Supreme Court hears historic case on removing Trump from ballot

While dozens of journalists are inside the courtroom at the Supreme Court, not one laptop or cellphone is.  

Unlike campaign events – which I usually cover – inside the Supreme Court, no electronics are allowed. Just pen and paper.

Even the smallest sounds can be heard, like someone jingling keys — or papers shuffling, as I discovered, as my case preview pamphlet slid to the floor. 

An area for the press exists to the left of the bench, and good views are not guaranteed. Rows F and G are partially obstructed by large marble columns draped in red curtains with gold trim. The spaces between the columns are open, and depending on your vantage point, slices of the courtroom are visible.

From where I was sitting in seat G-1, I had a nearly perpendicular view of the justices, in sight of Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. 

While Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson were a little harder to see. Sitting up tall in my seat or moving only my head slightly to the left helped to determine who had the floor, as well as their recognizable voices. 

You cannot switch seats, move your seat or lean your body over for a better glimpse, which I learned quickly. 

Shifting my chair over an inch didn’t go unnoticed by staff monitoring the press, as I was asked to shift it right back. 

Press may exit the courtroom during arguments, but once you leave, you cannot return. Several reporters, however, left before the case was submitted — at least one person after Trump attorney Jonathan Mitchell’s time at the lectern and more after Jason Murray’s turn.

While silence is requested in the high court, there were moments of levity, where the justices made a comment that evoked laughter. One example was during an exchange between Mitchell and Kagan. 

Mitchell acknowledged to one of her points, “There certainly is some tension and some commentators have pointed this out. Professor Baude and Professor Paulsen criticized Griffin’s case very sharply…”

Kagan kindly interrupted, “Then I must be right,” as people laughed. 

Another moment of laughter surrounded the order of specific questions. Kagan jumped in as Jackson pivoted to another point about the officer/office debate: “Could we — is that OK if we do this and then do that? Will there be an opportunity to do officer stuff or should we–?”

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Roberts said, diffusing the confusion, as people laughed.

The Supreme Court signaled Thursday it is poised to back former President Donald Trump and fend off a blockbuster challenge to his eligibility to appear on Colorado’s ballot.

Here are key takeaways from Thursday’s oral arguments:

Conservatives suggest several ways to side with Trump: Throughout the course of the arguments, the court’s conservatives repeatedly questioned whether the insurrection ban was intended to apply to former presidents and whether the ban could be enforced without Congress first enacting a law. Others delved into more fundamental questions about whether courts removing a candidate from the ballot is democratic.

“Your position has the effect of disenfranchising voters to a significant degree,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in one of the more striking exchanges with attorneys.

If Trump is removed from the ballot in Colorado, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted that states would eventually attempt to knock other candidates off the ballot. That, he signaled, would be inconsistent with the purpose and history of the 14th Amendment. “It’ll come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election,” Roberts said. “That’s a pretty daunting consequence.”

Jackson and liberals have tough questions for challengers: Another sign that the court was leaning toward Trump’s position: Even some of the liberal justices posed difficult questions to the lawyers representing his challengers.

Notably, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden nominee, said that the 14th Amendment provision did not include the word “president,” even though it specifically listed other officials who would be covered, such as members of Congress. That is a central argument Trump’s attorneys have raised in the case. “I guess that just makes me worry that maybe they weren’t focused on the president,” Jackson said.

Justice Elena Kagan questioned the implications of a single state banning a candidate in a presidential election. “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?” Kagan asked.

Justices didn’t focus on Trump’s January 6 actions: The nine justices spent little time on the former president’s actions surrounding the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that sparked the ballot challenge in Colorado and elsewhere. There were more questions, in fact, about the Civil War and how the insurrectionist ban in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution was enacted in order to grapple with confederates who fought against the Union.

Next steps: The court often takes a few months to craft opinions – and usually hands down its biggest cases at the end of its term in June. But because the court expedited the earlier stages of the Trump ballot case, it is likely the court will want to move quickly to decide the case, potentially within a matter of weeks.

Bill Hennessy, CNN’s regular sketch artist for the Supreme Court, captured scenes of today’s oral arguments on Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility case as it unfolded.

Trump’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, kicked off the arguments with a brief opening statement and then fielded a barrage of questions from the nine justices. Jason Murray, representing the Colorado voters who challenged Trump, presented next. Finally, Shannon Stevenson, Colorado’s top appellate attorney, spoke on behalf of Secretary of State Jena Griswold. At the end of the arguments, Mitchell then returned for a short rebuttal.

Norma Anderson, the Colorado Republican leading the lawsuit seeking to disqualify Trump from office, attended the arguments. Trump was not in the room and slammed the case against him in remarks from Florida.

While the Supreme Court shares live audio from proceedings, cameras are not allowed inside the room. Here’s a look at some of the scenes Hennessy captured in his sketches:

Justice Elena Kagan told an audience in Washington, DC, on Thursday that it is critically important for the Supreme Court to provide stability and avoid “flip flops” in the law to steer clear of the appearance of politics.

“And I think that that’s especially important for this Supreme Court at this time,” Kagan said.

Kagan spoke at the Library of Congress hours after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the challenge to former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s ballot, though she was not speaking about that case specifically. Kagan has made similar arguments in the past, particularly after the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Kagan was interviewed by Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the Cincinnati-based 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Kagan studiously avoided discussing the arguments that took place earlier Thursday, though she and Sutton briefly joked about the timing of the event later in the day.

“So another slow day in the office?” Sutton quipped.

Following Thursday’s Supreme Court oral arguments, Norma Anderson has a plain message to the Republican Party of which Donald Trump is the overwhelming 2024 frontrunner. 

Anderson, 91, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to remove Trump from the ballot based on his role in the January 6, 2021, riot, said protecting democracy starts by electing the right people. 

“I remember World War II, and I remember everyone in the United States pulled together to protect our democracy. We’re not doing that now. Democracy is precious. It doesn’t last, unless you take care of it,” Anderson said. “Taking care of it is electing correct people. Not people that want to throw out an election. That’s what other countries do. That’s not what we do.”

Being thrust into the spotlight in recent months, Anderson — a former Republican lawmaker in Colorado who has already broken barriers — said what compelled her to be part of this case is to protect the freedoms of the United States, especially as a grandmother.

“I’ve lived in a free country, and I visited countries that are not free. And I don’t want to be like them, Anderson said.

“I want to keep our democracy and our freedom. It’s very important to me … I’ve got 14 grandchildren, two great grandchildren,” she added. “Pardon me, I want them to have a good country to live in.”

The atmosphere in the Supreme Court on Thursday was “much more tepid” when compared to the oral arguments held for Bush v. Gore in 2000, according to CNN senior Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic, who was in the courtroom for hearings during both cases.

“Not only could you feel pretty quickly where it was going, the rhythm was not confrontational,” she said of Thursday’s hearing.

She noted that the justices today did not talk to each other as they commonly do during oral arguments.

“In this case, you could feel that like they didn’t have to make the case to each other,” she said. “There were enough of them who came into this argument ready to reject the Colorado voters’ position, so the tension was just much lower.”

During the Bush v. Gore hearing, Biskupic said “there was a lot more tension among the justices, a lot of interrupting, a lot of rapid fire questions.”

In comments to reporters on Thursday after the conclusion of the Supreme Court hearing, former President Donald Trump claimed that “there were no guns, there were no anything” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. People who illegally entered Capitol grounds during the January 6 riot were armed with guns and a wide variety of other weapons, including stun guns, knives, batons, baseball bats and chemical sprays. The Justice Department said in an official update in January 2024 that 116 of the people who have been charged in connection to the riot “have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.”

