Below is my column in USA Today on the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court to reject the disqualification of former president Donald Trump from the 2024 election. Some Democrats are now seeking to resume the effort through Congress to prevent voters from being able to vote for the leading candidate for the presidency.
Here is the column:
“Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.” Those words from the Supreme Court in its Trump v. Anderson ruling on Monday put an end to the effort of Democratic secretaries of state to engage in ballot cleansing by removing former President Donald Trump from the 2024 election.
The court’s decision was one of the most important and impactful moments in its history.
During the first Trump impeachment in 2019, I cautioned Democrats not to toss aside constitutional standards out of their hatred for the president. I quoted from the play “A Man For All Seasons,” when Sir Thomas More is told by his son-in-law that he would “cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” More responded, “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”
As More described England, the United States also is “planted thick with laws, from coast to coast.” The nation’s highest court on Monday decided to leave them standing.
After months of activists and experts calling for the court to allow ballot cleansing by individual states, the justices refused. Figures like Harvard professor Laurence Tribe had insisted that the legal theory allowing Trump’s removal from ballots was “unassailable” and rejected opposing positions as “absurd.”
Many news outlets posted the analysis of former federal court Judge J. Michael Luttig, who also called the theory “unassailable” and denounced the arguments against disqualification as “revealing, fatuous, and politically and constitutionally cynical.” He predicted that the court would simply affirm the Colorado Supreme Court.
Democratic members of Congress further pushed the narrative that only judicial activists and MAGA justices would oppose disqualification. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., declared: “This is their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.”
Well, the court rejected that “unassailable” theory in a unanimous decision. While Tribe’s view was repeated with little contradiction on many networks and newspapers for months, it failed to garner a single vote from either the left or the right of the court.
Things are not going well for those seeking to remake the nation. In 2020, Harvard professor Michael Klarman warned that all of the plans to change the country were ultimately dependent on packing the court. With the 2020 election, he stated that Democrats could change the election system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.”
However, Klarman conceded that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described,” so the court itself had to be changed.
Now that the three progressive justices have joined their conservative colleagues in ruling for Trump, they apparently also will have to go. Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann declared that “the Supreme Court has betrayed democracy. Its members including Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor have proved themselves inept at reading comprehension. And collectively the ‘court’ has shown itself to be corrupt and illegitimate. It must be dissolved.”
The problem for many on the left is that the unanimous decision shattered the narrative repeated for months that Colorado would be reversed because the conservative justices would robotically protect Trump (despite the fact that they have repeatedly ruled against Trump and his policies). Now, by Rep. Raskin’s measure, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are no longer acting as “real Supreme Court justices.”
Supreme Court transcended ideological divisions
The fact is that the Supreme Court justices have proved, again, that they are precisely the “real Supreme Court justices” that the Founding Fathers envisioned. The court was created to be able to transcend our divisions and politics. On Monday, a court sharply divided along ideological grounds showed the nation that it could speak with one voice. In doing so, it spoke to the things that bind us to each other, including an article of faith in our Constitution that defines us all.
In the news media and in universities, there is a persistent message that the court and the Constitution are the problem. In a New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically” altered to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks previously went on MSNBC to warn citizens not to become “slaves” to the Constitution and that the Constitution itself is now the problem for the country.
Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin even called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.”
The lumberjack school of constitutional law is the rage on our campuses. Free from the obstructions of constitutional demands, activists (and a newly constituted court) could set about pursuing the devil as a nation of Ropers.
Supreme Court ruling provides moment of clarity
Despite the push of court packing and extreme interpretations of the law, most Americans continue to cling to America’s core institutions and constitutional values.
For those reasons, this opinion could be one of the most significant in the court’s history, not because of what it did but what it would not allow to be done.
It is a moment of clarity for a nation mired in rage politics. It was not just the opinion that brought that clarity but what followed the opinion.
