The PBS NewsHour on Monday reacted badly to the Supreme Court’s 9-0 body blow to liberal dreams of having Donald Trump removed from state ballots in November and thus denying voters their choice of presidential candidates. But PBS reporter William Brangham tried desperately to salvage the credibility of the dubious original case involving a bizarre (and now officially unconstitutional) ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, and also muddied the waters to deny the damage to liberal hopes that the unanimous verdict signified.
Even as other liberal media outlets were initially dubious about Colorado’s election suppression in December, PBS’s Colorado ballot coverage was slanted in favor of the state’s vote denial. The appointed expert was Neal Katyal, who just happened to have served as solicitor general under President Obama, but with his partisan identification left unmentioned.
PBS downplayed the inconvenient fact that Trump has not actually been convicted of insurrection by any court, however defined, while allotting tons of time to marginal dissenting angles from the liberal justices to hint that this 9-0 decision was kind of actually more of a 5-4 decision (which even if true, would still be a loss).
Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that the 14th Amendment does not allow individual states to remove former President Donald Trump from their ballots.
Then co-anchor Geoff Bennett brought on reporter William Brangham to discuss the court ruling that only Congress, not states, could disqualify presidential candidates under the Constitution's “Insurrection Clause.”
Brangham reminded viewers of the alleged “Republican voters” that pushed Colorado’s Supreme Court to call Trump an insurrectionist in violation of Section 3 of the 14th amendment and thus ineligible for high office.
William Brangham: Remember, Geoff, this came out of a group of Republican voters in Colorado saying that January 6, to their mind, was clearly an insurrection, and that Donald Trump was the cheerleader of that insurrection....And [SCOTUS] basically said, you cannot have a system where a lot of different states are making this decision, because it would simply be a sort of ad hoc state-by-state basis. In their ruling, they said: "For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the states….”
Bennett set his reporter up to probe the supposed weaknesses of the iron
clad 9-0 ruling.
Bennett: How did the court deal with a specific question of whether Donald Trump is an insurrectionist?
Brangham certainly gave a lot of time to opposing viewpoints along the margins of a unanimous decision.
Brangham: They didn't. They didn't bring it up in the hearing last month. They didn't bring it up in this ruling. There was some disagreement in the ruling today as to who gets to make that decision and when they make the decision. The four female justices -- it was interesting how it split on gender lines here -- all four female justices said that the ruling that states shouldn't be able to make this decision should have stood. But, Kagan, Sotomayor and Justice Jackson all took issue with the further breadth of this ruling, which they argue made it much harder to actually enforce Section 3, saying that Congress has to write a particular statute in order to enforce a part of the Constitution. It's very unusual. These three justices wrote that the other justices crafted this ruling to insulate themselves and Donald Trump.
Brangham quoted the four justices’ partial dissent, then concluded the SCOTUS discussion with a plea for viewers to ignore the 9-0 headlines.
Brangham: They are clearly not happy with this, something to remember when we see all these headlines that this was a unanimous ruling.
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A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS NewsHour
3/4/24
7:03:19 p.m. (ET)
Amna Nawaz: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that the 14th Amendment does not allow individual states to remove former President Donald Trump from their ballots.
Geoff Bennett: In an unsigned opinion, the court said only that Congress, not states, can disqualify presidential candidates under the Constitution's so-called Insurrection Clause. The former president celebrated the decision.
Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: Essentially, you cannot take somebody out of a race because an opponent would like to have it that way. And it has nothing to do with the fact that it's the leading candidate. Whether it was the leading candidate or a candidate that was well down on the totem pole, you cannot take somebody out of a race.
Geoff Bennett: And William Brangham joins us now.
So, William, the court was unequivocal. States do not have the power to remove federal candidates from the ballot under the Insurrection Clause. Help us understand how the justices arrived at this ruling.
William Brangham: Remember, Geoff, this came out of a group of Republican voters in Colorado saying that January 6, to their mind, was clearly an insurrection, and that Donald Trump was the cheerleader of that insurrection.
And they cited this Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which is, as you mentioned, the Insurrection Clause. And it argues that, if you have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and then you engage in an insurrection after the fact, you can't hold office again.
And so they appealed that all the way to the Colorado State Supreme Court, and they won. And Donald Trump was ruled that he has to be taken off the Republican primary ballot. The Supreme Court is what — they overturned that today. And they basically said, you cannot have a system where a lot of different states are making this decision, because it would simply be a sort of ad hoc state-by-state basis.
In their ruling, they said: "For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the states. The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand."
It said states can choose to withhold and withdraw state candidates, not federal candidates.
Geoff Bennett: So, tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Colorado is one of the many states holding a primary tomorrow, but the impact of this decision sweeps far beyond Colorado. Isn't that right?
William Brangham: That's exactly right.
Trump will be on the ballot in Colorado. They printed the ballots already and thought, OK, if the ruling comes in the other direction, those votes just won't get counted. That doesn't matter now.
As you mentioned, there are over 30 states that were examining some kind of a challenge on 14th Amendment grounds to pull Donald Trump off their ballots. All of those go away now. Trump will be on the ballot in all the states.
Geoff Bennett: How did the court deal with a specific question of whether Donald Trump is an insurrectionist?
William Brangham: They didn't. They didn't bring it up in the hearing last month. They didn't bring it up in this ruling.
There was some disagreement in the ruling today as to who gets to make that decision and when they make the decision. The four female justices — it was interesting how it split on gender lines here — all four female justices said that the ruling that states shouldn't be able to make this decision should have stood.
But Kagan, Sotomayor and Justice Jackson all took issue with the further breadth of this ruling, which they argue made it much harder to actually enforce Section 3, saying that Congress has to write a particular statute in order to enforce a part of the Constitution. It's very unusual.
These three justices wrote that the other justices crafted this ruling to insulate themselves and Donald Trump. I'm going to read a little bit of what they said.
They wrote — quote — "The majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate. It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course."
They are clearly not happy with this, something to remember when we see all these headlines that this was a unanimous ruling.
