Should the Fourteenth Amendment Be Used to Disqualify Trump?

Some of the risks that the Colorado justices allude to are obvious: Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, said that Trump’s disqualification is “election interference”; Trump posted, on Truth Social, “BANANA REPUBLIC???” Of course, they would make the same complaints even if there were a commonly recognized and accepted process for adjudicating Section 3 disqualifications. Unfortunately, there is not. And the Colorado decision opens the way not just for more whining about witch hunts but for unprecedented confusion about whether and where Trump is on the ballot. In short, the majority found that Colorado, or any state, could write its own rules for implementing Section 3. In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Carlos Samour, Jr., called this “an imprudent, unconstitutional, and standardless system.”