A day after the unanimous ruling, millions of citizens will line up at polling places around the country to vote for their preferred candidates. It is their choice and privilege as citizens. They are also speaking with one voice. Not for a particular party or person, but as free people claiming their right to choose their own leaders.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @JonathanTurley
Point1 : Yes, the judgement was unanimous and clear, went to the obvious; yet, not many noticed that section 3 can be applied by States for State Offices, but not to Federal Offices, that was the point, and it respect the basis of the “Strong Union” goals of the Framers. But again the press doesn’t focus on very interesting concurrent opinions all filed by Females while the “boys” were all satisfied with the Opinion. This is the first I believe in this new Court, such a clear division around the sexes. Barrett only agrees with segments of the opinion but fully with the Judgment while Kagan, Sotomayor ad Jackson only agree with the Judgment.
Barrett uses a some sarcastic tone in the pressing matter of the case, did she want to develop on the opinion but was pressured not to.. She writes: “In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency.” Am I reading too much into this.
Well when one reads the second concurrent opinion, things get clearer, as Barrett three colleagues write: “It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.”
This means that the Opinion appears to put any other federal remedy to address the situation except potential statutes from Congress which have yet to be written. What exactly were they thinking of. Was there duress around the table. What other remedies were they thinking of?
Point 2: Jonathan mentions that the “extreme” or “activist” press or participants to the discussion are trying to redraw the Constitution with progressive constitutionalism.
Yes, but the right conservative Christian culture is also trying to redraw the constitution in a more authoritarian and Christian manner, and in this approach, any signs point to States acting in controversy to the US Constitution in the hope probably of maybe erasing old precedents and creating new ones. The threat of the US becoming a Christian theocracy is real.
Just look at Iowa reviewing Assembly and Free Speech laws. In a text passed in 2021, the “Senate File 342” (https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/LGE/89/SF342.pdf) has 15 lines describing the crime of defaming the US Flag, while SCOTUS wrote the Texas vs Johnson precedent on the same subject, and where even Justice Scalia, a proud Christian conservative, joined the majority in expressing Burning the Flag is a Protected Speech.
Here is the text of the Iowa Law (I’m not sure I have the final version, it was obtained through an NBCnews link yesterday), I follow with the conclusion of the Texas vs Johnson opinion.
f. (1) Knowingly and publicly uses the flag of the United States in such a manner as to show disrespect for the flag as a symbol of the United States, with the intent or reasonable expectation that such use will provoke or encourage another to commit trespass or assault.
33 (2) As used in this paragraph:
34 (a) “Deface” means to intentionally mar the external appearance.
1 (b) “Defile” means to intentionally make physically unclean.
2 (c) “Flag” means a piece of woven cloth or other material designed to be flown from a pole or mast.
4 (d) “Mutilate” means to intentionally cut up or alter so a to make imperfect.
6 (e) “Show disrespect” means to deface, defile, mutilate, or trample.
8 (f) “Trample” means to intentionally tread upon or intentionally cause a machine, vehicle, or animal to tread upon.
11 (3) This paragraph does not apply to a flag retirement ceremony conducted pursuant to federal law.
But Texas vs Johnson concludes its 1989 opinion with:
“The Government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable, even where our flag is involved. Nor may a State foster its own view of the flag by prohibiting expressive conduct relating to it, since the Government may not permit designated symbols to be used to communicate a limited set of messages. Moreover, this Court will not create an exception to these principles protected by the First Amendment for the American flag alone…” Affirmed.”
What Democrat’s forget is what comes around, goes around. During Trump’s years in office thye bristled at his Supreme Court nominations being approved by a simple majority. They conveniently forgot Harry Reid had changed the rules from a requirement of 60 votes to a simple majority when the Democrats majority fell below 60 seats in the Senate. At some point the behavior being visited upon Trump will be visited upon the Democrats…all for a good cause mind you.
