The Super Tuesday primary wins by Donald Trump and Monday’s Supreme Court ruling ensuring ballot access for the former president mean that voters will get an election in 2024 that’s a mostly-unwanted rematch of 2020.
The court ruled swiftly that states cannot disqualify Trump from the presidential ballot as an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment because of his actions to incite the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The ruling overturned a Colorado court decision to kick Trump off the ballot there and will keep Trump on the ballot in Illinois as well, where a Cook County judge had ruled in favor of voters who filed a lawsuit to disqualify Trump on similar 14th Amendment grounds.
It’s up to Congress to enforce the 14th Amendment for candidates for federal office, the Supreme Court said. It’s hard to argue much with a unanimous ruling, especially when the alternative might have been a patchwork of different presidential ballots across the country.
The Supreme Court acted a little over two months after the Dec. 19, 2023 Colorado decision.
We wish the court had decided to act more quickly on another crucial question involving Trump and the upcoming election: His claim of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump’s lawyers are making that claim in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal criminal case against the former president for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump, in essence, believes a president is above the law.
A Washington, D.C. appeals court recently rejected that notion, keeping the election interference case moving toward a trial that was supposed to begin this month. Then Trump appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to take the case, setting oral arguments for April 25.
We’re glad the court will settle the matter once and for all, though sooner would have been far preferable than later. Now a trial could take place during the height of the campaign season, allowing Trump to portray himself as a political martyr rather than a defendant in four separate cases.
Smith had asked the Supreme Court not to put Trump’s D.C. case on hold while Trump pursues his appeals.
“Delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict — a compelling interest in every criminal case and one that has unique national importance here,” Smith wrote in his brief to the court.
We agree. The public surely has a compelling interest in the outcome of this case. Two-thirds of voters don’t believe Trump should be immune from criminal prosecution, according to a recent PBS/NPR/Marist poll.
All the more reason the public deserves to know, well ahead of the election, whether one candidate is, in the eyes of a jury, a criminal who thinks he’s above the law.
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