U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jamie Raskin are taking up the challenge from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court ruled Monday that states couldn’t keep former President Donald Trump off their ballots by invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, added after the Civil War to prevent people who had engaged in insurrection against the U.S. from holding office again.
The justices said it was up to Congress, not the states to enforce the provision.
All nine justices said it was in Congress’ hands. A narrower majority of five conservatives went further, ruling it can only be done through legislation.
The two Democratic members of Congress said Tuesday they are setting out to do just that.
In 2022 they introduced legislation on the subject, and are now working on revisions to incorporate what the Supreme Court said. New legislation could come within days. The legislation would create a federal judicial process to determine whether a defendant is in fact an insurrectionist.
“The Supreme Court held that states cannot block insurrectionists from running for federal office unless Congress has acted first to identify and disqualify them under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Wasserman Schultz and Raskin said in a joint statement Tuesday.
“While we question the court’s flight from the plain meaning of the constitutional language and from the plain facts of the case, as well as its odd refusal to say what the law is, we are working now to revise our previous bill to provide the closely tailored enabling legislation that the Court is now requiring. Our bill affirms the constitutional directive that anyone who swears to protect the Constitution but violates that oath by engaging in insurrection or rebellion can never serve again in federal or state office,” they said.
They said Speaker Mike Johnson “must permit” a full House vote on their proposal. There’s virtually zero chance of that happening since he, like all other House Republican leaders, have endorsed Trump for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
Trump dismissed Wasserman Schultz and Raskin’s move during a phone interview with the Fox & Friends program on Tuesday.
“It’s the same losers. They’re real losers,” Trump said. “It’s the same voices, the same faces. They never stop.”
Wasserman Schultz, who represents part of Broward County, is the senior Democrat in the Florida congressional delegation. She is also a former chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Raskin, of Maryland, is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. He was the lead impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of Trump and served on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the disqualification clause, automatically bars from service those 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” unless Congress restores their right to hold office by a two-thirds vote.
Legal scholars — including one of the nation’s preeminent conservative legal thinkers and members of the conservative Federalist Society — have argued the 14th Amendment unquestionably applies to Trump, and prohibits him from another term as president.
The lawyers for Republican and independent voters who sued to remove Trump’s name from the Colorado ballot had argued that there is ample evidence that the events of Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection and that it was incited by Trump.
Trump’s lawyers mounted several arguments for why the amendment can’t be used to keep him off the ballot. They contended the Jan. 6 riot wasn’t an insurrection and, even if it was, Trump did not go to the Capitol or join the rioters. The wording of the amendment also excludes the presidency and candidates running for president, they said.
This report contains information from The Associated Press.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Facebook, Threads.net and Post.news.