We may never get a complete inventory of the concealed weapons the rioters possessed on January 6, since nearly all of the rioters were able to leave the Capitol without being detained and searched, so it is possible that most rioters were unarmed. But it was always apparent from video footage that there were a variety of unconcealed weapons in the crowd that day — and it has been proven in court that at least some of the people who illegally entered Capitol grounds on January 6 were armed with guns.

In its 2023 ruling disqualifying Trump from the Colorado ballot under the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office, the Colorado Supreme Court wrote: “Contrary to President Trump’s assertion that no evidence in the record showed that the mob was armed with deadly weapons or that it attacked law enforcement officers in a manner consistent with a violent insurrection, the district court found — and millions of people saw on live television, recordings of which were introduced into evidence in this case — that the mob was armed with a wide array of weapons.”

Derek Muller, an election law expert at Notre Dame Law School who filed a neutral brief that offered analysis of key legal questions, said after the hearing that the justices are likely to put Donald Trump back on the ballot in Colorado. 

“The justices seemed concerned that one state could affect the entire presidential election process, and that there needed to be some guidance from Congress before such an extraordinary measure could be taken,” Muller said. “The Court seemed inclined to let the political process play out.”

Muller – who hasn’t taken a position on Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment – pointed out that several justices expressed unease with states implementing the ban without some sort of guidance from Congress. 

“It’s not surprising to see the justices express discomfort with the proposition that the United States Supreme Court should wade into a factual and legal mire like this,” Muller said. “But it was somewhat surprising that there seemed to be consensus around the theory that states could not do this without congressional legislation.” 

Former President Donald Trump delivered remarks Thursday after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on his presidential ballot eligibility.

“I thought it was very— it’s a very beautiful process. I hope that democracy in this country will continue,” he said at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. “I thought the presentation today was a very good one. I think it was well received. I hope it was well received.”

Trump said he believes his status as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination should merit consideration by the Supreme Court when weighing Colorado’s decision to remove him from the ballot, while overstating his performance in polls against President Biden in a head-to-head rematch. 

“An argument that is very important is the fact that you’re leading in every race. You’re leading in every state. You’re leading in the country against both Republican and Democrat and Biden. You’re leading the country by a lot, and, can you take the person that’s leading everywhere and say, ‘Hey, we’re not gonna let you run.’ You know, I think that’s pretty tough to do, but I’m leaving it up to the Supreme Court,” he said.

Trump claimed the case is “more election interference by the Democrats.”

Jason Murray, the attorney representing a group of Colorado voters challenging Donald Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 ballot at the Supreme Court, finished his arguments after nearly an hour.

Here’s they key moment to know about:

Justices focused on ballot eligibility over January 6: Murray argued the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was unprecedented and rose to the level of an insurrection, but many of the justices focused on issues in this case that would take them away from the facts of the attack, such as how and if states determine ballot eligibility.

Much of the questioning of Trump’s attorney Jonathan Mitchell also revolved around similar sweeping questions of state power and how the 14th Amendment could allow for Colorado to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot.  

History of 14th amendment: Chief Justice John Roberts suggested one of the main arguments Murray raised was “at war” with the history of the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban at center in the case.

“The whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power,” Roberts said. “On the other hand, it augmented federal power.”

Justices were concerned about a single state’s power: Several justices signaled their skepticism over whether a single state should have the power to decide what candidates can be on the ballot for a national election. “Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but also for the nation,” Justice Elena Kagan asked, saying that “seems quite extraordinary.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett echoed the concerns, adding: “It just doesn’t seem like a state call.”

In response, Murray argued that each state would still have the ability to determine what appears on their own ballots, despite what officials in another state might decide.

CNN senior Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic said she began to “feel that the tide was already going in a certain direction” while she listened to oral arguments presented to the high court in the case of former President Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility.

Biskupic, who was inside the courtroom Thursday during the arguments, said justices were “soft” in their interactions with Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell when “compared to where they’ve been aggressively on any advocate who stands up there.”

“It was kind of a reality check bringing people back to where we all were in the beginning on, you know, this theory that a state could keep a candidate off the ballot and it would affect every state,” she said on CNN after the oral arguments wrapped.

Biskupic noted that the attorney representing the Colorado voters “got so many questions about how impractical this was and how could it possibly be what the framers of the 14th Amendment wanted.”

The arguments ended after roughly two hours.

Justices signaled Thursday they may back former President Donald Trump and fend off a blockbuster challenge to his eligibility to appear on Colorado’s ballot.

Jason Murray, a lawyer for the anti-Trump challengers, defended the fairness of the Denver-based disqualification trial that led to Trump’s eventual removal from the ballot, and the current SCOTUS case.

Murray was responding to a question from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom, like the other justices, has signaled some skepticism in the theory that the process in Colorado was the right way to enforce the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.” Trump has claimed that his due-process rights were grossly violated in the Colorado proceedings.

Kavanaugh read from the dissent of Colorado Supreme Court Justice Carlos Samour, a Democratic appointee, who wrote perhaps the most searing opinion disagreeing with the decision. He said: “I have been involved in the justice system for thirty-three years now, and what took place here doesn’t resemble anything I’ve seen in a courtroom.”

That dissent was reflecting on the highly expedited trial proceedings that were held to adjudicate an extremely complicated constitutional clause that had barely been touched since 1919. The lawsuit was filed in September, the weeklong trial began in October, and the trial judge issued her decision in November.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s majority – by a 4-3 decision – also believed the process was fair.

Shannon Stevenson, Colorado’s top appellate attorney, has been allotted 10 minutes to argue on behalf of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold.  

Griswold, a Democrat, requested to take part in the arguments to discuss how election officials in Colorado specifically handled the ballot in that state.  

Stevenson, who earned her law degree from Duke University, was named the state’s solicitor general last year. She previously clerked for Judge David Ebel on the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals. 

One aspect of the arguments that has been interesting: Even some of the liberal justices have posed difficult questions to the lawyers opposing former President Donald Trump.

Notably, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden nominee, noted that the 14th Amendment provision at issue in the case did not include the word “president,” even though it specifically listed other officials who would be covered, such as members of Congress. That is a central argument Trump’s attorneys have raise in the case.

“They were listing people that were barred and ‘president’ is not there,” Jackson said. “I guess that just makes me worry that maybe they weren’t focused on the president.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned the attorney for the Colorado voters on why former President Donald Trump should be disqualified from the ballot when he has not been convicted of inciting an insurrection. 

Kavanaugh noted there was a federal statute for insurrection and that Trump had not been charged with it, although he is facing other charges from special counsel Jack Smith related to his actions after the 2020 election.

“Your position has the effect of disenfranchising voters to a significant degree,” Kavanaugh said.

Attorney Jason Murray argued that the federal insurrection statute was enacted before the 14th Amendment was adopted, and that a federal conviction was not required to remove Trump from the ballot.

The provision does not say a conviction is necessary for disqualification, though some analysts have said a criminal conviction would help ensure that there was due process before anyone would be barred from office. After the Civil War, thousands of ex-Confederates were disqualified from office without prior criminal convictions.

Justice Alito tangled with the lawyer for the anti-Trump challengers over testimony from the Denver-based disqualification trial last year about Trump’s relationship with far-right extremists 

They were talking about Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who studies extremism. He testified in November in Denver District Court about Trump’s history of embracing of far-right extremists how those militant groups interpreted his incendiary rhetoric on the morning of January 6, immediately proceeding the violent storming of the US Capitol. 

Simi’s testimony ended up being influential to the Colorado Supreme Court’s eventual decision to bar Trump from the ballot. But Alito pressed lawyer Jason Murray on whether other states might draw different conclusions, if they were to vet Trump’s actions on January 6. He suggested that other states might not even consider Simi as an expert. 

