Donald Trump won big at the Supreme Court on Monday. The Supreme Court voted unanimously that Colorado could not toss him off their ballot for the presidency. 
A couple of months ago, the Supreme Court in Colorado decided it was perfectly acceptable to invalidate Donald Trump on the ballot in Colorado in the primaries of the general election because he was an “insurrectionist.” 
The basic premise of their argument was truly inane, claiming that because the Constitution of the United States bars insurrectionists from office, the state government of Colorado could simply declare Trump an insurrectionist and then toss him off the ballot.  
That claim had many legal problems. One: how do you define “insurrectionist”? Two: Even if you were going to define “insurrectionist,” that would theoretically have to be done at the federal level, not the state level. Three: How do you even define “insurrectionist” in terms of which party defines it in the federal government? Is that done by some sort of election board? Is it done by the legislature? How does the insurrectionist clause distinguish itself from, for example, issues with age? A state could theoretically throw someone off the ballot if they were not 35-years-old but still running for president, saying simply that this person was not eligible and, therefore, does not get listed on the ballot. But that would be pretty obvious from the federal language.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1917-unanimous-supreme-court-puts-trump-back-on-the-ballot-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
On Monday, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-719_19m2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>Proposed by Congress in 1866 and ratified by the States in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment “expand[ed] federal power at the expense of state autonomy” and thus “fundamentally altered the balance of state and federal power struck by the Constitution.” … Section 1 of the Amendment, for instance, bars the States from “depriv[ing] any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or “deny[ing] to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.” And Section 5 confers on Congress “power to enforce” those prohibitions, along with the other provisions of the Amendment, “by appropriate legislation.” 
Section 3 of the Amendment likewise restricts state autonomy, but through different means. It was designed to help ensure an enduring Union by preventing former Confederates from returning to power in the aftermath of the Civil War. … Section 3 aimed to prevent such a resurgence by barring from office “those who, having once taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, afterward went into rebellion against the Government of the United States.” 
Section 3 works by imposing on certain individuals a preventive and severe penalty—disqualification from holding a wide array of offices—rather than by granting rights to all. It is therefore necessary, as Chief Justice Chase concluded and the Colorado Supreme Court itself recognized, to “‘ascertain[] what particular individuals are embraced’” by the provision. … Chase went on to explain that “[t]o accomplish this ascertainment and ensure effective results, proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcements of decisions, more or less formal, are indispensable.” … For its part, the Colorado Supreme Court also concluded that there must be some kind of “determination” that Section 3 applies to a particular person “before the disqualification holds meaning.” 
The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made. </blockquote>
So they have said that under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, it should be Congress defining who is an insurrectionist and who is not. They say Congress’ Section 5 power is critical when it comes to Section 3.
<blockquote>This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3. We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency. </blockquote>
The court is making two separate arguments. Argument number one is that only Congress can define the word “insurrectionist” for purposes of who gets on the ballot and who does not. Argument number two is that even if that were not the case, the states do not have the capacity to do that. So theoretically, a different part of the federal government could actually create an enforcement mechanism that wasn&#8217;t the legislature. But states don&#8217;t have any power to enforce Section 3 with regard to federal offices, especially the presidency.
The court goes on to state, “Such power over governance, however, does not extend to federal officeholders and candidates. Because federal officers ‘owe their existence and functions to the united voice of the whole, not of a portion, of the people,’ powers over their election and qualifications must be specifically ‘delegated to, rather than reserved by, the States.’” 
Ultimately, there were two arguments made: that it can only be Congress that determines who is an insurrectionist and who is not, and that states cannot simply toss people out for federal office because that&#8217;s the federal government&#8217;s job.
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Although all nine members of the court agreed with the result, a slight dissent on sort of the rationale came from the liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. That dissent was written specifically to create a sideshow of controversy — because there really was no controversy. Everyone agreed Colorado couldn’t just toss Trump off the ballot.
But the minority opinion here, concurring in judgment, tried to find a point of differentiation from the majority opinion specifically so they could say that the majority opinion was overreaching in favor of Trump. They agreed that allowing Colorado to simply declare who can and can&#8217;t be on the ballot would violate the Constitution of the United States. 
But the Court also stated:
<blockquote>Yet the majority goes further. Even though ‘[a]ll nine Members of the Court’ agree that this independent and sufficient rationale resolves this case, five Justices go on. They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy. … Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment. </blockquote>
Basically, what they have said is that the conservative majority on the Court did this for Trump. What&#8217;s weird is that they&#8217;re claiming the Supreme Court majority went beyond its remit in order to help Trump, presumably because they think that if Congress were run by Democrats, a simple piece of legislation not defining insurrection, but just saying Donald Trump cannot run because he is an insurrectionist, might be sufficient.
In the end, the bottom line is what Amy Coney Barrett stated: This is 9-0. We&#8217;re done here.

Donald Trump Holds Primary Night Event In Columbia, SC

Trump Wins Big At The Supreme Court

2024 Election

Ben Shapiro

Colorado

Donald Trump

Fourteenth Amendment

Opinion

Readers Pass

A federal judge this week blocked an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/idaho" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Idaho</a> law protecting kids from transgender surgeries, claiming that it likely violated the 14th Amendment. 
Federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill temporarily blocked the enactment of an Idaho law passed earlier this year that bans procedures like double mastectomies on girls who identify as boys and giving children puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said that he would immediately challenge the ruling, which blocks the law until a lawsuit filed against the law is resolved. 
“The federal judiciary once endorsed the eugenics movement and forced sterilization of intellectually disabled people. Similarly, Judge Winmill’s ruling places children at risk of irreversible harm. History will not look kindly at this decision. We are taking immediate action to appeal this decision and are confident that correction will come. I will never stop fighting for and protecting our most vulnerable children,” Labrador <a href="https://www.ag.idaho.gov/newsroom/attorney-general-responds-to-court-blocking-idahos-vulnerable-child-protection-act/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement. 
Winmill <a href="https://idahocapitalsun.com/2023/12/27/judge-temporarily-blocks-enforcement-of-idaho-law-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-youth/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sided</a> with two families with children after they sued the state to stop enforcement of the law, under which doctors could face up to ten years in prison for giving children life-altering transgender surgeries or hormonal procedures. 
“Time and again, these cases illustrate that the 14th Amendment’s primary role is to protect disfavored minorities and preserve our fundamental rights from legislative overreach,” Winmill said. “That was true for newly freed slaves following the Civil War. It was true in the 20th century for women, people of color, inter-racial couples, and individuals seeking access to contraception. And it is no less true for transgender children and their parents in the 21st century.”
The judge said that his decision was not “anti-democratic” because the 14th Amendment was intended to stop laws that violated equal protection. 
“The authors of the 14th Amendment fully understood and intended that the amendment would prevent state legislatures from passing laws that denied equal protection of the laws or invaded the fundamental rights of the people,” Winmill said. 
The <a href="https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2023/legislation/H0071.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law prohibits</a> surgeries “that sterilize or mutilate, or artificially construct tissue with the appearance of genitalia that differs from the child&#8217;s biological sex” as well as the removal of the breasts of girls who identify as boys. Additionally, it blocks the administration of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, which can impact bone development, fertility, and heart health.
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In a statement, the ACLU of Idaho, which helped back the lawsuit, celebrated the decision. 
“This judicial decision is a much-needed ray of hope for trans people amid a years-long onslaught against their rights to access health care and ability to navigate the world around them. Everyone should be free to live and thrive in their authentic identity, which means transgender people should not be shut out of accessing medically sound health care,” ACLU of Idaho executive director Leo Morales said. 
Over 20 states across the country have passed legislation shielding kids from transgender procedures. While some judges have blocked implementation of the measures, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-appeals-court-upholds-tennessee-kentuckys-bans-on-transgender-treatments-for-children" target="_blank" rel="noopener">upheld</a> Tennessee’s law earlier this year.

