Congressional Democrats are showing no signs of using the Electoral College certification process to enforce the 14th Amendment and deny Donald Trump a second presidential term if he wins in November.
The Supreme Court’s decision this month to keep Trump on the Colorado primary ballot left it to Congress to act before the Constitution’s so-called Insurrection Clause could be enforced to keep him from regaining the White House.
But some legal experts have pointed out that the decision never explicitly rules out a scenario where Congress uses its power under the 12th and 20th amendments to enforce presidential eligibility requirements during a joint session on Jan. 6, 2025….
Sen. Gary Peters, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Democrats will stand behind what voters decide in November.
“We’re not election deniers,” the Michigan Democrat said. “This is all about the ballot box. So this is about democracy, and the voters get to decide who they want to have as their elected officials.”
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who served as an impeachment manager for Trump’s second impeachment trial, said any objections “would only be legitimate if there’s an actual problem with a particular vote in a particular state.”
“I don’t think people should object just because they don’t like the outcome of the election. That’s what Republicans do, and that’s just called being sore losers,” Lieu said. “So if members want to object, I think they should do it based on any evidence that actually comes out.”
Other lawmakers dismissed the scenario’s hypothetical nature. Senate Judiciary Chair Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said he didn’t want to get into “speculation of extraordinary use of the Electoral College.”
“I think that it’s divisive to raise it at this point,” Durbin said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said the theory was just “dealing in a sequence of hypotheticals.”