Thursday, Maine became the second state to take Donald Trump off the vote because of the riot in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. This threw the 2024 election into even more chaos and constitutional confusion.

Following a similar decision earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court, the move by the Maine secretary of state made things worse for Trump’s campaign. It also made the case for the US Supreme Court to take up the matter, which is based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.” It has already made things more chaotic around the election, and it could make national differences even bigger.

There needs to be an end to the growing uncertainty right away, since Iowa is about to start voting in the Republican nomination race on January 15 and other important election dates are coming up soon. Shenna Bellows, the Democrat who is Secretary of State of Maine, put off making her choice until Trump’s team said they were going to file an appeal in state court.

The choice was made on the same day that Nikki Haley, Trump’s rising rival in New Hampshire, tried to keep her mistake about slavery from sinking her campaign.

Even the thought that a presidential candidate in 2023 might not be able to say that slavery is what split the country apart more than 160 years ago is shocking.

But the drama surrounding the former governor of South Carolina less than three weeks before the election is also making people less interested in Trump. Trump has caused many more scandals and outrages during his defying gravity political career, and many of them are related to his legal exposure for denying the 2020 election.

It got even more complicated legally and politically with Maine’s choice. This is all because Trump wouldn’t accept defeat and challenged the supposed transfer of power in a way that had never been done before. After all, two states have now found that a past president led an uprising against the US government, which has never happened before in history.

But the issue also brings up new questions about whether efforts to make Trump pay for January 6 are necessary to protect American democracy from a particularly dangerous threat, or whether they could backfire politically next fall against President Joe Biden and Democrats. Trump is being charged with many crimes, which has made him more popular with his base voters, even though his crazy anti-democratic behavior in 2020 could hurt him badly in the general election.

Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for president, said on “CNN This Morning” on Friday that attacks on the former president like the ones in Colorado and Maine make him a “martyr.”

“Some people might think there’s a good reason to do this, but it’s not good for our democracy.” “In the end, people should vote against Donald Trump and someone like me who is willing to tell the truth about him should also defeat him,” he said.

‘The right to vote is fundamental.’

In her ruling, Bellows said that the facts were so strange that the Constitution required her to bar the Republican front-runner from running for office.

“This is not an easy decision for me,” Bellows said. “Democracy is holy…” I’m aware that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment has never been used as an excuse for a Secretary of State to keep a presidential candidate from voting. But I’m also aware that no presidential candidate has ever been involved in an uprising before.

Responding, Trump’s team slammed the country. The former president demanded that the country protect the very American right that he tried to take away three years ago: the right of people to choose their president.

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As we speak, Trump’s team said, “We are seeing the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.” “Democrats in blue states are attempting to quickly remove President Trump’s name from the ballot, which is both dangerous and against the Constitution. They are suspending the civil rights of American voters.”

This claim is very funny because Trump is still rejecting the outcome of the 2020 election and then trying to keep people from voting, even in key swing states where Biden won. Several courts threw out Trump’s false claims of voting fraud, and his administration made fun of them. However, that hasn’t stopped him from making them the focus of his 2024 campaign, which has turned into a way to accuse Biden of the same crime Trump did: meddling in the race.

The shocking news from Maine came just hours after an exclusive CNN story laid bare new details about how deeply the former president meddled in the early 2021 election. Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump advisor, was recorded saying that the Trump camp was “freaked out” that fake elector ballots were sent in the mail days before Congress was supposed to confirm the election results. Quick plans were made to get them to Washington, D.C., on January 5 to support a plan to name Trump the legitimate president. At the time, Vice President Mike Pence refused to join the plan.

The new evidence made Trump’s latest and much less plausible legal defense even less convincing: that his desperate efforts to stay in the White House were a legal way for the president to protect voters after an unfair election.

What issues Haley is facing and the Trump legal mess have in common.

Haley’s issues and Trump’s legal quagmire provide insight into the state of the Republican Party today.

Haley’s reluctance to discuss the evident, historical ramifications of slavery in an open manner seemed to be an attempt to placate staunch conservative supporters in a party that has recently moved significantly to the right. She has also refrained from publicly criticizing Trump’s attempt to subvert US democracy in 2020, ostensibly to prevent upsetting supporters who have fallen for the former president’s election-related lies.

Though his campaign is moving to contest his exclusion from the ballot, Trump’s legal shadow is also growing, even though Haley’s suffering is far from over.

The Colorado Republican Party has already filed a 14th Amendment lawsuit against the state Supreme Court’s decision to prevent him from being on the ballot.

The Trump campaign in Maine declared that it would promptly bring a lawsuit in state court to halt the implementation of the “horrible” ruling.

However, Bellows said that her actions qualified her to remove Trump from office.

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“My responsibility under Maine’s election laws is to make sure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek, and my top priority is upholding the Constitution,” she stated. According to Bellows, the opponents provided strong proof that the uprising on January 6 “occurred at the behest of” Trump and that the US Constitution “does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government.”

Prior to Colorado, a number of other states rejected similar initiatives, including Minnesota and Michigan. Additionally, the former president was on the certified list of candidates issued by California’s secretary of state on Thursday night. Even though stepping into this political tsunami could further strain an institution that has been politically battered in recent years, it is almost necessary for the US Supreme Court to intervene given that different states now have differing views on the Constitution and Trump’s eligibility to run for office again.

The justices will be asked two important questions. First, does the president fall within the constitutional prohibition against insurrectionists holding public office? Second, the highest court will face pressure to consider whether a state can declare a candidate to have participated in an insurrection without providing them with a fair trial.

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