Tangle - The Supreme Court reinstates Trump on Colorado's ballot.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

Starting point is 00:01:05 your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and we are talking about Donald Trump again. I'm sorry to do this. I love talking policy and culture war stuff, and I'm getting a little

Starting point is 00:02:07 exhausted by the constant stream of updates and news about various trials and all that stuff. But in this case, this was kind of a must cover. I don't think we could ignore this. The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Donald Trump must be reinstated in Colorado on their state ballot. We're going to talk about that ruling, what it means, some of the implications, and how they got there, which is kind of the most interesting part of this story. Before we jump in, I just want to remind everybody again, event, April 17th. I'm going to do this basically every day until you all buy tickets. April 17th in New York City, City Winery. We have two guests who I don't want to say are locked in.

Starting point is 00:02:50 We have one guest locked in, and we have one guest who is very, very close to being locked in, and I'm super excited about both of them. So you just want to buy your tickets before you know, because then it'll be so exciting when we announce them. You already have tickets to the show. City Winery, April 17th. If you have not yet figured out an excuse to come to New York City and do that, you should find one. If you live in New York, then I mean, I don't know what you're waiting for. It's a Wednesday night, something to do on a Wednesday. Go buy a ticket. And we'd really love to have the Tangle audience and some Tangle homers and fans in the

Starting point is 00:03:26 crowd. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in with some quick hits. First up, Israeli forces raided the West Bank city of Ramallah in what is being called the largest operation there in years. Separately, a United Nations report published on Monday found signs that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, were committed in multiple locations on October 7th during the Hamas-led attack on Israel. Number two, the Supreme Court temporarily halted a Texas law that allowed local and state police to arrest and deport migrants. Number three, France passed a constitutional amendment that declared abortion a guaranteed freedom, making them the first country to do so. Number four, Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer for the Trump organization,

Starting point is 00:04:17 pleaded guilty to lying under oath during testimony in Trump's New York civil fraud case yesterday. His plea deal sends him back to jail but does not require him to testify at Trump's hush money trial. Number five, four former Twitter executives have sued Elon Musk for unpaid severance. Separately, Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, saying it broke the company's founding agreement. And number six, a quick reminder that today is Super Tuesday. with elections in over 16 states. We've got a link breaking down what to expect in today's newsletter and episode description. The Supreme Court has just handed down an historic ruling concerning Colorado's attempt

Starting point is 00:05:07 to bar Donald Trump from the presidential ballot in that state. The decision coming just one day before Super Tuesday when voters headed the polls in 15 states, of course, including Colorado. Just moments ago in the case of Trump versus Anderson, the justice is ruling in Donald Trump's favor, saying Colorado has no right to keep his name off the ballot this November. The justices ruling that states cannot bar Donald Trump from running for another term, even though he is accused by some of insurrection.

Starting point is 00:05:36 Colorado and several other states were seeking to disqualify Trump because of his actions surrounding the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. of his actions surrounding the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. All nine justices of the Supreme Court agree that states cannot kick candidates off the ballot under the 14th Amendment, that clause which you mentioned, which passed after the Civil War, held that people who had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection are banned from holding federal office further. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that states cannot disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot for his role in January 6, 2021. The ruling overturns a

Starting point is 00:06:18 Colorado state Supreme Court decision disqualifying Trump and applies to every state in the country. However, the justices were divided on the question of who can enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. This ruling is unrelated to their decision to take up the question of whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution, which we covered in yesterday's podcast. A quick reminder here, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars anyone from holding office who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. An ideological mix of lawyers and legal scholars has embraced the idea that Trump should be disqualified from holding office because of his actions leading up to and on January 6th. In December, the Colorado State Supreme Court barred Trump from the ballot, siding 4-3 with a group of voters making that argument. The majority found that Trump incited

Starting point is 00:07:11 and encouraged the use of violence and lawless actions to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. At least 16 other states have had challenges to Trump's eligibility under the 14th Amendment. In Maine, the Secretary of State ruled that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot, but a state court judge put that ruling on hold until the Colorado case was resolved. Similarly, a judge in Illinois ruled that Trump was ineligible, but also put the ruling on hold until the Supreme Court gave its decision. On Monday, the Supreme Court handed that decision down, ruling unanimously that Colorado cannot remove Trump from the ballot. However, all nine justices did not agree on the reasoning. A coalition of five justices reasoned

