Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 4

"Supreme Court keeps Trump on ballot, rejects Colorado voter challenge." The Washington Post. (gift link)

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously sided with Donald Trump, allowing the former president to remain on the election ballot and reversing a Colorado ruling that disqualified him from returning to office because of his conduct around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Edit: you can read the opinion here. If you want to understand the differences between the majority's opinion and the minority's concurrence (Sotomajoy, Kagan, and Jackson), you should flip to page 15.

Essentially, the minority concurrence agrees that it would be inappropriate for a single state actor to play such a monumental role in shaping the outcome of a national election. This reasoning is sufficient to decide the case, and so the liberal Justices would have left the decision at that. Indeed, as a jab at their more conservative colleagues, they quote from Dobbs as if to drill this point home:

“If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.”

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U. S. 215, 348 (2022) (ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment).

However, the per curiam decision goes further than this -- it argues that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is not "self-executing", i.e. the Court has ruled that Section 3 may only be enforced through federal legislation. The liberal Justices point out that this is nonsensical:

Section 3 provides that when an oathbreaking insurrectionist is disqualified, “Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each House, remove such disability.” It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation.

They further argue that there is little historical evidence to support this reading of the Fourteenth Amendment and that

[i]n a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, [the majority] abandons that course.

Justice Barrett has also submitted a concurring opinion, agreeing with the liberal Justices that the excursion into whether Section 3 is "self-executing" was an unnecessary diversion by the majority. However, rather than criticize the majority, she instead pleads for civility:

In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency. The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up. For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.

Evan Osnos in the New Yorker: Joe Biden’s Last Campaign: Trailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection (archive link)

emphasis added:

I asked Biden what he would do in a second term to protect abortion access at the federal level. “Pass Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said. Democrats would need to win control of the House of Representatives and gain seats in the Senate, but Biden expressed confidence. “A few more elections like we’ve seen taking place in the states” would suffice, he said. “You’re seeing the country changing.” Then, reiterating his position on Roe, he said, “I’ve never been supportive of, you know, ‘It’s my body, I can do what I want with it.’ But I have been supportive of the notion that this is probably the most rational allocation of responsibility that all the major religions have signed on and debated over the last thousand years.”

It’s a framing that irritates advocates. (In February, after he told attendees at a New York fund-raiser, “I don’t want abortion on demand, but I thought Roe v. Wade was right,” Slate ran a story titled “Biden’s Latest Abortion Fumble Is Particularly Distressing.”) But, so far, they have chosen to avoid a fight with a Democratic President whose opponent crows that he was able to “terminate” Roe. After the midterms in 2022, researchers found that abortion restrictions had disproportionately motivated first-time and younger voters, and women under fifty.

support for reproductive rights has proven itself to be incredibly motivating for the Democratic base to get out the vote.

how the hell is Joe "most progressive president evar" Biden still fucking up the messaging this badly?

There's an election in California (and many other states) on Tuesday. For those of us studying up at the last minute, the Cal Matters voting guide seems pretty good? (Though unfortunately, it only covers a few key races.)

Any other recommendations?

Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona says she won’t seek reelection, avoiding 3-way race

TikTok tries a radical new tactic against Congress (Politico)

The alert was sent to the phones of TikTok users whose House members were on the Energy and Commerce Committee, according to a person familiar with the campaign. The committee was voting on the bill Thursday. Users got a pop-up alert saying, “TikTok is at risk of being shut down in the US. Call your representative now.” They also got a link to a website describing the law as “the TikTok ban.”

The measure would force Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban on U.S. app stores.

TikTok users flooded some congressional offices with dozens of calls. Results were mixed: Some staffers dismissed the callers as uninformed, or as pranksters, or as “teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app.” Some predicted it could cause a backlash.

...

But others reported sincere feedback: “We’re bombarded. We’re hearing everything from kids saying, ‘This is my life, don’t ban TikTok,’ to people saying, ‘I am a content creator, I really would like my representative to know the impacts this is having on me,’” said a Democratic staffer for a ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The calls didn’t work on the committee: It voted 50-0 to advance the bill on Thursday.

...

The bill is moving at warp speed by Capitol Hill standards, after lawmakers’ attempts to ban the app failed last year. After Thursday’s vote, it will move to the House floor, where House Speaker Mike Johnson has endorsed the bill.

The bill has 20 bipartisan cosponsors as well as White House support — more backers than any previous legislative effort to date.

However, it could still be difficult for the bill, known as Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, to gain traction, given the partisan politics of the House and no current supporters in the Senate.

Joe Biden’s Superfans Think the Rest of America Has Lost Its Mind https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/us/politics/biden-voters-democrats.html

Haley's campaign exposed cracks in Trump's GOP (ABC News / 538)

Her run also underscored a narrow path for women in the Republican Party.