Groups move to bar Trumo running in some states because of 14th Amendment

 The Hill - Two civil rights organizations are launching a campaign to pressure state governments to disqualify former President Trump from appearing on ballots in 2024. The groups say secretaries of state are empowered by the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from running for office because of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Starting Sunday, Mi Familia Vota and Free Speech for People will stage a week of rallies and banner drops outside the offices of the secretaries of state of California, Oregon, Colorado and Georgia. The groups also penned a letter to Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar last month, calling on him to block Trump under what’s known as the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause.

“We’re really focusing on Nevada and California and [Oregon, Colorado and Georgia] to make sure that they are taking a stand by disqualifying Trump in those spaces, which is something that the secretary of state can do,” said Héctor Sánchez, executive director of Mi Familia Vota,,,,

Secretaries of state are charged with certifying eligibility of candidates and counting the votes in their state. Though Trump has been indicted twice and is under investigation in other cases, the groups say those are not disqualifying facts under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. However, the groups believe Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection — for which he is also under investigation — does fit the constitutional clause’s definitions.

That clause bars from a series of public offices people 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.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, it’s unclear whether the clause bans people from being president — an office not explicitly mentioned in Section 3 — and whether the events of Jan. 6 rise to the level of “insurrection or rebellion against” the United States.