#fourteenthamendment
Adam Serwer on the 14th Amendment. #Trump and the #GOP want us to be like Andrew Johnson. We should be like Frederick #Douglass.
"...President Andrew Johnson complained that the 1866 Civil Rights Act, parts of which were later adopted in the Fourteenth Amendment, extended citizenship to “the Chinese of the Pacific States” and “the people called Gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood.” Yes, and that was the point. “A liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States, is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt,” Frederick Douglass declared in 1869. “It would be madness to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or proscribe any on account of race color or creed.”
Colorado One reason that due process applies to all "persons" and not just all "citizens" is that you cannot prove that you are a citizen without it. #DueProcess #FifthAmendment #FourteenthAmendment
What Is A #PollTax? Definition and Examples
By Robert Longley, July 27, 2022
Excerpt: "In the United States, the origin of the poll tax—and the controversy surrounding it—is associated with the agrarian unrest of the 1880s and 1890s, which culminated in the rise of the Populist Party in the Western and the Southern states. The Populists, representing low-income farmers, gave Democrats in these areas the only serious competition that they had experienced since the end of Reconstruction. The competition led both parties to see the need to attract Black citizens back into politics and to compete for their vote. As the Democrats defeated the Populists, they amended their state constitutions or drafted new ones to include various discriminatory disfranchising devices. When the payment of the poll tax was made a prerequisite to voting, impoverished #BlackPeople and often #PoorWhitePeople, unable to afford the tax, were denied the #RightToVote.
"During the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era in the United States, the former states of the Confederacy repurposed the poll tax explicitly to prevent formerly enslaved #BlackAmericans from voting. Although the #14thAmendment and #15thAmendment [s] gave Black men full #citizenship and #VotingRights, the power to determine what constituted a qualified voter was left to the states. Beginning with Mississippi in 1890, #SouthernStates quickly exploited this legal loophole. At its 1890 constitutional convention, Mississippi imposed a $2.00 poll tax and early registration as a requirement for voting. This had catastrophic results for the Black electorate. Whereas approximately 87,000 Black citizens registered to vote in 1869, representing almost 97% of the eligible voting-age population, fewer than 9,000 of them registered to vote after the state’s new constitution took effect in 1892.
"Between 1890 and 1902, all eleven former #Confederate states imposed some form of a poll tax to deter Black Americans from voting. The tax, which ranged from $1 to $2, was prohibitively expensive for most Black sharecroppers, who earned their wages in crops, not currency. Beyond the cost, voter registration and tax payment offices were usually located in public spaces designed to intimidate potential voters, like courthouses and police stations.
"The southern states also enacted #JimCrowLaws intended to reinforce #RacialSegregation and restrict Black voting rights. Along with the poll tax, most of these states also imposed literacy tests, which required potential voters to read and interpret in writing sections of the state constitution. So-called 'grandfather clauses' allowed a person to vote without paying the poll tax or passing the literacy test if their father or grandfather had voted before the abolition of slavery in 1865; a stipulation that automatically precluded all formerly enslaved persons. Together, the grandfather clause and the literacy tests effectively restored voting rights to poorer White voters who could not pay the poll tax, while further suppressing the Black vote.
"Poll taxes of varying stipulations lingered in Southern states well into the 20th century. While some states abolished the tax in the years after World War I, others retained it. Ratified in 1964, the #24thAmendment to the #USConstitution declared the tax unconstitutional in federal elections.
"Specifically, the 24th Amendment states:
'The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.'
"President Lyndon B. Johnson called the amendment a 'triumph of liberty over restriction.' 'It is a verification of people's rights, which are rooted so deeply in the mainstream of this nation's history,' he said.
"The #VotingRightsAct of 1965 created significant changes in the voting status of Black Americans throughout the South. The law prohibited the states from using literacy tests and other methods of excluding Black Americans from voting. Before this, only an estimated twenty-three percent of voting-age Black citizens were registered nationally, but by 1969 the number had jumped to sixty-one percent.
