2:00. We have the big decision come out of the Supreme Court yesterday. This is huge, and, of course, as I predicted on the show, it would be a very interesting decision. I initially predicted a couple of months ago that it would be a 5-4 decision in favor of Trump. Guess what? It was essentially a 5 to 4 decision in favor of Trump. All 9 justices argued that Colorado could not keep Trump off the ballot, but 4 of them had reservations about it. There was a concurring opinion that was almost a dissent. As I said, it was going to be 5 to 4, and then after listening to the arguments I thought, well, it's going to be 9 to 0, or 8 to 1, but it turned out to be 9 and 0 in favor of Trump "staying on the ballot," but the arguments against it, kind of this expansion of the 14th Amendment, certainly the 3 liberal justices believe that Amy Coney Barrett, who I thought would be in the 5 to 4, who I thought maybe Roberts would go to the 4 but it was Barrett. She is certainly still saying that maybe the state can do something with the 14th Amendment, Section 3 of that, but regardless, I was right on both accounts. That's why you listen to the show and that's why on social media I said I should be making Rush Limbaugh kind of money.
3:30. Let me go into some of the things about this; in fact, I'm not going to read the decision very much. I'll say some general things about the decision. First and foremost, I think that Barrett in some ways is actually right that states can enforce provisions of the Constitution. I mean state judges take an oath to defend the Constitution, and so do state officers. They do it. This is what I've mentioned about Texas. Texas can enforce the Constitution. They can round up people crossing the border illegally, send them back to Mexico, or wherever else they are from. They can do that. State officers take an oath to support the Constitution. Now, what states don't have to do is enforce unconstitutional laws. I've talked about that on this show. That's non-commandeering. But if the law is constitutional, and they take an oath to do it, then they have to enforce those things.
4:20. Now, the situation with the ballot is very interesting because it wasn't until the late 19th century that we had the States involved in that process, and some of that was because of the 14th Amendment. But also because states wanted to regulate who could and who could not be on a ballot; in some ways, that's a little bit of an expansion of power that maybe they don't have. Private entities or parties can put anybody they want on the ballot. The states can sort that out after they get nominees, but you can have any party nominate anyone. And if that person had been convicted of, say, insurrection, well, then the state could potentially leave them off the ballot, or if that person was a criminal or another way of what if they were in jail well that person could be kept off the ballot I mean there are some things you know like when if they're not old enough whatever the situation is the state can review that and say no well this person can't be there also Congress has a role in that regard as well they can refuse to see people in Congress but the state certainly gets to decide to choose it's electors so in that way there could be some control of that for the states.
