The case involves a Mississippi law that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received and counted. Fourteen other states do likewise, and 29 states, including Colorado, allow at least some military and overseas ballots to be counted after Election Day. Opponents contend that the Mississippi law violates a federal law that requires all states to hold congressional and president elections on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

Kavanaugh and the professor he quotes are right; if ballots received after Election Day decide a close election, it could undermine confidence in the results. However, that does not mean Mississippi’s law conflicts with the federal law or the Constitution. Nor will overturning it restore skeptics’ faith in our elections, as their doubts originate not from inadequacies in state laws but deceit by self-serving politicians.

Trump casts Florida mail ballot as he pushes Congress to severely limit that voting option

The Constitution gives states primary authority over elections but allows Congress to weigh in which it did in 1845 to establish the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November as Election Day. This federal law does not dictate when states must receive ballots only when they are cast. If a ballot is postmarked by Election Day, then presumably the person did cast his or her vote on or before Election Day.

Some states have compelling reasons to extend a grace period. Ballots from voters in remote Alaska villages accessible only by plane may be delayed by weeks due to inclement November weather. Do all states have such a compelling reason to allow a grace period? No, some are holdovers from the COVID-19 era. However, whether states have adequate reasons to provide an extension is not for the court to decide but for that state’s voters and their state assemblies.

Some suggest that states with geographic challenges could just send out ballots earlier. Voters in remote regions would be expected to mail their ballots in early if they wanted them to count. What if negative news about a candidate breaks in October? Those voters could not vote accordingly. Americans overseas, including servicemen and women, would face a similar unfair dilemma: vote early before the campaign is over or risk not having one’s vote count. By annulling state grace periods, the Court would, in effect, change the date of Election Day for those residents to one much earlier. If anything, that appears to be a violation of the federal law and the Constitution.

If denying those in remote Alaska and overseas the ability to vote on Election Day would put to rest election conspiracy theories, such a ruling might be countenanced, but let����ap be honest, it won’t. Distrust of mail-in ballots is not rooted in evidence. A November 2025 Brookings Institution study found only four cases of fraud for every 10 million mail-in ballots cast. In this state, county clerks have implemented numerous safeguards to catch people who vote other people’s ballots. When it happens, which it does periodically, those people go to jail.

Misgivings about Colorado’s mail-in ballots, voting machines, and proof of citizenship procedures exist not because of inadequate policies but because President Donald Trump and other dishonest politicians and their enablers have sown doubt. They will cry that elections have been stolen from them, regardless of the policies in place.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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The high court’s reversed a prior decision by an appeals court that found a government agency violated the country’s bedrock environmental law — the — by failing to analyze potential environmental impacts of the Uinta Basin Railway outside of the immediate area of the proposed railway, like in Colorado.

The 88-mile railway expansion would connect oil and gas producers in Utah’s Uinta Basin to the existing rail system and greatly increase the amount of crude oil transported across Colorado to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Plaintiffs in the litigation — led by Colorado’s Eagle County — argued that the U.S. Surface Transportation Board failed to consider in its environmental review how the railway could impact land, water and air away from the immediate construction site.

They argued increased train traffic raised the risk of wildfires along the railway and increased the chance of a spill of crude oil into the Colorado River, which provides water for a region of 40 million people.

“We’re very disappointed with the decision,” said attorney Nathaniel Hunt, who represented Eagle County in the case. “Overall, it kind of rocks the environmental world.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and filed briefs in the case, urging the Supreme Court to leave the lower court’s decision in place.

“Today, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the lower court����ap decision to block a risky scheme to transport waxy crude oil along the Colorado River, right alongside our most critical water resource and posing major risks to Colorado’s Western Slope communities,” Weiser said Thursday in a statement. “The court����ap opinion allows agencies to ignore the upstream and downstream environmental harms of projects.”

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, said the court’s decision “lays the groundwork for environmental catastrophe.”

“Increasing fracking levels and transporting them across the country would not only harm the communities through which the train travels, including those in Denver, but it would further devastate the communities surrounding the facilities where this oil would burn,” she said in a statement.

The justices found that regulators were right to consider only the direct, local effects of the project, rather than the wider upstream and downstream impacts. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that courts should defer to regulators on “where to draw the line” on what factors to take into account while analyzing projects’ environmental impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock,” he wrote of the policy act reviews. “The goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it.”