So basically Harry Reid is responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned? Yeah I guess he is. And for one week during the Kavanaugh confirmation process my two favorite senators were Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins. I never thought I’d say that but it’s true.
“So basically Harry Reid is responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned? Yeah I guess he is.”
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One of the wonderful things I enjoy from the Catholic faith is the recurring theme that the Divine is ever-ready to use the least likely and most unworthy vessels to carry out His will. As Martin Luther popularized, “God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.” Amen, brother.
Mespo – crooked sticks to draw straight lines, that’s good. But do you find it at all ironic to be quoting Martin Luther in support of a Catholic principle?
omk:
Luther may just have been the most “Catholic” of everyone involved in that indulgence arbitrage racket. And as you know, he was Catholic when he said it but it was around before he said it.
Professor Turley Writes:
“Now that the three progressive justices have joined their conservative colleagues–
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We’re supposed to think Kagen, Sotomayor and Jackson are Bernie Bros? ..Since when..?? How does Turley know that???
Seems like Turley is just sticking the ‘progressive label on these women in an arbitrary fashion. Like, “If you’re not a Trumper, you’re a Bernie Bro”.
This line of thinking is a backdoor way of mainstreaming both the radical left and radical right. Like, “You’re either one of us, or one of them”.
For the record those 3 judges only concurred that we can’t have a patchwork of different state laws for presidential elections. And that is consistent with their opposition to Dobbs, where a patchwork of different state abortion laws has been an abject failure.
But the 6 Federalists are too partisan to see the hypocrisy of their double standard. They prefer to cherrypick when the patchwork system can and cannot work.
LOL. Anything not radical left is radical right…Same old BS over and over and over again.
The three dingbats are addled by the “living constitution” or postmodernism theory, anything can mean anything crap. The others are not so much like that, fortunately, which does not make them radical, but simply going their GD jobs.
Democrats are abusing positions of authority to try to interfere in elections. Again.
Comey protected Hillary Clinton after she was caught keeping top secret information on a bootleg server in her bathroom, which she uploaded to the Cloud, and wiped with BleachBit while under subpoena. People go to prison for a fraction of the offenses she committed. Comey interfered with the election by shielding her from the same prosecution that anyone else would face.
On the other hand, Democrat prosecutors and Judge Engoron abused their authority, and charged Trump with fraud because they did not agree with how he valued his buildings on business loans. The banks had the purview to disagree with his assessment and do their own due diligence. Engoron fined Trump half a billion dollars, which he has to pay in order to appeal. Democrat NYC has driven out taxpayers, so now they’re trying to seize the assets of a political rival to make up the shortfall, and materially damage his reelection efforts.
Democrats in the intelligence community pretended that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, to meddle in the elections.
Democrats in state government have barred Trump, and other Republicans, from ballots, to interfere with elections.
Karen, many would say Republicans should nominate a candidate who’s NOT facing charges. That way they’ll know that candidate might still be available on Election Day.
Like when did it become normal for parties to nominate indicted candidates??
And ‘yes’, Democrats should nominate a candidate who’s under 60.
