Andrea Jesse's Blog: 2023

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4291122-the-attempt-to-bar-trump-under-the-14th-amendment-explained/ The idea of barring Trump from holding office is based on the 14th Amendment. Section 3 of the amendment notes that no one can hold office if, having previously done so and taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The former president encouraged the Capitol insurrection by his words and actions. Those include repeated, false claims of election fraud as well as his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, in which he contended that people had to “fight like hell” to overturn the election result or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” In scholarly circles, the argument got a big boost when a paper emerged in August from two members of the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group. William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas Law School argued that the amendment, which dates back to the Civil War era, “remains an enforceable part of the Constitution.” They added that the amendment “in particular … disqualifies former President Donald Trump and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.”