Dear John,

I have been saying for months that Donald Trump is ineligible to run for president due to the provision in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, that says:

“No person shall... hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,... who, having previously taken an oath... 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.”

Now, lawsuits have been filed seeking the enforcement of this provision in three states so far: in Colorado, brought by CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and in Minnesota and Michigan, brought by Free Speech for People. Trump is counter-suing in Michigan. An additional lawsuit may be coming in Massachusetts, and pre-emptive reviews are underway in Maine, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.

This is all good news and a sign that our work together is helping to move this fight forward. In the end Trump’s eligibility will almost certainly be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the more cases decided in our favor before it gets to the highest court, the better.

And we just LOST one of them (sort of) last week:

The court’s argument was that state law lets party committees put anyone they want on the primary ballot, so they threw out the case. But, they also made clear that this decision did not mean Trump is qualified to run in the general election.

Here’s the bottom-line: Trump IS disqualified and his qualification should be challenged in every state -- not just these seven.

That’s why we must keep the pressure up on state secretaries of state to take action. Click here to urge state election officials to enforce the 14th Amendment and disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot now!

Ben Clements, chairman and senior legal advisor of Free Speech for People, says, “The purpose of Section 3 was to say, certain people engage in conduct that’s so egregious, that is such a threat to our democracy, that even if they have the support of the majority of Americans -- they should not serve.”

Clements says, “We have this provision in the Constitution and it should be enforced. And the evidence is overwhelming that Donald Trump incited and mobilized the insurrection.”

The argument received considerable traction in August, when two prominent conservative legal scholars associated with the Federalist Society, William Baude & Michael Stokes Paulsen, wrote a 126-page paper in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, holding that “Section 3 is valid, enforceable, and self-executing.”

They mince no words in concluding, “it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.”

Of course, it’s not just right-wing scholars saying it.

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe says, “this is a provision that’s supposed to operate whether or not you are prosecuted and convicted” of a crime, and it must be considered in the context of well-documented attempts to intimidate election officials into “finding” non-existent votes for Trump, and the false electors scheme he established in an attempt to invalidate millions of legitimate votes by American citizens.

Without lawsuits and public pressure, state secretaries of state appear unwilling to make these decisions. Especially as Trump’s lawyers argue these 14th Amendment cases amount to “election interference.”

If Trump were under 35 years old or hadn’t been born in the United States, you can bet election officials nationwide would automatically bar Trump from running because the Constitution's rules for office are an open and shut case.

If you believe the same is true for the insurrectionist clause in the 14th Amendment. as I do, then we need to keep the public pressure up on election officials nationwide to do their job and bar Trump from running for office now. Please join me by adding your name.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was designed for just this type of situation. And without its enforcement -- and if Trump is reelected -- it could literally determine whether the United States survives as an electoral democracy or not.

Thank you for taking action today.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action