Four other conservative justices joined his opinion and three liberal justices wrote their own opinion, which reached the same conclusion but through different reasoning. Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case after , whose companies could profit if the railway is built. Gorsuch, as a lawyer in private practice, previously represented Anschutz.

The justices remanded the case back to the lower court, which will now reconsider the issues through the lens of the Court’s decision.

The Supreme Court did not rule on other issues that Eagle County and other plaintiffs won in the lower court, Hunt said. The plaintiffs will continue to fight the railway expansion when it returns to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

“We don’t think this changes things,” he said. “We look forward to going back to the D.C. Circuit.”

Environmental groups said the decision would have sweeping impacts on reviews and limit the scope of environmental reviews required by the law.

“As noted, the biggest project beneficiaries of this decision will likely be large energy, natural resource, infrastructure and transportation projects,” said Michael Drysdale, an environmental attorney with Dorsey and Whitney. “This is because these types of projects tend to generate a lot of upstream and downstream environmental effects, spur or involve numerous related but separate projects, and generate intense opposition. This has, for decades, made permitting such projects very challenging under NEPA. It may now be easier at the federal level, if not truly simple.”

The court����ap conservative majority has taken steps to curtail the power of federal regulators in other cases, including the decades-old that made it easier for the federal government to set a wide range of regulations.

The ruling comes after President Donald Trump’s vow to boost U.S. oil and gas drilling and move away from former President Joe Biden’s focus on climate change. The administration announced last month it����ap speeding up environmental reviews of projects required under the same law at the center of the Utah case, compressing a process that typically takes a year or more into just weeks.

“The court����ap decision gives agencies a green light to ignore the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their decisions and avoid confronting them,” said Sambhav Sankar, senior vice president of programs at Earthjustice.

Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said opponents would continue to fight the Utah project. “

This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy,” she said.

The project����ap public partner applauded the ruling. “It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability,” said Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition.

___

Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurt and Hannah Schoenbaum contributed to this story.

The conservative-led court is taking up the case amid targeting transgender people, including a ban on military service and an end to federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The justices also have heard arguments in a Tennessee case over whether state bans on treating transgender minors violate the Constitution. But they have yet to issue a decision.

Colorado is among roughly half the states that prohibit the practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.

The issue is whether the law violates the speech rights of counselors. Defenders of such laws argue that they regulate the conduct of professionals who are licensed by the state.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the state law. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has struck down local local bans in Florida.

In 2023, the court had a similar challenge, despite a split among federal appeals courts that had weighed state bans and come to differing decisions.

At the time, three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, said they would have taken on the issue. It takes four justices to grant review. The nine-member court does not typically reveal how justices vote at this stage of a case so it����ap unclear who might have provided the fourth vote.

The case will be argued in the court����ap new term, which begins in October. The appeal on behalf of Kaley Chiles, a counselor in Colorado Springs, was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal organization that has appeared frequently at the court in recent years in cases involving high-profile social issues.

One of those cases was in which the justices ruled that California could not force state-licensed anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion.

Chiles’ lawyers leaned heavily on that decision in asking the court to take up her case. They wrote that Chiles doesn’t “seek to ‘cure’ clients of same-sex attractions or to ‘change’ clients’ sexual orientation.”

In arguing for the court to reject the appeal, lawyers for Colorado wrote that lawmakers acted to regulate professional conduct, “based on overwhelming evidence that efforts to change a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity are unsafe and ineffective.”

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at .

Re: “Richardson rallies U.S. women in 4×100; men shut out again Olympic,” Aug. 10 sports story

After I enjoyed watching Sha’carri Richardson and the rest of the U.S. Olympic women win gold in the 4×100 relay on Aug. 9, I was disappointed to read reporter Eddie Pells’ AP story in The Denver Post the following morning. Pells gave Richardson and her teammates a brief congratulations. However, before finishing the glowing details of the women’s race, his 2nd paragraph read, “Afterward, she (Richardson) moved aside to watch the U.S. men do what they do best in the 4 x 100 relay – find a way to lose.”

Granted, any of us who watched the men the night before were disappointed, but the printed statement felt like bullying. If the men had won and the women had been disappointed, would he have included the nasty comparison, calling the women those who would “find a way to lose?” Insert candidate names, racial or social identities, or even names of other countries in place of the U.S. men’s team, and the writer’s statement would have been seen as unnecessarily aggressive, if not worse.

