🚨 SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORT: “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning,elderly man with a poor memory” pic.twitter.com/YSSPQkIW4y

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 8, 2024

sympathetic well meaning elderly man with poor memory

Yikes

The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed poised to allow former president Donald Trump to remain on the Colorado ballot, expressing deep concerns about permitting a single state to disqualify the leading Republican candidate from seeking national office.

Justices from across the ideological spectrum warned of troubling political ramifications if they do not reverse a ruling from Colorado's top court that ordered Trump off the ballot after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The court was considering the unprecedented and consequential question of whether a state court can enforce a rarely invoked, post-Civil War provision of the Constitution to disqualify Trump from returning to the White House.

During more than two hours of argument, the justices asked questions that suggested that t he often deeply divided court could reach a unanimous or near-unanimous decision to reject the challenge to Trump's eligibility brought by six Colorado voters. Not since the court's 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore has the Supreme Court been thrust into such a pivotal role in a presidential election.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan repeatedly questioned whether one state should be allowed to decide whether a presidential candidate is disqualified. “Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?” she asked, adding, “That seems quite extraordinary, doesn't it?”

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed, adding that “it just doesn't seem like a state call.”

Trump is quickly closing in on the GOP nomination, and several justices suggested that a state court ruling initiated by voters in one state to bar him from federal office would throw the presidential race into extreme disarray.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. predicted that a number of other states would quickly try to disqualify the leading Democratic candidate if the justices allowed the Colorado decision to stand. He called the prospect of a handful of states deciding the presidential election a “pretty daunting consequence.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh worried about disenfranchising voters if the court removed the leading Republican presidential candidate from the ballot. “What about the idea that we should think about democracy, think about the right of the people to elect candidates of their choice, of letting the people decide?” he asked.

In response, attorney Jason Murray, representing the Colorado voters, said, “The reason we're here is that President Trump tried to disenfranchise 80 million Americans who voted against him, and the Constitution doesn't require that he be given another chance.”

The high court could announce a decision at any time. Its opinion is expected to resolve the issue in other states with similar challenges to Trump's eligibility.

Colorado's top court put its December ruling on hold while the litigation continues. Trump's name will appear on the state's already printed March 5 primary ballot.

At issue is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who previously pledged to support the Constitution as “an officer of the United States” from returning to office if they betrayed their oath by engaging in insurrection.

The challenge to Trump's candidacy was brought by six Colorado voters — four Republicans and two independents. After a five-day trial, a lower court judge in November concluded that Trump engaged in insurrection when he summoned his supporters to Washington and encouraged an angry crowd to disrupt Congress's certification of President Biden's 2020 victory. But the judge also found that Section 3 did not apply to the presidency.

A divided Colorado Supreme Court disagreed and barred Trump from the ballot, prompting his appeal to the Supreme Court. Maine's secretary of state reached the same conclusion, but her decision is also on hold.

Much of the discussion Thursday centered on differing interpretations of the text and history of the 14th Amendment provision, also known as the disqualification clause, which was initially intended to stop former Confederates from returning to power after the Civil War.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — two justices who have not often agreed on the most divisive issues before the court — both expressed deep skepticism of the Colorado voters' view of the scope of the 14th Amendment, agreeing with Roberts's assessment that the post-Civil War amendment was aimed at limiting the power of the states.

And yet, Roberts said, the Colorado voters seeking to remove Trump from the ballot appear to be trying to use the same amendment to say states have the power to prevent candidates from running for nationwide office.

“That seems to be a position that is at war with the whole thrust of the 14th Amendment and very ahistorical,” Roberts said.

The text of Section 3 does not specify who is supposed to enforce the clause or when it should be invoked.

Trump's attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, told the justices that Congress, not state courts or officials, enforce the provision and that Trump's passionate political speech on Jan. 6 did not amount to insurrection. Section 3 does not apply to Trump, they emphasized, because the president is not an “officer of the United States,” which is the term the section uses to discuss potential insurrectionists.

Mitchell pointed to three other sections of the Constitution — the appointments clause, the commissions clause and the impeachment clause — that distinguish between the president and “officers” appointed by the president.

On the other side, leading historians and the Colorado voters working with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have cast doubt on the idea that the framers of Section 3 would have created a loophole for oath-breaking, insurrectionist former presidents.

Murray, the voters' lead attorney, urged the justices not to create a “special exemption” from the disqualification clause for Trump.