Hand of nurse preparing arranging medical surgical tools on tray wearing latex gloves protective workwear for safety in surgery operation room in hospital with medical professional doctor nurse

Judge Blocks Idaho Law Protecting Kids From Transgender Procedures

Courts

Idaho

Transgender

transgender surgery

U.S.

Democrat Governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/gavin-newsom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gavin Newsom</a> criticized a proposal to kick former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> off the ballot in California days after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the former president could not be on the ballot in the Centennial State. 
Newsom claimed on Friday that Trump was a threat to democracy, but indicated that he did not support Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis’ request to California’s secretary of state to follow Colorado and move to kick Trump off the ballot. Newsom has been accused of running a shadow presidential campaign and has been seen as a potential option for Democrats should President Joe Biden step out of the 2024 race. 
“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Newsom <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/23/news/gavin-newsom-slams-effort-to-block-trump-on-california-ballot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”
On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-blasts-co-supreme-court-ruling-banning-him-from-ballot-banana-republic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> that Trump is disqualified from becoming president again for “inciting the crowd that breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” which the court said violated Section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, known as the insurrection clause.
Following the ruling, Kounalakis <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/20/news/california-next-to-push-for-trump-ballot-removal-after-colorado-ruling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked</a> California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to move to kick Trump off the ballot.
“I urge you to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot,” Kounalakis said. “This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy.”
“There will be the inevitable political punditry about a decision to remove Trump from the ballot, but this is not a matter of political gamesmanship. This is a dire matter that puts at stake the sanctity of our constitution and our democracy,” Kounalakis added. 
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In her letter, Kounalakis mistakenly said that the age requirement for president was 40 when the actual age requirement is 35.
Trump has promised to challenge the ruling and called on Biden’s Justice Department to stop pursuing the other prosecutions targeting him. 
“BIDEN SHOULD DROP ALL OF THESE FAKE POLITICAL INDICTMENTS AGAINST ME, BOTH CRIMINAL &amp; CIVIL. EVERY CASE I AM FIGHTING IS THE WORK OF THE DOJ &amp; WHITE HOUSE. NO SUCH THING HAS EVER HAPPENED IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE. BANANA REPUBLIC??? ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111612799689559392" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on Wednesday morning.
Similar efforts to kick Trump off the ballot have been attempted in Minnesota and Michigan.

California Governor Newsom Announces New Gun Safety Legislation After String Of Mass Shootings In The State

