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.
Look at the wording - it’s clearly intended to be an automatic disqualification. The only way you could possibly arrive at the conclusion that the Office of the President is exempt from this section is by jumping through frankly absurd and facile semantic hoops.
But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Pointedly, the only way Congress should be involved (per the relevant section) is in rescinding the disqualification.
Again it did not pass the 2/3 rule. That is critical to make it lawful. I don't know why that is so hard to understand.
I get it. Trump is a sedacious bastards. But regardless they have yet to convict him of that in the legal court or within the Senate. Ones of those needs to have happened and it has not.
And by the way it is not uncommon. Was done to Clinton for what amounted to a private matter but again did not pass the Senate and thus it did not effect his access to office. As it shouldn't have in his case.
Right? I mean if justice can be aborted/ sidetracked by a simple appeal, how effective is it? Surely he was found to be liable by a judge, the ruling should stand during the appeal, not be put on hold.
This take is wildly ahistorical. Confederates were barred from office without being impeached. Impeachment is not mentioned in the 14th amendment at all. In fact, it explicitly mentions a remedy for people who have committed insurrection: the Congress can vote by 2/3 majority to reinstate an insurrectionist's right to hold public office.
As a non-American, I beg you, get rid of Trump. You're the most powerful country in the world, your election has so much impact outside your borders, we are looking at it and are expecting...
What happens in November ? We don't know and it's kinda scary...
We’re trying. 60 million of us (about 18%) are mentally defective backward degenerates that hold disproportionate power in our idiotic electoral system. The tyranny of this minority brought you trump.
I think that argument might convince people to vote for trump tbh. More and more it looks like the US had way too much power and uses it for evil and maybe voting for the dude that will cause its downfall will be the best thing for the rest of the world
This is not ending with a Biden win. If Trump loses there are others waiting to take up the mantle. People that will look better (not physically) on paper so to speak. They will appeal to the more Traditional conservative, the mainstream.
A Trump loss will force MAGA back, after a bit of grumbling and violence, then they will become quiet. Not all of them. But the next fight will be 2026, 2028, 2030, etc. Though my belief thinks a better than Trump candidate will definitely be 2028 the next presidential election.
This Insurrection isn't over for them...just like the Civil War never ended for them. They have patience.
We must remain vigilant and push for more equality for all.
The impossible needs to happen. We need constitutional amendments to further define and protect our democracy. But that would require those in power to be willing to close the gaps to limit individuals and party power, and I think very few in state houses (states have to ratify amendments) or Congress want to do that. It's like the poor man who wants to protect the rich man's wealth from taxes because someday he will be rich too.
A constitutional amendment will never occur again, because it is an incredibly high bar to overcome even when the legislative process in the country isn't as dysfunctional.
One party would need a super majority in both houses of Congress, where the bar is 2/3 but you're probably going to need at least ten more than that to prevent the amendment from being scrapped by a contingent of Joe Liebermans.
Then that same party will need a majority in the state legislatures of 38 states to ratify the amendment.
It's not the scary foreigners. It's "our" rich people who have bought out the system and molded it to their liking. Capitalism always turns into fascism as the system crumbles under its own weight unless something drastic occurs.
yeah, a bunch of corrupted fascists and genocide supporters greedy for money who brought humanity to the bring of extinction with their wars and polluting the environment for profits winning again and staying in power would be the biggest win of your lives.
They'll sacrifice their lives for a person who is demonstrably the actual biggest loser in history, and he just gets more loser-y, folks, okay... If any of you are starting to have your memories fade, here's a quick refresher to read this morning and then copy and send to your aunt karen in Missouri.
0 re-elections won
1 term president
2 times impeached
3 marriages
4 inch lifts in his shoes
5 kids, from 3 different mothers
6 bankruptcies
7 US Capitol police suing him for Jan 6 terrorist insurrection and murder of police
8 trillion + dollars added to the US debt in a single term
9 trump lawyers sanctioned by federal judge for lying in frivolous election fraud lawsuits and ordered to pay defendant's legal fees
10 years that trump paid $0 in income taxes between 2000 and 2015. ($0 to cops, teachers, roads, prisons, disaster relief, etc)
11 trump associates charged with serious crimes over the past 5 years
12 million votes (the big lie) - trump claims he won the 2020 election by 12 million votes when in reality, he lost by about 7 million votes.
13 of August, 2021 - one of multiple days that trump was supposed to magically become president again according to Qanon and a crack addicted pillow salesman (the two most respected information sources in the gop)
14 year old girl in a youth choir that trump approached in 1992 to say, "Wow! Just think - in a couple years I'll be dating you."
15 originally confirmed cases of COVID in the US trump said would soon be, “down to close to zero.” followed by, “like a miracle, it will disappear.” - over 1,000,000 Americans have since died of COVID and it continues to kill 4 years later.
16 years old - age of daughter ivanka when she hosted "miss teen" pageant and, according to long time trump associate Noel Casler, "trump called her over in the middle of a rehearsal and had her give him a lap dance while he leered at the crew."
17 known trump and russia investigations from local, state and federal prosecutors
18 gop senators that ignored trump threats / warnings and supported Biden admin's infrastructure bill.
