House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., slammed reports that Democrats are ginning up legislation in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision Monday to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot.
“We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency,” the Court wrote, adding that “the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates.
According to a report published in Axios Monday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former member of the Jan. 6 select committee, said he is already crafting federal legislation that would force Trump off the ballot.
But a spokesperson for Speaker Johnson told Fox News Digital on Monday night that his Democrat colleagues should “get a grip.”
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“Democrats need to get a grip. In this country, the American people decide the next president—not the courts and not the Congress,” the spokesperson said.
According to the Axios report, Raskin referenced legislation he introduced in 2022 with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. that would allow the Justice Department to sue to keep candidates off the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
“We are going to revise it in light of the Supreme Court’s decision,” Raskin told the outlet. He suggested that the bill would be paired with a resolution declaring Jan. 6 an “insurrection” and that those involved “engaged in insurrection.”
Trump is facing a number of federal charges related to the 2020 election, but he has not been charged with insurrection.
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In the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday, the nine justices unanimously agreed that states don’t have Section 3 enforcement authority. But Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the majority went too far when it said Congress has sole enforcement authority.
“The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement,” the trio said.
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“The Court today needed to resolve only a single question: whether an individual State may keep a Presidential candidate found to have engaged in insurrection off its ballot. The majority resolves much more than the case before us. Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue, the majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate,” the three wrote.
“It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a Presidential candidate under that provision,” the three said.
Rep. Raskin’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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