"In 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court went beyond the Twenty-fourth Amendment by ruling in the case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, states could not levy a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in state and local elections. In two months in the spring of 1966, federal courts declared poll tax laws unconstitutional in the last four states that still had them, starting with Texas on February 9. Similar decisions soon followed in Alabama and Virginia. Mississippi's $2.00 poll tax (about $18 today) was the last to fall, declared unconstitutional on April 8, 1966."
https://www.thoughtco.com/poll-tax-definition-and-examples-5443130
#VoterDisenfranchisement #USPol #USHistory #TwentyFourthAmendment #FourteenthAmendment #FifteenthAmendment #VoterRights #LiteracyTests #USElections #VoterSuppression #BlackAmericans
#SCOTUS in #NYTvSullivan & subsequent decisions set a standard that in order to win a #libel suit, a public figure must demonstrate the offending statement was made w/ "actual malice," meaning w/ knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard as to whether it was false.
That standard has since been adopted in a number of state laws across the country, including in Nevada.
#SteveWynn, the fmr CEO of Wynn Resorts & fmr finance chair of the #RNC, is appealing a decision by Nevada's top court to dismiss his #defamation suit against the #AssociatedPress & one of its #journalists. The court found Wynn failed to show a disputed 2018 news report containing allegations of #SexualAssault had been published w/ "actual malice."
The court established a stringent limit on #defamation claims by public figures more than 60 years ago in its New York Times v. Sullivan decision involving the U.S. Constitution's #FirstAmendment protections for freedom of speech & the press.
#law #journalism #FreePress #NYTvSullivan #FourteenthAmendment #Trump #TrumpCoup #authoritarianism #tyranny
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/106761/new-york-times-co-v-sullivan/
Federal district court judge temporarily blocks Trump's birthright citizenship order
Excerpt: "I’ve been on the bench for over four decades," Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said. "I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order."
"I’ve been on the bench for over four decades," Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said. "I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order."
Sharing as the incoming emperor apparently hasn't read the #Constituion.
Amendment XIV
Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
#ChiefJustice #JohnRoberts’s Unsigned Opinion
…In Feb, the justices heard arguments on a provocative question. The #Constitution’s #FourteenthAmendment, adopted after the Civil War, contains language barring #insurrectionists from holding office. So could #Colorado kick #Trump off the ballot in its #Republican primary, creating an obstacle for his presidential campaign?
A lifetime appointment means that #SupremeCourt justices can do whatever they wish when they are in the majority. When the justices wanted to force #Colorado to return #Trump to its presidential #ballot after the state concluded that his attempted seizure of #power on #Jan6 barred him from holding office under the #FourteenthAmendment, they moved as rapidly as possible. When they wanted to assist Trump’s strategy of delaying any possible federal trial, they took their time.
Some jails allow book shipments from Amazon and big-box chains, while denying book shipments from independent bookstores. Now, an independent bookstore, Avid Bookshop, has filed a lawsuit alleging that this is unconstitutional.
'Appalling!': Historians torch Supreme Court's handling of Trump ballot case
Lawrence O'Donnell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSgQU7jthDM
Here we have two eminent American historians, David Blight and Drew Gilpin Faust, discussing how thoroughly Supreme Court justices got the historical part of their deliberations wrong. This was so striking that I commented on it DURING ORAL ARGUMENTS.
This Supreme Court hearing calls to mind a passage in a Sherlock Holmes film. Not sure if it is in the Arthur Conan Doyle original. Holmes was examining an object of deep interest to him, when Dr. Watson walked in. Holmes handed over the item and asked Watson what he observed of it. Watson gave what sounded like a reasonably thorough list of the object's details and then asked, "Have I missed anything?" Sherlock Holmes replied, "Only everything of any importance."
