Trump promoting his “Official Election Defense Fund.” There was no Official Election Defense Fund.
Tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. Mountain time (10:00 a.m. Eastern) the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson, the case about whether Donald Trump is ineligible to hold office, and thus whether he can appear on Colorado’s presidential primary ballot.
The U.S. Supreme Court now lets the public listen to arguments via live audio of its proceedings.
The case is one of the most important in decades, and it has ties directly to Colorado.
The lead plaintiff in the case is 91 year old former Colorado state legislator Norma Anderson, a prominent Colorado Republican and the first female majority leader of the Colorado House of Representatives.
Lawyers on both sides will make their arguments over 80 minutes. There will be 10 minutes for the Colorado Secretary of State’s attorney to weigh in, and then the Justices will ask questions of the attorneys. The questions they ask often signal the aspects of the case they find most interesting and most pivotal to the outcome.
At the heart of the case is the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, known as the Disqualification Clause, which states:
“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. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Last December, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is ineligible to hold elected office under the Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment because he engaged in insurrection in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump supporter
Trump appealed that ruling against him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that is what tomorrow’s hearing is all about.
You can listen to live audio of the oral arguments at this website provided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If you miss it and want to listen to it later, the audio of the arguments will be posted the same day at this website.
For more information and background in the case, read the National Constitution Center’s Daily Blog on the case.
No matter how the Court decides this case, some portion of the population will not be happy, which will further erode public confidence in the Court. It is already quite low.
It has been speculated that the Supreme Court may issue their decision before the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5, 2024, which would be very quick for the Court, but the Court has given no date for issuing their decision. It will be very interesting to listen to the oral arguments and to the justices questions, which may give some indication how each justice is leaning in the case.
The justices can and often do ask the lawyers questions during the lawyer’s presentations. These interruptions can be jarring and throw the lawyers off their arguments, leaving the lawyers little time to finish their remarks.