Starting point is 00:07:50 that the 14th Amendment was designed to expand the federal government's power to prevent former Confederates from returning to power after the Civil War. Before disqualifying someone under Section 3, the majority argued, there must be a determination that the provision actually applies to that person. Further, Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which says that Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article, gives the power of that determination exclusively to Congress. The court also argued that if states were allowed to enforce Section 3 against candidates for federal office, it would create chaos across the country, with candidates disqualified in some states but not others. The result could well be that a single candidate would be declared ineligible in some

Starting point is 00:08:34 states but not others, based on the same conduct, the court said. The majority also argued that if states were allowed to enforce Section 3, they would not be limited by Section 5 the same way Congress would, according to SCOTUSblog. And the notion that the Constitution grants the states freer reign than Congress to decide how Section 3 should be enforced with respect to federal offices is simply implausible, the justices said. Three of the justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Katonji Brown Jackson, signed a separate opinion agreeing that Trump should remain on the ballot in Colorado, but arguing that the majority should not have gone on to decide who can enforce Section 3 and how. The American people have the power to vote for and

Starting point is 00:09:15 elect candidates for national office, and that is a great and glorious thing, they wrote. The men who drafted and ratified the 14th Amendment, however, had witnessed an insurrection and rebellion to defend slavery. They wanted to ensure that those who had participated in that insurrection and in possible future insurrections could not return to prominent roles. Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oath-breaking insurrectionist from becoming president. Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed that the court should not have gone so far as to rule on the complicated question of whether federal legislation is the

Starting point is 00:09:50 exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced. However, she wrote her own separate opinion that also criticized Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson's dissent, saying in part that it turned the temperature up when this ruling should be turning the temperature down. The court did not answer the question of whether Trump engaged in insurrection, which he had asked the court to do. Today, we're going to explore some arguments from the right and the left about the decision, and then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Almost all of the right supports the decision and celebrates that it was unanimous.

Starting point is 00:10:37 Some agree with the outcome but criticize aspects of the court's reasoning. Others say the court has effectively destroyed part of the 14th Amendment. aspects of the court's reasoning. Others say the court has effectively destroyed part of the 14th Amendment. In Newsweek, Mark R. Weaver wrote that the Supreme Court has restored order in a chaotic time. The high court forestalled what could have been serious constitutional confusion with the attendant partisan polemics, Weaver said. What Colorado and others like Maine and Illinois sought was politics by less noble means. If upheld, every future presidential election would hold the potential for partisan scheming to dig up the most plausible evidence that an opposing party's candidate was an insurrectionist or given aid to the enemy

Starting point is 00:11:14 through some political rhetoric or executive action. But the high court said, convincingly, nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos, Weaver wrote. In our collective American dictionary, federalism is a synonym for order. This decision brings it. Trump's opponents should cease their lamentations and lawfare and focus their energies on the venerable area where final decisions are made, the presidential election. In the New York Times, David French argued that the Supreme Court just erased part of the Constitution. Times, David French argued that the Supreme Court just erased part of the Constitution.

Starting point is 00:11:50 The court went with, arguably, the broadest reasoning available, that Section 3 isn't self-executing and thus has no force or effect in the absence of congressional action, French wrote. But now, Section 3 is different from other sections of the amendment. It requires federal legislation to enforce its terms, at least as applied to candidates for federal office. Through inaction alone, Congress can effectively erase part of the 14th Amendment. In other words, the Constitution imposes the disability and only a supermajority of Congress can remove it. But under the Supreme Court's reasoning, the meaning is inverted. The Constitution merely allows Congress to impose the disability, and if Congress chooses not to enact legislation enforcing the section, then the disability does not exist. The Supreme Court has effectively