I felt as if I were reading political sparring, by far my least favorite sport, and definitely unworthy of the Olympics.

Bullying is never appropriate in sports, in life in my opinion, and I was sorry to find it on the Sports page.

Mary M. Bartek, Centennial

Break dancing? Wall climbing or racing, or whatever the heck that is called. Skateboarding? 3×3 basketball? Maybe I am late in chiming in since I am more of a Winter Olympics guy, but what has happened to the Summer Olympics?

If break dancing is a medal event, then why not ballet, tap dancing, and trapeze performances? We might as well throw in zip-lining. I didn’t realize racing up a wall is considered a sport. Are they nuts? The summer Olympics are bordering on farcical. It begs the question, Why?

Walter Bonora, Erie

The Olympics are exciting to watch and follow. However, the Paris Olympics this year provided some negative aspects:

• Paris had ample time to ensure the Seine River was fit for the different events.

• Restricting the visiting tourists’ access to various parts of the cultural areas of the city was frustrating to them.

• Businesses and restaurants suffered losses due to the restrictions on tourists’ availability to move through the city,

• The surfing competition was in Tahiti, separating the Olympians from each other by many thousands of miles.

• The swimming pool was not the typical depth as in the past, causing some concern with the athletes.

• Breakdancing as an Olympic sport is questionable and confusing.

• At the opening ceremony, the Olympic flag was accidentally raised upside down.

• The skit that was performed in the Opening Ceremony was in bad taste.

The Olympic Committee needs to be aware of issues such as these to ensure that the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are more enjoyable for tourists and athletes.

Michael Hult, Arvada

Did Congress learn a lesson from the Olympics? I hope so. The lesson I saw repeatedly was more than good sportsmanship. The Olympic athletes put their bodies in danger for many years, hoping to go for the gold and win it.

How many footraces (for example) did you see leaving the also-rans stretched out on the track gasping for breath, but only after they graciously congratulated the winner? Can Congress do that?

Can our fractured politicians put aside their party politics and work for the greater good of the American people? I suspect I am not alone in praying that they would put their bickering aside and allow all of us to win gold.

Howard Amonick, Aurora

50 years later, a lesson on resilience from Watergate

I am writing in anticipation of the recognition of President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation as president of the United States 50 years ago, on Aug. 9, 1974. I served as one of the president����ap lawyers on the Watergate legal defense. Our team of a dozen young lawyers was headed by special counsel James D. St. Clair and by Jack Chester.

It is inevitable that the turbulence surrounding the resignation of President Joe Biden as a candidate for re-election and the tribulations of former President Donald J. Trump — including his two impeachments by the House of Representatives, the subsequent acquittals by the Senate, and his criminal proceedings — is compared to that which existed in 1973 and 1974 with respect to Watergate. The overall atmosphere of divisiveness is common to both eras, although few know or remember that President Nixon was never charged with a crime, never impeached by the House, and never convicted by the Senate of an impeachable offense.

What is the most important legacy of the Watergate experience on today’s political-judicial events that are often declared by both political parties and the mass media to be the most important in the history of the United States?

In my opinion, the biggest lesson of Watergate is that our country possesses the continued resilience and ability to address, defuse and conquer inevitable national crises.

I am proud to have been an integral part of a historic legal team.  I am much better for having stepped forward to help in 1974.

James Prochnow, Denver

Casa Bonita’s fare not to everyone’s taste

Re: “Casa Bonita — Worst to First,” Aug. 7 feature story

Lily O’Neill’s article describing the food at Casa Bonita in today’s Denver Post was long overdue. If people want to eat decent Mexican food, there are countless fine Mexican restaurants in the Denver area waiting to serve them. If it’s good, clean entertainment that’s wanted, Casa Bonita is the place to go. If folks want both, they should expect to pay for it. Casa Bonita definitely is not for them. If they are so smitten by their ads and can’t wait to stand in line, I would love to get their names so that I can offer them some outstanding oceanfront property in Nebraska.