Newsom Criticizes Proposal To Kick Trump Off Ballot In California

California

Gavin Newsom

On Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court of Colorado ruled that President Donald J. Trump had to be removed from the state ballot, for both the primaries and the general election. They cited the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three of the Constitution of the United States, which <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-14/section-3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reads</a> as follows:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
The case made by the 4-3 majority in favor of barring President Trump from the ballot is simple: They say that Trump tried to conduct an insurrection in their judgment, and thus can be barred from the ballot by their say-so. “Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach,” <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a> the Court, and “Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.” In other words, so long as Section Three says that insurrectionists are disqualified from office, that means that Congress need not sound off on just what insurrectionists are. State courts can do it. 
What’s more, the Court says that the Constitution authorizes states to determine the “constitutional qualifications of presidential candidates” because, otherwise, states would be unable to “exclude a twenty-eight-year-old, a non-resident of the United States, or even a foreign national from the presidential primary ballot in Colorado.”
The Court says it is qualified to determine who is guilty of “insurrection” under the Fourteenth Amendment without any criminal case or impeachment case. The Court continues, saying, “that the events of January 6 constituted an insurrection and that President Trump engaged in that insurrection.” The Court claims, “President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary. Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power.”
This reading is, to put it mildly, strained.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1873-breaking-trump-barred-from-colorado-ballot-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Section Three was designed to prohibit those who had served in the Confederacy from holding public office in the United States. The Confederacy, as we know, was an armed rebellion against the United States which ended in the deaths of some 600,000 Americans on both sides. 
It was unclear when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed whether it was designed to apply to any future rebellion or insurrection, or whether it was supposed to apply to presidential candidates or those seeking to qualify as such, or exactly how it would be effectuated — by states, by Congress, or by some other party. 
Just two months ago, Kurt Lash, author of “The Fourteenth Amendment” and professor of law at Richmond School of Law published an essay about Section Three, <a href="https://lawliberty.org/the-fourteenth-amendments-ambiguous-section-three/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing</a>, “The omission of express language on these issues is significant because prior publicly announced drafts did expressly apply to present and future rebellions, did expressly name the office of the President of the United States, and did expressly bar certain persons from either holding or qualifying for office.” What does this mean? It means that at the very least, the amendment didn’t mean to clearly bar presidential candidates in future elections who took part in future “insurrections.”
Most importantly, the amendment is totally unclear on exactly how it is supposed to be effectuated. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, one of the most radical Republicans of the time, said that the text would “not execute itself” — that Congress would have to pass laws making clear who was barred from office. 
Historically, Congress was generally the enforcement mechanism for this provision. In 1872, for example, Congress passed the Amnesty Act, which did away with penalties on former Confederates due to the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress itself passed a law in 1994 that made it a crime to “assist or engage in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States,” so presumably, a conviction for such a crime would automatically disqualify a candidate from office under Section Three. 
Even if the amendment were self-effectuating — which it likely is not, given this would create a massive incentive for states to randomly disqualify candidates they don’t like under its auspices — it would still require the state to prove Trump engaged in insurrection. As Chief Justice Brian Boatright says, “Age, time previously served as president, and place of birth all parallel core qualification issues under Colorado’s election code. Conversely, all these questions pale in comparison to the complexity of an action to disqualify a candidate for engaging in insurrection.” Barring Trump from the ballot without an actual trial for guilt or innocence — or even an enactment from Congress — seems to violate basic due process principles, as Justice Carlos Samour points out in dissent: “based on its interpretation of Section Three, our court sanctions these makeshift proceedings employed by the district court below — which lacked basic discovery, the ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses, workable timeframes to adequately investigate and develop defenses, and the opportunity for a fair trial—to adjudicate a federal constitutional claim (a complicated one at that) masquerading as a run-of-the-mill state Election Code claim.”
This case is wrongly decided. The good news is that its effect is stayed until January 4, the day before ballot eligibility must be set; if Trump appeals, which he has already pledged to do, the stay remains in effect indefinitely.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that the use of lawfare against Donald J. Trump is absolutely unprecedented. It radically undermines electoral integrity, creating an ad hoc way for political opponents within each state to bar candidates they don’t like through reinterpretation of the Constitution.
And, of course, this Colorado State Supreme Court ruling is merely the latest iteration of lawfare against President Trump. It&#8217;s certainly true that Trump opened himself to this legal hellstorm with his activities leading up to and on January 6 and his handling of classified material after his presidency. He had to know there was a giant target on his back, and as always, he did what he wanted. 
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t being targeted by a variety of perverse methods — methods that threaten the future peace of the republic in serious ways. 
There are four outstanding criminal cases against Trump, three of which are rooted in misinterpretation of statute, and the fourth of which concerns mishandling of classified documents — a matter for which Trump’s former rival, Hillary Clinton, was let off the hook. Furthermore, the prosecutor in Trump’s January 6 criminal prosecution, Jack Smith, is openly attempting to cram through that criminal trial before the election, specifically in order to damage Trump’s chances in the election.
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As Andy McCarthy <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/the-obstruction-charges-that-may-derail-trumps-election-interference-trial/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “The prosecutor’s proposed schedule is driven by the political calendar, not law-enforcement concerns. … The Biden Justice Department took nearly three years to charge Trump, even though the facts by then were well-established; the indictment was strategically timed so a trial could take place during the presidential campaign. Not only did Smith push to force Trump to trial in just a few months after Smith’s own investigators had taken years; the prosecutor indicted in Washington, D.C., only after locking Trump into yet another complex criminal trial in another district a thousand miles away (south Florida).”
What does all this mean?
It means that 2024 is going to be the most insane and ugly presidential election in American history. And that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are both years that existed. Already, partisan use of the judicial process to stop Trump has created a narrative for Trump that even should he lose, he will have been cheated — and he won’t be entirely wrong. In fact, if he is barred from ballots and his trial expedited to affect the election, he’ll be right.
Meanwhile, because the supposedly apolitical judicial branch has now signed into this fight on behalf of Joe Biden, Democrats are likely to think that Trump is not just morally but legally barred from office. Under what circumstances, precisely, would Democrats accept the result of a Trump election?
The weaponization of the legal system creates an all-consuming fire, burning everything in its path. There is simply no 2024 result likely to result in anything but complete — and perhaps violent — chaos at this point.

Former President Trump Holds Rally In Waterloo, Iowa

Trump Barred From Colorado Ballot

Republican Primary

A judge in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/colorado" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Colorado</a> has rejected a challenge filed by a Left-leaning group to remove former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> from the state&#8217;s 2024 presidential primary ballot under the 14th Amendment. 
On Friday, Colorado Judge Sarah B. Wallace <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/02nd_Judicial_District/Denver_District_Court/11_17_2023%20Final%20Order.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> that Trump could not be kicked off the ballot in the state because the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment did not apply to the presidency. The challenge in Colorado was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-insurrection-amendment-2024-ballot-colorado-5b6e40f069abc1b8604ec37c46621055" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed</a> by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on behalf of six Colorado voters. 
“Part of the court’s decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section 3,” Wallace wrote. The ruling comes after similar efforts to block Trump from appearing on state ballots <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michigan-judge-dismisses-14th-amendment-challenge-against-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">failed in Michigan</a> and Minnesota. 
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/us/politics/colorado-trump-14th-amendment.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that the ruling was another nail in the coffin for the efforts to make Trump ineligible to run for office. 
“We applaud today’s ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges,” Cheung said. “These cases represent the most cynical and blatant political attempts to interfere with the upcoming presidential election by desperate Democrats who know Crooked Joe Biden is a failed president on the fast track to defeat.”
Wallace did rule that the Capitol riot was an “insurrection” and claimed that Trump meant to “incite political violence.” 
“Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification,” Wallace wrote. “Trump cultivated a culture that embraced political violence through his consistent endorsement of the same.”
Mario Nicolais, a lawyer for the group who challenged Trump’s eligibility, said that the group planned on appealing. 
“The court found that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection after a careful and thorough review of the evidence,” Nicolais said. “We are very pleased with the opinion and look forward to addressing the sole legal issue on appeal, namely whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to insurrectionist presidents. We believe that it does.”
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Trump, currently the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has risen above President Joe Biden in polling from recent crucial swing states. 
The ruling from Wallace came the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/speaker-johnson-announces-public-release-of-january-6-footage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that he would be making footage from January 6 publicly available for everyone to view. 
Much of the footage that was previously made available focused on protester clashes with police while widely shared footage from Friday&#8217;s drop showed people walking down a hallway past law enforcement in an orderly fashion and even waving to officers.

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 30: President Donald Trump talks to me