Starting point is 00:12:30 replaced a very high bar for allowing insurrectionists into federal office, a supermajority vote by Congress with the lowest bar imaginable congressional action. In National Review, Dan McLaughlin said haste and acrimony undermine a unanimous Supreme Court. We brought Dan on to hear some of his opinions straight from the horse's mouth. Dan McLaughlin, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Glad to be here. So first, I want to just give you a chance to kind of explain the top level two minute summary of your position on this Colorado 14th Amendment ruling that the Supreme Court just handed down. I mean, I thought you had a very nuanced position and one that was sort of maybe happy with the outcome, but dissatisfied, I would say, with how the court got there. And I'd love to hear you sort of explain a little bit of that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's the court did get to the right bottom line result of keeping Trump on the ballot. There were a lot of legal issues in this case, almost all of which

Starting point is 00:13:36 were completely novel in terms of things that the Supreme Court had never decided before, most of them being things a lot of federal courts had not decided before. And they fell into three general areas, right, which is the coverage issues, right? Is the president even covered by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to where he's an office that could be disqualified? Two is the process issue, right? Are state courts allowed to make these decisions or any courts allowed to make these decisions? If not, who gets to make them? Congress? And then the third set of issues is the merits. You know, was this an insurrection? Did Trump engage in insurrection? My own view, I really think that the court should have ruled on the merits. I think that they should have gone directly to the legal question of what it means to engage in insurrection. And I think if they had ruled on that, that Trump

Starting point is 00:14:32 should have won. The court was, I think, hesitant to do that for a lot of reasons, partially because they don't like wading into factual disputes. But fundamentally, the original understanding of the term engage in insurrection, as it was written in the 1860s, meant something like active participation, and active participation after the insurrection started. It did not mean, you know, giving speeches before the fact that created a political climate for insurrection. Congress was pretty clear on that at the time in the 1860s, and I think that's really political climate for insurrection. Congress was pretty clear on that at the time in the 1860s, and I think that's really decisive in Trump's favor. Can you talk a little bit about the dissenting voices here? I mean, this was a unanimous

Starting point is 00:15:15 decision. The three liberal justices on the court sort of broke from the five justices who penned the overall opinion and basically said that they wish they hadn't gone as far as kind of limiting who could enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It seemed like Amy Coney Barrett agreed with them, but maybe didn't agree with how they said it. Could you talk a little bit about those four justices and how their views are kind of interacting here? Yes. I mean, what the court did basically, and Barrett's a little bit in the middle because she joined parts of the court's opinion, but not the whole thing. So, I mean, basically what the court said is, you know, Section 3 disqualification has to be enforced only, you know, pursuant to,

Starting point is 00:16:04 that only Congress has the power to do it, although Congress can create statutes to allow it to be done. There is one such statute on the books, the criminal statute. Trump has not been charged under that. And they basically said, look, states can't enforce this at all. And all nine justices agreed with the part of states can't enforce this at all. And all nine justices agreed with the part of states can't enforce this at all. But where the disagreement comes is principally, I think, two things. One is that the, we'll call them the dissenting justices, the three liberals, although they actually concurred in the results. So the case was unanimous in that sense. So the three liberals essentially argued that what they thought should happen is that it ought to remain open to later, you know, raising in lawsuits, say, after Trump becomes president, if he wins. know, raising in lawsuits, say, after Trump becomes president, if he wins, that, you know,

Starting point is 00:17:11 if the Justice Department is prosecuting somebody or Trump is trying to pass or repeal some new regulation, that in the course of, you know, the ordinary lawsuits under general laws or criminal cases under general laws, some federal court could just pick the time and the place to say, you know what, this guy's not really the president. He doesn't get to exercise the powers of the president. I mean, that was essentially what they were saying, is the court went too far in their view foreclosing that, which I think it was a little bit vague in the opinion as to whether it was actually doing that. The other thing that some people have mooted around, which I don't think the court did, there seemed to be some concern that maybe the court was precluding anybody, precluding Congress from outside of the context of passing laws,

Starting point is 00:18:01 from exercising its powers, for example, to say that presidential electors couldn't be counted for a disqualified candidate or for, you know, in other contexts that maybe Congress shouldn't be able to, you know, now after this decision, Congress couldn't say refuse to seat somebody in the House or the Senate who has engaged in insurrection because they didn't go through this legal process. I don't read the court's opinion that way at all. I think the court actually, I mean, this was a vaguely written opinion in a couple ways that will, you know, there will be issues that will come back eventually about it. But I think the court made pretty clear that Congress still has the power at least to refuse to seat congressional candidates who they feel are disqualified under Section 3. Yeah, I want to talk just a little bit about that, the writing of the opinion and some of the issues it might bring up.