The questioning was yet another example of how the justices appear to be skeptical of the effort to bar Trump from the ballot. 

Here’s CNN’s coverage from when Simi testified at the trial:

Trump was often “using language with a wink and a nod,” Simi said, but members of these extremist groups consistently interpreted his comments as a “clarion call” toward “anger, resentment and mobilization.” This ramped up in summer 2020 as Trump began claiming he was being cheated in the presidential election, Simi said.

Eric Olson, an attorney for the Colorado challengers, played clips from Trump’s January 6 speech, where he urged supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” so they could “save” the country (Though, at times, he also said they should do so peacefully.)

Right-wing extremists understood those words as “a call to violence,” Simi testified.

“Within far-right extremist culture, fighting is meant to be taken literally … especially within the context as it’s laid out, that these threats are imminent, and that you’re going to lose your country. Then, fighting would be understood as requiring violent action.”

The relationship between Trump and far-right extremists is “unprecedented,” Simi said.

“Far-right extremists really were galvanized by his candidacy starting in 2015,” Simi said. “And a relationship really emerged between Donald Trump and far-right extremists, with far-right extremists really seeing him as speaking their language, and really addressing many of their key grievances.

The Supreme Court appears poised to back former President Donald Trump and fend off a blockbuster challenge to his eligibility to appear on Colorado’s ballot as a presidential candidate in 2024, a move that would extract the justices from one of the most politically fraught appeals in the court’s history.

If Trump is pulled off the ballot in Colorado, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted that other states would eventually attempt to knock other candidates off the ballot. That, he signaled, would be inconsistent with the purpose and history of the 14th Amendment.

At issue is a provision in the 14th Amendment that bars certain public officials from serving in the government again if they took part in an insurrection. The six Republican and independent voters from Colorado who challenged Trump say his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol makes him ineligible under that “insurrection ban.”

A majority of the conservative justices on the court posed tough questions to the lawyers representing the voters – including whether the insurrection ban can be enforced without a law first passed by Congress – though it was unclear which route the court might take.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly pressed the attorneys about a 19th century decision from a lower court that suggested it was congress, not states, that must act first on enforcing an insurrection ban.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, on the other hand, stressed the idea that the ban only applies to serving in office – not necessarily running for office.

The amendment’s key provision, Section 3, says in part: “No person shall … hold any office … under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … 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.”

Although the Republican-appointed justices were all skeptical of Colorado’s position, we also heard skeptical questions from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, too.

That could be a sign that there’s a consensus building for one of the “off-ramps” that would let justices avoid deciding if Trump is or isn’t an “insurrectionist” — although it’s not clear which of the procedural arguments have the most support.

Kagan asked Jason Murray, the attorney for the Colorado voters, why one state should get to decide who runs for president nationally.

If that’s what Kagan is worried about, it’s hard to see even two votes for affirming the decision — let alone five.

Justice Neil Gorsuch asked a key question to the anti-Trump challengers, about whether the “insurrectionist ban” applies to running for office or holding office.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says no person “shall be” an officeholder “or hold any office” if they are an oath-breaking insurrectionist.

The challengers – and Colorado’s top election official – say this means the ban applies to candidates because states have an interest in making sure that only qualified candidates appear on their ballots.

If the court were to conclude that the ban applies to potential officeholders, and not office-seekers, then that would open the door to a scenario where Trump wins in November, but then lawsuits are filed to block him from being sworn in next year.

A trio of legal scholars, including a top GOP election lawyer, warned the justices about that doomsday scenario in a friend-of-the-court brief filed last month.

“The chance that there would be no clear answer come Inauguration Day 2025 — and that the country thereby would be thrown into a possibly catastrophic constitutional crisis — is disturbingly high,” they wrote.

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney Jonathan Mitchell concluded his initial arguments before the Supreme Court justices after nearly an hour.

Here are some of the key things that happened:

Power of states: Several of the justices from both ideological sides pressed the Trump lawyer about stripping states of their ability to exclude candidates from power, including whether an “admitted insurrectionist” could be removed from the ballot.

Mitchell argued that it was the role of Congress to determine whether someone should be disqualified — so even if a person admits to being an insurrectionist, states have no basis to act. “Even if the candidate is an admitted insurrectionist, Section 3 (of the 14th Amendment) still allows the candidate to run for office, and even win election for office, and then see whether Congress lifts that disability after the election,” Mitchell said in response to a question from Chief Justice John Roberts.

The role of Congress: Mitchell argued that Colorado’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot was improper because, among other reasons, the state disqualified Trump before Congress explicitly gave it the power to do that.

The debate over the term “officer”: The justices pressed Mitchell over whether the framers of the 14th Amendment believed the president is an “officer of” the United States, and therefore subject to the “insurrectionist ban” under Section 3. The argument is a central focus of the former president’s legal team, which believes that when the amendment’s framers wrote “officer,” they meant lower federal officials appointed by the president – not the president himself.

That discussion led to this particularly intense exchange:

“For an insurrection, there needs to be an organized, concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence,” Mitchell said.
“A chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked.
Mitchell responded: “This was a riot. It was not an insurrection.”

What happens next for Trump’s legal team: Mitchell will have an opportunity to make brief rebuttal arguments to the justices at the end of the hearing, after lawyers for the Colorado voters and secretary of state finish presenting their case.

Justice Elena Kagan pushed the attorney for the Colorado voters over why a single state should have the power to decide which candidates can be on the ballot for a national election.

“I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be President of the United States,” Kagan asked attorney Jason Murray.

“Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but also for the nation,” she asked, saying that “seems quite extraordinary. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett echoed the concerns, adding “it just doesn’t seem like a state call.”

In response, Murray argued that each state would still have the ability to determine what appears on their own ballots, despite what officials in another state might decide.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Jason Murray, arguing for the Colorado voters, is challenging the justices to grapple with the legal definition of insurrection — arguing the January 6, 2021, riot was such an unprecedented attack.

But many of the justices have been focused on more pedestrian issues in this case that would take them away from the facts of the attack, such as how and if states determine ballot eligibility — related to anything from ballot eligibility or even residency or age.

Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh specifically challenged Murray on the ability of states to dictate who can hold federal office.

Much of the questioning of former President Donald Trump’s attorney Jonathan Mitchell also revolved around similar sweeping questions of state power and how the 14th Amendment could allow for Colorado to do what it has done on its 2024 primary ballot.

Justice Clarence Thomas asked why there weren’t more examples of states disqualifying candidates under the 14th Amendment after the Civil War. 

Jason Murray, who is arguing on behalf of the Colorado voters, pointed to one example of a disqualified candidate, saying it was not surprising there weren’t more because elections then were often decided by parties or as write-ins without ballots.

Thomas appeared skeptical, however. “There were a plethora of confederates still around, there were any number of people who would continue to either run for state offices or national offices, so it would seem — that would suggest there would at least be a few examples of national candidates being disqualified,” Thomas said.

“There were certainly national candidates disqualified by Congress refusing to seat them,” Murray said. 

 “I understand, but that’s not this case. States disqualify them – that’s what we’re talking about here,” Thomas responded.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a key vote to watch in the case, suggested one of the main arguments raised by challengers was “at war” with the history of the insurrection ban at center in the case.

“The whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict state power,” Roberts said. “On the other hand, it augmented federal power.”

Roberts suggested the idea that the amendment would give states power to remove candidates under the provision would be “at war” with the whole thrust and history of the 14th Amendment.

The challengers claimed the 14th Amendment lets states bar insurrectionists from the ballot – which means in simple terms that Congress was providing some very strong powers to the states. But Congress wrote and ratified that amendment during the Reconstruction Era, when they were trying to reign in rogue Southern states after the Civil War and reassert federal powers over civil rights.