Judge Rejects Effort To Kick Trump Off Ballot In Colorado Under 14th Amendment

Elections

January 6

Joe Biden

Politics

The Minnesota Supreme Court <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-insurrection-election-president-f6b72c94bb351c1b870d4884e54f6a75" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> dismissed a legal challenge from a left-wing group to block former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 primary ballot using a constitutional provision known as the “insurrection clause.”
The state’s high court dismissed the lawsuit brought by Free Speech For People, who <a href="https://freespeechforpeople.org/the-14point3-campaign/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">allege</a> Trump &#8220;incited hundreds of violent insurrectionists to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,&#8221; in a so-called effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The group turned to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone from running for office who had previously taken an oath of office who then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
But the state’s high court blocked the group’s effort by reportedly ruling that the state law allows political parties to put anyone they want on a primary ballot.
“There is no state statute that prohibits a major political party from placing on the presidential nomination primary ballot, or sending delegates to the national convention supporting, a candidate who is ineligible to hold office,” Chief Justice Natalie Hudson ruled.
However, the court’s ruling only applies to the state’s primary ballot and left open the possibility that the plaintiffs could make another attempt to block Trump from appearing on the general election ballot in November 2024.
Free Speech For People has not yet publicly commented on the ruling.
Trump took to his social media platform on Wednesday, celebrating the court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit.
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“Ridiculous 14th Amendment lawsuit just thrown out by Minnesota Supreme Court,” Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111377205337385444" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “Congratulations to all who fought this HOAX!”
In response to the ruling, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in part: &#8220;Today’s decision in Minnesota, like New Hampshire before it, is further validation of the Trump Campaign’s consistent argument that the 14th Amendment ballot challenges are nothing more than strategic, un-Constitutional attempts to interfere with the election by desperate Democrats who see the writing on the wall: President Trump is dominating the polls and has never been in a stronger position to end the failed Biden presidency next November.&#8221;
Efforts to remove Trump from state ballots in the next presidential election have been appearing in a series of lawsuits nationwide from critics of the leading Republican contender.
U.S. officials ratified the Amendment in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War during the Reconstruction Era, which was designed to represent a new birth of freedom for previously disenfranchised citizens, according to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute.
Trump has criticized the lawsuits as “frivolous,” claiming that “radical Democrat dark money groups” fund the legal challenges to interfere with his attempt to retake the White House in 2025.
Trump’s attorneys have reportedly argued that the “insurrection clause” lacks power without Congressional review of how to apply it, noting that the U.S. Capitol breach doesn’t meet the definition of insurrection and that the former president only used his First Amendment right of freedom of speech.
His attorneys also pointed out that the clause does not apply to the office of the presidency because it’s not mentioned in the text.
Other groups in Michigan and Colorado have also brought similar <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/removing-trump-from-2024-ballot-would-reinforce-voter-grievances-about-elections-ga-sec-of-state-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuits</a> against Trump. Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to counter an attempt to bar him from the 2024 presidential ballot in Michigan.
Trump&#8217;s lawyers filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to counter an attempt to bar him from the 2024 presidential ballot in Michigan.
But Colorado became the first state last month to bring its challenge to trial under the constitutional measure — which has rarely been used over the last 150 years. A state judge reportedly scheduled closing arguments for next week.
Legal experts reportedly expect the issue to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Minnesota Supreme Court Dismisses ‘Insurrection Clause’ Challenge To Keep Trump Off State’s Primary Ballot: Report

Minnesota Supreme Court Dismisses ‘Insurrection Clause’ Challenge To Keep Trump Off State's Primary Ballot

Constitution

Minnesota

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger believes invoking the 14th Amendment to prevent former President Donald Trump from seeking a second term in the White House would only reinforce voter grievances about the U.S. election process.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/efforts-to-remove-trump-from-2024-ballot-using-14th-amendment-ramp-up-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Efforts to remove Trump</a> from state ballots in the 2024 presidential election are ramping up nationwide after critics argued the leading Republican contender is constitutionally disqualified from serving as president for allegedly engaging in &#8220;insurrection&#8221; against the United States.
Opponents across the political spectrum of the former president argue that under the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s 14th Amendment, Trump is barred from holding office ever again after the January 6 Capitol breach.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-campaign-blasts-lawsuit-to-bar-candidate-from-co-ballot-absurd-conspiracy-theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> on Wednesday to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado under the 14th Amendment, accusing the former president of violating Section 3, which bars anyone from running for office who had previously taken an oath of office, then &#8220;engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.&#8221;
But in an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cant-keep-trump-off-the-ballot-georgia-sec-state-14th-amendment-c1017ede" target="_blank" rel="noopener">op-ed</a> to The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Raffensperger pushed back against such efforts, arguing that &#8220;grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt&#8221; would only be exacerbated if a secretary of state removed a candidate from a state ballot and &#8220;erode the belief in our uniquely American representative democracy.&#8221;
&#8220;Denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Since our founding, Americans have believed that a government is just when it has earned the consent of the governed. Taking away the ability to choose—or object to—the eligibility of candidates eliminates that consent for slightly less than half of the country.&#8221;
Raffensberger and Trump became embroiled in a controversy after the 2020 presidential election after The Washington Post released a phone conversation between the two officials where the president reportedly &#8220;pressured&#8221; the official to &#8220;find&#8221; the votes necessary for him to win the state.
However, the Georgia official still argues disqualifying a candidate under such a measure is the &#8220;newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box&#8221; and that the outcome should be determined by the American people who vote in the primaries and the general election.
&#8220;Since 2018, Georgia has seen losing candidates and their lawyers try to sue their way to victory. It doesn&#8217;t work,&#8221; Raffensperger said. &#8220;Stacey Abrams&#8217;s claims of election mismanagement following the 2018 election were rejected in court, as were Mr. Trump&#8217;s after the 2020 election.&#8221;
The Trump campaign called a lawsuit seeking to ban the former president from the ballot in Colorado a political attack based on an &#8220;absurd conspiracy theory.&#8221;
&#8220;The people who are pursuing this absurd conspiracy theory and political attack on President Trump are stretching the law beyond recognition,&#8221; campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told ABC News in a statement. &#8220;There is no legal basis for this effort except in the minds of those who are pushing it.&#8221;

Georgia’s Secretary Of State Holds News Conference On Election Ballot Count

Removing Trump From 2024 Ballot Would Reinforce Voter ‘Grievances’ About Elections, GA Sec Of State Says

2024

Brad Raffensperger

Georgia

Six <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/california" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California</a> college professors are suing the state over diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) requirements they say force them to take the government&#8217;s view on “politically charged” topics. 
The professors, from three Fresno-area community colleges, are being represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which filed the lawsuit in federal court last week. The professors say the requirements are unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. 
“I’m a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction?” <a href="https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-sues-stop-california-forcing-professors-teach-dei" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Reedley College professor Bill Blanken. “What’s the ‘anti-racist’ perspective on the atomic mass of boron?”
The lawsuit <a href="https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/palsgaard-v-christian-verified-complaint" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a> that Blanken does not believe that DEIA principles should be incorporated into his chemistry classes, saying he believes that it would be &#8220;pedagogically unsound and disruptive&#8221; to do so. 
The other professors involved in the suit include James Druley, David Richardson, Linda de Morales, and Loren Palsgaard of Madera Community College; and Michael Stannard of Clovis Community College. They are suing California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian, the State Board of Governors, and State Center Community College. 
The professors are concerned that they will face disciplinary action or termination if they don’t align with California community college <a href="https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Vision-for-Success/diversity-equity-inclusion">DEIA requirements</a>.
Under the guidelines, professors must develop “knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.&#8221; Professors are also directed to teach using a “collectivism perspective” and “social justice lens,” according to the lawsuit. 
“These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines, and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line.”
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The <a href="https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/palsgaard-v-christian-diea-glossary-terms" target="_blank" rel="noopener">glossary</a> of DEIA terms put out by California shows that the guidelines are meant to implement certain ideological beliefs, according to FIRE.
“Persons are either anti-racist or racist. Persons that say they are ‘not a racist’ are in denial of the inequities and racial problems that exist,” the definition of ant-racist reads. 
The glossary also claims that the concept of “merit” is embedded in “whiteness.” 
“Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards (i.e., the use of standardized tests that are biased against racial minorities) and as highlighted by anti-affirmative action forces. Merit implies that White people are deemed better qualified and more worthy but are denied opportunities due to race-conscious policies,” the glossary says.

