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Democrats’ next goal: Barring Trump from holding office again

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Now that President Donald Trump has been impeached a second time, keeping him from holding office again could be Congress’ next step. But impeachmen­t alone won’t prevent Trump from seeking office in the future. Some questions and answers about how Congress might bar Trump from ever seeking federal office again.

What exactly does impeachmen­t do?

Impeachmen­t in the House sets up a trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to remove the president from office. After the House impeached him in late 2019, the Senate voted to acquit. Only one Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, broke with the GOP.

This time, however, could prove different. Republican­s are angry, and Trump would presumably be out of office before any vote is taken on whether to convict him. Presidente­lect Joe Biden gets sworn in January 20. With the Senate split 50-50, Democrats and the two independen­ts who caucus with them would need 17 Republican­s to join them to convict Trump.

Is Trump automatica­lly barred from office if he is convicted?

No, if past is precedent. If the Senate were to convict, lawmakers would take a separate vote on whether to disqualify him from holding future office. No president has ever been convicted in the Senate and removed from office. But in the case of federal judges who were impeached and removed from office, the Senate has taken a second vote after conviction to determine whether to bar the person from ever holding federal office again.

The bar is lower on that second vote, with only a majority of senators needed to succeed. Then again, because it’s never happened before in the case of a president, a court challenge could follow. Frank Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and author of A History of Impeachmen­t for the Age of Trump, said the lower number of votes makes sense, but it’s not crazy to think that it might be challenged if things got to that point.

Another legal issue: It appears that Trump’s Senate trial will not even start before Jan. 19, a day before he leaves office. Scholars disagree about whether a former president can even face an impeachmen­t trial in the Senate.

Impeachmen­t in the House sets up a trial in the Senate, where a twothirds majority is required to remove the president from office.

Is that the only way Trump can be barred?

Maybe not. In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Yale Law School professor Bruce Ackerman and Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca argued that members of Congress have another, perhaps easier, path to barring Trump from office. They pointed to the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, aimed at preventing people from holding federal office if they are deemed to have “engaged in insurrecti­on or rebellion against” the Constituti­on.

The professors write that if a majority vote of both houses agree that Trump engaged in an act of “insurrecti­on or rebellion”, then he would be barred from running for the White House again. Only a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress in the future could undo that result.

What significan­ce does Section 3 have in the 14th Amendment?

The 14th Amendment was one of three amendments adopted after the Civil War to end slavery and afford equal rights to Black people. The point of Section 3, according to Ackerman and Magliocca, was to keep Confederat­es — those who had engaged in “insurrecti­on or rebellion” — from holding public office in the postwar period. In 1872, Congress passed the Amnesty Act to allow those men to serve again. But Section 3 remains. It was last used a century ago to keep a socialist from Wisconsin who opposed US entry into the First World War from taking his seat in Congress.

 ?? AP/PTI ?? Speaker Nancy Pelosi signs the articles of impeachmen­t against Trump on Wednesday.
AP/PTI Speaker Nancy Pelosi signs the articles of impeachmen­t against Trump on Wednesday.

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