There were signs from the first hour of arguments that things were going decently for former President Donald Trump — notably questions posed by a number of centrist justices that appeared to signal support for his position.

It’s still early, and oral arguments often are misleading because only one side is arguing at a time. But here are a few themes that have developed early.

More than 1,300 people have been charged in connection to the January 6, 2021 US Capitol insurrection, according to Justice Department statistics.

Prosecutors have secured guilty pleas or convictions for more than 930 of those people, from low level misdemeanors for trespassing on Capitol grounds to assault charges for brutal attacks on law enforcement.

More than half of the defendants who have been sentenced already received jail time – the longest of which is a 22 year prison sentence given to former Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio.

Among the convicted individuals are dozens of members of far-right organizations, including groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys. Leaders of those organizations were convicted of seditious conspiracy – the first federal convictions of the charge in more than a decade – for attempting to lead their followers in failed plots to stop Joe Biden from becoming the president.

Investigators are still searching for hundreds of individuals they say were involved in the attack, including the person who placed pipe bombs near the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the riot.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin told reporters that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should have recused himself from today’s 14th Amendment case, as the Court considers whether former President Donald Trump should be barred from the ballot.

“I think he should have for the good of the court, and the reputation and integrity of the court,” said Durbin, pointing to Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “There’s no question that his wife is uniquely positioned in the political debate. I think it would have been in the best interest of the court and their reputation for him to step aside.”

Durbin added that “it remains to be seen” if the justices can rule fairly in this case.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine told CNN’s Manu Raju that he believes the Court will reject the 14th Amendment argument.

“The Supreme Court is going to decide it, and, I think, probably not accept the claim,” said Kaine, noting that his belief is “based on the way the court has handled matters in the past.”

Remember: Durbin’s remarks join others in their call for Thomas to recuse himself from the case. Eight Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Thomas last month as the court was still considering whether to take up Trump’s appeal. They said Ginni’s role in the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that she attended made it “unthinkable” that the justice could be impartial in deciding whether the event constituted an insurrection. 

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell argued that the events of January 6 were “shameful, criminal, violent” – but not an insurrection.

The definition of insurrection is crucial to the case because if January 6 doesn’t reach that high bar, then Trump couldn’t have “engaged in insurrection,” which would disqualify him from office under the 14th Amendment.

“This was a riot, it was not an insurrection,” Mitchell said. “For an insurrection, there needs to be an organized concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence.”

Mitchell made these comments while being questioned by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was the only justice to ask him sharp questions about the definition of “insurrection” that touched on Trump’s conduct on that day.

Notably, Mitchell’s comments condemning January 6 are different than what his client, Trump, regularly says in interviews and on the campaign trail, and even on that day. He has repeatedly praised his supporters and bemoaned the fact that hundreds of them are now being subjected to criminal prosecution for their actions.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned Donald Trump’s attorney on whether his argument that the former president is not covered by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment because he is not an “officer” of the United States.

As part of that argument, Trump’s lawyers have argued that Trump has never taken an oath as an officer of the United States. Sotomayor pointed out that he’s the only president that this applies to — because all past presidents either took that oath as lawmakers or as military officers.

Trump is the first president to have never held office — civil or military — before ascending to the presidency.

“I certainly wouldn’t call it gerrymandered,” Trump’s lawyer responded, saying it should not be considered nefarious.

As discussion at the court turns to whether January 6, 2021, qualifies as an insurrection, it’s worth noting that only a small number of Republicans believe former President Donald Trump’s actions were illegal.

Views of Trump’s efforts to remain president following the 2020 election remain effectively unchanged from 18 months ago, according to a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with roughly half of Republicans saying that Trump did nothing wrong.

In the most recent survey, 45% of US adults say Trump acted illegally, 32% that he acted unethically but not illegally, and 23% that he did nothing wrong. That’s nearly identical to the results of a July 2022 survey taken amid the public hearings on the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, in which 45% said Trump acted illegally, 34% that he acted unethically, and 21% that he did nothing wrong.

In the latest poll, the overwhelming majority of Democrats, 80%, say Trump acted illegally, with 14% saying his actions were unethical and 6% that he did nothing wrong.

Just 11% of Republicans view Trump as having acted illegally, with 40% saying his actions were unethical and 49%, saying that Trump did nothing wrong in the wake of the last presidential election.

Read more about CNN’s poll.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has had to weigh in on more legal questions related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol than the other jurists on the bench. 

Jackson, while serving on a federal trial-level court in Washington, DC, oversaw a handful of criminal cases against rioters as the Justice Department was making its first batches of arrests after the deadly attack. 

“How close can a person be to unquestionably violent and completely unacceptable lynch-mob-like acts of others and still claim to be a nondangerous, truly innocent bystander,” Jackson said in the case of one rioter. 

Then-Judge Jackson ultimately handed the rioter cases she was assigned off to other judges when she left the district court after President Joe Biden elevated her to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. But her statements from the period immediately following the attack offer an indication of how she might approach the riot in the Trump ballot case. 

Read more about the cases she has handled.

Jason Murray, the attorney representing the voters challenging former President Donald Trump’s eligibility, is presenting now. This is the first time he is arguing before the Supreme Court.

A veteran of appellate courts, Murray served as a law clerk to two of the justices, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch, when he was on the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Murray argued the challenge to Trump in Colorado that ended with a state Supreme Court decision disqualifying him from the state ballot. Murray was a trial lawyer for 11 years with the national corporate law firm Bartlit Beck, handling big-dollar commercial disputes. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Trump attorney Jonathan Mitchell on whether his argument that states can’t disqualify an insurrectionist without congressional action could set up the possibility for a president to run for a third term, which is barred under the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

“Are you setting up so that if some president runs for a third term, that a state can’t disqualify him from the ballot?” the justice asked.  

Mitchell quickly rebuffed the hypothetical.  

“Of course a state can disqualify him from the ballot, because that is a disqualification that is categorical,” Mitchell said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor has landed the two most direct questions about former President Donald Trump so far — asking his attorney Jonathan Mitchell if he is setting up this case so a state couldn’t disqualify a person for a third term of the presidency, and if his arguments of defining “officers of the US” are just to aid Trump.

Several of the justices from both ideological sides also pressed Mitchell about how far his arguments go to potentially strip states of power to exclude candidates from power.

The justices are clearly aware of the potential impact this ruling may have on future elections, and looking at how they may need to narrow the arguments Trump’s side is making, if they side with him.

The 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” has already come up multiple times in today’s Supreme Court oral arguments. It is a relic of the Civil War that hasn’t been touched in more than a century until the Donald Trump-fueled attack on the US Capitol.

What does the 14th Amendment say? The 14th Amendment says Americans who take an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection” are disqualified from holding future public office.

The amendment’s key provision, Section 3, says in part: “No person shall … hold any office … under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … 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.”

However, the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban. And there is an open legal debate over how some of the terms in the vague provision should be defined. For instance, the amendment doesn’t explain what level of political violence is tantamount to “insurrection.”

The US Supreme Court is reviewing a decision from the Colorado Supreme Court, which said in a landmark 4-3 ruling in December that the “insurrectionist ban” applies to Trump.

To reach that conclusion, the Colorado justices also ruled against Trump on several other key matters. They concluded that the ban applies to the presidency, even though the presidency isn’t explicitly mentioned in the provision. They concluded that courts have the power to enforce the ban, and don’t need to wait for authorization from Congress. They also concluded that the Denver-based trial was properly conducted under Colorado’s election laws that govern ballot access challenges.

One of the potential ways the Supreme Court could resolve the Donald Trump ballot case without saying that he is or isn’t an “insurrectionist” is to rule that the section of the 14th Amendment at issue is not “self-executing,” which means that courts can’t enforce the provision without some legislation approved by Congress first.