Hand writing the word racism on blackboard. Stop hate. Against prejudice and violence. Lecture about discrimination in school.

California College Professors Sue Over State DEI Requirements

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

First Amendment

Lawsuit

America’s Founding Fathers considered “<a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/no-taxation-without-representation">taxation without representation</a>” the definition of tyranny; today’s Democratic Party considers it a policy goal. Democrats have replaced the American republic with an ill-defined concept of “Our Democracy,” in which Democrats hold power, even if they have to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-one-thing-that-explains-everything-democrats-do">fundamentally transform</a> America’s electorate to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-one-thing-that-explains-everything-democrats-do">maintain their hold on power</a>.
When Republicans win, liberals do not talk about overturning elections; they simply thwart the will of the people as effectively as possible in the name of protecting “our democracy.” Here are the steps Democrats take to assure the American people do not get their way when they elect Republicans.
1. Stripping Republicans of their committee assignments.
Congressional Democrats seem to believe that if you can’t prevent an opponent from being elected, you can keep him from doing his job. In the last year, Democrats have resorted to an unprecedented campaign to stymie Republicans by stripping them of their committee assignments in an effort to keep the most vital part of the legislative process to themselves.
Although the media usually report on legislation once it comes up for a vote, the work of congressional committees has been described as “<a href="https://www.senate.gov/general/Features/Committees.htm">essential</a>” and “the <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/gov/6c.asp">most important work of Congress</a>.” Committees launch investigations, grill witnesses under oath, and craft legislation before it reaches the full House. Members without committee assignments “basically have nothing to do,” <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/04/congress-house-republicans-committee-assignments-stripped-1145320">cracked</a> Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
For <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/03/congress-comittees-removed">most</a> of U.S. history, congressmen would only lose committee membership for criminal behavior, such as when agents <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/story/politicians-gone-wild-scandals-of-2006">found</a> $90,000 in bribe money in Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)’s freezer in 2006. Then-Speaker John Boehner lowered the bar by <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Chocola-Boehner-committee-assignments/2012/12/05/id/466662/">stripping</a> conservatives of some of their committee assignments for <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fed-up-conservatives-plot-revenge-against-boehner">voting against him as Speaker</a>, and Kevin McCarthy later stripped <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-steve-king-defends-himself-says-he-has-frank-camp">Rep. Steve King</a> (R-IA) of <a href="https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/12/05/gop-rep-steve-king-blasts-republican-party-for-treating-him-like-a-federal-felon-861003/">all assignments</a> for a series of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/steve-king-frank-camp">controversial</a> remarks.
House Democrats have decided to supercharge the process. They began by targeting newly elected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) last February, one month after she took office, over controversial conspiratorial comments she made <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-removes-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-from-committees-in-unprecedented-vote">before</a> her election. Typically, Congress allows voters to vet candidates — and trusts their verdict — but not this time. Although only <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202125">11 Republicans</a> voted to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/72/text">remove Greene</a> from her two committee assignments, stripping a member’s committee assignments requires only a majority vote which the chamber’s Democratic majority gladly provided. “Serving on a committee isn’t a right. It’s a privilege,&#8221; said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-democrats-file-resolution-strip-marjorie-taylor-greene-committee-assignments-n1256365">said</a> her motion was offered for “reducing the future harm that [Greene] can cause” and acting as a “restraint on her influence.”
A handful of Republicans pointed out the revolutionary nature of the punishment. “What the majority is really proposing to do today is establish a new standard for punishing members for conduct before they ever became a member,&#8221; <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/04/963785609/house-to-vote-on-stripping-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-from-2-key-committees">said</a> Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK). “This change opens up troubling questions.” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) added, “This is nothing more than an abuse of power by a party drunk with power.”
Like any drunk, congressional Democrats decided they wanted more. After teaming up with 5% of elected Republican congressmen to strip Greene of her assignments, Democrats won only <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-gosar-censure-committees-house-aoc-video/">two Republican votes</a> while successfully stripping Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) of his after he made a string of controversial <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/560730-gosar-to-hold-fundraiser-with-white-nationalist-nick-fuentas">speeches</a> and starred in a bizarre anime video. Since then, Democrats have proposed the same treatment for Rep. <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/omar-says-she-is-confident-that-pelosi-hold-vote-to-strip-boebert-of-committee-assignments-next-week%20AND">Lauren Boebert</a> (R-CO) and Rep. <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/legal-complaints/cawthorn-should-be-removed-from-committees/">Madison Cawthorn</a> (R-NC), and more may follow. Coincidentally, this would further shift their committees’ composition in the Democrats’ favor.
President Woodrow Wilson once <a href="https://history.house.gov/Education/Fact-Sheets/Committees-Fact-Sheet2/">quipped</a>, “Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee rooms is Congress at work.” Democrats clearly do not want Republican congressmen to work for the people who elected them.
2. Expelling elected representatives from Congress
Like addicts, Democrats need stronger stimuli to get the same thrill. Not content with having stripped Greene of her committee assignments, one month later a California Democrat introduced <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/260/text?r=17&amp;s=1">a resolution</a> to expel her from Congress. That was too small for Squad member Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who called for the potential expulsion of every sitting Republican from the House of Representatives.
What grounds would Bush expel Republicans from the current Congress? Protesting elections the same way Democrats have in years past and, most chillingly, because of the way they voted on two congressional bills.
Bush’s <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-117hres25ih/html/BILLS-117hres25ih.htm">bill</a> states that during the 2020 election, “over 140 Members of Congress” took “unprecedented steps to defy the will of the American people who overwhelmingly voted for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris by voting against the certification of the votes of the Electoral College.” Bush falsely asserts that this move is “unprecedented,” as Republicans’ decision not to certify the electoral vote followed the precedent set by Democratic lawmakers in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-objected-to-electoral-vote-certification-in-2000-2004-2016">2000, 2004, and 2016</a>. Bush also attempts to insert — wait for it! — racism into this action. Her bill states bizarrely that “refusing to concede the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election … suggests racial animus,” and insists that “efforts by Republican Members of Congress to denounce the votes of millions of Americans is a continuation of Jim-Crow era measures.”