19 as in COVID19 - trump was verified as the single largest source of disinformation on the virus, with a Cornell study claiming that 38% of the "misinformation conversation" originated with trump
20 the day in January, 2021, when Biden was sworn in despite trump inciting a violent insurrection to stop election verification at the US Capitol.
21 gun salute that trump ordered for himself when he left office after a humiliating defeat, even though he never served in the military, famously called military members "losers" and "suckers" and actively avoided the draft with a cowardly "bone spurs" excuse.
22 date in August, 2021, when Alabama hate rally crowd booed trump for finally saying people should get vaccinated, only after 700,000 Americans have died due mostly to his failure as president
23 as in wrestlemania 23 in 2007 where trump, a cartoon level failure with no other prospects, participated in a fake bet that a proxy wrestler would win a fake fight on his behalf or he would shave his wig and hair plugs off.
24 day in August, 2021, when trump actually filed a lawsuit in Florida court against YouTube, a private company, demanding that they reinstate his YouTube channel like a desperate, irrelevant embarrassment with no platforms left to abuse.
25 plus credible sexual assault allegations against trump, spanning decades and with accusers starting as young as 13 years old at time of assault.
It's great to see this optimism here. Wish I could muster that. Everything he's done seems so impossible to me but time after time he wins and wins and gets away with so many terrible things. There is an ocean of support behind this madness and it seems like things aren't nearly different enough than they were 8 years ago. I once thought him being elected was impossible, now it feels almost inevitable. A star is collapsing and he is the black hole at the center.
I hope you are right, I support these efforts and I'm not giving up, but man it's hard not to feel futillistic when the horned beast arises from the gauntlet unscathed time after time.
I have zero faith in Thomas or Alito. Gorsuch and Kavenaugh, while bad overall, have managed to surprise me a few times. While both were appointed by Trump, they haven't been the MAGA loyalists I expected so far.
Gorsuch actually wrote the majority opinion on Bostock v Clayton County, guaranteeing sexual orientation as a protected class. He's also been a defender of Native American rights and his Originalist tendencies focusing on Founders Intent when it comes to legislation may be helpful since those actually barred from office following the Civil War weren't convicted in a court prior to their prohibition from office. He also Clerked under Justice Kennedy.
Kavenaugh has always been a partisan. He was Counsel for George W Bush and the was an author of the Star Report leading to the impeachment of Clinton. His approach to the law involves strict interpretation of language, and less of a focus on intent. The question of whether the 14th amendment applies to the President will be a big part of his decision, as other elected positions are specifically named.
But he also Clerked for Kennedy, and has been less-partisan than expected from the bench. He's the idealolgical center of the Court (the most-partisan justices are Alito, Thomas, and Kagan). He voted with Roberts (the least-partian justice) 95 percent of the time in the last term, and the justice with whom he disagreed more than any other was actually Thomas.
He was also the majority opinion on 96 percent of cases, though that's a little misleading because the justices agree more than they don't. The justice with the lowest rate of being in the majority last term was Thomas followed by Alito, who were still in the majority on 76 and 80 percent of cases, respectively.
And even Barrett could have been worse, though she's definitely the worst of the 3, and even more painful is that she replaced RBG. Interestingly though, Dobbs v Jackson is the only 5-4 case where she joined the majority opinion during her tenure.
Idealogically, all 3 Trump appointees are closer to center than any of the liberal justices. I don't like any of them, but the worst justices on the Court are still Thomas and Alito.
I'm excited with how much steam/momentum Vivek Ramaswamy is getting. He's the first politician running under the Republican party that I know would actually be GREAT for the country since Ron Paul. There are literally no other candidates in the two major parties that are worth their weight in a sneeze.
Edit: How do I already have three downvotes less than one minute after posting this? What kind of bot bullshit do we have going on here? I can't imagine people are THAT blinded by their biases.
The annoying billionaire who acts like a sleazy used car salesman? The guy who has been praising and endorsing Trump during his own campaign (nice strategy there)? The guy who made a large chunk of his money by investing in a business started by his friend, Martin Shkreli (who was sent to prison for fraud)?
Yeah, seems like a pretty good Republican candidate to me. I can't imagine why anyone would downvote your opinion on Lemmy, of all places. It must be bots.
Ron Paul is essentially the father of the Tea Party wing of the Republicans, which with all of their "Stop Obama" campaigns and fear-mongering paved the way for Trump and the far-right turn of the GOP. His brand of Libertarianism revels in a house divided and non-working. He is a walking billboard for 'starve the beast' political ideology, where government programs are neutered to the point of being useless, and therefore justifying their cancelation.
Ron Paul has helped to serve you the America you currently live in. Fuck Boy Ramaswamy is a pale comparison of Paul, in that he spouts some of the rhetoric, but I get the impression he has even less ideological fortitude, and is very much in it for himself. For all Ron Paul's faults, he has been principaled in his politics (even if they are to the detriment of the country).
He's just as unhinged as Trump and that's why you're being downvoted, but okay, I'll bite the obvious bait... What about his platform do you think is so great for America?