Starting point is 00:19:00 Because what I got a little bit from your piece was that you felt like maybe some of the opinion was a little sloppy or a little rushed. Could you talk about some of the things that kind of concern you, what stuck out to you that are maybe going to be issues down the line? Yeah, I mean, I think there's three real issues, three real problems here that went into the writing of this opinion, and it's hard to tell sometimes um or maybe for what contributed to what one is sort of the moral courage issue the court didn't want to get into the merits of whether trump's an insurrectionist or not one is they were writing in haste uh you know this this this case came up a lot faster than the usual supreme court case and they clearly wanted had a probably a

Starting point is 00:19:42 self-imposed deadline to get it out before the Maine and Colorado primaries, which are today. One is, you know, I think that Trump's lawyers really leaned on the arguments that won and not so much on the engage in insurrection point in a legal sense. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on

Starting point is 00:20:18 and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000

Starting point is 00:20:37 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province.

Starting point is 00:20:59 Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCcellvax.ca. And finally, I think that the court sometimes writes very mushy opinions precisely because the person who's writing it is trying to get as many votes as possible instead of making a clear legal decision. And I think it was probably important to the Chief Justice that they be unanimous, right? And there was no way that some of the dissenters, some of the liberal justices were going to sign on to an opinion saying Trump's not an insurrectionist. So the problem is, I mean, as I said, they were kind of vague about, you know, maybe a little bit vague about whether they were somehow, what they were foreclosing Congress from doing as opposed to what they were foreclosing the state courts from doing.

Starting point is 00:21:50 Um, it seems that the court may have foreclosed states now from throwing disqualified candidates off the ballot at all under other constitutional qualifications like citizenship and age, minimum age. There's already a rule that says that states can't throw people off for residency, but that's because you're allowed to change your residency all the way up to election day, right? So there's a practical reason for that. But it was really unclear whether the court was saying that state courts can't enforce the disqualification provisions of the 14th Amendment, or were they saying they can't do it for any of the qualification provisions of the Constitution. The court didn't say one way or the other. when it's going out of its way not to decide some related question to, you know, there's like a footnote in the opinion or something that says, you know, our decision doesn't apply to this. We're not deciding this today. We're assuming this for that deciding it or we're leaving that

Starting point is 00:22:55 for another day or something. They didn't do that here. So before we get out of here, I want to ask you one last question about the liberal justices and what we're calling their dissenting opinion, even though this was a unanimous decision. There's been a lot of strong responses to how they wrote their opinion. Obviously, Amy Coney Barrett even criticized it pretty explicitly, I think, which was a little bit unusual, if not extraordinary, just basically saying that this is a unanimous decision. a little bit unusual, if not extraordinary, just basically saying that this is a unanimous decision, we should be turning the temperature down, and this block of justice is, you know, turning the

Starting point is 00:23:30 temperature up during an election season. I'm curious for your view on sort of, you know, the nature of what the liberal justices wrote, if you feel like it crossed the line or was inappropriate in some ways. I mean, you know, look, on the one hand, the court, you know, they're all grown-ups. When they feel that the court has done something really improper, it's not that unusual to have some fairly acid dissents or even concurrences. That said, you know, look, I think that the, particularly given kind of the storm of criticism that the left has brought down on the court, I think the dissent, the three liberal justices knew what they were doing here, right? They know that

Starting point is 00:24:11 they're reaching a conclusion that's going to be unpopular with the people who like them. So they were sort of throwing some red meat to their base in the commentariat, which I think is unfortunate, because I don't think that's the way Supreme Court justices should think. You know, it's one thing to write sort of for the legal academy and everything and say, you know what, the court's just done something really improper here. But the actual, I thought that the rhetoric they used was disproportionate to the actual dispute, which was fairly narrow. And, you know, they were getting upset over something that the court wasn't even clearly doing. And I think, you know, I think in that situation, it's much more appropriate to write an opinion saying, you know, the court has

Starting point is 00:25:02 just made a mess. You know, they left a whole bunch of unanswered questions. People write those opinions all the time saying, you know, the court has just opened a whole bunch of questions that it doesn't answer, and we're going to be dragged back into this again. Right? A certain tone of exasperation, perhaps, rather than fury. And there was a little too much fury here, which is, it's so to my horror, but it's still, you know, I thought it was unnecessary. All right, Dan McLaughlin, thank you so much for giving us some of your time.