Finally, Bush’s legislation intimates that all sitting Republicans in the House should be expelled, because they did not vote for Democratic legislation to nationalize elections. “House Republicans have refused to vote in support of voter protections aimed at supporting disenfranchised Black, Brown, and Indigenous voters, including H.R. 1, the For the People Act and H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.” Bush is right that <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202162">both bills</a> failed on <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021260">party lines</a>. True, not a single Republican voted for HR 1 — but <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bennie-thompson-only-dem-vote-against-hr1-election-bill">neither did</a> Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson. Strangely, Bush did not recommend his expulsion nor accuse Thompson, who is black, of “racial animus” for following the will of his constituents.
Justice Joseph Story warned that the expulsion power “might be exerted for mere purposes of faction or party, to remove a patriot, or to aid a corrupt measure.” That time has come. In Bush’s world, voting against Democratic bills is enough to expel every member of the opposing party from Congress as insurrectionists.
While Bush is on the far-Left, the sentiment flows throughout the Democratic Party. Even moderate Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has <a href="https://youtu.be/kfB9G0Z15kc?t=492">said</a> Congress should consider <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/534565-manchin-removing-hawley-cruz-with-14th-amendment-should-be-a-consideration">removing</a> Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) over their objections to certifying the 2020 election.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Joe Manchin | Full Episode 1.15.21 | Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | PBS" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kfB9G0Z15kc?start=492&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Adding those two senators to all House Republicans targeted by Bush’s bill would overturn 214 separate elections. To put that number in perspective, only 20 people have been <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45078.pdf">expelled</a> from Congress in U.S. history — 18 of whom were removed for disloyalty to the government (17 related to the Civil War and one in 1797 for a senator who intended to enrich himself by inducing “Indians and frontiersmen to attack Spanish Florida and Louisiana, in order to transfer those territories to Great Britain”). The next expulsion came 118 years later, in 1980, when Congress expelled Rep. Michael Myers (D-PA) after his conviction on bribery charges from the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/abscam">ABSCAM investigation</a>. The last congressman to be expelled from Congress, Rep. James Traficant (D-OH) in 2002, had been convicted of numerous felonies. Threatening to expel every elected official of the opposing party because they did not vote the way one member would have preferred is, to this writer’s knowledge, unprecedented in a democratic republic.
Naturally, Bush is unlikely to prevail. The Constitution <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei">requires</a> two-thirds of a chamber to vote before it can “expel a member.” But the specter itself is chilling — albeit not as chilling as the party’s election experts would prefer. Democrats have proposed another means to prevent voters from electing their favorite candidates in the first place.
3. Invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent candidates from running for office
There is a reason Democrats have attempted to label every action that counters their agenda as part of an “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-things-the-media-are-now-calling-insurrections">insurrection</a>”: The Constitution disqualifies anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States, or aided such efforts, from serving in Congress. Stretching the definition of insurrection, Democrats hope to prevent their opponents from seeking office in 2022. Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias <a href="https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1473118873302056961">tweeted</a> last December, “My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress.” The lawyer wrote, “We may even see litigation.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress. 
We may even see litigation. <a href="https://t.co/pF7P2fw0kn">pic.twitter.com/pF7P2fw0kn</a>
&mdash; Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) <a href="https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1473118873302056961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 21, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“It seems quite likely that one or more Republican members of Congress will be subject to this disqualification, and it is important that we start to identify them now,” Elias <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/news/naming-the-insurrection/">elaborated</a> in an article a month later. “Preferably, the Department of Justice would lead this effort,” using “the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/burden_of_proof">lower civil standard of proof</a>.” If the DOJ does not act, “Congress and private litigants will need to step in” and prevent the American people from voting for the candidates of their choice “[i]f we are to remain a democracy.” Similarly, <a href="https://www.influencewatch.org/person/noah-bookbinder/">Noah Bookbinder</a>, the president of the left-wing “ethics” organization <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/02/03/we-can-stop-the-collar-insurrectionists-from-doing-it-again-heres-how/">CREW</a>, wrote that Americans must <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/02/03/we-can-stop-the-collar-insurrectionists-from-doing-it-again-heres-how">prevent</a> “white-collar insurrectionists” who allegedly “inspired the violent insurrectionists” on January 6 from running for office in 2022. “If we fail to do so, we risk losing forever our system of government of, by and for the people.”
This overturns the concept of elections themselves: The voters simply never get a chance to elect the candidate they want. The Democrats here aim at the prophylactic prevention of democracy.
Legal scholars argue over how to trigger the Fourteenth Amendment prohibition. Some argue Congress could bar someone from running from office by a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/01/12/14th-amendment-insurrection-trump-removal-problems/">simple majority vote</a> — the kind congressional Democrats have already used twice to strip House Republicans of their committee assignments — or that Congress should pass a law <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/disqualifying-insurrectionists-and-rebels-how-guide">enabling judges</a> to determine a candidate’s ability to seek office, giving judges a veto over voters’ preferences. Imagine an unelected judge ruling that voters could not select their preferred candidate in the name of preserving democracy.
Whatever the mechanism, Democrats are once again on board. Last January 10, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter <a href="https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/11021-0">telling</a> her colleagues, “Your views on the 25th Amendment, 14th Amendment Section 3 and impeachment are valued.”
These three measures are far from comprehensive. If a candidate manages to wiggle through this gauntlet of anti-democratic resistance, Democrats try to thwart the president’s effectiveness. Members of the highly unionized federal bureaucracy, who are nearly impossible to fire, routinely drag their feet during Republican administrations. Increasingly, they accuse Republican officeholders of immoral or illegal actions, like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-the-left-wing-media-promoted-a-baseless-covid-conspiracy-theory">Rebekah Jones’ baseless claims</a>that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) manipulated the state’s COVID-19 death toll. These accusations give elected Democratic officials an excuse to launch investigations, appoint a special counsel, or file articles of impeachment — which is also treated as part of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. In May 2019, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democratic-congressman-admits-impeaching-trump-all-josh-hammer">admitted</a>on MSNBC that he believed Democrats must impeach Donald Trump, because “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”
No party that so brazenly abuses the democratic process can be trusted to protect voters from politicians seeking to overturn elections.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Democrats

