Supreme Court Delivers Huge Win to Trump on Ballot

Donald Trump scored a massive victory in the 2024 election on Monday—and it came from the Supreme Court, not the voting booth. The court ruled unanimously that the former president should not be disqualified from appearing on the ballot in Colorado because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, reports the Washington Post.

• Not a surprise: The court heard arguments last month, and both conservative and liberal justices appeared to be reluctant to keep him off the ballot. Trump had challenged Colorado's decision to exclude him.
• Impact: Had the Colorado ruling stood, Trump likely would have been removed from the ballot in states around the country. Thus, Monday's decision "was the court's most important ruling concerning a presidential election since Bush v. Gore handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000," per the New York Times.
• Unusually fast: This ruling came much faster than most, with the court apparently rushing to issue it before this week's Super Tuesday voting, when Colorado and more than a dozen other states vote in primaries. Trump is expected to further cement his giant lead over Nikki Haley in the Republican race.

• The clause: Colorado's top court declared that Trump engaged in insurrection and thus should be disqualified from running again under a clause in the 14th Amendment. Read about the rationale here.
• SCOTUS view: "The Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates," the court said, referring to the clause. If the ruling stood, "the result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some states, but not others, based on the same conduct." And that would be too chaotic, the justices declared, per the Wall Street Journal.
  

(More Donald Trump 2024 stories.)