World
Colorado’s top court finds Donald Trump ineligible for US presidency
Colorado’s Supreme Court has ruled former United States President Donald Trump is ineligible to run for the White House because of his role in the 2021 assault on the Capitol by his supporters and should be removed from the state’s primary ballot.
While the ruling only applies to Colorado, it marks the first time in US history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office anyone who “engaged in insurrection”, has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate and comes as courts in other states consider similar legal actions.
“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the Colorado high court wrote in its four-three majority decision.
“Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” they added.
The decision – which Trump’s campaign said it would appeal – drew immediate condemnation from Republicans.
The one-time property tycoon and reality TV star faces a raft of court cases, from criminal charges over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, to mishandling classified documents, hush money payments in the 2016 election and fraud in his business practices.
Trump has claimed he is the victim of political persecution.
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” the Colorado justices said. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
A lower court earlier found that while Trump incited an insurrection, for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the 14th Amendment was intended to cover the presidency.
Noah Bookbinder of the campaign group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which brought the original case along with a group of Colorado voters, welcomed Tuesday’s higher court ruling.
The court’s decision is “not only historic and justified, but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”, he said in a statement.
“Our Constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government.”
Swift appeal expected
The Colorado court placed its ruling on hold until January 4 or until the US Supreme Court rules on the case. State officials say the issue must be settled by January 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots. The Republican primary is due to take place in March.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said they would “swiftly file an appeal” to the Supreme Court, which has the final say on constitutional matters.
Cheung claimed Colorado’s “all-Democrat appointed” panel was doing the bidding of a “[George] Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked [President] Joe Biden”.
The Supreme Court at the federal level has a six-three conservative majority and includes three judges Trump appointed when he was president.
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, faces dozens of lawsuits under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War.
It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
“I think it may embolden other state courts or secretaries to act now that the bandage has been ripped off,” Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has closely followed the cases, told the Associated Press news agency after Tuesday’s ruling. “This is a major threat to Trump’s candidacy.”
The Colorado court decision brought swift rebukes from senior Republicans, including Trump’s one-time rival for the 2016 nomination, Senator Marco Rubio.
“The US has put sanctions on other countries for doing exactly what the Colorado Supreme Court has done today,” he wrote on social media.
The Colorado ruling stands in contrast with the Minnesota Supreme Court, which last month decided that the state party can put anyone it wants on its primary ballot. It dismissed a Section 3 lawsuit but said the plaintiffs could try again during the general election.
In another 14th Amendment case, a Michigan judge ruled that Congress, not the judiciary, should decide whether Trump can stay on the ballot in a ruling that is being appealed.
The liberal group behind those cases, Free Speech For People, has also filed a lawsuit in Oregon seeking to remove Trump from the ballot there.
Both groups are financed by liberal donors who also support President Biden, who is set to run for a second term in office. Trump has blamed the president for the lawsuits against him. Biden has no role in them.
Three Colorado Supreme Court justices dissented in Tuesday’s ruling.
One of the dissenting justices, Carlos Samour, said in a lengthy opinion that a lawsuit was not a fair mechanism for determining Trump’s eligibility for the ballot because it deprived him of his right to due process, noting that a jury had not convicted him of insurrection.
“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past – dare I say, engaged in insurrection – there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office,” Samour said.
World
Biden will give election-year roast at annual correspondents' dinner as protests await over Gaza war
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to deliver an election-year roast Saturday night before a large crowd of journalists, celebrities and politicians against the backdrop of growing protests over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to needle media coverage of his administration and jab at political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump.
But with protesters pledging to gather outside the dinner site, any effort by Biden to make light of Washington’s foibles and the pitfalls of the presidential campaign will have to be balanced against concerns over the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict. Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s 6-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.
Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people at a Washington hotel will be followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live,” who is sure to take some pokes at the president as well as his opponents.
There will also likely be a spotlight on the many journalists detained and otherwise persecuted around the globe for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.
But before the president gets to the Washington Hilton — where the event has been held for decades — he was expected to pass hundreds of people rallying along the path of Biden’s motorcade and nearby to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”
The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.”
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House correspondents’ association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”
In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
World
Ukraine lawmaker, 34, fights for Kharkiv in the public square
Mariia Mezentseva is a face of the war in Ukraine.
At just 34 years old and a member of Ukraine’s parliament, her formal tasks include looking into ways Ukraine can integrate into the rest of Europe’s institutions.
But, what really has gotten her attention are her posts about her hometown, Kharkiv. It has a population of 1.3 million people, just 20 miles from the northeast border with Russia.
From the beginning, Putin has wanted to take it over. In 2022, Ukrainians pushed them back.
However, in recent months, Russian attacks have grown furious, knocking out residential areas, power infrastructure, even the city’s huge TV tower.
KEY NATO ALLY SHOCKS WITH ITS ‘SINGLE LARGEST’ PLEDGE TO UKRAINE: ‘THEY NEED OUR SUPPORT’
Moscow, in fact, made clear it has wanted to turn Kharkiv into a demilitarized zone so it would not threaten Russia.
Critics said Moscow has tried to turn Kharkiv into Aleppo, the Syrian rebel stronghold Russia flattened in its support of Assad in Damascus.
Mezentseva regularly has posted shots of damage, rescue and relief efforts in Kharkiv, branding Russian efforts “genocidal actions.”
She generally has exuded hope, especially for the recent package of U.S. military aid for Ukraine which would benefit her home area.
The package, Mezentseva said, “will serve the purpose for sure.”
Basically, for the time being at least, it will keep the city alive.
World
Zelenskyy warns of Russian nuclear risks on Chernobyl anniversary
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Friday that the safety of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhia is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine, as the country marked the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
On the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of the risks surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility, which has been at the centre of nuclear safety crisis since Russia’s invastion of Ukraine.
Even under the shadow of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Zelenskyy said Russian forces were not taking the safety of the plant seriously.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine in the first days of its 2022 invasion.
Both sides regularly accuse each other of endangering safety at the site, Europe’s largest nuclear facility.
“For 785 days now, Russian terrorists have held hostage the Zaporizhzhia NPP,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “And it is the entire world’s responsibility to put pressure on Russia to ensure that ZNPP is liberated and returned to full Ukrainian control, as well as that all Ukrainian nuclear facilities are protected from Russian strikes.”
“This is the only way to prevent new radiation disasters, which the Russian occupiers’ presence at ZNPP constantly threatens.”
The Chernobyl explosion in 1986 is considered the worst nuclear accident in history in terms of the scale of contamination and the number of victims. The detonation in the reactor zones caused radioactive contamination that directly contaminated a radius of tens of kilometres, and wind and water movement carried nuclear contamination further afield.
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