3 Ways Democrats Are Trying To Overturn Elections

Fascism

With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to hear oral arguments over a groundbreaking Mississippi law that could overturn Roe v. Wade, CNN’s legal expert attempted to link the “right” to abortion to the nation’s arduous battle to abolish slavery.
Kim Wehle began by falsely asserting that Texas “literally” has “no abortion rights,” thanks to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-6-biggest-lies-youve-been-told-about-the-texas-abortion-law">Texas Heartbeat Law</a>, which <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-bias-101-pro-life-restrictions-vs-pro-abortion-protections">protects unborn children</a> from being aborted if a medical professional can detect a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chris-cuomo-suggests-babies-dont-have-a-heartbeat-at-6-weeks-heres-what-science-says">fetal heartbeat</a>. The law does not affect abortion before that time.
“Roe was kind of de facto overruled in Texas,” said Wehle, who is a CNN legal contributor, a university law professor, and a frequent author at <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/author/kimwehle/">The Bulwark</a>. “That&#8217;s what makes” Wednesday’s arguments over Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “so dangerous. There are approximately 26 states that are poised to ban abortion if Roe gets overturned.”
Wehle then turned to the legal basis on which the Supreme Court created the “right” to abortion in the 1973 landmark case, telling CNN host Don Lemon that it came “from the Fourteenth Amendment [of] the United States Constitution. That&#8217;s a post-Civil War, anti-slavery amendment. It&#8217;s about obliterating the brutalities of enslaving people, where half of enslaved people that moved through interstate were separated from spouses, were separated from parents. Of course, they were brutalized physically.”
The link between the right to abort a child and slavery, which treated human beings as objects who could be killed at their owner’s convenience, is not readily apparent.
The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/14thAmendment.htm">written in 1866</a> and adopted in 1868, gave no indication that they intended their amendment to confer an unalienable right to abortion. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments — known as the Reconstruction Amendments — aimed to free American slaves, abolish the institution of slavery, and grant formerly enslaved people full U.S. citizenship.
Abortion was <a href="https://studentsforlife.org/med-law/legalities-of-abortion/">illegal</a> in much of the United States in the nineteenth century and remained so after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Pro-life advocates have long said that the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiv">Fourteenth Amendment</a> legally <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/abortion-and-14th-amendment-michael-j-new/">forbids</a> the taking of human life in the womb. The amendment does not allow “any State [to] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/410/113.html">Roe v. Wade ruling</a> agreed with this legal reasoning, noting that abortion cannot be considered constitutional if someone confers the status of “<a href="https://therightswriter.com/2014/09/ronald-reagan-spoke-about-fetal-pain-and-personhood/">personhood</a>” on the unborn. “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant&#8217;s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus&#8217; right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment,” Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the decision.
Instead, Blackmun and his fellow justices built on the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/#tab-opinion-1945663">ruling</a>, which asserted that the Constitution had a multitude of unwritten “rights” waiting to be discovered. “The Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,” the case held. For the first time in Supreme Court history, the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/#tab-opinion-1950137">claimed</a> that the ability to procure an abortion fell under the newly discovered “right” to “sexual privacy,” which is “said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbra.”
The idea that the Supreme Court should restrict its jurisprudence to “enumerated things in the Constitution,” such as the document’s actual text, is “really scary,” Wehle told Don Lemon.
But many jurists say the court has politicized itself by artificing dubious legal rulings to affect policy on contentious social issues. “The major problem with Roe from a constitutional perspective is that the court took something that appears nowhere in that document – and which therefore is left to the states – and promoted it to a fundamental right. Nothing in the Constitution’s text, structure, history or tradition supports this innovation. The court’s exercise of raw judicial power thus usurped Americans’ ability to determine whether and how to regulate abortion,” wrote  Carrie Severino, president of the <a href="https://judicialnetwork.com/">Judicial Crisis Network</a>, in a statement. “When the court exercises that sort of judicial supremacy, the justices transform themselves into political figures – the most important and dangerous political figures in the nation.”
Others note that the Democratic Party, whose 2020 platform calls for taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, ardently supported slavery and segregation in the 1860s. “Today&#8217;s party of unlimited abortion was also the party of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and voter suppression,” <a href="https://www.theradiancefoundation.org/">The Radiance Foundation</a>’s chief creative officer, Ryan Bomberger, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/4-lies-the-media-is-telling-about-abortion-and-pro-life-americans">told me</a> earlier this year. “Sadly, the Democratic Party still doesn&#8217;t see us as being created equal and continues to divide us by the color of our skin.”
Bona fide <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2014/03/04/if-pro-lifers-are-racist-how-come-so-many-racists-support-population-control-and-abortion/">white nationalists endorse abortion-on-demand</a>, which disproportionately reduces the birthrate of minorities. A total of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm">117,626</a> black babies were aborted in 2018, according to the CDC’s most recent abortion surveillance.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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&#8220;I&#8217;ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” – President Ronald Reagan
Today is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-at-march-for-life-we-are-fighting-for-those-who-have-no-voice-and-we-will-win">47th March for Life</a> in Washington, D.C. For nearly five decades, dating back to the one-year anniversary of the abominable Roe v. Wade decree, Americans from all walks of life have braved the January cold to march together in solidarity with the most vulnerable subset of the human population: The unborn. It is a remarkable display of unity in defiance of a grave injustice that stains our collective national conscience.
Roe, of course, is just as morally abhorrent as it is constitutionally fabricated. As I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-the-legal-argument-to-overturn-roe">explained</a> earlier this week on Liz Wheeler&#8217;s One America News program, there is nothing whatsoever in the original public meaning or plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause — which states, &#8220;nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law&#8221; — that transmogrifies the inherently elitist U.S. Supreme Court into an institution that can unilaterally impose abortion policy upon a nation as diverse as ours. As U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Judge William Pryor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-judge-william-pryor-is-yet-again-a-victim-of-the-lefts-war-on-truth">said</a> at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Roe is &#8220;unsupported by the text and structure of the Constitution, [and] it has [also] led to a morally wrong result. It has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children.&#8221;
But don&#8217;t take it from just avowed pro-lifers; iconic leftist Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/the-forgotten-history-of-justice-ginsburgs-criticism-of-roe-v-wade/2016/03/01/9ba0ea2e-dfe8-11e5-9c36-e1902f6b6571_story.html">opined</a> that Roe was incorrect, as a matter of law. Ditto famously liberal longtime Harvard Law School professor John Hart Ely, who <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122704335139038479">once said</a> that Roe &#8220;is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.&#8221;
The fight for the unborn is the human rights struggle of our time. The <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1220797862017191943">comparisons</a> to antebellum chattel slavery are <a href="https://www.redstate.com/erick/2015/10/26/yes-the-arguments-for-abortion-do-parallel-the-arguments-defending-slavery/">remarkable</a>: Both involve treating fellow human beings as property to be harmed at will, both were upheld by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds via the Fifth/Fourteenth Amendment <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/five-lessons-abraham-lincoln-would-have-todays-josh-hammer">doctrinal ruse</a> known as &#8220;substantive due process,&#8221; both are deemed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-it-past-time-trump-openly-defy-court-order-josh-hammer">beyond reproach</a> by <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1260996">judicial supremacists</a>, and the opposition to each is led by the Republican Party. As iconic conservative Princeton University professor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-iconic-conservative-leader-requests-ag-barr-address-pornography">Robert P. George</a> co-wrote in 2004 <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2004/08/republicans-and-relics-barbarism-robert-p-george-william-l-saunders/">at National Review</a>: &#8220;For the Republicans&#8221; of the Civil War era, &#8220;the idea that human beings could be reduced to the status of mere &#8216;objects&#8217; to be bought and sold and exploited for the benefit of others was a profound violation of the intrinsic dignity of creatures made in the image and likeness of God.&#8221; Abortion is similarly a &#8220;profound violation of the intrinsic dignity of creatures made in the image and likeness of God.&#8221; &#8221;
The reality is that the conservative movement, and the Republican Party with which it is intertwined, simply must come to view Roe and its murderous progeny as indistinguishable from the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857 that directly precipitated the Civil War. &#8220;As with Roe, the Dred Scott decision lacked any warrant in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution,&#8221; Dr. George wrote four years ago at <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2016/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it">First Things</a>. &#8220;It was, as Abraham Lincoln rightly insisted, an act of judicial will, not law, and as such an assault on the very Constitution in whose name the justices purported to act. Dred Scott, like Roe v. Wade, was a case of judicial usurpation in the cause of mass dehumanization.&#8221;
It is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-president-trump-will-be-the-first-president-to-attend-the-march-for-life-heres-why-that-matters">wonderful</a> that President Donald Trump spoke today to the March for Life. But to oppose abortion yet support judicial supremacy — the notion that the Supreme Court does not merely render judgments for discrete litigants in a given <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii">Article III</a> &#8220;case&#8221; or &#8220;controversy,&#8221; but is the exclusive and final arbiter of broader legal/political principle for the nation — is not to oppose abortion at all. It is self-contradictory and nonsensical. President Trump would do well to<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-it-past-time-trump-openly-defy-court-order-josh-hammer"> follow the lead</a> of his predecessor Abraham Lincoln, who issued the following famous remarks as part of his magisterial <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp">First Inaugural Address</a> (emphasis my own):
<blockquote>I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.</blockquote>
Roe is not merely a human rights tragedy of unfathomable scale. It is also a bastardization of our entire system of self-governance. It is a bastardization of the republicanism upon which the nation was founded. And it deserves to be treated with no more dignity than the righteous irreverence with which Lincoln treated Dred Scott.