Bill Shefrin, Denver

Supreme Court “swings are cyclical”

���:��“Biden just taking first step to fix Supreme Court,” Aug. 7 letter to the editor

President Joe Biden making threats to “fix SCOTUS” is actually all about right vs. left, contrary to the letter writer’s assertion. The Supreme Court is, just like it always has, issuing rulings that are in alignment with our laws as they are written. The facts are that some laws do leave room for interpretation and a bias leaning one way or another. I can fully assure everyone that if SCOTUS was interpreting their rulings as favorable for the left, as they have for a very long time prior to 2018’s affirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the left would not now be beating the drum for new tactics of how to change the balance of opinions that every SCOTUS justice innately brings with them. These swings are cyclical, and it is merely the right’s turn presently to benefit from the rulings of our Supreme Court.

We would all be better served if the left would learn to share instead of stomping their feet and throwing a fit just because they can’t have everything their way always. Everything in moderation.

Mark Klosky, Denver

Kamala Harris’ talking points

Just when things were looking good for the Kamala Harris campaign, she pulled a Hillary, got too full of herself and said something stupid: an echo of former President Donald Trump’s call for no taxes on tips.

Elon Musk says stupid things, JD Vance says stupid things, and Trump is the grand master of saying stupid things over and over, but these don’t matter in patriarchal America. A woman running for president simply cannot say stupid things without immediate condemnation, and conservative AM talk radio is all over it like dogs on a bone.

I don’t know if she listens to advisers, but please stick to important issues. Talk about Project 2025, talk about the concentration of wealth and corruption of money in politics, the Supreme Court, and social media, talk about the environment, global warming, and wildfires, talk about a future different from that proposed by the Republican agenda. Make the Democratic Party relevant.

This is her election to win or lose.

Robert Porath Boulder

This is getting to be bizarre. Vice President Kamala Harris has avoided interviews and town halls. She just reads the same scripted message from the teleprompters. So, how is this supposed to work? Are we just supposed to vote without knowing what the candidate’s views are?

I have to say that I’m not a Donald Trump fan, but at least he’s out there. Joe Biden ran while in his basement, but he could at least blame COVID. Perhaps the problem is that Harris remembers having to drop out of the presidential race before the 2020 primaries. Or, maybe she remembers her unfavorable ratings as vice president? So here we go, a candidate who keeps wanting us to remember “the steal” and a candidate who just wants us not to remember anything.

Michael Scanlan, Arvada

Convinced yet that rental assistance doesn’t work?

Re: “2024 bringing record evictions,” Aug. 11 news story

In my Oct. 21, 2023, Open Forum letter, I wrote, “Rental assistance has never achieved good results anywhere it has been tried, and that’s for the simple reason that more dollars chasing the same supply of rental housing causes rent inflation.”

Ten months and tens of millions of rental assistance dollars later, we have record-breaking rental evictions. How much more eviction carnage do we have to endure before we’re convinced that rental assistance doesn’t work?

Rental assistance is rocket-fuel for rental demand, but we aren’t suffering from too little demand. We’re suffering from too little rental supply.

Rental units are made artificially scarce via government edict. You can’t build here. You can’t build too tall. You can’t build too small. You can’t build too big. You can’t build too dense. You can’t build multi-family units here. You can’t build here because it doesn’t fit in with the character of the neighborhood. You can’t build because it blocks someone’s view. You can’t build unless you have an unaffordable number of parking spaces and build to an unaffordable green standard. You can’t build unless you subsidize a certain number of “affordable” units. You can’t build unless you dedicate land to the city for parks, open space, or schools. You can’t build because of traffic or sprawl.

There is so much red tape, it’s a wonder anything gets built at all. Because of the red tape, mostly what gets built is only what the well-to-do can afford.

What’s needed to make rents affordable again is to cut the red tape and build, baby, build!

Chuck Wright, Westminster

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The extreme right-wing activist majority has reversed longstanding legal decisions and precedents. These rulings have adversely affected Americans’ freedoms, legal rights, and civil rights. These justices have intentionally chosen to decide specific cases based on an ideological vision that is out of touch with most Americans. Two years after its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, two-thirds of Americans still oppose the Court����ap decision with political ramifications that could meaningfully impact the 2024 election as it did during the midterm election.

And, just when you thought the imperial Court couldn’t cause any more institutional damage, it issues a 6-3 decision reshaping the institution of the presidency by granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for crimes they commit in office. The Court����ap decision essentially insulates presidents from criminal liability. Thanks to this Court, Americans can no longer say that no person is above the law. Yes, the Court����ap dangerous and extreme decisions threaten the foundation of our democracy.