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#arthurconandoyle #conandoyle #davidblight #democrats #donaldtrump #disqualificationclause #drewgilpinfaust #14thamendment #fourteenthamendment #lawrenceodonnell #sherlockholmes #supremecourt #trump #unitedstatessupremecourt #ussupremecourt
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Nikki Haley says Texas can secede from the United States: "that's their
decision to make"
-- FOX "News"
"[A] state has no right to sever the bond between a U.S. citizen and that national government through secession or otherwise"
-- Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a document that evidently has never come to Nikki Haley's attention
:
#democrats #14thamendment #fourteenthamendment #nikkihaley #secession #texas #texassecession
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DISQUALIFICATION CLAUSE AS IT RELATES TO PRESIDENTS AND VICE PRESIDENTS
How Donald Trump Disqualified Himself From Holding Office Ever Again
I am placing this here, belatedly, in hopes of making up for a goof I made in an earlier post. It reports on US Senate debate about what ultimately became Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
"This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood," Van Winkle said at the time.
It's also worth noting that there was just a single reference in the Senate debate to the fact that the president and vice president were not explicitly mentioned in Howard's draft as "officer(s) of the United States," the way members of Congress and state officials had been itemized in the text. Would the disqualification clause of the amendment not cover the top posts in the executive branch?
"Why did you omit to exclude them?" asked Maryland Democratic Sen. Reverdy Johnson.
Maine's Lot Morrill jumped in to clarify.
"Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,'" Morrill said, ending the discussion on that point.
What the framers said about the 14th Amendment's disqualification clause: Analysis
It is being used to challenge Trump in some states from being on the ballot.
By Steven Portnoy
December 29, 2023, 5:54 PM
This seems really clear to me. It ought to be equally clear to the United States Supreme Court, unless justices "step up" to serve Donald Trump instead of the American people and the Constitution.
:
#democrats #disqualificationclause #donaldtrump #14thamendment #fourteenthamendment #lotmorrill #lotmmorrill #lotmyrickmorrill #supremecourt #trump #unitedstatessupremecourt #ussupremecourt
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More from the #amicus brief’s statement of interest:
“Amici’s interest in this appeal arises from the gravity of the case before the Court & the necessity of grounding any decision in a proper historical understanding of Section Three of the #FourteenthAmendment. As eminent American historians w/ expertise in the relevant era, actors, & events, amici are well qualified to assist the Court by establishing the original intent, meaning, & public understanding of the Disqualification Clause.”
"It seems to me that if Trump can win the election given everything we know about him — including court findings that he engaged in #fraud in #NewYork and that he sexually assaulted #EJeanCarroll –we have a problem that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment cannot solve."
- @Teri_Kanefield
https://terikanefield.com/section-3-and-the-spirit-of-liberty/
The Fourteenth Amendment Scolds Abetting Trump’s Return: The pundit class has finally found a section of the Constitution they can’t abide. By coincidence, it’s the part that’s designed to protect the nation from an insurrectionist.
https://newrepublic.com/post/178025/fourteenth-amendment-media-abetting-trump
This is where #LeonardLeo and the #FederalistSociety gets the first payoff on all the money they've invested in packing #SCOTUS with far-right operatives
Thomas and Alito and Kavanaugh and Barrett about to pay off big now for Leo and the #FedSoc
Roberts wondering how he's been so badly blind-sided by his own craven culpability
Associated Press
The Supreme Court will decide if Donald Trump can be kept off 2024 presidential ballots
By MARK SHERMAN and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Updated 5:35 PM EST, January 5, 2024
It probably surprises few observers, if any, that the US Supreme Court will take up the case of whether a traitor to our nation, such as Donald Trump, can appear on primary and general election ballots. The news is that they have decided to take the case and they have made it known to the nation.
:
#colorado #democrats #disqualification #disqualificationclause #donaldtrump #14thamendment #fourteenthamendment #supremecourt #trump #unitedstatessupremecourt #ussupremecourt
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