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March For Life

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Roe v. Wade is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jacobs-why-the-u-s-supreme-court-needs-to-recognize-fetal-rights">essence of science denial</a>, and it has been for nearly 50 years. Yet the 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidates share a vision of America that centers around Roe and its long-debunked scientific notions about human biology.
Ever since the first Democratic presidential debates, the candidates have increasingly asserted their fervent belief in Roe v. Wade — a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-alabama-legislature-right-openly-defy-josh-hammer">fallacious decision</a> that is based upon and perpetuates erroneous and obsolete ideas that contradict the fundamental, objective scientific facts of the biological science of human embryology. The most egregious, blatant, and disingenuous of all Roe&#8216;s distortions is its central tenet that it remains a mystery when human life begins.
More, in order to completely obscure the biological truth and redefine human reproduction to satisfy their political point of view, the politicians have announced numerous policies to augment Roe, including the promise to codify this toxic source of misinformation about human development.
Roe v. Wade declares: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man&#8217;s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
Since when should those in “medicine, philosophy, and theology” be consulted for such a specifically biological issue when they have no such academic expertise? Most philosophers and theologians have never had a graduate course in biology, much less in human embryology, and most physicians briefly learn about human embryology as part of a broader anatomy course and are not properly considered “scientists.” Human embryology is the study of development of the new individual from beginning to end and is the only science that specializes in when a human life starts; solely the testimonies of those biologists with doctoral degrees in human embryology should, in theory, be consulted. Yet not one human embryologist was allowed to testify during the Roe litigation.
In addition, to help rationalize the decision to reject the concept of “personhood” of the human embryo and fetus until “viability,” cited at the time to be between 24 and 28 weeks, Roe refers to ancient scientific ideas about human reproduction when it claims: “There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth. This was the belief of the Stoics.”
The Stoics were a group of Greek philosophers, existing around 300 B.C.E. Are the Democratic presidential candidates endorsing the suggestion that human biology has not advanced for more than 2000 years — and that it will never do so?
Among the scientific experts, there is and has long been an international consensus regarding the beginning of a human life. When a human being — an individual, living member of the human species — begins to exist has been known and documented for more than 100 years and was instituted in 1942 in the Carnegie Stages of Human Embryonic Development. The Carnegie Stages continue to be refined and advanced as the global standard of human embryological research, and <a href="https://www.medicalmuseum.mil/assets/documents/collections/hdac/stage01.pdf">Carnegie Stage 1</a> still documents human sexual reproduction.
Carnegie Stage 1 states that all sexually reproduced human beings begin to exist at the start of the process of fertilization (Carnegie Stage 1a). Human embryologists know that fertilization also initiates the continuum of human life — in other words, after fertilization, the new human being does not become a different kind of thing. He or she continues to grow and develop as the same human organism throughout the rest of the embryonic period, the fetal period, and then after birth, during the subsequent stages of life.
Thus, the term “human embryo” or “human fetus” is simply the scientific name for an already-existing human being during the embryonic or fetal period of human development. Thus, for sexually reproduced human beings, &#8220;personhood&#8221; begins at fertilization, not at “viability,” “first breath,” or some later point that conveniently fits a popular political, social, or economic narrative.
Under the Supreme Court’s current abortion jurisprudence precedent, as established in Roe v. Wade and modified/upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, states are still prohibited from applying the objective scientific facts and banning abortion prior to “viability.” However, as medical technology has improved, Roe’s fetal “viability” threshold has moved back from 28 weeks — not forward to 40 weeks as imagined by the Democratic presidential hopefuls. In the U.S., infants born at 22 weeks gestation have a nearly 25% survival rate and in Japan, the survival rate is over 30%. In Sweden, for infants younger than 22 weeks gestation, the survival rate has improved from 3.6% to 20% over the last decade.
Rather than pledging allegiance to, expanding upon, and imposing their misconceptions and Roe v. Wade’s absurd “scientific” myths on the American people, the Democratic presidential candidates should acknowledge that the immediate product of human sexual reproduction is both a human being and a human person — and renounce public policies and laws that do not reflect this scientific reality.
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Brooke Stanton is the CEO of Contend Projects, a registered 501(c)(3) education organization spreading the basic, accurate scientific facts about when a human life starts and the biological science of human embryology.

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