In ruling against Trump in December, Colorado’s Supreme Court rejected that argument, concluding that any number of constitutional rights would be wiped out if courts couldn’t enforce them without a separate law passed by Congress.  

“If these amendments required legislation to make them operative, then Congress could nullify them by simply not passing enacting legislation,” the Colorado court wrote. “The result of such inaction would mean that slavery remains legal.” 

Though some of his allies have raised the point, Trump has not argued the position himself. He has instead made a more nuanced argument that other legislation approved by Congress has limited how the insurrection ban can be enforced.  

Justice Brett Kavanaugh tossed an important question to Trump’s attorney about a 19th century decision dealing with the same issue the court is wrestling with now.

Known as “Griffin’s case,” the 1869 decision found that the insurrection ban could not be enforced without some action first from Congress. The opinion was written by Chief Justice Salmon Chase. It was not a Supreme Court decision but it’s one of the closest things the Supreme Court has to a precedent.

By asking the question, Kavanaugh – often a key swing vote — seems to be signaling an interest in siding with Trump in a narrow way: By ruling that the insurrection ban at issue cannot be enforced with a law enacted by Congress.

“Don’t you think Griffin’s case” is important in “trying to figure out what the original meaning” of the insurrection ban is, Kavanaugh asked.

Justice Neil Gorsuch peppered former President Donald Trump’s lawyer with questions about the “officer” dispute, which revolves around whether the “insurrectionist ban” applies to presidents.

The provision doesn’t explicitly say that it can be used to ban a presidential candidate from the ballot, but it does say that it disqualifies any oath-breaking insurrectionists from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States.”

Trump’s side argues that the ban doesn’t cover the presidents. The challengers disagree – and so did the majority of the Colorado Supreme Court.

Donald Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell argued to the Supreme Court that even an “admitted insurrectionist” could not be removed from the ballot, stating it was the role of Congress to determine whether someone should be disqualified. 

“Even if the candidate is an admitted insurrectionist, Section 3 still allows the candidate to run for office, and even win election for office, and then see whether Congress lifts that disability after the election,” Mitchell said in response to a question from Chief Justice John Roberts.

“This happened frequently in the wake of 14th Amendment, where Confederate insurrectionists were elected to office,” Mitchell said. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out during the hearing Thursday that several state-level officials have been barred in the past from holding public office under the 14th Amendment.

“History proves a lot to me and to my colleagues,” Sotomayor said, adding that “there’s a whole lot of examples of states relying on Section 3 to disqualify insurrectionists for state offices.”

According to the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, at least eight public officials have been barred from public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment since its ratification in 1868. 

Most recently, convicted January 6 rioter and Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin was removed from his elected position as a county commissioner in New Mexico for his role in the US Capitol attack. 

Other individuals removed from office, according to CREW, include a state solicitor who served in the Confederate army, a senator from North Carolina who served in the Confederate army, and a Wisconsin representative who was convicted of charges under the espionage act.

Remember: The 14th Amendment says Americans who take an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection” are disqualified from holding future public office.

The amendment’s key provision, Section 3, says in part: “No person shall … hold any office … under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … 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.”

However, the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban. And there is an open legal debate over how some of the terms in the vague provision should be defined. For instance, the amendment doesn’t explain what level of political violence is tantamount to “insurrection.”

Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether the consequences of the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling could be “quite severe,” asking Trump’s attorney whether the ruling could “effectively decide this question for many other states, perhaps all other states.”

Alito also said disqualifying someone from running for office before being elected goes beyond the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which he said refers to holding office.

“Section 3 refers to the holding of office, not running for office,” Alito said. “So if a state or Congress were to go further and say you can’t run for office, you can’t compete in a primary, wouldn’t that be adding an additional qualification for serving for president?”

The debate between Trump attorney Jonathan Mitchell and Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor has turned to “Griffin’s case.”

One unique feature of the Donald Trump ballot dispute is that the Supreme Court is more or less operating with a clean slate. The question of whether a former president can be knocked off a ballot for his role in an insurrection, perhaps not surprisingly, hasn’t come up before.  

And sometimes when the court is operating in mostly new territory, advocates look back – way back – to find earlier decisions to reference. Enter Griffin’s case, from 1869.  

In Re. Griffin involved a defendant’s challenge to a criminal conviction based on the fact that the judge in the case had fought for the Confederacy. Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who was writing for an appeals court and not the Supreme Court, ruled that the “insurrection ban” could not be enforced against the judge unless Congress first passed a law. 

Trump cited the case on the third page of his brief to the Supreme Court earlier this year and both sides have been debating its salience for weeks.  

One strike against Griffin: Chase had written in an earlier case involving Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, that the constitutional provision could be enforced without Congress. 

Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Donald Trump’s attorney on whether election officials would be barred from denying a candidate access to the ballot — even if they admitted to being an insurrectionist.

“Even when somebody comes in and says, ‘I’m a resident … of Indiana. I have been all my life. I want to run for office in Illinois,’ the secretary of state can’t say, ‘No, you can’t’?” Roberts asked.

The question is important because it suggests a degree of skepticism on Roberts’ part about the argument that state election officials can’t keep a candidate from the ballot. 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas opened Thursday’s hearing by asking Donald Trump’s lawyers whether Congress needs to take action before states can enforce the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban,” a relic of the Civil War that hasn’t been touched in more than a century until the Trump-fueled attack on the US Capitol.

This is an important part of the case: If the high court determines that congressional action is necessary, then that means the Colorado decision removing Trump from the ballot would need to be overturned.

Trump lawyer Jonathan Mitchell responded that the Colorado decision was improper because, among other reasons, the state disqualified Trump before Congress explicitly gave it the power to do that.

Ahead of today’s arguments before the Supreme Court, Colorado’s Secretary of State dismissed the claims that former President Donald Trump was not afforded due process.

“He has faced trial. He had a five-day hearing in Colorado at the District Court, and then he also appeared before the Colorado Supreme Court. Both of the courts determined that he did engage in insurrection,” said Jena Griswold, a Democrat and Trump critic, told CNN shortly before today’s arguments began.

“Believe it or not, Donald Trump didn’t even use his full amount of time allotted to him by the court. He was able to call every single witness that he wanted to call. He presented all of his testimony. And actually, he did not use several hours allotted to him. On top of that, he refused to appear himself, he refused to take deposition. So I do think that this angle that, ‘oh, he wasn’t afforded due process,’ is incorrect. He was afforded due process,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

While Trump had raised this objection of due process in the media, he did not do so in any court filings, Griswold noted.

Remember: Throughout the case, Griswold adopted a more neutral tone. She said she believed Trump “incited the insurrection,” but would defer to the courts on how to apply the post-Civil War amendment. Her office did not take a position on Trump’s eligibility during the Denver-based trial last year or while the Colorado Supreme Court reviewed the case. She has defended the procedures that led Colorado courts to disqualify Trump.

Griswold on Thursday noted that she did not make the court ruling in Colorado, and that the court case was brought by Republican and “unaffiliated voters who did not want a disqualified candidate and the ballot.” 

Donald Trump’s attorney Jonathan Mitchell began by going to the question of who is an “officer of the United States.”

“‘Officer of the United States’ refers only to appointed officials,” Mitchell said in his opening remarks.

On the surface, this case is about whether former President Donald Trump disqualified himself from another term because of his actions on January 6, 2021. But the justices are also looking at a number of threshold questions that are more technical yet that could decide the dispute. 

One of them is whether Trump was an “officer of the United States” when he served as president.  

The 14th Amendment bars several types of former government officials, including an “officer of the United States,” from taking an oath to “support” the Constitution and then engaging in an insurrection from serving as president.

