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Donald Trump has been removed from Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballot in an unprecedented and historic ruling by the state’s Supreme Court.
In a 4-3 decision on Tuesday, the panel ruled Mr Trump could be kept off the state’s GOP ballot under the 14th Amendment, which bars those who took a constitutional oath and then “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office, over his role in the January 6 Capitol riot.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the majority opinion reads. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction.”
The decision, which is stayed until early January, only applies to Colorado’s ballot and Mr Trump has already vowed to appeal.
While it appears likely the conservative-heavy US Supreme Court may overturn the ruling, it paves the way for other states to potentially follow suit, while some Republicans are already vying retaliatory action against President Joe Biden.
The landmark ruling comes after reports emerged that federal prosecutors in Washington, DC, were considering charges over Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election months before Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith took charge of the investigation.
Trump campaign: ‘We have full confidence that the US Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favour’
Here’s the response to yesterday’s news from Trump spokesman Steven Cheung, striking a typically defiant note.
Also continuing to echo the former president’s grievance narrative was Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who was quick to cry “election interference”.
Can Donald Trump still run for president?
Here’s how yesterday’s dramatic news from Colorado feeds into the already extremely tangled web of controversies threatening to stop the Republican’s charge to the White House.
John Bowden, Alex Woodward and Ariana Baio have the latest.
Read Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling striking Trump from next year’s presidential ballot in full
In a stunning and historic ruling for America, Donald Trump has been struck off Colorado’s 2024 presidential election ballot by the state’s Supreme Court, over his part in inciting the January 6 Capitol riot
Colorado’s highest court issued the landmark ruling on Tuesday, with a 4-3 majority finding that the former president is not eligible as a presidential candidate under the 14th Amendment – which bars anyone who “engaged in an insurrection” from holding office.
“When President Trump told his supporters that they were ‘allowed to go by very different rules’ and that if they did not ‘fight like hell,’ they would not ‘have a country anymore,’ it was likely that his supporters would heed his encouragement and act violently,” the justices wrote in the majority ruling.
Read the first-of-its kind ruling in full here:
RFK ‘able to laugh or crack a joke'
According to Statista, 47 per cent of 18-34 year olds say they get their news from social media, 28 per cent from streaming services such as YouTube, 15 per cent from online only news sites and 11 per cent from local and national newspapers.
Mr Culotta said that the podcast format allowed RFK Jr’s authenticity to come through.
“When I’m listening to him, it feels like he’s just having a conversation. He’s able to laugh or crack a joke. And he’s shown his ability to change his mind on issues like the border.”
After a trip to the southern border in June, Mr Kennedy adopted a new hardline approach that was closer to Mr Trump’s policies than the Democrats.
“You don’t see anything like that from the major candidates,” Holden Culotta, 22, says. “They seem to have this approach of ‘if I admit that I was wrong about something and change my mind, it’s just going to look like weakness.”
Link Lauren concurred that candidates who were willing to sit for extended interviews and had a savvy social media presence would fare best with the youth vote.
“It’s no surprise that they’re really resonating with Gen Z and Millennials because that’s where they’re getting their information.”
President’s stock plunges among young voters
In 2020, under-30 voters turned up in droves to help elect Mr Biden. The 55 per cent of youth voter turnout was the highest since the dying days of the Vietnam War in 1972, with six in ten opting for the Democrat candidate.
But the president has since seen his stock plunge among young voters. A recent NBC News poll found he was trailing Mr Trump among 18 to 34-year-olds as Gen Z deserted Mr Biden over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Where his uncle John F Kennedy mastered the new format of television, RFK Jr has been a fixture on the podcast and YouTube circuit, appearing for extended interviews on dozens of shows from Joe Rogan to Jimmy Dore.
He has shared raw, personal accounts of overcoming heroin addiction, and the loss of his famous uncle and father by the time he was 14.
“With minority and younger voters seeming intrigued, Kennedy, for now, enjoys the kind of demographic support his charismatic father and uncles generated decades ago,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said recently.
