Between abortion and Trump, the 14th Amendment has become the Left’s Swiss Army Knife
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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A century and a half ago, the United States ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which ensured that formerly enslaved people were granted equal rights and citizenship while disqualifying unrepentant Confederates from government offices. This was in response to the horrors of 10 million would-be Americans enslaved and up to 1 million Americans dead as a result of the Civil War. Naturally, the progressive legal movement has decided to pervert this legal landmark in its ceaseless war against Donald Trump.
In a reckless crossing of the legal Rubicon, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the former president was disqualified from the state’s Republican presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, arguing that Trump engaged in an insurrection. This is not just despite the fact that the prohibitive front-runner of the GOP primary — and the general election against Joe Biden — has never been charged in criminal court with, let alone convicted of, engaging in an insurrection. This is also in defiance of all historical precedent.
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Even after the Amendment’s passage, President Ulysses S. Grant exempted the overwhelming majority of Confederates from disqualification from office with the passage of the Amnesty Act. Even Gen. Robert E. Lee and presidential pretender Jefferson Davis were posthumously waived from their Section 3 qualification. Between Reconstruction and 2021, Section 3 succeeded in unseating only one politician from his elected seat, socialist Victor Berger, under the guise of violating the Espionage Act, another civil liberties atrocity weaponized against Trump — but the Supreme Court eventually overturned Berger’s disqualification. Even in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots, only one public official has been successfully removed from office under Section 3: Couy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner who physically climbed over barriers and walls to invade the Capitol and was convicted of trespassing.
Donald Trump has not been convicted of any violent crime against property or a person, let alone something tantamount to an insurrection, let alone literally anything at all. Even special counsel Jack Smith’s sweeping indictment against Trump related to his admittedly abhorrent actions surrounding the 2020 election does not include anything related to insurrection, just obstruction of election proceedings and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and against rights more broadly.
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Considering that four rounds of criminal charges against Trump have correlated with his rise in both primary and general election polling, the state court’s ruling — which will surely be overturned by the federal Supreme Court, not implausibly by a 9-0 ruling — will only serve to cement Trump’s dominance in his party.
We’ve seen the progressive legal movement contort the 14th Amendment for its own political purposes, more perniciously in the 50-year lie of Roe v. Wade, and most recently with the Obergefell v. Hodges decision’s shaky assertion that marriage equality is a matter of constitutional promise rather than a product of democratic assent. Now, to punish Trump for his supposed affront against democracy, four unelected justices have attempted to disenfranchise half of the state. Alas, if another country did such a thing, liberals might understand that it is indeed undemocratic. Either way, it’s a bastardization of an amendment departed far, far away from its original intent and text.