The bad news is that the Democrats are plotting to use the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from running for office again. The good news is that nothing the Democrats ever try works.
The efforts are based on Provision 3 of the 14th Amendment.
That provision reads:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
There are many obstacles that must be overcome in order for that to happen since no one has ever been accused this way before.
Who decides when someone has committed insurrection? Is it Congress? That would make it partisan and would not be anything the Founding Fathers would have suggested.
Would it be a judge? Not unless it is the Supreme Court. And that would require proof that insurrection occurred and that it was committed specifically by the person accused.
And it would also come down to intent.
The 14th Amendment was established as a reconstruction Amendment after the Civil War to prevent the leaders of the Southern Cause (in re: Democrats) from regaining elected office after the war.
In the worst-case scenario, you cannot make a case that January 6th was either a rebellion or an insurrection since no one tried to overthrow the government.
The answer of whether Democrats could use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against Trump to prohibit him from ever holding office again is a highly complicated question over which constitutional scholars disagree.
For example, some experts told The Hill the mechanism is not “self-executing,” and thus would require Congress to act. Tribe, on the other hand, suggested Congress would need to establish a neutral fact-finding body to determine whether Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” as the amendment states or assign a federal court to establish whether Trump crossed that line.