Starting point is 00:25:31 If people want to keep up with some of your work, where's the best place to do that? I am at National Review online and on Twitter at Baseball Crank. Thanks so much, Dan. I appreciate it. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is surprised by the outcome, but disappointed nonetheless. Some argue the case was a political gift to Trump. Others question the originalist

Starting point is 00:26:05 credentials of the court's conservative justices. In Vox, Ian Millhiser wrote that the Supreme Court just crushed any hope that Trump could be removed from the ballot. As the court's three Democratic appointees write in a co-signed opinion dissenting from the majority's reasoning, states have limited authority to decide questions that implicate a uniquely important national interest extending beyond a state's own borders, Millhiser said. Fair enough, but the majority opinion goes much further than that. It holds that the Constitution empowers Congress and only Congress to determine which individuals are disqualified from public office because they previously engaged in an insurrection. Any attempt to disqualify Trump is almost certainly dead. Even if special counsel Jack Smith can amend this indictment to bring charges under

Starting point is 00:26:50 the insurrection statute, the court's decision to slow walk Trump's trial means that the election will most likely be over before that trial takes place, Millhiser wrote. The courts, it is now crystal clear, are not going to do much of anything to prevent an insurrectionist former president from occupying the White House once again, and the Supreme Court appears to be actively running interference on Trump's behalf. In New York Magazine, Ellie Honig suggested the 14th Amendment effort only ended up helping Trump. It was plain from the start that the effort to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot was doomed to fail. It was a fascinating exercise, a wild law school hypothetical sprung to life. But now the ironic result is that a constitutional provision meant to ban insurrectionists from holding office will provide Trump with fuel

Starting point is 00:27:36 for his effort to win back the White House, Honig said. The Supreme Court's ruling today was no outlier. Dozens of 14th Amendment challenges to Trump had already been rejected in state and federal courts across the country. The constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office is a perfectly sound, necessary even, policy concept. And by any common sense application, Trump violated the clause. But the process issues that ultimately sank the effort to ban Trump from the ballot were apparent all along, Honig wrote. Trump's on the 2024 ballot, just as he would have been without the 14th Amendment detour. He and his supporters surely will rally around a failed effort by a bunch of Northeastern elitist law professor types to use the courts to deny the American voters a choice and take out the Republican frontrunner. In The Atlantic, Adam Seward said the Supreme Court once again

Starting point is 00:28:25 reveals the fraud of originalism. The unanimous part of the decision found that states do not have the authority to disqualify candidates for federal office, the least absurd and damaging rationale for avoiding disqualification, Seward wrote. Not that this should have mattered to the court's originalists, whose commitment to that doctrine supposedly prevents them from deciding cases on the basis of their personal preferences rather than the law itself. Originalists preferred interpretive prisms. The plain text of the amendment, how it was understood at the time, the intent of its framers, would have led to Trump being disqualified, a result that apparently none of the justices liked, Seward wrote. The conservative justices have a majority, and they may work their

Starting point is 00:29:05 will, but the originalism they purport to adhere to is nothing more than a framework for reaching their preferred result in any particular circumstance. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So the last time I wrote about this, I did not pull any punches. In December, after Colorado removed Trump for the ballot, this is what I said on this podcast, quote, I think this is the wrong decision legally, incredibly dangerous politically, and it will rightfully have close to zero chance of standing up to Supreme Court scrutiny. Everything about it is going to aid Trump in telling his supporters that the establishment will do anything to stop him. And on top of all that, the Supreme Court