Trump argues that when the amendment’s framers wrote “officer,” they meant lower federal officials appointed by the president – not the president himself. His opponents say that a plain reading of the word “officer” should easily include the presidency. 

Jonathan Mitchell, representing former President Donald Trump, is speaking now. He is a well-known conservative advocate with some experience at the court – yet none in a case close to this magnitude. 

Mitchell joined the case on behalf of Trump around the time arguments were underway at the Colorado Supreme Court. Mitchell, however, is a strategic conservative thinker in sync with the right-wing of this bench. 

Mitchell has been attracted to ideologically and politically charged cases, serving as solicitor general of Texas for five years and teaching at various law schools before establishing his own one-person firm in 2018. 

He previously argued five cases at the high court, including in 2021 to support a Texas abortion ban that was a precursor to overturning Roe v. Wade.

Read more about Mitchell’s career.

The Supreme Court has set aside 80 minutes for arguments in today’s historic dispute over whether former President Donald Trump disqualified himself from the ballot for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

In reality, the debate will carry on for much longer. Here’s a look at the order of speakers:

Each attorney will first take questions from the justices in something of a free-for-all format. Then, Chief Justice John Roberts will permit each justice to ask a few questions in order of seniority.  

At the end of the arguments, Mitchell will return to the well of the courtroom for a short rebuttal.  

Bike rack fences line the perimeter of the Supreme Court, dotted with small signs: “Area closed by order of the Supreme Court Marshal.”

Facing the court steps, there is a second row of bike rack fencing, where the scene is fairly calm Thursday morning.

A handful of Supreme Court police are beyond the fencing and let certain people through a section at the center, such as members of the press and bar association.

At one point, a man was shouting profanities in the direction of people holding signs outside the court.

Jennifer Hobbs of New York is one of these people. She wore a “Trump is a Traitor” sweatshirt and held a sign that said, “Are these hollow halls of justice?”

“We want to see the Constitution upheld. This man violated his oath. Seems pretty straightforward,” she told CNN. “Think this one should be pretty simple.”

Jason Miller, senior adviser to President Trump, who is part of his campaign, was out front briefly taking a couple of photos of the area with his cell phone. He said he would be inside the court today.

As arguments begin this morning in a historic challenge to Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on the ballot, they will thrust the Supreme Court into a raucous election as it threatens to abruptly end the former president’s campaign for a second term.

Not since the court decided Bush v. Gore after the 2000 election have the nine justices been asked to dig into a case so intertwined with an ongoing presidential election. Though the appeal is ostensibly about Colorado’s ballot, both sides acknowledge the decision later this year will have nationwide implications.

The court scheduled 80 minutes for the arguments that will kick off shortly after 10 a.m. ET, but the justices regularly blow past the set time on more mundane matters. It is more likely that they will press the attorneys arguing before them for hours.

Here’s what to watch for:

Trump ballot fight pushes high court into unchartered territory: Many of the legal theories raised in the insurrection dispute are new to the Supreme Court. Though the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, the court has never before wrestled with a claim based on the insurrection clause. While the stakes for Trump are enormous, they are also significant for the Supreme Court. Approval ratings of the court have sunk to record lows and a large portion of the country will likely be enraged by the decision in the ballot case.

Will justices look for ways to rule without saying if Trump was an insurrectionist? The six Republican and independent voters who sued Trump filled court papers with harrowing pictures from the attack on the US Capitol and striking language about the chaos that unfolded that day. But if the justices appear to be mostly focused on more technical points, that may be a good sign for Trump.

“A lot of justices are going to be looking for a way to get out of this,” said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The court will be reluctant to decide the merits of this because that would then place the court in the middle of the election.”

Interplay between John Roberts and Elena Kagan may be key: Though among the least talkative on the bench, Chief Justice John Roberts is always important to watch during arguments. Roberts, concerned about the court’s reputation, will likely seek to settle the politically fraught case in a narrow way that can bring together the court’s six conservatives and three liberals. Roberts’ questions could signal what he thinks is the best path to that outcome. The arguments Thursday may offer insight into the appetite within the court’s liberal wing – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – to find a compromise with Roberts. The chief justice and Kagan, who was nominated in 2010 by President Barack Obama, have found ways to work together in recent years.

CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.

The Biden team – from the White House to the campaign – is expected to stick to their stay quiet strategy relating to former President Donald Trump’s legal cases today.

Just last week, President Joe Biden indicated he’s “fine” with Trump remaining on the ballot in November.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s fine,” Biden told reporters last Tuesday when asked whether Trump should be on the ballot. 

In December, Biden said he believes Trump supported an insurrection but indicated it is up to the courts to determine whether that should disqualify him from running for president.

The president has repeatedly argued Trump poses a direct threat to democracy, including sharp criticism of his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, but Biden has largely refrained from using the twists and turns of the legal cases against Trump as part of his arguments, in part, to avoid any appearance of political interference.

Instead the campaign’s focus today is charging ahead with plans to take on Trump in a general election contest in November. Biden this week has leaned into framing the 2024 race as a referendum on Trump, painting him as an “existential threat” and using the Republican dysfunction on Capitol Hill as evidence of the party’s strict adherence to Trump’s will. Biden is also dispatching senior campaign officials to discuss their campaign’s strategy with House Democrats today.

The president will be traveling to Leesburg, Virginia, this afternoon where he will speak at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference.

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday argued the US Supreme Court needed to make a “powerful decision” as the high court is set to hear a case over the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot over the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist” clause.

Trump continued to argue that the case brought against him amounted to election interference and said in a radio interview on “The John Fredericks Show” that it would be “bad for our country” if the court didn’t rule in his favor. 

“It’s important that a very powerful decision be made on this. You can’t take the votes away from the people,” Trump said.

Trump argued, “Essentially, they want to take me out of the race, they want to have, you know, the Supreme Court rule or vote to take me out of the race. That would be a very terrible thing to do. It’s about the vote and it’s about our Constitution.”

Trump also said if he were to be disqualified from office it would “be so bad for democracy. That would be so bad for our country. And I can’t imagine that would happen.”

“It’s very inappropriate, a lot of people feel that. I mean, I read all of the legal scholars and the legal opinions, very few people go to the other side unless they truly hate me,” Trump said.

For Donald Trump, the fate of a presidential campaign will hang in the balance at the Supreme Court.

For Chief Justice John Roberts, it is at least in part a legacy that will be on the line.  

Since joining the bench in 2005, the conservative Roberts has built a reputation for trying to steer the court clear of the partisanship that vexes the rest of Washington. But Roberts’ middle-ground, go-slow approach could face one of the greatest tests of his tenure as the former president and frontrunner for the GOP nomination keeps showing up to a Supreme Court he helped to design. 

“It would be much better if it was unanimous and it didn’t look like a partisan decision,” said Tom Ginsburg, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and the co-author of a 2018 book about the threat of democratic decay. “The challenge for Roberts is to take a jurisprudential route that will get nine votes.” 

Read more about the enormous test Roberts is facing.

Law enforcement agencies in Washington, DC, including Supreme Court Police and the United States Capitol Police, will be monitoring any protests or security concerns that crop up around Thursday’s arguments.

Agencies in DC are not currently monitoring any credible threats around the hearing before the high court, according to several law enforcement officials.

Law enforcement agencies will still be watching the situation, with one security official on Capitol Hill telling CNN they would be “coordinating with local and federal partners.”

Capitol Police will have “some security posture” Thursday, according to an official familiar with the planning, and any security fencing put in place ahead of the arguments would be “minimal” and could include bike-rack fencing.

“Now that he’s not coming, everyone’s a bit relieved,” one official told CNN of former President Donald Trump’s plans not to attend the arguments in person.

