Death of an Insurrection

On the day Donald Trump was scheduled to stand trial in Washington for charges related to the events of January 6, the Supreme Court instead delivered a death blow to the Insurrection.

Obituary

RIP, Insurrection. A young political life with such promise cut short after suffering a series of debilitating injuries over the past three years. Not even the hubris of Liz Cheney, faux outrage of Jamie Raskin, fake tears of Michael Fanone and Don Lemon, podium-pounding screeds of Joe Biden, or nonstop life-sustaining efforts by the entirety of the national news media could save it.

Date of death: March 4, 2024.

Cause of death: All nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot for allegedly participating in an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

Insurrection will be sorely missed by Andrew Weissmann, Rachel Maddow, Mitt Romney, and so many close friends from MSNBC and the Washington Post.

Thoughts and Prayers

As I explained last week, today was supposed to be a monumental day in American history: a former president for the first time would have entered a federal courtroom as a defendant in a criminal trial. And not for committing murder or dealing drugs or using relatives to strong-arm foreign oligarchs into wiring millions of dollars to shell companies for doing no work.

No, Trump was supposed to go on trial for the Insurrection—a far more dire threat to “democracy” and the “rule of law” and whatnot, according to Jennifer Rubin. No one, after all, is above the law of Insurrection even though the former president wasn’t charged with Insurrection.

But the case brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith in August 2023 for January 6 and his alleged attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election remains on indefinite hold while the courts hash out whether a president can face criminal prosecution for his conduct in office. The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments the week of April 22 to debate the unprecedented matter; every day that ticks away without a decision after that represents another delay in the Department of Justice’s J6 trial against Trump, an event the special counsel’s office and media openly admit must happen before the November election.

Whether a U.S. president is immune from criminal prosecution, the question pending before the court, undoubtedly presents complicated legal ground for the justices to consider. But the justices found common ground for now on one consequential election question: whether the Colorado Supreme Court—in a 4-3 decision—had the authority to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which reads:

In a 9-0 opinion published Monday morning, the court overturned the Colorado ruling. “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the court wrote in a per curiam—meaning the full court agreed and the opinion was not authored by a particular justice—decision.

The scope of the opinion, however, extended beyond what happened in Colorado and essentially ruled out the ability of any other state from following suit absent legislation passed by Congress. “This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3. We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”

In other words, it’s over. The casket has closed on the Insurrection.

How Will They Go On?

Loved ones of the Insurrection understandably took the news hard. Without evidence of a corpse, the bereaved reasoned, perhaps the Insurrection somehow survived the firing squad?

Noah Bookbinder, president of the nonprofit responsible for filing Insurrection-disqualifying lawsuits in numerous jurisdictions, best demonstrated the denial stage of the grieving process. “The fact that not a single justice today issued a single sentence disputing the finding that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection is incredibly telling. Yes, they let him off on a technicality, but there is no question that he is an oath-breaking insurrectionist,” Bookbinder posted, presumably from the fetal position, on X.

Bookbinder’s coping mechanism caught on fast. “The loudest sentence in today’s opinion is the one that’s not there. The Court had a chance to absolve Trump of having engaged in insurrection against the United States and declined to do that, which is a stunning statement by our nation’s highest court,” Protect Democracy founder and former Obama White House general counsel Ian Bassin posted.

Frequent MSNBC legal analyst Neal Katyal claimed the absence of an answer to a question no one asked—the court noted in its opinion that Trump’s petition for certiorari “raised a single question: ‘Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?’—meant Trump was guilty of Insurrection…or something.

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, apparently rendered incoherent by grief, just threw a bunch of words on X that perhaps made sense to the voices in his head. “It’s staggering that not one of the 9 justices said a word to support Trump’s claims that trying to overturn Biden’s 2020 election wasn’t an ‘insurrection,’ that anyway he didn’t ‘engage’ in it, and that as president he was exempt from Sec 3’s disqualification from future office!”

Coping with Loss

Their life-saving spin is a desperate attempt to frustrate what is likely to be the public’s quick reading of today’s opinion: that Donald Trump did not engage in insurrection.

And with no resuscitative J6 criminal trial in the near future, that sentiment will stick no matter how hard the Katyals and Tribes of the world claim the court did not “clear” Trump’s name.

Perhaps we should be gracious during this period of mourning. It is hard, after all, for one to let go of something so critical to one’s existence. “Who am I without Insurrection?” those left behind will ask with futility as flashbacks of the QAnon shaman and Indiana mee-maws keep them awake in the wee hours.

Hopefully they can find comfort in the shared loss of others.

They will always have January 6.