Your Jan. 6 reminder that elections have consequences is the news that Jason Miayres, who was elected attorney general in Virginia at the bottom of the ticket in the Glenn Youngkin 2021 wave, signed us on to an amicus brief from a group of 27 Republican AGs asking the U.S. Supreme Court to side with Donald Trump’s appeal of Colorado’s move to remove him from that state’s primary ballot.
“The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove President Trump from the primary ballot is a clear abuse of power and something I’d expect to see in Cuba, not America,” Miyares said in a statement. “In the United States, voters must maintain the power to choose their president. Removing your political opponent from the ballot is not ‘democracy’.”
Cute language there. What Miyares is really saying is, I’m the attorney general in Virginia, and I should be able to tell election officials in another state how to do their business.
You know, because of states’ rights, and all.
The argument from the MAGA AGs, boiled down: “The Fourteenth Amendment … anticipates that Congress will decide whether a particular person is qualified to hold office under Section 3 (or at least determine the process for making that decision). The structure of the Constitution, relevant history, and authority from this Court confirm as much. The Court should grant the Petition to prevent state courts from usurping Congress’s exclusive power.”
Three of the nine members of the Supreme Court are Trump appointees, packed that way because Senate Republicans slow-walked Merrick Garland’s nomination because of the pending 2016 election, and then fast-tracked Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination because of the pending 2020 election.
This is how a country that has been trending center-left for a generation is reversing advances in reproductive rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, and for god’s sake, we’re spending more time banning books than we are educating our kids.
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Chris Graham
