Trump 14th Amendment ruling roils 2024 race

A Colorado court’s decision to remove former President Trump from the ballot has threatened to upend the Republican primary race less than a month before voters begin casting ballots in other states. 

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Trump was disqualified from appearing on the state’s 2024 GOP primary ballot under the 14th Amendment, which bars certain individuals who take an oath to support the Constitution and subsequently engage “in insurrection or rebellion.” The state’s highest court determined the clause applies to presidents, reversing a trial judge’s finding that the 14th Amendment does not apply to the presidency.

Republicans, including the Trump campaign, largely blasted the ruling while Democrats offered a more mixed response. 

Trump’s campaign plans to quickly file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, and aides are confident the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, will rule in his favor. Trump allies also view the Colorado ruling as a political positive because it forces his rivals to rally behind him and reinforces the narrative among some voters that Trump is being unfairly targeted because of his standing in the polls. 

“They see this persecution that goes on and this two tiers of justice or injustice, and they don’t like it,” Trump said Tuesday night in Iowa. “They don’t want that. This is not what America is all about. So I appreciate everything, and I appreciate all the support we get. Because that makes a big difference.” 

The decision may ultimately have little impact on the primary. Trump’s campaign and many legal experts believe the Supreme Court will overturn the Colorado decision. Similar cases in Michigan, Minnesota and elsewhere have failed. 

In the meantime, the ruling was blasted by Trump’s rivals in the GOP primary — including one of his most prominent critics — even as they have sought to make the argument against another Trump term in office, underscoring the political tightrope candidates are walking as they’ve looked to contrast themselves with the former president while at times speaking out against his indictments and legal controversies.  

“What I will say is I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being President of the United States, by any court,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in a statement Tuesday. “I think he should be prevented from being the President of the United States by the voters of this country.” 

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley struck a similar tone while speaking to reporters, saying, “We don’t need to have judges making these decisions, we need voters to make these decisions,” and that they were “going to win this the right way.” 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) pushed for the Supreme Court to reverse the Colorado court’s ruling in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

“The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds. SCOTUS should reverse,” DeSantis wrote. 

Meanwhile, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy went even further and vowed to withdraw from the GOP primary in Colorado unless the ruling was reversed, calling it in a statement on X “an *actual* attack on democracy.” 

Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe didn’t anticipate that Colorado’s ruling would hold but suggested it would only boost the former president, who continues to hold wide leads against his primary challengers in national and early state polls.  

“I don’t think at the end of the day that this decision stands, but what it will have done is supercharge Trump even more just a month before the Iowa caucuses,” Roe said.

“Bad news for Donald Trump is good news for Donald Trump,” he added. 

Still, the move has angered Republicans.

Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams called it a “constitutional crisis,” explaining the state party would be appealing the decision and could start the process of converting to a caucus system in the state.  

The Colorado ruling has even torn critics of the former president. Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House aide who testified during the Jan. 6 Committee hearings last year and is backing Haley in the primary, called the ruling “shaky.” 

“I’m someone that believes that Donald Trump did commit an insurrection. I think that there’s evidence to back that up, but he, at this stage, hasn’t been convicted of that. … I feel like this decision, it’s kind of shaky,” she said. 

“That upsets me just because I think that there are other ways to defeat Trump rather than trying to keep him off the ballot like this. And … this is like another example of — I feel like for him to point to of political persecution,” Matthews added. 

Former Trump White House communications director and now co-host of ABC’s “The View” Alyssa Farah Griffin posted on X that she had “incredibly mixed feelings” and expressed concern that it “plays into Trump’s hands & ‘the system is against me & you’ narrative.” 

Perhaps the biggest risk for Trump is if the Supreme Court upholds the Colorado ruling, which could set off a wave of other states moving to remove him from the ballot on the same grounds.

But experts have indicated that is unlikely. 

Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, predicted Tuesday a unanimous Supreme Court ruling to overturn the Colorado decision. His comments were highlighted by multiple Trump aides. 

Kristi Burton Brown, a former chair of the Colorado GOP and a constitutional attorney, noted that even the Colorado justices, who are all appointees of Democratic governors, were split on the decision in the 4-3 ruling. She believed the Supreme Court would effectively reverse the Colorado court’s ruling, even suggesting the possibility that at least one of the liberal Supreme Court justices could side alongside the conservative majority in the opinion. 

Politically, Burton Brown believed the case would benefit the former president in the general election. 

“I think you may see, certainly some Republicans who maybe don’t prefer Trump in the primary and are on the fence as to whether or not to vote for him in the general — I think this will push them towards voting for him,” she said. “I think unaffiliated voters who maybe voted for Trump in ’16, but not in ’20, something like this makes them come back to someone who they believe the system is targeting and that their own voice is being denied.” 

Trump holds a commanding lead in the Republican primary that has withstood four separate criminal indictments, a fraud trial over his business practices and other controversies. 

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday morning found 64 percent of GOP primary voters back Trump, up 10 percent from a July poll conducted before Trump’s indictments in Washington, D.C., and Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. 

The poll was conducted prior to the Colorado court ruling, but it underscored Trump’s enduring support: The survey found 62 percent of Republican voters believe Trump should remain the GOP nominee even if he is convicted of a federal crime. 

The same New York Times poll found Trump trailing Biden by 2 percentage points among likely voters in a hypothetical 2024 matchup. And Biden and his allies have argued a year’s worth of reminders about Trump’s legal problems and his conduct on Jan. 6 will be enough to deter voters from backing the former president regardless of the court ruling. 

“Whether the 14th Amendment applies or not, we’ll let the court make that decision,” Biden said. “But he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on it.”