Since it’s probably unconstitutional to ban people from public office just because their missives look like scribblings from a fourth-grader’s Trapper Keeper, we may have to use the 14th Amendment to keep the traitorous, Trump-besotted frat boy Madison Cawthorn from seeking another term in Congress.
The North Carolina congressman is suing to prevent his state’s board of elections from ruling him ineligible to run just because he’s an unrepentant insurrectionist. His argument? He’s not literally a Confederate soldier. Or something like that.
In a late Monday court filing, state attorneys said a provision of the 14th Amendment — disqualifying insurrectionists from holding federal office — is not a defunct Civil War-era relic meant to apply only to former Confederates but a guard against future acts of insurrection. As a result, Cawthorn, who is fighting a challenge to his eligibility to run, could face that prohibition if the North Carolina State Board of Elections determines he meets the criteria, the state attorneys said.
To be clear, Cawthorn hasn’t been ruled ineligible yet. That’s for North Carolina’s board of elections to decide. But this is one of the first real indications that Republicans who threw in with Donald Trump at the expense of our Constitution (i.e., the vast majority of Republicans) could be barred from reelection.
The case is an important early test for those seeking to impose consequences on members of Congress who embraced former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the results of the 2020 election. Those claims helped fuel unrest that led to the attack on the Capitol last year, leaving scores of police officers injured and disrupting the transition of power from Trump to President Joe Biden.
Wait, you can’t just back a coup against our legitimate government without facing consequences for it? Is this Russia? Well, that would explain why so many Republicans decided to celebrate their last Fourth of July holiday in this country.
At issue in Cawthorn’s most recent filing is the interpretation of the 14th Amendment provision barring insurrectionists from office. Cawthorn says it was meant to punish only those who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and he claims an amnesty law passed in 1872 has made the provision moot. But the state attorney general’s office disagreed, noting that the amendment had been used at least once since the Civil War to bar an office-seeker who had violated the Espionage Act during World War I.
“Plaintiff’s argument is meritless, as it would invalidate the expressed intent of the legislators who enacted both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Amnesty Act of 1872,” wrote Special Deputy Attorney General Terence Steed in a filing.
The ruling comes after attorneys representing some of Cawthorn’s constituents filed a challenge to his eligibility, claiming he was “involved in efforts to intimidate Congress and the Vice President into rejecting valid electoral votes.” They also claim that when he appeared at the Jan. 6 rally that helped stir up the MAGA mob, he would have surely known it was a powder keg that could lead to violence.
Whether those arguments persuade the elections board remains to be seen, but this is a first step that could ultimately lead to more such challenges. Unless the challenge to Cawthorn’s eligibility is rendered moot by a redistricting effort that could prompt him to run for a different seat than he’d planned to, it will next go to a three-member investigative panel. From there, the panel’s decision will likely be appealed to the five-member state board.
Stay tuned.
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