Former president can run again, US judges rule

DONALD Trump has won a major victory after the US Supreme Court ruled that he could stay on the ballot for the presidential election.

America’s highest court rejected efforts to stop the likely Republican candidate from competing because of his role in the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Three states have already removed Mr Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment but he will have to be put back on, the Supreme Court ruled.

Its decision gives Mr Trump a big win going into Super Tuesday today, when 15 states will decide their Republican nominee and potentially hand him the party’s candidacy.

In a post online, he said it was a ‘BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!’ The effort to bar Mr Trump ended up in the Supreme Court after activist groups filed challenges to him being on the ballot in 36 states. Three of them – in Colorado, Maine and Illinois – were successful, with Mr Trump appealing the Colorado decision all the way to the Supreme Court because it was the first.

The Supreme Court said in its 20-page unanimous ruling that states can disqualify people from holding state office, but have ‘no power’ to do so at a national level. Even the three liberal judges agreed, stating that kicking Mr Trump off the ballot would ‘create a chaotic state-bystate patchwork, at odds with our nation’s federalism principles’.

Ben Clements, chairman of Free Speech for People, a group that filed several of the challenges to Mr Trump standing, called the decision ‘a great disservice to the country and to our constitutional democracy’. Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, said she was disappointed by the ruling. Mr Trump is expected to win all 15 states today, which could force his sole rival, Nikki Haley, out of the race.