Starting point is 00:29:54 is all but guaranteed to come in and overturn the ruling right away. In fact, I'll take this moment to do one of my rare bits of political prognostication and wager that the high court rules 9-0 in Trump's favor. I don't quote that piece to take a victory lap, but because I got enough heat from readers when I talked about this, I think it's worth revisiting here. To clarify, I don't think Trump belongs on the ballot because he's innocent of all wrongdoing, nor do I think the Supreme Court is corrupt. I wrote that the court would unanimously overrule Colorado because it seemed obvious to me that removing Trump from the ballot under Section 3 was a legal stretch and a political powder keg. And historically, when those two things meet, the Supreme Court stays away. In this case, the fundamentals seemed obviously anti-democratic and dangerous. As all nine justices agreed,

Starting point is 00:30:49 states should have limited authority, quote, to implicate a uniquely important national interest extending beyond a state's own borders. The idea that a state court could disqualify Trump from the ballot and effectively throw the election for the entire country doesn't and shouldn't sit right, and the court ending that charade here in unanimous fashion is a good thing. What I did not successfully predict was how the court would decide to address this question. I was right that all nine justices would agree that a state cannot disqualify a presidential candidate, but I expected them to conclude that Trump did not receive the proper due process to be ruled an insurrectionist, or that he, like all presidents, had not served as an officer of the United States under the purview of Section 3. Instead, five of the justices came to that agreement by deciding that only the federal

Starting point is 00:31:31 government, not the states, can disqualify candidates under Section 3 unless Congress passes a statute authorizing states to do so. As commentators from the left and right have argued, this ruling is in many ways the broadest and sloppiest way the court could have resolved the issue. It creates a whole slew of new problems. Dan McLaughlin outlined some of them under what the right is saying, including that a president's eligibility can now be challenged after he is elected. Most pointedly, the reasoning feels odd because the entirety of the 14th Amendment is self-executing now except for Section 3. As Mark Joseph Stern put it, Congress need not pass a law to ensure that all persons have due process, equal protection, and freedom from enslavement. Why, the liberals wondered, did the majority create a special rule

Starting point is 00:32:17 for the Insurrection Clause alone? Amy Coney Barrett seemed to agree about how messy the majority made this, though she penned her own opinion because she didn't like the tone of the liberal justices who dissented on the reasoning in their own brief. It's also worth noting, as McLaughlin did, that this same court has given states primacy in how to run elections throughout U.S. history and has affirmed that authority very recently. In 2023, in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court limited federal courts in supervising state courts in rulings affecting federal redistricting. Now, it says that granting states this kind of power would invert the 14th Amendment's rebalancing of the federal and state power. On the surface, the ideological framing here does feel hypocritical and inconsistent. The end result is that nobody

Starting point is 00:33:01 seems particularly happy. A lot of people on the right are upset the court didn't clearly and narrowly end this ruling. A lot of people on the left were given ammunition to claim the court is covering for Trump and has been inconsistent in its jurisprudence. Although the court reached the right decision, the path it took to get there seems like the most complicated one possible. Sure, it leaves the door open for Congress to take action and clarify all of this with legislation, but a constitutional amendment shouldn't require legislation for its own enforcement. And nothing about how this Congress has acted, or how previous Congresses have picked

Starting point is 00:33:34 up the reins when the court seemingly begs them to, makes me feel encouraged. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from an anonymous reader in Salinas, California, who said, why is Kamala Harris so unpopular? anonymous reader in Salinas, California, who said, why is Kamala Harris so unpopular? Is it because of gender, race, the border? What makes a good vice president or what makes a bad vice president? All right. So first of all, I think it's very hard to define what makes a good vice president. There is a frank and surprisingly engrossing report from the Brookings Institute that covers that topic. We link to it in today's newsletter,

Starting point is 00:34:29 and we'll drop it in the episode description. I'm going to draw from that report a bit here because I thought it was really good. Up until the 90s, a good vice president was simply someone who could draw votes from a swing state to help the president get elected. That changed with Al Gore, Bill Clinton's vice president, Brookings argued, who introduced more of a partnership model. Since Gore's term, every effective vice president in the modern partnership era has helped on foreign policy. Even Vice President Mike Pence, who may have served primarily as electoral cover for Trump, had some role in foreign policy. President Biden, of course, is a longtime senator and two-term foreign policy-focused vice president. That didn't leave Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, much room to be of service

