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A Colorado court bars Donald Trump from the Republican primary.
The Supreme Court rejects the decision.
The Republicans celebrate.
Washington, DC – Republicans had every reason to celebrate.
The Supreme Court decided to keep Donald Trump on the ballot in Colorado, overturning a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that disqualified him for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The decision came on the eve of Super Tuesday, when Republican nomination elections will be held in 15 states, including Colorado.
Almost immediately after the verdict was announced, Donald Trump posted a short, all-caps message on his social media page: “GREAT VICTORY FOR AMERICA!!!,” he wrote.
Senator Tim Scott (symbol image).
© Brian Cahn/Imago
Victory for Trump: Supreme Court decides on immunity
A few moments later, he referred to the next question before the justices that could affect his eligibility.
Trump has challenged a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that said he is not protected from prosecution by presidential immunity.
The Supreme Court's decision to take up the case delayed Trump's federal election interference trial in Washington until at least late summer, just months before the election.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case next month.
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In a radio interview shortly after the decision, Trump said it was "of equal importance" how the court would rule on his broad claim to immunity from prosecution for actions taken during his term as president.
“A president has to have immunity or he can’t function,” Trump told Boston radio host Howie Carr.
“They will be ceremonial.
So I think this is a very important point that’s coming up.”
Donald Trump speaks to supporters in Greensboro on March 2nd, 2024 (symbolic image).
© Megan Smith/Imago
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President Biden, the White House and his campaign have largely avoided commenting on the Colorado case.
On Monday, Quentin Fulks, Biden's deputy campaign manager, told
MSNBC
's Jen Psaki that the Biden team was not particularly interested in the court's decision.
“We don’t really care.
“It’s not the way we planned to beat Donald Trump,” Fulks said.
“Since day one of this campaign, we have been focused on defeating Donald Trump at the ballot box.
And everything we have done since the president announced in April that he was running in the 2024 US election has been to build an infrastructure and an apparatus to make that happen.”
Republicans celebrate Supreme Court decision on Trump's participation in the primaries
On Monday, it wasn't just Trump who celebrated the decision.
Some people seen as potential Trump candidates declared the verdict online as a victory for their party's presumptive nominee.
“The U.S. Supreme Court rejects Colorado’s clearly political abuse of our democracy,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) wrote on X. “A unanimous, major victory for President Trump and our country against the anti-democratic radical left,” wrote Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on X.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, called the decision “a victory for the American people.”
She accused those behind the effort to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado - led by a former GOP lawmaker - of taking part in a "dangerous attempt by the radical left to suppress votes."
“We, the people, decide the elections, not unelected radical leftists,” Stefanik said in a statement.
She voted against counting electoral votes for Joe Biden and has spread debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
And South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) wrote on
The Republicans in the House of Representatives also reacted to the decision with both joy and attacks on Trump critics.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who joined an amicus brief arguing that the Colorado Supreme Court's decision tramples on the prerogatives of members of Congress, said the court has confirms “what we all knew: The Colorado Supreme Court has launched a purely partisan attack on the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary.”
He added: "States that engage in the same activist, undemocratic behavior should take note and let the American people decide who should be president."
Nikki Haley also praises the Supreme Court's pro-Trump decision
Even Republicans critical of Trump's efforts to overturn the election praised the decision.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley - the last major Republican challenger to Trump in the race for the 2024 nomination - said at a rally in Texas that the ruling was "important."
"We don't want any elected official in any state - or anyone else - to say who can and can't be on the ballot," Haley said, even after the crowd booed her over the ruling.
“This is America.
... I will defeat Donald Trump fair and square, but I want him on the ballot.”
Republican Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), one of the few Republican lawmakers who have criticized Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, said it is up to Colorado voters "to decide who should lead our nation."
Buck's sentiment was echoed by many Republicans on Monday.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the ruling confirms what Republicans have always maintained: "The American people get to choose their candidates, not activists or bureaucrats."
Dhillon Law Group, the lead firm that defended Trump in the Colorado case, said this "victory is not just for President Trump, but for the integrity of our election system and the rights of voters across the country."
Democrats ignore Supreme Court ruling
The Democrats, however, had little to say about the verdict.
Among those who commented on the decision was Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.), who posted the text of the 14th Amendment on social media.
“It is clear that [Donald Trump] attempted to forcibly overturn an election,” Pascrell wrote.
“The text of our Constitution may be inconvenient and awkward to execute, but the text is clear, despite all the loopholes concocted by the Republican Supreme Court.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) simply shared the following comment on X: “The fate of our nation is on the ballot in November.
Vote.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who served as manager in the first Trump impeachment inquiry, wondered whether the court would move as quickly on the second Trump-related case on its docket.
“The Supreme Court acted quickly to grant Donald Trump permission to run.
Will it move just as quickly to reject his false claims of immunity so he can appear in court?
Or will justice that has been postponed be denied again,” he wrote on X.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called the Supreme Court's call on Congress to act
a "blunder" in an interview with
CNN .
Although Raskin disagreed with the court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, he also pointed out that he was working with Democratic representatives such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Florida) and Eric Swalwell (California) to formulate a new law.
This should make it clear that “anyone who has committed insurrection” is disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Apparently the Supreme Court did not want to address the clear textual meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Raskin continued.
“Much less did they want to address the original purpose of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
That was to keep people out of federal office who have already proven themselves to be disloyal and untrustworthy.”
Washington Post
Mariana Alfaro
is a reporter for The Washington Post's political news team.
The native of El Salvador has been working for the post office since 2019.
Previously, Mariana interned at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Insider, and The Texas Tribune.
Azi Paybarah, Patrick Svitek and Amy B Wang contributed to this report.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on March 5, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.