CNN senior legal analyst Eli Honig explains how he thinks the Supreme Court justices will approach the issues at hand in the historic 14th Amendment battle.

Watch his analysis here:

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has faced pressure to recuse himself from the Colorado ballot case from liberals who have seized on his wife’s conservative activism and efforts to reverse the 2020 election results. 

In a letter sent by eight Democratic lawmakers to Thomas last month as the court was still considering whether to take up Trump’s appeal, the lawmakers Virginia “Ginni” Thomas’ role in the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that she attended make it “unthinkable” the justice could be impartial in deciding whether the event constituted an insurrection. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin also called for Thomas’ recusal in a social media post Wednesday. 

“Given questions surrounding his wife’s involvement, Justice Thomas should recuse himself so there’s no question of bias,” Durbin wrote.  

Thomas has so far resisted the recusal calls, though he or any other justice could recuse themselves at any point. They are not required to explain themselves either way. 

Other ethics issues have dogged the justice over the last year, with a steady stream of stories about a GOP megadonor’s largesse to Thomas – which have mostly gone unreported on the justice’s financial disclosures – raising questions about transparency at the high court.  

Grace Kiple, a first-year student at Georgetown Law School, arrived at the Supreme Court a day before the historic arguments just to ensure she would have a seat inside the courtroom. That meant she had to stay overnight on the sidewalk. She came prepared with a sleeping bag and a yoga mat.

“I’ve never camped before,” Kiple said, clutching a large coffee. “This case is such a big thing.”

There were a handful of protesters outside the high court early Thursday, including some who held signs declaring former President Donald Trump a “traitor.” A line for public access snaked along one side of the building. Some wore suits and ties. Others snuggled into sleeping bags and sat on camp chairs.

Kendra Sharrard, also a first-year Georgetown Law student, said she and Kiple had been planning to attend the arguments for a long time.

“We want to know what the justices ask and how that leads the arguments,” Sharrard said. “We wanted to be here for the history of it.”

The team of attorneys challenging former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on the ballot expressed confidence that they will “run the table” when the Supreme Court meets for historic oral arguments in the case today.

“Our team has been prepared for this for a long time,” Mario Nicolais, co-counsel for the team representing six Republican and independent voters who sued Trump. “We think we win so many of these arguments on multiple different levels, and that’s why we feel very strongly that we will win this case.”

At issue is whether the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” bars Trump from appearing on the ballot because of his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Nicolais acknowledged the lawyers opposite Trump will “have to be perfect” and “win every argument” when they appear before the justices. Many experts believe the conservative Supreme Court is likely looking for a narrow path to settle the dispute in Trump’s favor.

“This case puts the court in a tough position,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group representing the voters challenging Trump. “I think they’d rather not be thinking about these issues, but it is what the democracy requires and what the Constitution requires at this moment.”

Former President Donald Trump on Monday urged the Supreme Court to keep his name on Colorado’s ballot, accusing his challengers of pursuing an “anti-democratic” legal case against him.

“He is the presumptive Republican nominee and the leading candidate for President of the United States,” Trump’s attorneys told the Supreme Court in the brief. “The American people – not courts or election officials – should choose the next President of the United States.”

Trump’s attorneys compared the litigation seeking to remove him from the ballot to anti-democratic efforts in Venezuela.

“Yet at a time when the United States is threatening sanctions against the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela for excluding the leading opposition candidate for president from the ballot,” they claimed, the voters who brought the case are asking the Supreme Court “to impose that same anti-democratic measure at home.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday in the blockbuster challenge to Trump’s ballot eligibility because of his role in the events that led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. A group of Colorado voters claim those actions amounted to an insurrection and that the Constitution bars him from holding office.

Advocacy groups and critics of former President Donald Trump are trying to remove him from the 2024 presidential ballot based on the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which says public officials who have “engaged in insurrection” are disqualified from ever serving again.

Two states – Colorado and Maine – have determined that this ban applies to Trump, because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Both states stripped him from the Republican primary ballot, though those decisions were paused on appeal. The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Colorado case on Thursday.

But the attempts to block Trump from the ballot fell flat in several other key states, where lawsuits were dismissed on procedural grounds and never reached the questions about Trump’s actions on January 6. This includes Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Illinois, and elsewhere.

CNN is tracking the major decisions on Trump’s eligibility. See where the major anti-Trump ballot challenges stand across the United States.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Thursday in the historic efforts to disqualify former President Donald Trump from office because of his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The case revolves around the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban,” a relic of the Civil War that hasn’t been touched in more than a century until the Trump-fueled attack on the US Capitol.

What does the 14th Amendment say? The 14th Amendment says Americans who take an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged in insurrection” are disqualified from holding future public office.

The amendment’s key provision, Section 3, says in part: “No person shall … hold any office … under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … 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.”

However, the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban. And there is an open legal debate over how some of the terms in the vague provision should be defined. For instance, the amendment doesn’t explain what level of political violence is tantamount to “insurrection.”

The US Supreme Court is reviewing a decision from the Colorado Supreme Court, which said in a landmark 4-3 ruling in December that the “insurrectionist ban” applies to Trump.

After turning several recent trials and court hearings into campaign stops, Donald Trump is not expected to be in the room when the highest court in the land takes up the question of his ballot eligibility, sources familiar with the planning tell CNN.

On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers will appear at the US Supreme Court for arguments over a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to throw Trump off the state’s ballot under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding public office. Trump currently doesn’t plan to be there. Instead, he’ll be at Mar-a-Lago in Florida before traveling to a Nevada caucus victory party in Las Vegas.

“There is no upside to him attending these arguments,” one source close to the legal team tells CNN. “Trump understands how serious this is – the stakes could not be higher.”

Trump’s decision not to attend the historic Supreme Court arguments in the case – which would determine his ballot eligibility nationwide – is an indication of how carefully his team is handling the case before the court where Trump appointed one-third of the justices on the bench to create a conservative supermajority.

The arguments come as the Supreme Court is also expected to consider a more perilous legal question for Trump – whether he is immune from criminal prosecution for his actions following the 2020 election. Trump may feel more strongly about attending those arguments, according to another source familiar with his legal strategy.

While many legal experts believe Trump could prevail on the ballot challenges issue, his appearance could be considered disruptive to the normally staid and above-the-fray decorum of the Supreme Court.

Trump and his team have treated various court appearances as opportunities for him to cry “election interference,” call out who he deems “Trump-hating” judges and attack the system as rigged “political persecution.” His presence and the attendant

Keep reading here about how Trump is juggling the campaign and courtroom.

Few critical US democratic institutions have escaped unsullied from a tangle with Donald Trump.

Now, the US Supreme Court faces its greatest test so far from the former president.

On Thursday, the nine justices will hear a case with critical implications for the 2024 election – over the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot over the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist” clause.

How Trump works the refs: Even though Trump is not expected to attend Thursday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court, the justices know what’s coming.

The prospect of being dragged into the hyper-politicized arena of a presidential election is a nightmare enough for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has often sought to guard the high court against reputational damage from the country’s raging politics.

But an election case involving Trump, in a time of far greater partisan fury than the bitter aftermath of the 2000 election, could be an even graver matter – especially if any of the court’s rulings eventually go against Trump.

How Trump leans on judges: Any judge that delivers verdicts contradictory to Trump’s view risks becoming a target. The former president’s attack on a district judge that ruled against the Trump administration in an asylum case prompted Roberts in 2019 to try to insulate the judiciary from politics. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts wrote in an extraordinary statement that did not name Trump, but clearly had him in mind. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

Read more about how few critical US institutions have emerged unscathed from an encounter with Trump.

