Grady Yuthok Short of the Brennan Center analyzes.
March 21 Online National Constitution Center Event: “Democracy Checkup: Preparing for the 2024 Election”
Very much looking forward to participating in this event (free registration required):
Richard Hasen, author of A Real Right to Vote, Sarah Isgur, senior editor of The Dispatch, and Lawrence Lessig, author of How to Steal a Presidential Election, provide a health check on the state of American democracy, and look ahead to potential areas of vulnerability in the run-up to the 2024 election. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
“Manhattan Prosecutors Seek 30-Day Delay of Trump Trial”
Less than two weeks before Donald J. Trump is set to go on trial for criminal charges in Manhattan, the prosecutors who brought the case asked a judge on Thursday to delay it up to 30 days, a startling development in the first prosecution of a former American president.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, sought the delay so it could review a new batch of records. It only recently obtained the records from federal prosecutors, who years ago investigated the same hush-money payments at the center of the case.
The potential postponement of the trial, which is scheduled to start with jury selection on March 25, would represent the latest delay on Mr. Trump’s sprawling legal docket. The criminal case against him in Washington, where he is accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election results, was initially supposed to go to trial this month, but that is delayed while Mr. Trump appeals to the Supreme Court.
A delay in the Manhattan case would most likely delight the former president, whose central strategy for fighting all of his legal entanglements is to stall as much as possible. If he is elected to a second term in November, the criminal cases against him would grind to a halt until he is out of office.
“Supreme Betrayal: A requiem for Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment”
Judge Luttig and Laurence Tribe in the Altantic:
The Supreme Court of the United States did a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation in Trump v. Anderson.
In a stunning disfigurement of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court impressed upon it an ahistorical misinterpretation that defies both its plain text and its original meaning. Despite disagreement within the Court that led to a 5–4 split among the justices over momentous but tangential issues that it had no need to reach in order to resolve the controversy before it, the Court was disappointingly unanimous in permitting oath-breaking insurrectionists, including former President Donald Trump, to return to power. In doing so, all nine justices denied “We the People” the very power that those who wrote and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment presciently secured to us to save the republic from future insurrectionists—reflecting a lesson hard-learned from the devastation wrought by the Civil War….
Far from preventing what it sought to depict as state usurpation of a federal responsibility, the Supreme Court itself usurped a congressional responsibility, and it did so in the name of protecting a congressional prerogative, that of enacting enforcement legislation under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy. The Supreme Court has now rendered that safety net a dead letter, effectively rescinding it as if it had never been enacted.
Can Congress Disqualify Trump After the Supreme Court’s Section 3 Ruling?
A Lawfare essay analyzing how best to read Trump v. Anderson for understanding its potential implications down the road. The piece delves deep into the details of both the per curiam and the separate opinion by the three liberals on the Court, but the unfortunate bottom line of uncertainty is reflected in the essay’s subtitle: “The dueling opinions for the 9-0 decision support two opposing interpretations on this crucial question.”
Arizona’s Especially Worthwhile Electoral Reform Effort
A new Common Ground Democracy essay with this subtitle: “A local group is pursuing a proposal that deserves nationwide recognition as well as success at home.”
ELB readers should be especially interested in following the development of this important effort. Given Arizona’s status as one of the most hotly contested electoral battlegrounds–the only state with “toss-up” races in both its presidential and U.S. Senate elections, according to Cook Political Report (with Amy Walter)–the pursuit of this particular proposal, with its pragmatic flexibility, could serves as a model for how other states might tackle the increasing problem of partisan polarization.