House Dems Prep an “Insurrection” Bill Barring Trump from Taking Office
Have they considered the can of worms they're opening here?
March 5, 2024 by Daniel Greenfield
The Supreme Court didn’t dig into the weeds of the entire insurrection debate, but one obvious issue with the various efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in various states was that insurrection had been left entirely to Democrat state officials to define. That kind of nonsense however won’t fly in an actual legislative process.
Now that the Supreme Court blocked state officials from announcing that Trump can’t be on the ballot because he’s an “insurrectionist”, House members are now trying to play the same game.
Congress will have to try and act,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, told Axios.
What he’s saying: Raskin, a former member of the Jan. 6 select committee, said he is already crafting the bill, telling Axios, “I’m working on it — today.”
Raskin pointed to legislation he introduced with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) in 2022 creating a pathway for the Justice Department to sue to keep candidates off the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
“We are going to revise it in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” Raskin said.
Raskin suggested the bill would be paired with a resolution declaring Jan. 6 an “insurrection” and that those involved “engaged in insurrection.”
For now, in a GOP House, the bill is mostly virtue signaling, but tellingly Raskin is not so much trying to define insurrection as trying to define J6 as an insurrection. It’s the typical end run around the process of defining the thing because otherwise Democrat BLMers might fall afoul of it.
The Raskin bill conveniently defines J6 as an insurrection and carefully defines the term so as to specifically apply it to Trump. It does not however define what an insurrection is making the whole exercise into a bill that specifically exists to block a particular candidate from being able to take office on grounds that would be unlikely to apply to his own party. Does that raise some major banana republic issues? Obviously.
Still, has Raskin considered what kind of can of worms he’s opening here?
more
https://www.frontpagemag.com/house-dems-prep-an-insurrection-bill-barring-trump-from-taking-office/
