14th Amendment Section 3
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
No impeachment is necessary. Just an Act of Congress passed in both houses by a simple majority vote and signed by the president is all that the Constitution requires to disallow Trump from ever holding public office again.
Should the January 6 Committee or the DOJ ever get around to making that singular case of insurrection, Democrats would be practically obligated to bring such an Act up for a vote. Therein lies the rub. Democrats are notoriously feckless and timid. I doubt they’d have the gumption to bring it up before the election, perpetually outraged Republicans would go ballistic, as they always do, and Trump’s MAGA cult followers would surely show up at polls in November, open-carry ‘persuasion’ at the ready.
But AFTER the November election, Democrats would not have much to lose. If they do lose the House and/or the Senate, they still have until January 3, 2023, to make their move. Cue the Republican outrage machine.
If Democrats, by some miracle of sanity, retain the House and/or the Senate, all the more reason to pass the Act, as the spoken Will of the People. But, regardless, cue the Republican outrage machine.
Do Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden have the courage to save our republic from the existential threat of another Trump presidency, as they have so often stated publicly that that’s what it would be? The Electoral Count Act of 1887, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the For the People Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, all have failed, in one way or another, to protect our free and fair elections from malign domestic forces.
This is the United States’ last chance. The 14th Amendment is not self-enforcing, but it is an indelible part of the Constitution. It means exactly what it says, and an insurrection is exactly what January 6 was.
Oxford English Dictionary, insurrection: a violent uprising against an authority or government.
Merriam Webster, insurrection: an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.
Cambridge Dictionary, insurrection: an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence.
Beyond the Republican “outrage,” if Congress were to pass such an Act, one can only imagine the deafening public sigh of relief that this thorn has finally been removed from our body politic and the healing may begin. Forever Trumpers are a dying breed, Never Trumpers are ready to resume sanity, and the rest of us are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the marmalade menace.
The world is anxiously ready to move on from this error of an era. And by virtually all US opinion polls, Americans are anxiously ready for a fresh start, the next generation of leaders, Democrats, Republicans, and maybe even independents, to break free from the past and work for new solutions to our myriad problems — while we still have whatever time is left before those problems become insurmountable.
Enforce the 14th Amendment.