Starting point is 00:35:10 in that area, which I think brings us in part to Harris's unpopularity. I'm sure that biases against minorities and women in politics have affected the way a lot of people see her, but that can't explain just how unpopular she is. To me, a lot of it has to do with what issues she's been handed. The biggest thing she's taken ownership of since the beginning of Biden's term has been the one thing that's been dragging him down the most, the southern border. And to be fair to Harris, the way her strengths align with Biden's has made it hard for her to find an area of focus that capitalizes on her strengths. Being handed a crisis that very few presidents are able to navigate is not exactly ideal. Still, I don't

Starting point is 00:35:50 think those are her biggest problems. The truth is she has always had a polarizing brand among Democrats. From Kamala the cop, to her flip-flopping, to the way many people view her as inauthentic in interviews with the press, by 2020 she just hadn't entered the kind of stratosphere needed to win a presidential election. After a disastrous interview with NBC's Lester Holt in 2021, reporting from the New York Times said, quote, White House officials, including some in her own office, noted that she all but went into a bunker for about a year, avoiding many interviews out of what aides said was a fear of making mistakes and disappointing Mr. Biden. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, her lack of public involvement on some issues reads as a lack of trust from the president. Just a year into her

Starting point is 00:36:36 term, Edward Isaac Devere and Jasmine Wright penned a brutal expose about her in CNN. Quote, worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff, deciding there simply isn't time to deal with them right now, they wrote. While voters might not have day-to-day insight, I do think a lot of people are able to glean that her office isn't really looped in with the president's, and I think the totality of all these things has done some serious damage to her reputation. All right, that is it for our reader question today, which now brings us to our under the radar section. New federal guidelines released by the CDC last week reduced the suggested isolation time

Starting point is 00:37:23 for anyone who contracts COVID-19. The new guidelines state that people who are sick should stay home and away from other people, but also that if someone has been fever-free and without symptoms for 24 hours, they can limit contact with others, wear a mask, and avoid indoor spaces without fully quarantining. If their symptoms come back, the clock starts over. Previously, CDC guidelines had said people who test positive for COVID-19 should stay home for at least five days and isolate for 10 days. PBS News has the story on these updates, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of days between the start of oral arguments on whether Donald Trump should be disqualified from state ballots under the 14th

Starting point is 00:38:08 Amendment and the Supreme Court's ruling on the case was 25. The number of states where formal challenges to Trump's presidential candidacy have been filed is 36. The number of states won by Trump in the 2020 election where a formal challenge to his 2024 candidacy has been filed is 14, in addition to Maine, where Trump won one of the state's electoral votes in 2020. The number of states in which the formal challenges to Trump's candidacy has already been dismissed or rejected is 19. The percentage of Americans who said they were opposed to the Supreme Court overturning the Colorado decision to disqualify Trump from the ballot in a February 2024 poll from Marquette Law School was 50%. The percentage of Americans who said the Supreme Court should remove Trump from the ballot in all states in January 2024 poll from ABC News Ipsos was 30%.

Starting point is 00:38:57 All right, that is it for our numbers section, which brings us last but not least to our Have a Nice Day story. Elizabeth Christensen, a recently divorced mother of two, matched with a man named Joshua Colbert on the Hinge dating app in 2023. That's not that abnormal, but as the two chatted, they discovered they grew up in the same town. Not only that, but they were born on the same day at the same hospital. And not only that, but they were born on the same day at the same hospital. And not only that, but they were kindergarten classmates. Elizabeth's parents then dug up old videos that showed the two of them together, and at one point Elizabeth's mom zoomed in on Joshua before panning back to her daughter.

Starting point is 00:39:37 A mother's intuition, I guess, Joshua said. Five months later, they tied the knot. CBS News has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, go to readtangle.com and consider becoming a member. And don't forget, New York City, April 17th. We're coming live on the stage. Hope to see some of you there. Ticket link is in the episode

Starting point is 00:40:05 description also on our website readtangle.com forward slash live we'll be back here same time tomorrow have a good one peace our podcast is written by me isaac saul and edited and engineered by john wall the script is edited by our managing editor ari we edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to retangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character

Starting point is 00:41:05 trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Tangle - The Supreme Court reinstates Trump on Colorado's ballot.

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