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**FEBRUARY 8, 2024**
On the Prospect website
Bernie Sanders Isn't Thankful for High Drug Prices
Another in a series of hearings with pharma CEOs takes place today. BY
DAVID DAYEN
From Flint to East Palestine and Back
Ohio and Pennsylvania residents want the tools to study long-term health
impacts from the 2023 freight train derailment. But East Palestine
hasn't seen the money. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY
Judges Who Were Consumer or Worker Advocates? Not Many.
Biden has diversified the bench by many metrics, but corporate-side
attorneys still fill most federal judgeships. BY RAMENDA CYRUS
Water Democracies
Four-hundred-year-old acequia systems of the Southwest are changing how
communities cope with water scarcity. BY AINA MARZIA & LAJWARD ZAHRA
Meyerson on TAP
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**** Stop Trump? Who, Us?
The Supreme Court finds several reasons not to keep Trump off the
ballot.
There were always three questions involved in the case that the Supreme
Court heard today. The first was whether Donald Trump had, in fact,
instigated an insurrection. The second was whether he should be
forbidden from holding the presidency (or any other office) under
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The third was whether a state-in this
case, Colorado-could bar Trump from the ballot, citing the first and
second cases as the reason for barring him.
That gave the Court three off-ramps from having to chonk Trump off this
year's presidential ballot, and any one of them would be sufficient.
The justices' response to the oral arguments presented today made
clear that there would be no chonking. The three Democratic-appointed
justices-Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown
Jackson-seriously questioned the third rationale-that is, whether a
state could block a presidential candidate from appearing on the ballot,
which, they suggested, could lead to chaotic election-year divergences
from state to state, and could set a precedent for disqualifications
that could be a lot more arbitrary than this one.
The Republican-appointed justices also raised that objection, but went
further in suggesting that Section 3 didn't contain the word
"president" and thus, though it does specify officials who've sworn an
oath to the Constitution, couldn't be invoked against Trump. They were
clearly indifferent to the fact that this was the kind of argument that
led Shakespeare to write, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the
lawyers."
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What I suspect will emerge from this mishmash is a ruling that's
either unanimous or close to it, that will nullify Colorado's
decision. My guess also is that there may be separate concurring
opinions, some (from the Democrats) saying that the first two cases
remain undecided and thereby create the possibility that Trump could
still be blocked from taking office under Section 3, and some from some
of the Republicans arguing that Section 3 just doesn't apply to
presidents.
What I suspect will also follow from this is that the Court will shortly
uphold the unanimous appellate court ruling this week that Trump has no
immunity from prosecution for instigating the January 6th insurrection.
(They may, in fact, even decline to hear Trump's appeal of that
ruling.) That the Court has had the good fortune to have both these
cases before it and thus could split the difference is doubtless a
relief to Chief Justice Roberts, who wants nothing so much as to help
restore the Court's reputation for balance, if such restoration is
even possible.
If Trump's prosecution for January 6th goes forward in a timely
fashion, and if he's convicted, can someone go back to the Court
making cases one and two? Clearly, the Court's hard right-Thomas,
Alito, Gorsuch-will want to squelch that possibility in rejecting the
case they heard today. The timing will also make that difficult: By
then, Trump may well be the Republicans' official nominee.
Conundrums await, with disaster always a clear possibility.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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