Can Trump Be on the Ballot?
On Feb. 8, 2024, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson in response to the former president’s appeal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision banning him from that state’s presidential ballot. Justices appeared poised to rule in Trump’s favor.
Days later, Trump appealed another case to the Supreme Court, asking for a delay in the Special Counsel’s proceedings against him after a lower federal court ruled he was not immune from prosecution for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The nation’s highest court is tilted to the right with three ultra-conservatives appointed by Trump himself, one of whom is married to an avid pro-Trump activist.
In conversation with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali, Bill Blum, a former state of California administrative law judge and Truthdig.com contributor, discussed the two cases, where they overlap, and the constitutional crisis they could potentially spark.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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