Judge Engoron didn’t “charge” anyone with anything, because that’s not what judges do–it’s the duty of the prosecuting attorney. And, this is a civil case, not a criminal case, so there weren’t any “charges” in the first place. The NY AG brought claims for fraud on financial institutions. The issue is not a disagreement on how Trump “valued his buildings” on financial statements–it was a pattern of egregious lying to a degree that the judge found “shocking to the conscience”. For the same time period, Trump devalued properties for tax purposes (so as to pay lower taxes) and egregiously inflated the values of the same properties in order to qualify to borrow more money on better terms than if he had told the truth. One example: his Trump Tower apartment is less than 11,000 sq. ft, but he claimed it was 33,000 sq.ft.. The issue before the Court was not whether lenders had the ability or even some duty to investigate, but rather, Trump lied repeatedly on financial forms. Whether the bank investigates is irrelevant to the fact that Trump lied, repeatedly. Whether the lenders could have discovered he was lying and whether he defaulted are not defenses to falsification of financial statements. His accountant, Alan Weisselberg, testified that the Trump Tower apartment alone was overvalued to the tune of $200 million. The issue before the Court was not whether Trump actually defaulted, either–the point was he could have defaulted, and the loss would have damaged the lenders and their honest customers. Also, by lying to obtain bigger loans based on fraud, there was less money available to loan to honest borrowers. The issue of default was not speculative–Trump has already taken bankruptcy 6 times. New York is the financial capital of the world, and that’s why the State of New York has laws to punish those who lie in order to qualify to borrow other people’s money on more favorable terms–to promote stability of the financial market. The damage award by Judge Engoron is based on the value Trump obtained by his fraudulent conduct–how is that unfair? The fact that it is a large number reflects the fact that the extent of benefit he obtained by fraud was large–“shocking to the conscience” according to Judge Engoron–so, we’re not talking about a few thousand dollars about which people could disagree. Should Trump just get away with lying about his assets in order to borrow other people’s money? The Hunter Biden laptop is a nothingburger. Republicans are the ones using the laptop to smear Joe Biden even though they have not come up with even a shred of evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong.
Trump wa barred from the ballot in Colorado and other states because HE chose to lie about losing in 2020, stirred up his fans to go after Pence and Congress, tried to bully Secretaries of State into awarding him votes he didn’t get, got fake electors to falsify Electoral College documents saying he had won when he hadn’t, and incited an attack on our Capitol as a last-ditch effort to keep power he stole in the first place. TRUMP CHOSE to do these things–which are not opinions or speculation–it was an effort to cheat to stay into office based on fraud–lying that he really won when he really lost. It’s not Democrats doing anything to Trump. Trump should be held to account for the Big Lie and for January 6th, including the death of Ashli Babbitt, who died because she believed his lies.
nice to see GiGi scan the Internet and copy and paste from several left-wing sites, then she comes here and lifts clever words, sayings, phrases, then she throws them all together to “create” her own Opus as above^^^^. Only, it’s not hers. she does this every day. (pretty soon we will see her using the word Opus.) you go girl!
Trial Delays Exploit Ignorance Of Indictments
A Jan. 30-Feb. 1 YouGov survey asked voters whether they knew a) that Trump has “been charged with falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star”; b) that he “has been charged with taking highly classified documents from the White House and with obstructing efforts to retrieve them; c) that he “has been charged with conspiring to overturn the results of a presidential election”; and d) that he “has been charged with attempting to obstruct the certification of a presidential election.”
Twenty percent to 25 percent of those surveyed said they did not know and 20 percent to 25 percent said they were “not sure” what the charges against Trump were — in other words, nearly half of those surveyed had little or no comprehension of the array of allegations against him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/opinion/trump-trials-supreme-court.html
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SCOTUS provides Trump with a huge boost by delaying the main obstruction trial. The less people know about that case, the better for Trump. The 6 Federalists know this and it’s good for them. If Trump comes back to power, more Federalist judges.
Yeah you tried that before, troll, and it got deleted. Nobody cares about your crying little eyes. Mommy, Scotus provided Trump with a “huge boost.” Mommy make Scotus go away. Boo hoo!
Yeah, that’s right–keep the gullible ignorant and/or claim that charges against Trump are all baseless and politically-motivated by Democrats, which is why NewsMax, OAN, Brietbart, InfoWars and other pro-Trump media that came about because Fox wasn’t pro-Trump enough, either ignore these cases, outright lie about the facts and/or falsely accuse prosecutors of political motivation. So Trump falsified election finance statements by misrepresenting hush money paid to a porn actress as a legitimate business expense. Is that important? The answer is: why do we have laws requiring reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures and why are they important? Because the American people deserve to know who is financing political campaigns, that contributions from donors are being spent on legitimate campaign expenses and that the donated money is not misused, all of which promotes integrity of our elections.
