Hello and welcome to this urgent reaction edition of the 538 Politics podcast. I'm Galen Druk.

Tuesday evening, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that former President Trump's actions

surrounding January 6th constituted engaging in an insurrection and as such he cannot

appear on Colorado's primary ballot on Super Tuesday because he's disqualified from serving as president again.

That is their decision based on section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states, with some

abridgment here, no person shall hold any office, civil or military

under the United States who, having previously taken an oath as an officer of the United States

to support the Constitution of the United States

shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort

to the enemies thereof. I know that was a lot. We're going to

unpack it right now. Some legal scholars have been making the argument since

shortly after January 6th that Trump is barred from public office going forward and lawsuits along those

lines have been filed in courts around the country. This is the first to succeed,

but the ruling is stayed through January 4th to give Trump time to appeal to the US Supreme Court, which his team has indicated he will do,

casting the decision as, quote, a scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of crooked Joe Biden.

Here with me to talk about the law and politics of all of this is

Kimberly Whaley constitutional scholar and professor of law at the University of

Baltimore. Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Delighted to be here.

Great to have you.

Also here with us is Senior Elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly.

...