2023-12-30 05:01:00
In the space of a week, two states in the United States, Colorado and Maine, decided to ban Donald Trump from being a candidate in the Republican primaries. The big question is whether this could prevent the former president from being elected again.
-Why could you be declared ineligible?
In both Maine and Colorado, senior state officials estimated that the magnate would not be able to return to the White House due to his role in the assault on the Capitol in 2021.
That cold January 6, hundreds of his followers attacked the headquarters of Congress, where legislators were certifying the victory of Democrat Joe Biden, causing unimaginable chaos.
The authorities of these states considered that that day Trump participated in acts of “insurrection” and that therefore he is not eligible for the presidency, under the 14th amendment of the Constitution.
Are these decisions applicable?
The Republican primary season, dedicated to nominating the party’s presidential candidate, will run between next January and June.
The historic decisions in Maine and Colorado are only valid for the primaries in those states, scheduled for March 5. And both have been suspended pending a court ruling.
As long as the Supreme Court, the highest legal institution in the country, does not rule on the issue, the ballots must include the name of former President Trump, both in Colorado and Maine.
What happens in other states?
The US is a federal country: it is up to each state to decide on Trump’s eligibility. In recent days, Michigan, Minnesota and California have ruled that the billionaire has the right to appear on the ballot. Oregon, for its part, should make a decision on the matter very soon.
Faced with the possibility of chaos, the Supreme Court has been asked to urgently address this explosive issue.
Can Trump be prevented from being elected?
It is difficult to know the end of this story. It all depends on whether the Supreme Court agrees to take up this matter and its possible decision. This court was largely reshaped by Trump when he was in power and is made up of a solid conservative majority.
However, more than once it has issued surprising rulings. Meanwhile, nothing prevents the former president from campaigning.
At the same time, Trump faces four charges: he is accused of having bought the silence of a pornographic actress, having stolen confidential documents with state secrets from the White House and having tried to annul the results of the 2020 elections.
Most of these processes would begin before the November presidential elections. Currently, it cannot be ruled out that Trump will go to jail for a while or that he will manage to return to the White House, a completely extraordinary situation.
At each turn of this extensive legal saga, the tycoon raises crazy sums of money and rises in the polls: his followers are convinced that he is the victim of a witch hunt.
Trump did not wait to campaign after Maine’s decision: “It is worthy of a dictatorship,” the former president commented in an email message in which he asked for financial contributions to his campaign.
The Maine desition
The state of Maine, in the northeastern United States, announced this Thursday that the Republican magnate will not appear on the ballots for the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. “He is not qualified to be president” for having participated in acts of “insurrection” Shenna Bellows, Maine’s state secretary, in charge of organizing the elections, said in an official document.
“I do not come to this conclusion lightly,” he confessed in the document, in which he added that the assault on the Capitol was committed “by order, with the full knowledge and support of the outgoing president.” In response to the violent events at the Capitol, Trump declared: “We fought like hell. And if you don’t fight like that, you won’t have a country anymore.”
The Maine Secretary of State, like the Colorado Supreme Court, appealed to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits people who have participated in an insurrection from holding elected office.
That amendment was approved in 1868, after the Civil War in the United States, to prevent people associated with the southern rebels of the Confederacy from coming to power.
“I am aware that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of access to the polls based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Bellows wrote in the document shared by US media.
“However, I am also aware that no presidential candidate has ever participated in an insurrection before,” Bellows noted.
The challenge
The decision will be “suspended” in the event of a legal challenge, he added. Apparently this will be the case, as Trump’s campaign spokesperson announced that the Republican will challenge Maine’s decision in court. It could even be the subject of a final appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
Trump was quick to condemn a decision he claimed had been made by “a radical leftist” who was an “ardent supporter” of Joe Biden. “We are witnessing live an attempted theft of an election and the deprivation of the right to vote of the American voter,” denounced the Republican.
Trump and his most fervent supporters continue to challenge, without evidence, the results of the 2020 election.
Biden reacted to this decision and said that Trump had “without a doubt supported an insurrection.” “There’s no doubt about it, none,” he declared.
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