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Anonymous ID: 30bb39 March 5, 2024, 2:19 p.m. No.20522785   🗄️.is đź”—kun

Former President Trump pulled out an unanimous victory at the Supreme Court on Monday in his historic ballot ban case that invoked the 14th Amendment, but a 5-4 division among the justices emerged beneath the surface — joined by one of his own nominees.

 

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberals criticized their five conservative colleagues for going further than they needed to in resolving Trump’s case by also determining that the only way for the 14th Amendment to be enforced is through a statute by Congress.

 

“This suit was brought by Colorado voters under state law in state court. It does not require us to address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced,” Barrett, Trump’s last appointee to the high court, wrote in a concurring opinion.

 

“The majority’s choice of a different path leaves the remaining Justices with a choice of how to respond,” Barrett continued. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”

 

“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

 

All nine justices sided with Trump on Monday by preserving his status on the ballot, reversing a lower court’s decision that disqualified him in Colorado under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

 

The court’s decision came on the eve of Super Tuesday, when Colorado voters will join more than a dozen other states in casting their primary ballots for president. The court unanimously agreed that a singular state has no unilateral authority to disqualify federal candidates from the ballot.

 

The other five conservatives — two Trump appointees in Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito — also concluded that Congress has exclusive authority to enforce the provision.

 

“These are not the only reasons the States lack power to enforce this particular constitutional provision with respect to federal offices,” read the court’s unsigned opinion.

 

“But they are important ones, and it is the combination of all the reasons set forth in this opinion—not, as some of our colleagues would have it, just one particular rationale—that resolves this case,” it continued. “In our view, each of these reasons is necessary to provide a complete explanation for the judgment the Court unanimously reaches.”

 

In a six-page concurring opinion, the court’s three liberals said the finding was unnecessary and was designed to insulate Trump and others alleged insurrectionists from disqualification.

 

"Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision,” wrote Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

 

They invoked the chief justice’s opinion in the Supreme Court’s recent landmark abortion case, when Roberts criticized his conservative colleagues for going beyond merely upholding the Mississippi abortion restrictions at issue to completely eviscerate Roe v. Wade.

 

The trio also referenced retired Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent when the court decided Bush v. Gore in 2000, in which Breyer wrote, “[w]hat it does today, the Court should have left undone.”

 

The liberal justices said Monday they could not join an opinion that “decided momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily,” also saying the conclusions were “inadequately supported” and “gratuitous.”

 

“By resolving these and other questions, the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office,” the trio of justices wrote.

 

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4506721-barrett-liberal-justices-supreme-court-trump-ballot-ban/

Anonymous ID: 30bb39 March 5, 2024, 2:44 p.m. No.20522908   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>2932

Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced Tuesday that she will not run for re-election this year, leaving the Senate after one term that saw her paint Arizona blue, leave the Democratic Party and play a key role in numerous legislative negotiations in a tightly divided Senate.

Sinema’s decision paves the way for a tough and expensive fight for her seat — though it will be more straightforward than the messy three-way contest she would have prompted by staying in.

In her video, Sinema said partisan warfare has carried the day.

Sinema’s decision comes as her prospects of victory appeared dim if she ran. Polling on the race is sparse, but surveys have consistently shown Sinema in third place in a hypothetical three-way contest featuring Gallego and Lake. It was unclear which candidate she would have pulled more support from.

Notably, Sinema believed she was stronger with Arizona Republicans than with her former party. In a prospectus reported by NBC News last September, Sinema told donors her path to victory was to attract 10% to 20% of Democrats, 60% to 70% of independents and 25% to 35% of Republicans.

“As we look ahead, Arizona is at a crossroads. Protecting abortion access, tackling housing affordability, securing our water supply, defending our democracy — all of this and more is on the line," he said in a statement. "I welcome all Arizonans, including Senator Sinema, to join me in that mission.”

Lake also praised Sinema in a statement: "We may not agree on everything, but I know she shares my love for Arizona. Senator Sinema had the courage to stand tall against the far left in defense of the filibuster — despite the overwhelming pressure from the radicals in her party like Ruben Gallego who called on her to burn it all down.

Sinema’s political arc has been extraordinary, from Green Party organizer to the GOP’s erstwhile favorite Democrat in the U.S. Senate. In 2004 she became a Democrat and was elected to the Arizona Legislature. At a 2011 progressive gathering, she labeled Arizona the “meth lab of democracy” while criticizing legislation that state Republicans were advancing. She ran and won an election in 2012 to the U.S. House, where her voting record showed some centrist bona fides. She used that moderate approach to get elected to the Senate in 2018, ending a losing streak for Democrats statewide.

Sinema was a pivotal vote during Biden’s first two years in the 50-50 Senate, using her clout to shape his signature Inflation Reduction Act and single-handedly nix provisions she opposed, like tax rate increases on corporations and the wealthy, and to pare back a provision aimed at lowering prescription drug prices. She was at the center of multiple successful bipartisan negotiations, including on infrastructure and gun safety.

Sinema left her party to become an independent in 2022, while still helping Democrats maintain control of the Senate. That came after an irreparable rift between Sinema and Arizona Democrats, as she stood in the way of some legislation proposed by Biden and voted to block Democratic efforts to undo the Senate filibuster to advance voting-rights legislation.

Previous key allies, like EMILY’s List, said they would no longer support Sinema, and there was talk of Gallego challenging her in a Democratic primary. She announced in December 2022 that she would leave the Democratic Party and become an independent, but Sinema did not tip her hand about whether she’d run for re-election.

Sinema’s influence has waned since Republicans took control of the House and Democrats gained one seat in the Senate in 2023. The Arizona senator negotiated a border security deal with Democrats and Republicans earlier this year, but it was blocked by Republicans.

“What I’ve demonstrated in my five years in the United States Senate, is that I have a proven track record of bringing disparate interests and groups together, finding common ground and moving forward with bipartisan solutions,” Sinema told NBC News in December in the midst of the border bill negotiations.

And as she often did, she shrugged off a question then about her re-election plans, casting it as a sideshow compared to her legislative work: “I’m 100% focused on delivering a real result,” Sinema continued.

Arizona’s tilt to becoming a purple state was confirmed in 2020, when Biden narrowly carried the state against then-President Donald Trump. In 2022, Arizona’s other senator, Democrat Mark Kelly, won his re-election race by 5 percentage points, but in another statewide race, now-Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, beat Lake by less than 1 point.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/independent-sen-kyrsten-sinema-will-not-run-re-election-arizona-rcna124499