How about stealing classified documents, flashing them around to show off for young female staffers, returning some, lying about returning all of them, moving them around to prevent the FBI and attorneys from finding them, storing them in unsecure locations, lying about “declassifying” them by mental telepathy, and then accusing political motivation for charging him criminally over this conduct? What’s the point of having agencies that generate documents determine that documents should be “classified” in the first place–national security for our most-secret and important information that could damage our national safety, disclose and jeopardize sources and methods, disclose strengths and vulnerabilities, disclose weapon systems and tip off our enemies as to who are spies are. If such information got into the wrong hands, people could die, our relations with allies could be compromised, weapons and security systems could be compromed and unimaginably bad things could happen, which is why documents containing this information are “classified”. They are not some kind of “prize” to be shown off by an emotionally insecure person who is not a patriot and who cares more about boasting and showing that no one can tell him him what to do than national security.
Then, there’s the insurrection. What would have happed to American democracy if Trump got away with stopping Congress from certifying Biden’s win by his fans violently attacking the Capitol, killing the VP and Pelosi, if he could have bullied Secretaries of State into awarding him votes he didn’t get based on lying, and if the falisified Electoral College documents had gone through instead of the true electoral college documents? There would be no point to holding elections–because Americans’ votes wouldn’t matter. THAT’s what almost happened, and that’s the danger Trump poses–a bevy of gullible people who believe his lies and will do his bidding. Trump needs to be tried for this conduct before the Election. By delaying the decision on presidential immunity, the SCOTUS may be helping Trump get away with these crimes because he will try to pardon himself if he cheats his way back into office (which he most certainly will, because that is what he does). This decision could not be more urgent because time is of the essence. The SCOTUS appears to be dragging its feet, and if it prevents a trial before the Election and Trump pardons himself, the SCOTUS will have helped the biggest threat to democracy get away with trying to steal an election. The issues have been briefed. Most legal scholars agree Trump will lose the immunity argument. The SCOTUS has proven it can act with expediency when it chooses to help Trump–like it did with the Colorado decision–so why won’t it act swiftly to put to rest the issue of presidential immunity?
Go back to step one, fool.
NDAs are ubiquitous, customary, traditional, and legal.
The ho breached a valid contract.
You have a whole lot of prosecutin’ to do, pardner.
Trump FALSIFIED campaign finance records by misrepresenting hush money as a legitimate campaign expense. YOU go back one step, fool
Sounds like Democrat John Edwards to me.
Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin even called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.”
Isn’t this so-called “popular constitutionalism” just a re-hashed version of Ed Meese’s “Executive Power of Constitutional Interpretation” that became the subject of intense debate in the 1980s, when there was a right-leaning executive and a left-leaning court? See Edwin Meese III, The Law of the Constitution, 61 Tul. L. Rev. 991 (1987) (reprinting a 1986 speech) (speech linked below). Back then academics dismissed the notion as ridiculous and dangerous. But now that we have a right-leaning court and a left-leaning executive, academics suddenly love the idea.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/08/23/10-21-1986.pdf
“The fact is that the Supreme Court justices have proved, again, that they are precisely the ‘real Supreme Court justices’ that the Founding Fathers envisioned.”
– Professor Turley
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The “’real Supreme Court justices’ that the Founding Fathers envisioned” implemented the clear meaning and intent of the Constitution of the Founding Fathers:
– Removal by States of a presidential candidate from the ballot, 2024, is unconstitutional and only Congress has the power, exclusively, to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot.
– Abortion, per Roe v. Wade, 1973, was and is unconstitutional understanding that abortion is a legal issue reserved to the States.
The Supreme Court Justices have “…declared all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
The Supreme Court has and must place America squarely under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Supreme Court must now strike down every aspect and facet of the communist welfare state as unconstitutional violations of Article 1, Section 8, the enumerated powers to tax and regulate, and it must strike down all infringements of the 5th Amendment right to private property.
