Remember how Democrats were outraged — Outraged! — that some Republicans objected to the counting of the Electoral College votes back in 2021 over concerns that voter fraud tipped the election results to Joe Biden in key battleground states? The very idea of disputing the election results was seen as blasphemy and anti-democratic.
Yet the left is once again pushing for Congress to block Donald Trump from taking office, despite his overwhelming victory in 2024.
Evan Davis, the former editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review, and David Schulte, the former editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, argue in a joint column in The Hill that Congress not only has the power to block Trump from taking office but should.
Their column doesn’t cover much new ground. It references Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies individuals who have engaged in insurrection from holding office, despite the fact that Trump did no such thing. Heck, he hasn’t even been charged with such an offense, and when you consider the fact that rogue left-wing prosecutors have charged him with all sorts of made-up crimes, that says something.
Disqualification is based on insurrection against the Constitution and not the government. The evidence of Donald Trump’s engaging in such insurrection is overwhelming. The matter has been decided in three separate forums, two of which were fully contested with the active participation of Trump’s counsel.
The first fully contested proceeding was Trump’s second impeachment trial. On Jan. 13, 2021, then-President Trump was impeached for “incitement of insurrection.” At the trial in the Senate, seven Republicans joined all Democrats to provide a majority for conviction but failed to reach the two-thirds vote required for removal from office. Inciting insurrection encompasses “engaging in insurrection” against the Constitution “or giving aid and comfort to the enemies thereof,” the grounds for disqualification specified in Section 3.
Davis and Schulte also cite the Colorado judicial hearing where a partisan court found Trump to have engaged in insurrection, which the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned. They really jump through a lot of hoops to give the appearance of a solid legal foundation for their argument.
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Not only is the foundation of their argument weak, but they’re relying on partisan cases that all failed. They’re calling on Democrats to do exactly what was once considered an unprecedented attack on democracy, which not only undermined the will of the voters but also subverted the entire electoral process. The authors insist that it's not okay to have doubts about an election where the Democrat was declared the victor, yet it is more than okay to use bogus arguments to prevent a Republican from taking office.
"The unlikelihood of congressional Republicans doing anything that might elect Harris as president is obvious," they write. "But Democrats need to take a stand against Electoral College votes for a person disqualified by the Constitution from holding office unless and until this disability is removed. No less is required by their oath to support and defend the Constitution."
It sure sounds like the left is getting a little insurrection-y by its own standards.
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