Via NBC News: Republican secretary of state threatens to kick Biden off the ballot as Trump payback.
“What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic,” Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wrote on the social media site X on Friday. “While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for @realDonaldTrump applies equally to @JoeBiden!”
[…]
Asked how he would disqualify Biden from the ballot for insurrection, Ashcroft said that he’s “let an invasion unstopped into our country from the border.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he added, “supported people that were rebelling against the U.S. government during the riots in 2020,” referring to racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
“If this is the standard, does that suddenly mean she’s not allowed to run? None of us can say, because there is no standard,” he said.
This is, of course, predictable. On one level, Ashcroft isn’t wrong to note these are uncharted waters. Still, I would invite him to hold a hearing that tries to establish the fact that Biden’s approach to immigration (which, ultimately, is not all that different from Trump’s in terms of outcomes, if not actual enforcement–just sans harping on a wall) rises to the level of insurrection (or even being able to define a migration crisis as an insurrection). Nor do I see how Black Lives Matter protests linked to the murder of George Floyd could be categorized as an insurrection, let alone that Vice President Harris is someone uniquely responsible (why? Because she is Black?).
Of course, it is easy to spout off on Twitter, but a lot harder to make all of this actually happen.
Similarly, The Messenger reports: DeSantis Says He’s Looking to Make ‘Credible Case’ to Remove Biden From Florida Ballot.
“This is just going to be a tit for tat and it’s just not gonna end well,” the GOP presidential candidate warned Friday alongside Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, according to a video posted by CNN. “You could make a case — I’m actually looking at this in Florida now [if we] could we make a credible case” to block Biden from the ballot “because of the invasion of 8 million.”
Although DeSantis later added he doesn’t think “that’s the right way to do it.”
I know all of this immigration stuff plays well with his audience, but I still fail to see how that would be sufficient to invoke section 3 of the 14th Amendment (especially when we had similar problems during the Trump administration–so would be be disqualifying too?).
Indeed, if there are federal judges (let alone an appeals court) who would uphold a section 3 claim based on what amounts to a refugee crisis on our border, then the system may be more broken than I think it is and we really are doomed to a significant degeneration of governance.
There is room to debate whether section 3 requires a criminal conviction, but Trump’s role in January 6th and in other attempts to overturn the election is pretty clear (although yes, I understand how MAGAites don’t see it that way and how other GOP voters are motivated to rationalize it away). This is in no way analogous to the situation on the border.
And this is all of course inevitable, at least from a rhetorical point of view, and is probably one of the reasons that SCOTUS will find a way to punt on section 3 instead of taking very seriously a presidential candidate who, when in the highest office in the land, tried to overturn a legitimate election.
But we are both in very serious and yet also deeply unserious times.
All of this reminds me of the following (via Reuters): US House Republicans plan impeachment hearing for Biden’s border chief.
A Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives committee next week will advance an effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over allegations he has been derelict in his duty of managing the U.S.-Mexico border, the committee announced on Wednesday.
The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on Jan. 10 related to the impeachment allegations with witnesses to be announced in the coming days, it said in a press release.
First, failing to achieve the majority party’s policy goals hardly qualifies as a high crime or misdemeanor (at least in any rational assessment). Second, since Congress is responsible for immigration policy, they are are responsible as anyone for its ongoing failure.
I would note, for example, that the only cabinet secretary impeached (and also removed) was William Belknap who was Secretary of War. He was impeached over a clear case of bribery. (There were several others who had serious charges against them who resigned before they were impeached, which actually was also the case with Belknap, as well as a couple of others that seem to fall in the political stunt category that eventually went nowhere, as I expect to ultimately be the case here).
That we have a real and complex issue at the southern border is inarguable. But, Congress has done precious little about it for years (decades!) and I can guarantee that holding impeachment hearings (or even removing Mayorkas) will not improve the situation one iota.
Nor, to return to the topic of the post, does being president while this issue exists, make one the cause, let alone party to, insurrection.
