The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 1:

• In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot bar Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from participating in the 2024 election—and, consequently, he cannot be removed from state ballots. Only Congress, according to the Court, is capable of enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, barring an individual guilty of participating in an insurrection from holding elected office. In the main opinion, the Justices write that “the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates…The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made. The relevant provision is Section 5, which enables Congress, subject of course to judicial review, to pass ‘appropriate legislation’ to ‘enforce’ the Fourteenth Amendment…The ‘patchwork’ that would likely result from state enforcement would ‘sever the direct link that the Framers found so critical between the National Government and the people of the United States’ as a whole.” You can read the court’s full decision here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/04/us/supreme-court-ruling-trump-colorado.html
• After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot bar Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from appearing on ballots, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) appeared on CNN announcing that—with the help of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA)—he is working on a new strategy to bar Trump from 2024 ballots.
• Charlie Savage of The New York Times writes: “In criticizing the majority for unnecessarily dismissing other potential ways federal officials might enforce Section 3 besides a congressional statute, the three liberal justices [Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson] do not specify what those alternative methods might be. But when it comes to presidents, one obvious alternative would be that when Congress meets to certify electoral college votes on the Jan. 6 after an election, lawmakers could refuse to count electoral college votes won by a candidate they deemed disqualified under Section 3—even without a statute. Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett, in her separate opinion, also says it was enough to rule that states lack the power to enforce Section 3 against presidential candidates and there was no need ‘to address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced.’” You can read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/04/us/trump-supreme-court-colorado-ballot/31379f62-f91f-57f7-a33e-37959bc68452?smid=url-share
• While appearing on MSNBC following the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Donald Trump, Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold said that she was disappointed by the decision and that “it’ll be up to the American voters to save our democracy in November.” Colorado’s State Supreme Court had ruled that Trump was barred from holding office for his role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
• Zack Smith—Legal Fellow and Manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that states cannot bar Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from state ballots.