Great River Energy generously supports MinnPost's D.C. Memo. Learn why.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday that could revive an effort to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in Minnesota’s Super Tuesday primary — though that’s a long shot.
The high court heard a challenge to Colorado’s decision to keep Trump off the state’s ballot. If the court decides in Colorado’s favor, something that is far from assured, a group of voters in Minnesota who want to bar Trump from running in the state again could try again to do so.
“I think it’s fair to say that if the court rules in favor of Colorado, we could refile our action,” said Ronald Fein, a lawyer for Free Speech for People, a nonprofit representing state voters who filed the Minnesota case.
Last year, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a bid by eight voters in the state led by former Minnesota Secretary of State Joan Growe to bar Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
Like similar efforts in Colorado and other states, the Minnesota case was based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars anyone who has engaged in insurrection after swearing to uphold the Constitution from holding office again. The 14th Amendment was drafted after the Civil War, and the insurrection clause was originally aimed at preventing former Confederate officers from holding public office.
The plaintiffs in the case filed in Minnesota argued that Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol disqualifies him from being placed on Minnesota’s primary ballot.
But the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a primary election is not an election for federal office, but rather a party-led event that is not covered under the insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“This is an internal party election to serve internal party purposes, and winning the presidential nomination primary does not place the person on the general election ballot as a candidate for President of the United States,” the court’s order said.
But a Colorado court ruled that the state could keep Trump off the state’s primary ballot. If that ruling prevails at the U.S. Supreme Court, Fein said he would refile the Minnesota suit challenging Trump’s name on the ballot in November.
“We would be free to refile for the general election and certainly would,” he said.
Voting for Minnesota’s Super Tuesday primary has already begun.
Fein’s nonprofit group has filed similar ballot-access cases in Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois and other states are also trying to keep Trump off the ballot. Even more states are expected to do so if Colorado prevails.
But after Thursday’s arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court, those efforts seem to be a long shot. Justices from across the ideological spectrum were skeptical of Colorado’s argument.
“I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” said Justice Elena Kagan, one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s three liberal justices.
And Justice Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether keeping Trump off the ballot would disenfranchise Trump voters. He also said a win for Colorado could result in other states kicking presidential candidates off the ballot, both Republicans and Democrats, creating chaos in presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has said there must be uniformity across the nation when it comes to Trump’s ballot access.
He has said the former president must be on the ballot “everywhere or nowhere.”
Emmer to blame for GOP’s defeat?
The twin failures in the U.S. House this week of two high-profile bills on the same night — one that would advance the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the other that funnel new aid to Israel without any strings or money for Ukraine — was considered unprecedented.
The death of those two bills on the House floor Tuesday evening led to new frustration among members of the House Republican conference and plenty of finger pointing, mostly at House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., but also at House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-6th District.
Democrats were able to kill the bills because they remained united.
Even Rep. Dean Phillips, D-3rd District, temporarily abandoned his run for the presidency to return to the U.S. Capitol for the first time since mid-December and help his party out. And Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas, left his hospital bed to make a dramatic, last-minute entrance in the House chamber in a wheelchair and hospital gown to cast a deciding vote.
Meanwhile, the Republican majority in the U.S. House has narrowed so much the party could not afford to lose more than two votes. And Emmer lost a few GOP members because he could not convince them to change their votes from a “no” to “yes.”
There was grumbling from several House Republicans about what they called Emmer’s inability to count noses and prevent the high-profile embarrassment. “We need to know exactly where we are and we need to be careful not to get out ahead of our skis,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark.
But Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colorado, one of the GOP “no” votes, said Emmer told him ahead of the votes that he — and the rest of the Republican House leadership — were fully aware they did not have the votes.
“They knew what was happening,” Buck said.
So, it appears Emmer had an accurate count and Johnson put the legislation on the floor anyway.
Meanwhile, when Phillips entered the House chamber after a nearly two-month absence, he was enthusiastically greeted by members of the GOP side of the aisle. And not so much by his Democratic colleagues.
Phillips disputed that in a post on X.
“Got hugs, handshakes, and high-fives on the House Dem side too! Imagine that. Good friends on both sides of the aisle,” he said.
This and that
A few readers wrote to me this week about the efforts of Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, and Marjorie Taylor-Green, R-Ga., to sanction Rep. Ihan Omar, D-3rd District, for what they considered anti-American remarks in her recent speech to Somali-Americans. The lawmakers appeared to have reacted to a mistranslation of Omar’s speech. Among other things, Emmer called for Omar’s resignation and Green said the lawmaker, a U.S. citizen, should be deported.
One reader wrote this:
“Are Emmer and Greene fluent in Somali? Pretty obviously they are fluent in bigot. As for Greene, I would even be surprised that she could find Somalia (on) a map.”
Another wrote this:
“Republicans are at best being disingenuous and at worst lying about what Ilhan said.”
Another reader reacted to a story this week that said Minnesota’s incumbent members of Congress — and some of their challengers — are raising a lot of campaign cash. This is what he said:
“Boy howdy sure would be nice if we had public financing for elections and not what amounted to money diarrhea from oligarchs blanketing the landscape.”Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I’ll try my best to respond. Please contact me at aradelat@minnpost.com.
Ana Radelat
Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.
