians and pundits have weighed in. Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a former professor of constitutional law, said the Constitution “could not be any clearer,” according to The Hill.
“This is a chance for these [Supreme Court] justices to show that they really mean it when they talk about textualism, when they talk about originalism. The plain text of the Constitution could not be any clearer,” Raskin said. “If Donald Trump is not disqualified from holding office again after what he did on January 6 in the weeks leading up to it, then who is disqualified? Why would they read an entire provision out of the constitution?”
Another constitutional law professor, Mark A. Graber of the University of Maryland, agrees. Graber puts particular emphasis on the part of Section 3 about a person who had previously taken an oath to protect the Constitution who engages in insurrection.
“These oaths bind officeholders to follow all the rules in the Constitution. The only legitimate government officers are those who hold their offices under the constitutional rules. Lawmakers must follow the Constitution’s rules for making laws. Officeholders can only recognize laws that were made by following the rules – and they must recognize all such laws as legitimate,” Graber wrote in an essay for The Conversation.
Why It Doesn’t Apply to Trump
On the other hand, most of the court rulings in favor of Trump ask questions of jurisdiction and standing. In Florida, a federal district judge ruled that the lawyer and voters who sued to remove Trump didn’t have standing, according to Forbes. In Michigan and Minnesota both, Trump was allowed to remain on the ballot because Trump had qualified for the primary election, but the courts said the cases could be brought again should Trump enter the general election.
In California, Secretary of State Shirley Weber declined to honor a request from Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis to “explore every legal option” to boot Trump from the ballot citing the 14th Amendment, according to the New York Times. However, California state law does not legally give the secretary of state authority to disqualify candidates in the presidential race, the Times reports. This sets California apart from most other states, where secretaries of state indeed have that power.
As with the argument in favor of dumping Trump, politicians have come out to say that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply in this case. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said that Section 3 only applies to the former Confederacy, and has no modern application.
“The 14th Amendment referred to, basically, people who had risen in rebellion and fought a war for four years. There’s no point at which it references anybody today,” Gingrich said, according to The Hill.
Gingrich also said that Trump had not been charged with insurrection, “because you can’t. Because an insurrection is a unique and classifiable thing.”
Legal scholar Kurt Lash wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that posits that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply, as the presidency is not, as the Constitution requires, a “‘civil’ office ‘under the United States.'”
“If the framers meant the catchall provision to include presidents and postmasters, they were remarkably negligent. According to longstanding congressional precedent and legal authority, the phrase ‘civil office under the United States’ did not include the office of president of the United States. As Joseph Story explained in his influential ‘Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,’ the congressional precedent known as Blount’s case established that the offices of president, senator and representative were not civil offices under the government of the United States; they were the government of the United States. The phrase ‘civil office under the United States’ referred to appointed offices,” he continued.
Of course, we’ll have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide before we’ll have an official answer. While both chambers of Congress could give Trump an exemption, this seems unlikely as the Republican control of the House is by a razor-thin margin, and the Democrats control the Senate.
But either way, until then, Trump’s political fate lies in limbo.
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President Donald Trump vowed not to invite South Africa to the 2026 meeting of the G20 over a debunked conspiracy theory he continues to push.
Writing to his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon, Trump announced that the U.S. did not attend this year’s G20 meeting in Johannesburg, and, in turn, wouldn’t let South Africa attend next year’s meeting in Miami.
“The United States did not attend the G20 in South Africa, because the South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right Abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them. Perhaps, worst of all, the soon to be out of business New York Times and the Fake News Media won’t issue a word against this genocide. That’s why all the Liars and Pretenders of the Radical Left Media are going out of business! At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our U.S. Embassy, who attended the Closing Ceremony. Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year. South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote.
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Trump’s claims of human rights abuses against Afrikaners has been widely debunked. Trump says that the South African government, in retribution for apartheid-era institutional racism, is punishing the white population of the country. The conspiracy theory alleges that South Africa is engaging in “white genocide” against the Afrikaners, according to NPR.
While Trump is correct that the “fake news media won’t issue a word against this genocide,” it’s because it’s not happening. Even Afrikaners have denied that there is an “existential threat” against them, according to France24.
“We reject the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. This framing, now being used to support the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory in the United States, is not only misleading, but also dangerous. It distorts the realities of South Africa, weaponizes our history, and reduces a complex social context and necessary levelling of playing fields into a simplistic symbol of white decline,” a letter from several prominent Afrikaners reads.
“Let us be clear: South Africa faces serious challenges – crime, inequality, and the enduring legacy of apartheid. But these issues affect South Africans of all races. To cherry-pick white suffering and elevate it above others is dishonest and harmful. It feeds extremist ideologies that perpetuate division and have inspired real-world violence, including mass shootings.”