The Supreme Court has set aside 80 minutes for arguments in today’s historic dispute over whether former President Donald Trump disqualified himself from the ballot for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.  

In reality, the debate will carry on for much longer.  

Trump’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, is expected to kick off the arguments a little after 10 a.m. ET with a brief opening statement and will then field a barrage of questions from the bench. Jason Murray, representing the Colorado voters who challenged Trump, will present next. Finally, Shannon Stevenson, Colorado’s top appellate attorney, will speak on behalf of Secretary of State Jena Griswold.  

Each attorney will first take questions from the justices in something of a free-for-all format. Then, Chief Justice John Roberts will permit each justice to ask a few questions in order of seniority.  

At the end of the arguments, Mitchell will return to the well of the courtroom for a short rebuttal.  

Arguing before the Supreme Court involves an enormous amount of preparation, from nailing the intricacies of an argument to anticipating hypothetical questions from justices.  

Mitchell arranged two moot courts to practice before the justices took their seats. Murray had planned four. Such sessions are designed to expose the weaknesses in a case, devise solutions and refine its strong points. The tougher the moot – the adage goes – the smoother the actual argument. 

Read more about how the arguments are expected to unfold.

Norma Anderson, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to disqualify Donald Trump from office, is a lifelong Republican who has had a storied political career, including stints as the first-ever woman majority leader in both chambers of the Colorado legislature.

“I’m an old-fashioned Republican that believes in strong defense, supporting business, and helping those who don’t know how to help themselves, and less government, and a fair tax base,” Anderson said.

Here are some highlights of her career:

Battling Trump – especially in court – comes with acclaim in some circles, and vitriol in others. Anderson said she has received a lot of support from friends and family, except for one or two holdouts who are still die-hard Trump supporters. She said most of her friends weren’t surprised that she got involved in the case.

“I was born four months before FDR was elected,” Anderson said. “I’ve lived through a lot of presidents. Some I liked, some I didn’t. But not one of them caused an insurrection, until Donald Trump.”

Learn more about Anderson’s life, work and stances here.

There is a dizzying array of court cases related to former President Donald Trump. Only one is headed to the US Supreme Court this week. It is a Colorado case in which Trump was declared ineligible for the state’s 2024 ballot for violating the Civil War-era insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

When we asked CNN readers for their questions about the Supreme Court case, it quickly became clear in the hundreds of responses that a lot of people are struggling to keep all of Trump’s legal issues separate.

For instance, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Thursday in the 14th Amendment case – the same week that an appeals court in Washington, DC, clarified that, no, Trump does not enjoy “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

For an excellent, shorter version of what might happen at the court this week, listen to this “One Thing” podcast with CNN’s Supreme Court expert Joan Biskupic.

In answering readers’ questions, we’ve tried to delineate between the multiple cases involving Trump. We’ve also edited the wording in some questions for grammar and style.

Read our answers’ to readers’ questions.

A group of current and former US Capitol Police officers who defended the iconic building on January 6, 2021, want the court to reject Trump’s argument that his speech that day is protected by the First Amendment. 

“Mr. Trump’s explicit instructions to a vast crowd to assault the Capitol and disrupt the proceedings of Congress — is precisely the kind of speech that is excluded from the First Amendment’s protections,” the group of current and former officers argued in a friend-of-the-court brief. 

Trump’s attorneys say, among other things, that his speech that day is shielded by longstanding First Amendment precedents because he wasn’t trying to incite imminent violence. 

The group of five current and three former Capitol Police officers behind the brief brought a civil lawsuit against Trump and several of his allies in 2021. The officers were at the Capitol during the riot and, according to court documents, were violently attacked by members of the mob. 

“Mr. Trump’s audience did as it was told.”

“Attackers breached the Capitol’s defenses, forced entry, and temporarily obstructed Congress’s electoral vote count, ” the brief said. “In the process, the attackers violently assaulted (the officers who filed the brief) and other Capitol Police officers, striking them and spraying them with toxic chemicals.” 

A former conservative federal appellate judge is among those asking the Supreme Court to keep Donald Trump off the ballot, arguing the ex-president’s effort to cling to power after his 2020 election loss was “broader” than South Carolina’s secession from the US that triggered the Civil War. 

“Mr. Trump tried to prevent the newly-elected President Biden from governing anywhere in the United States. The South Carolina secession prevented the newly-elected President Lincoln from governing only in that State,” J. Michael Luttig, a former judge on the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, told the justices in a friend-of-the-court brief.  

“Trump incited, and therefore engaged in, an armed insurrection against the Constitution’s express and foundational mandates that require the peaceful transfer of executive power to a newly-elected President,” the brief said.

“In doing so, Mr. Trump disqualified himself under Section 3 (of the Constitution).” 

Luttig has long been one of the most high-profile conservatives to argue that Trump engaged in an insurrection following his loss in 2020 and that he should as a result be barred from holding office. He played a critical role in the heated fight over the certification of the 2020 presidential election, providing in a series of tweets legal ammunition to help then-Vice President Mike Pence defy Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. 

Read more.

Norma Anderson already earned her spot in the Colorado history books before becoming the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to disqualify Donald Trump from office.  

The standoff with Trump is one final chapter in the 91-year-old’s storied political career, which includes stints as the first-ever woman majority leader in both chambers of the Colorado legislature.  

“If Nikki Haley makes the ballot, she has my vote,” Anderson told CNN.

Anderson, who still identifies as a Republican, spent 12 years in the state house. While there, from 1997 to 1998, she was the majority leader of the lower chamber. After that, she won a seat in the state Senate, and spent seven years there. She similarly reached the post of Senate majority leader in 2003. She was the first woman to hold both senior positions.  

Read more about Anderson and how the case got to the Supreme Court.

Most Americans have less than total confidence in the Supreme Court to handle any election-related legal cases, according to a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Just 11% say they have a great deal of trust in the Supreme Court to make the right decisions on any cases related to the 2024 election, with 31% expressing a moderate amount of trust, 35% just some, and 23% none at all.

Roughly half (52%) of Republicans express a great deal or moderate amount of trust, with 17% saying they don’t trust the Supreme Court at all on the issues. Doubts are higher among Democrats: just 36% have at least a moderate amount of trust in the court to handle election-related cases, with 27% saying they have no trust at all. 

Timing is key as well.

About half of all Americans, 48%, say they think it’s essential that a verdict is reached before this year’s election on the federal charges Trump faces related to election subversion in 2020 before this year’s presidential election.

Read more about CNN’s poll.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments today in its review of the Colorado Supreme Court’s historic and unprecedented decision to remove former President Donald Trump from that state’s ballot.

Trump remains on the primary ballot as the lower-court ruling disqualifying him has been put on hold pending Supreme Court action. If the justices do conclude Trump is ineligible for public office, then any votes cast for him wouldn’t count.

The high court’s decision to hear the case puts the nine justices squarely in the middle of the 2024 election as voting starts in the early primary contests and represents the court’s most significant involvement in a presidential race since its highly consequential decision 23 years ago in Bush v. Gore.

The state court’s ruling all but ensured that the justices would have to take up the politically fraught case and resolve the controversial question of whether Trump can be removed from the ballot. Though the Colorado ruling applies only to that state, courts in several other states have also reviewed challenges to Trump’s eligibility, though no such case has made it as far as the one in Colorado.

Last year, Maine’s secretary of state removed Trump from that state’s 2024 primary ballot, and the former president’s team appealed that decision in state court. The Oregon Supreme Court could also soon rule on a bid to remove Trump from that state’s primary and general election ballots because of his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, underscoring an urgent need for the justices in Washington to act quickly in the Colorado case.

Trump’s campaign said it welcomes a “fair hearing” at the Supreme Court over the Colorado ballot challenge.

Read more about the case.