Prosecutors considered bringing obstruction months before Jack Smith’s appointment
Federal prosecutors in Washington, DC were considering obstruction charges linked to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election months before Special Counsel Jack Smith took charge of the investigation.
It remains unclear if the prosecutors were considering bringing the charge against Mr Trump at the time or just against people close to the former president.
McConnell reacts to Trump anti-immigrant rhetoric by mentioning wife’s cabinet appointment
CNN’s Manu Raju asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, “Are you comfortable with your party’s leading presidential candidate referring to legal immigrants as people who are poisoning the blood of our country?”
“That didn’t bother him when he appointed Elaine Chao Secretary of Transportation,” he said.
Mr McConnell has been married to Ms Chao since 1993.
But Mr McConnell chose not to address how Donald Trump previously spoke about Ms Chao.
Alex Woodward wrote in January that Mr Trump spent months unleashing “a string of thinly veiled racist comments about his former transportation secretary, the wife of his party’s Senate leader, to relative silence from other GOP officials ... Mr Trump has repeatedly used a racist nickname or some variation of ‘China-loving wife’ on his Truth Social account to describe Ms Chao, a Republican and the first Asian American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet”.
‘Kennedy is very active on social media and podcasts which contributes to his appeal for young voters'
The Kennedy campaign has touted its Students4Kennedy initiative and pointed to a “groundswell of support” on college campuses.
“Mr Kennedy is very active on social media and podcasts which contributes to his appeal for young voters who may not see him on TV news,” his campaign told The Independent.
So far, there’s little evidence of this supposed burgeoning youth movement.
The Students4Kennedy account on X/Twitter has been inactive since June. A callout for students to “get involved” leads to a broken link. A search for Students for Kennedy on TikTok brings up a channel from a failed run for Senate in 2020 by Joe Kennedy III, RFK Jr’s nephew.
At a recent Spaces event on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, titled Why Gen Z loves RFK Jr, there was a distinct lack of Gen Z voices among the speakers.
Ex-Proud Boys leader is sentenced to over 3 years in prison for Capitol riot plot
A former leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group was sentenced on Tuesday to more than three years behind bars for joining a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol nearly three years ago.
Charles Donohoe was the second Proud Boy to plead guilty to conspiring with other group members to obstruct the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress for certifying President Joe Biden‘s electoral victory. His sentence could be a bellwether for other Proud Boys conspirators who agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
Donohoe, 35, of Kernersville, North Carolina, apologized to his family, the law-enforcement officers who guarded the Capitol on Jan. 6 and “America as a whole” for his actions on Jan. 6.
“I knew what I was doing was illegal from the very moment those barricades got knocked,” he said.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced him to three years and four months in prison. Donohoe could be eligible for release in a month or two because he gets credit for the jail time he already has served since his March 2021 arrest.
Georgia election workers file suit to stop Giuliani from telling ‘same lies’ after $148m defamation win
A pair of former Georgia election workers filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against Rudy Giuliani, alleging the former Donald Trump attorney has continued to defame them regarding their work on the 2020 election, even after a federal court concluded last week Mr Giuliani owes the pair $148m for his past remarks on the subject.
The suit, filed in Washington DC, federal court, accuses Mr Giuliani of “repeating over and over the same lies that [the] Plaintiffs engaged in election fraud during their service as election workers during the 2020 presidential election.”
“I’m not going to comment on any potential upcoming legal matters, but I will say this—the Rudy Giuliani you see today is the same man who took down the Mafia, cleaned up New York City, lifted hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty, and comforted the nation—and world—following the terrorist attacks of September 11th,” Ted Goodman, an advisor to Mr Giuliani, told The Independent via email.
Throughout and after his federal defamation trial, the key Donald Trump ally continued to falsely suggest mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss were part of an election conspiracy, according to the suit.
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2023-12-20 10:20:13Z
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