The Republican party is plotting once again to ensure that Donald Trump takes control of the White House even if he can’t win a free and fair election.
There is no real pathway for Donald Trump to secure enough electoral college votes to win the 2024 election. The Fake Elector strategy is now one of the centerpieces of Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump and 6 of his co-conspirators, so that plan is out. Kamala Harris is definitely not going to adopt the Pence Card strategy. And while a violent insurrection cannot be ruled out, especially as Republicans continue to threaten initiating a Civil War, it’s not likely that that violence will lead to overturning the election. (It is a terrifying thought, though, that Speaker McCarthy is just behind Kamala Harris in the line of succession.)
And while the average Trump supported might only have the mental capacity to believe in displacement theory, ivermectin and Flat Earth, the people holding the power and purse strings for the Republican party know their odds and understand their limitations.
There is a handful of billionaires that run a network of organizations that control not only the Republican Party, but the entire far-right. They control the funding, the politicians, courts, think tanks, lawyers, media, grassroots organizations and strategies that hold the GOP together and push it to the brink. And they haven’t stopped their attempts to turn the United States into a Confederate wasteland just because their coup didn’t work out the way they planned. In fact, they’ve only doubled down on these efforts.
The masterminds behind the Jan. 6 Insurrection have learned from their mistakes.
To be fair, there were quite a few mistakes, but there were two in particular that proved fatal to their plan. The first was that the ask was too high. State and Federal officials were being asked to not just break the law, but to commit treason. In the end 84 Republicans signed on to the fake elector strategy, but the overwhelming majority of those in power refused. This led to problem number two.
Because the ask was too high, the Confederate billionaires were unable to get the state level buy in needed to effectively put their strategy into operation. In the end, they were only able to secure a scattershot gaggle of Republicans ranging in position from GOP car salesman to State Congressman.
Many are currently facing investigations, lawsuits, and indictments, but the grand wizards of the far right persist. They have come up with a new plot that accounts for these mistakes, amends them, and SCOTUS certifies them.
Instead of trying to throw together a hodgepodge of Republicans, the puppet masters of the GOP are targeting both state legislatures and secretaries of state – two battlegrounds where Democrats are significantly outnumbered by Republicans. Rather than asking for potential participants to overthrow an election, they are asking them to stop the election from even happening in the first place. And to ensure that there is no threat of prosecution, the Republicans are asking that their hand-picked radical right SCOTUS justices sign off on the plan in advance.
Here’s how it works.
A Civil War for the Ballot
The Republicans can best be described as neo-Confederates. They love white supremacy. They push states rights. They defend Confederate statues and flags, and they hate the Union.
Take for example, the war for mask and vaccine mandates. Instead of allowing for a national public safety standard based on science and best practices, the Republicans turned what should have been no-brainer moves to keep Americans safe during a pandemic into a state by state war for the right to direct public policy. And they won. Another example is the decision. Abortion rights have now been turned into another state by state battle to exact forced labor policies that have not only harmed women seeking abortion, but devastated women seeking general healthcare.
Now imagine our elections facing the same fate.
If the Republican plan works, voters will no longer decide the outcome of elections. State legislatures and\or Secretaries of State will decide who can and cannot appear on the ballot and they can decide who wins. At the core of this strategy is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
The Republicans can’t win enough states to take the White House in 2024 through the electoral college. If it’s a battle between Secretaries of State, though, Republicans have an advantage of 26 to 20. When members of Federalist Society, of whom 6 of 9 SCOTUS justices are current or former members, wrote their piece about disqualification, they were keenly aware of that.
Media outlets applauded their call to remove Trump from the ballot, but the devil is in the details. And these details are horned and pitchforked. In the report, the Federalist Society members write:
“Anybody who seeks office will at some point need to show that they are entitled to hold that office. At every point that this occurs, Section Three governs. So, for instance, state or local election boards, and state Secretaries of State, may possess state law authority to make at least initial determinations as to eligibility of candidates for elected office in that state or representing that state in Congress (as authorized by Article I, section 4 of the Constitution)—and, thus, whether or not such candidates shall be placed on a primary or general election ballot.”
So the Federalist Society here is arguing that Secretaries of State have the responsibility to disqualify candidates that violate Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from the ballot. They also argue that state legislatures could lead that charge.
Knowing full well that Republicans outnumber Democrats in state legislatures 57 to 40, the Federalist Society members write, “And as a textual matter, state legislatures have the power to regulate the “manner” of elections, which includes ballot eligibility. In our view, the better interpretation is that Section Three can be relevant to both the state’s power to regulate the manner of elections and each house’s power to judge the results of those elections.”
At this point, you might be thinking, “Hey, that’s great! We can disqualify Trump in every Blue state and per the Federalist Society, some Red states might follow along!” That’s exactly what the Federalist Society wants the left to think. But as we’ve established, devils and details and whatnot.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads:
“No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice- President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, 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.”
There is little question that Trump has violated the “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” part of the disqualification clause. But in true MAGA style, the Republicans have figured out a way to weaponize the “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” part.
This is where things get tricky.
While the Democrats are busy getting ready to kick Trump off of the ballot in Blue states, Republicans are getting ready to kick Biden off of the ballot in Blue states. Enter McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry.
Speaker McCarthy has officially instructed top Republicans to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. In an article entitled By The Standards Democrats Applied To Trump, Joe Biden Is A Traitor, The Federalist reports (without evidence):
“Joe Biden should have been impeached as a traitor the day he took office…many of the Chinese officials who paid Biden family members were connected with high-level Chinese government intelligence.
‘[T]he Biden family received some $31 million from Chinese businessmen with very close ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president,’ [Peter] Schweizer documented in his 2022 book, ‘Red-Handed.’
Is the same true about Ukrainian payments to Hunter Biden?”
The impeachment inquiry is set up to build a narrative, no matter how false, that Biden was accepting bribes from foreign entities in exchange for political payouts. In other words, he was giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
This is an accusation that, no matter how false, could be used by Republicans to demand the removal of Joe Biden from the 2024 ballot. Worse, SCOTUS could very soon give the Republicans the green light to do it.
There are two cases that have already been launched to disqualify Trump from the ballot. One is in Colorado and one is in Florida. Both of them have been filed on behalf on individuals. It is unlikely that SCOTUS will rule on Trump’s actual eligibility to run in the election. What they will rule on, if they take up either case, is standing. They question that the Court will focus on is whether or not individuals have the right to initiate a case involving Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
What they are likely to say is that individuals don’t have the standing needed to disqualify Trump from the ballot, but states do. Once SCOTUS hands the power of disqualification to the states, it is possible that we will see Blue states mobilizing to remove Trump from the ballot and Red states doing the same with Biden. The nation would be formally split into Red and Blue. Countless lawsuits would be filed and the outcome of the election could be indefinitely postponed and in question. The violence that could be mobilized by the far right around this divide could be catastrophic. And it would be SOCTUS that decides the final outcome.
Trump deserves to be removed from the 2024 ballot. There is no question about that. Joe Biden does not. Disqualification, though, doesn’t require truth. It requires buy in. And in every space where buy in is necessary - whether it be secretaries of state, state legislatures, or SCOTUS – Republicans outnumber the Democrats. We have to be prepared to counter this plot and ready to defend the Democratic process. If we aren’t, this nation may never see another fair and free election again.