The letter was signed by 46 Afrikaners in South Africa, including professors, journalists and more. It was sent in response to Trump’s first overture to the conspiracy theory, which was to allow Afrikaners to come to the United States as refugees—all while the number of real refugees the U.S. will accept has been lowered from 125,000 to just 7,500.
Image via Reuters
After sharing a meme appearing to threaten the city of Chicago with war, President Donald Trump has backtracked, saying he only wants “to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them.”
On Saturday morning, Trump posted to Truth Social an AI-generated meme captioned “Chipocalypse Now.” It depicts Trump sitting in front of the Chicago skyline as black helicopters fly in and fire rages behind him.
“‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the meme read.
After facing criticism over what many saw as a threat to declare war on an American city, the president tried to soften his original tone.
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“We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” Trump told reporters on Sunday according to WLS-TV. “We’re going to clear them up so they don’t kill every five people every weekend. That’s not war. That’s common sense.”
Monday morning, he continued to reframe his original post as an offer of help.
“6 people were murdered in Chicago this weekend, 12 others were shot, and in serious condition. This would mean that over the past number of weeks, approximately 50 people were killed, and hundreds were shot, many expected to die. Governor Pritzker just stated that he doesn’t want Federal Government HELP! WHY??? What is wrong with this guy, and the 5% in Polls Mayor. I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the Criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness. The City and State have not been able to do the job. People of Illinois should band together and DEMAND PROTECTION. IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!!! ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s reference to Gov. JB Pritzker refusing help likely refers to his response to the original meme.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator,” Pritzker tweeted Saturday.
It should be noted that though Trump has reframed his threat to Chicago, it hasn’t substantially changed. About 40 minutes before his post, he wrote another one about deploying the National Guard to Washington, DC.
“Washington, D.C. IS A SAFE ZONE IN JUST A MATTER OF WEEKS. Thank you, President Trump. Who’s Next???” Trump wrote.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to deploy federal troops to Democrat-led cities in addition to Washington. This summer he sent troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests, an act a federal judge ruled violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bans the use of military forces for law enforcement on American soil.
Image via Reuters
Much of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about his on-again/off-again tariff plan is based around the idea that the U.S. is in a trade deficit with many countries around the world. But a deficit isn’t always a bad thing.
On Monday, the White House released a new statement that the U.S. and China had come to an agreement to lower tariffs. Earlier this year, Trump had proposed a 145% tariff against China, and the country retaliated with a proposed 125% tariff on U.S. goods. The new plan sees the tariffs drastically lowered to 30% on imported Chinese goods and 10% on American goods imported into China. The new deal is temporary, lasting 90 days.
“For too long, unfair trade practices and America’s massive trade deficit with China have fueled the offshoring of American jobs and the decline of our manufacturing sector,” the White House said in a statement.
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Earlier this year, Trump characterized the United States’ trade deficit with Canada as subsidizing our neighbors to the north. But a trade deficit is just a gap between the amount of goods and services exported and imported to and from a country. For example, the U.S. imports $412.7 billion of goods from Canada while exporting $349.4 billion. While that might look like a $63.3 trade deficit, that doesn’t take into account money coming in the services sector, so our trade deficit with Canada is actually $35.7 billion.
The U.S. has a trade surplus with some countries, too. Brazil buys a lot of energy resources from the U.S., according to the New York Times, but doesn’t sell nearly as many other goods and services back to the states.
The concept of trade deficits and surpluses is wholly neutral—and in fact, a trade deficit can be a good thing.
“America is getting more cheap goods, and in return it is giving foreigners financial assets: dollars issued by the Federal Reserve, bonds from the US government and American corporations, and stocks in newly created firms,” Tarek Alexander Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University, wrote. “That is, a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the US than Americans invest abroad.”
But, of course, sometimes trade deficits can be problematic for a country. If a country has a very large trade deficit for a long time, that can make it more susceptible to the winds of change, according to Jason Furman, who served on the White House Council of Economic Advisors during President Barack Obama’s second term. But, as Furman told NPR, that doesn’t apply to the United States.
Furman also pointed out that while tariffs can be a useful thing, Trump’s tariffs in particular are not.
“Let’s say you wanted to use trade policy to bring manufacturing jobs back. You wouldn’t do what the president just did, which is to put tariffs on all the bananas, mangoes, avocados and coffee coming into the United States. Those just aren’t things that we’re really ever going to make at enormous scale,” he said. “Moreover, the types of things that they do in Vietnam – you know, making clothing, making shoes – that’s not the jobs that we should be aspiring to have in the United States. We don’t want to give up jobs making airplanes in order to have more jobs making shoes.”
Featured image via Reuters
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