The news publication Axios reported this week that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) was preparing a legislative proposal that would create enforcement mechanisms for the provisions in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment that restrict insurrectionists from public office.
The report came after a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that was disappointing for many in undoing a state-level decision in Colorado booting Donald Trump from their presidential election ballots over his argued incitement of the Capitol attack of early 2021. The nation’s highest court said that responsibility for carrying out the invoked provisions of that amendment rested instead with Congress.
Raskin, the top Dem on the House Oversight Committee, has actually proposed legislation covering much the same ground previously, though it wasn’t enacted. The earlier proposal would have allowed courtroom proceedings pursuing the formal disqualification of a targeted contender, with appeals possible.
“We are going to revise it in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” Raskin told Axios in reference to the earlier proposal, which would ultimately push deliberations over potential disqualification towards the substance of the involved acts rather than procedural underpinnings for the whole thing. In other words, it would be about making a case the targeted individual did, in fact, engage in insurrection.
Raskin would likely become the chairman of the House Oversight Committee if Democrats retake control of the legislative chamber in elections later this year. Currently, the House’s slim GOP majority is likely to oppose any such proposal from Raskin.
In the meantime, experts argued after the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Colorado-involved case that the judges didn’t undo the earlier determinations that Trump was an insurrectionist for Constitutional law purposes. Both a trial judge and the state Supreme Court in Colorado concluded as much… though for now, opportunities to use such a finding against Trump’s bids for office are limited.
