Law & Crime: ‘It sounds awfully national to me’: Supreme Court appears poised to leave Donald Trump on Colorado ballot amid fight over Constitution’s insurrection clause
Issues
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on February 8, 2024.
In a statement Thursday after arguments concluded, the president of the progressive group Alliance for Justice, Rakim Brooks, said the arguments on Thursday suggested to him that the U.S. has “failed the test” the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment set out.
“The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment were the greatest generation the nation has known, having led us through a civil war and secured Lincoln’s new birth of freedom in the aftermath of his assassination. Section 3 was one of their gifts to us. They wanted to ensure insurrectionists would never again threaten our constitutional republic, so they barred insurrectionists from all offices under the United States. They said so as plainly as they could, and trusted future generations to do the rest. My how we seemed to have failed the test. Rather than receive their gift graciously, this Court insults our benefactors. Their questions suggest they believe the framers were indecisive, conflicted, and short-sighted, that they left us absolutely nothing of value in our hour of need. The Constitution deserves better; the nation deserves better.”