The former president's eligibility is not the only question before the court that could affect Trump's political future. He is expected to asked the Supreme Court to reverse a ruling this week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that said he is not protected by presidential immunity from being prosecuted for trying to block Biden's 2020 victory.

The justices separately have said they will review the validity of a law that was used to charge hundreds of people in connection with the Jan. 6 riot and is also a key element of Trump's four-count federal election obstruction case in Washington.

In a sign of the significance of the case before the Supreme Court on Thursday, the courtroom was filled with many guests of the justices, high-profile visitors and dozens of journ*lists. Among those in attendance was Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who helped lead the impeachment proceedings against Trump after the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump listened to the argument from Mar-a-Lago in Florida and called it “a beautiful thing to watch, in many respects.”

“I thought the presentation today was a very good one,” Trump said at a news conference after the arguments concluded. “I think it was well received. I hope it was well received.”

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

Cspan starts at 8 minutes

!latinx

Sure, the left has Taylor Swift, but we have Catturd https://t.co/jOQ3BFgJHM pic.twitter.com/xaiN3InS2J

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) February 6, 2024

apparently catturd is a twitter user who pwns libs and got an interview with tucker carlson

Greene: Democrats hid one of their members trying to throw us off on the numbers pic.twitter.com/8Da16eNJcj

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 7, 2024

Context: Republicans failed to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security by vote

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-vote-gop-led-push-impeach-dhs-secretary/story?id=106967588

!nonchuds

Four republican reps have employed an obscure and abstract constitutional argument to rationalize how Mayorkas does not deserve to be impeached even though Congress's laws are contrary to his administrative actions.

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1754969473684050257

!chuds !nooticers

President Biden is being criticized online after he claimed that he met with Francois Mitterrand, the former president of France who passed away roughly 30 years ago.

Biden told an audience in Las Vegas on Sunday about a meeting he had with French President Emmanuel Macron during a G7 meeting in England after he had already assumed the presidency.

"I sat down and I said, ‘America's back,'" Biden recalled. "And Mitterrand from Germany – I mean from France – looked at me and said…"

François Mitterrand was France's president between 1981 and 1995. He died in 1996.

Biden appeared to trail off before collecting his thoughts to finish the sentence: "Well, how long are you back for?"

Biden was mocked for his flub online, with politicians and commentators asking what was wrong with the president.

"Was Biden the kid in The Sixth Sense?" Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas., jokingly asked, referencing the 1999 horror movie.

Show host Graham Allen said that Biden's mistaken claim that he met with a dead French president recently was "not a healthy sign."

Popular X account Libs of TikTok wrote that the clip was a sign of "elder abuse."

"We're stuck in a 1980s loop forever and I'm not even mad," political commentator Peachy Keenan wrote.

Biden's comments came while he was warning of the dangers of a potential second Trump presidency ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary in Nevada.

The president continued, saying the "Chancellor of Germany" asked him how he – and by extension, the U.S. – would respond if, hypothetically, thousands of people stormed Britain's House of Commons and killed two "bobbies," or British police officers, to stop the election of a Prime Minister.

The Hill later flagged that the White House, which posted Biden's comments online, released the speech with the name Mitterrand crossed out and replaced with Macron, the current president of France.

Biden has been known to make numerous gaffes, including during a recent speech in January where Biden appeared to make nearly unintelligible remarks about beer.

Partway through his remarks at a speech in Wisconsin, Biden appeared to mumble, "The beer brewed here, it is used to make the brew beered here." While most of the sentence was unintelligible, he seemed to add, "Ooh, Earth Rider, thanks for the Great Lakes. I wonder why…"

The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

!chuds !nooticers

Reddit dilates about it

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1ajjqo0/singaporeans_bemoan_sen_cottons_ignorant_grilling

Yes! Then we can gun them down in the streets!

!chuds they're afraid of lol

• CNN commentator Josh Barrow adds to clamor of voices on the left demanding the early retirement of the pioneering Latinx justice

• They fear the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority could be further entrenched if the 69-year-old dies in office under a Republican presidency

• Comes after they helped force the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer in 2022 and his replacement by Ketanji Brown Jackson

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is under pressure from fellow liberals to retire amid growing fears she might enable a Republican president to appoint a conservative successor.

CNN commentator Josh Barrow became the latest to demand the 69-year-old step down lest she follow in the footsteps liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died while serving at 87 in 2020.

That death allowed then-president Donald Trump to cement the court's conservative majority with the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett, and some liberals are determined it will not happen again.

'I'm not saying I think Justice Sotomayor is on death's door,' Barrow conceded to his fellow panelists on CNN This Morning.

