'Under the spell of Trump': Raskin blasts SCOTUS for passing ballot decision to Congress
The U.S. Supreme Court kicked Donald Trump's eligibility for election to Congress, but Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) doubts lawmakers will disqualify the former president under the Constitution's insurrection clause.
The court on Monday overturned a ruling by Colorado's Supreme Court disqualifying Trump under the 14th Amendment, which says that anybody engaging in an insurrection against the U.S. is barred from holding public office.
SCOTUS' ruling said that only Congress could determine a presidential candidate's eligibility — and Raskin said the justices had inconsistent constitutional standards.
"Let me go to your original point about the Supreme Court kicking everything to Congress," Raskin said. "I think it only does that when it doesn't like the ultimate inescapable implications of just enforcing the Constitution as written. That's what's happening in this case, but when you take like the Voting Rights Act, for example, in Shelby county v. Holder, the Supreme Court decided to take up the Voting Rights Act and then cut the heart out of it, dismantling the pre-clearance mechanism, which is in there."
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"So, yeah, I think that at this court just didn't want to go anywhere near it and is saying Congress has to deal with it, knowing that the Congress has split because there's a very narrow Republican majority in the House and the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate," Raskin added.
"So we're going to fight for it, but it looks like this is a constitutional norm that the people of the United States are going to have to enforce at the ballot."
He cited the effort to impeach Trump over January 6, which failed in Congress. He suggested any push to bar him under the 14 Amendment would undoubtedly fail again.
He added: "Mike Johnson and the leadership of the GOP are very clearly under the spell of Donald Trump and they would probably do everything they could to keep this from going to the floor."
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