The “‘real Supreme Court justices’ that the Founding Fathers envisioned” must now also strike down the immediate and follow-on effects of Lincoln’s unconstitutional denial of not-prohibited and fully constitutional secession, beginning with the mass illegal immigration of non-citizens and random stateless individuals who were precluded by law from becoming citizens on January 1, 1863, constituting the criminal installation of an inimical and distinctly adverse foreign, four-million-man standing army, and concluding with the unconstitutionally obtained and improperly ratified “Reconstruction Amendments,” passed, not one but virtually impossibly three, in a national condition of violence and intimidation and under the duress of brutal post-war military occupation and oppression.
The “‘real Supreme Court justices’ that the Founding Fathers envisioned” must now get secession right and begin the process of reversing and correcting the effects of its denial and awarding enormous commensurate REPARATIONS to the Confederate States and the descendants of their populations. Secession is not prohibited and is reserved to the States. Lincoln’s denial of secession was the most salient, deleterious, and adverse act against the Constitution and Bill of Rights in American history.
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“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
Yes, the United States too can become a nation with a judicial system organized to legitimize the arbitrary power of a totalitarian political party. The American system of justice, along with all professional associations involved with its administration, can be made to align and coordinate with a myriad of illiberal goals.
For totalitarians and their stooges there is no greater illiberal goal than that which would deny the influences of their opposition. “Ballot cleansing” is but the latest in the recent history of attempts by a gang of elitists within the Democratic Party to dominate social, political, and economic initiatives and ultimately supplant the Constitution with the authority of a single leadership.
Due process be damned. It matters not that allegations of “insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution of the United States be first adjudicated. It matters only that one be accused of it by a privileged group in society that would lead us according to C. Wright Mills to “feelings of powerlessness….. living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.”
There’s a man who sits in the White House who could have done a very simple thing. He could have said that barring his opponent from running for office without any conviction for the offense of insurrection is against all the principles of our founding document. If he would have done this one thing he would probably still be President in November. Now we know that his oath of office telling us that he would defend our nation was not considered with even a speck of mortality. That oath was the first lie of many lies to come.
How can barring Trump from office be “against all the principles of our founding document” when it is literally part of the document? No conviction required. Due process yes, but Trump had that. The chickenshit SCOTUS punted when they should have followed the text of the constitution.
The chickenshit SCOTUS punted when they should have followed the text of the constitution.
The ruling was 9-0. You think all nine Justices were wrong but you’re right, and worse that they were “chickensh*t”, and only you are right? Wow.
They agreed that a state court could not disqualify a candidate. They bitterly disagreed on everything else.
Is “bitterly disagreed” the new “scathing concurrence”? Hahahahahaha!
No they did not – please read the concurrance.
They did NOT say that the majority was WRONG, they said they had violated the traditions of the curts and decided additional issues not currently before them.
That is NOT “bitterly disagreed about everything”
“No conviction required.”
Since when ? A14S3 does not say those accused of insurrection.
It does not say those that some people think were insurrectionists.
It says those who actually committed insurrection.
” Due process yes, but Trump had that.”
Yes, this went to the supreme court and the left LOST RESOUNDINGLY.
Due process and the rule of law not man require that whatever result you are trying to accomplish can be repeated most anywhere in the country.
We find murder convictions dubious – when we KNOW that in 95% of the country the defendant would have been aquitted.
This is not different.
The rule of law/Due process does NOT mean – anything that you can weasel through with biased prosecutors, judges, and juries in a half dozen of the over 4000 counties in the US.
” The chickenshit SCOTUS punted when they should have followed the text of the constitution.”
The text says that congress must put the rest of the 14th amendment to effect by passing laws.
That congress must define what constitutes insurerection, and what constitutes “due process” and it must do so without running afoul of the rest of the constitution.