'But I think it's important, given it's a lifetime appointment, to take a very long-time horizon view on this.

'It seems like that -- it would be the right time strategically for her to step down in favor of somebody younger if she's very concerned about the political balance on the court.'

The sitting president is entitled under the constitution to appoint justices to the Supreme Court, subject to Senate approval, and Trump appointed three during his four years in office.

Liberal campaigners mobilized against Justice Stephen Breyer who retired at 83 in 2022, allowing President Biden to appoint Ketanji Brown Jackson to the bench.

The court's 6-3 conservative majority has steamrolled a raft of landmark judgements including the overturning of Roe V Wade and the outlawing of positive discrimination at public institutions.

And the pressure on Sotomayor is growing after she made gloomy remarks about her role in a speech to University of California Law School students this week.

'I live in frustration,' she admitted, 'and every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart.

'Cases are bigger. They're more demanding. The number of amici are greater, and you know that our emergency calendar is so much more active.

'To be almost 70 years old, this isn't what I expected.

'I'm tired.'

'I find it a little bit surprising, given what Justice Sotomayor describes there about the stakes of what is happening before the Supreme Court, that she's not retired,' Barrow said.

'It's quite possible the Democrats will lose control of the Senate in the next election and who knows how long it could be before there's a next opportunity for a Democratic president to make a new appointment to the seat she sits in.'

The Bronx-born justice was the first Latinx to sit on the bench when she was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009.

She has suffered from life-long Type-1 diabetes and her father died at just 43, but her mother made it to an impressive 94.

Supreme court justices are over 80 when they retire on average, but some on the left are even targeting Sotomayor's fellow liberal justice Elena Kagan who is just 63.

'Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are important. But they are important because of the values they champion,' wrote liberal lawyer and podcast host Peter Shamshiri last year.

'If they want to see those values protected, then they can't risk letting their seats fall into Republican hands.'

'If Sotomayor and Kagan do not retire within the next two years they could doom the entire country to live under a 7-2 or even an 8-1 court controlled by an increasingly radicalized Republican Party's appointees,' wrote legal journ*list Ian Millhiser in Vox.

But despite her complaints, Justice Sotomayor seemed reluctant to throw in the towel.

'It is still work that is all-consuming and I understand the impact the court has on people and on the country, and sometimes the world. And so it is what keeps me going.

'You can't throw up your hands and walk away. And that's not a choice. That's an abdication. That's giving up.'

NEW: Gavin Newsom says he was visiting a Target and got blamed for a shoplifting incident to his face by a worker who didn’t recognize him.

Remarkable 😂

During a Zoom call, Newsom said he was at a checkout line when someone left the store without paying.

Newsom asked the… pic.twitter.com/LZxaJabDjH

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 2, 2024

NEW: Gavin Newsom says he was visiting a Target and got blamed for a shoplifting incident to his face by a worker who didn't recognize him.

Remarkable 😂

During a Zoom call, Newsom said he was at a checkout line when someone left the store without paying.

Newsom asked the worker why nobody stopped the shoplifter.

“She goes, ‘oh, the governor.' Swear to God, true story on my mom's grave.”

“The governor lowered the threshold, there's no accountability,” the worker said.

“She looks at me twice and then she freaks out, she calls everyone over, wants to take photos,” Newsom said.

“I'm like, ‘no we're not taking a photo, we're having a conversation, where's your manager? How are you blaming the governor?'”

“And it was $380 later, and I was like ‘Why am I spending $380, everyone else can walk the heck right out?”

The key insight is that women have always been more [economically] left-wing than men, but that women were also more religious (both vs today and vs men) and that this was a moderating force against those left-wing views.

With religion in retreat, those views now take voice. pic.twitter.com/Ed3GJyHhap

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) February 2, 2024

!neolibs

Be sure to checkout /u/mrdilldozer.

A user so soylent even the Neolibs are dunking on xim.

Tbh my main gripe with mixed race marriages are that mixed race babies are ugly as sin. We should ban Asian-white and Afro-white relationships. Thoughts?

🇺🇲 2024 GE: @QuinnipiacPoll (15)

Nov. 2023
(R) Trump: 48% (+2)
(D) Biden: 46%
.
Dec. 2023
(D) Biden: 47% (+1)
(R) Trump: 46%
.
Jan. 2024
(D) Biden: 50% (+6)
(R) Trump: 44% https://t.co/o5quaNGa46 pic.twitter.com/6jP0KUpUp8

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) January 31, 2024

!chuds in shambles