But it����ap not just about the perilous decisions that make this Court����ap approval ratings so low, it����ap their unchecked behavior too. Moral lapses created a corruption crisis, which led to the Court����ap implementation of a Code of Ethics. The problem here is that the ethics code is non-binding and it allows the justices to police themselves. As a result, the shenanigans continue and the new code has failed to stop justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas from participating in cases where their impartiality is rightfully questioned.

This week we learned that Justice Thomas — already known to be the benefactor of millions of dollars of gifts, trips and personal benefits — had taken even more luxury trips paid for by wealthy conservative donor Harlan Crow than previously reported by journalists. that Thomas received “at least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.”

In response, the Senate Judiciary Committee launched an investigation and on Crow’s jet: to Glacier Park International Airport, to Dallas and to Savanah, Georgia.

For his part, Alito also received unreported significant luxury gifts from billionaire donor Paul Singer and had an upside-down American flag flying at his home to support the January 6th riot in the days after the insurrection attempt. Alito’s fishing buddy, Singer, later had cases before the Court, including one where Alito voted with the majority of justices in a case worth $2.4 billion to Singer’s hedge fund.

It’s no wonder that President Joe Biden has called for a binding, enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court. Justices should not be above the law either. And, this isn’t a partisan issue. A new USA Today/Ipsos poll showed that 70% of Republicans support a binding code of ethics that would require disclosure of gifts, prohibit involvement in political activity, and mandate recusal from cases involving conflicts of interest for themselves or their spouses.

It is also time for term limits to restore the Court����ap integrity and independence. President Biden has proposed an 18-year active term for justices, which two-thirds of Americans support as well.

Supreme Court justices enjoy a lifetime tenure until they die, step away voluntarily or are impeached for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The latter is extremely rare. Justices serve an average of about 28 years, which is equivalent to seven presidential terms. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was appointed at age 48, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed at age 53,  could easily serve over 35 years.

Congress has the power to regulate the structure and jurisdiction of the Court and impose term limits. By way of example only, the number of seats on the Supreme Court has changed from a low of five to a high of ten members over the years.  After the Civil War, the number of justices was set at nine. Many have argued for adding more members to the Court, but that����ap not going to solve the problem.  And, if Congress won’t do it, it can be accomplished by a constitutional amendment as well.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, no other major democracy gives lifetime seats to judges who sit on constitutional courts, and even countries that previously did like Canada and the United Kingdom, have abandoned this practice. It is also incongruent with the practice among states that overwhelmingly oppose lifetime tenure. It����ap far from a partisan issue, but rather simply a matter of common sense. Forty-seven states, red, blue, and purple, require that their state supreme court justices serve fixed terms, subject to re-election or re-appointment. Further, most states have mandatory retirement ages. There are only three states that allow indefinite terms, but in those states, two of them have age limits.

Members of the Supreme Court����ap right-wing have placed ideology over impartiality, with its two most radical justices placing their own self-interest over the Court����ap integrity.  And, in doing so, they have undermined the foundation of our democracy. Without serious reform, both the president and the Court, will continue to operate in a manner that places them above the law and the public’s distrust will only continue to grow.

Doug Friednash grew up in Denver and is a partner with the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. He is the former chief of staff for Gov. John Hickenlooper.

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In a historic 6-3 ruling, the justices said for the first time that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for their official acts and no immunity for unofficial acts. But rather than do it themselves, the justices ordered lower courts to figure out precisely how to apply the decision to Trump’s case.

The outcome means additional delay before Trump could face trial in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

The court����ap decision in a second major Trump case this term, along with its ruling rejecting efforts to bar him from the ballot because of his actions following the 2020 election, underscores the direct and possibly uncomfortable role the justices are playing in the November election.

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

Roberts was joined by the other five conservative justices. The three liberal justices dissented.

“Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a scathing dissent.

Sotomayor, who read a summary of her dissent aloud in the courtroom, said the protection afforded presidents by the court “is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless.”

The ruling was the last of the term and it came more than two months after the court heard arguments, far slower than in other epic high court cases involving the presidency, including the Watergate tapes case.

The Republican former president has denied doing anything wrong and has said this prosecution and three others are politically motivated to try to keep him from returning to the White House.

In May, Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, in a New York court. He was found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment made during the 2016 presidential election to a porn actor who says she had sex with him, which he denies. He still faces three other indictments.

Smith is leading the two federal probes of the former president, both of which have led to criminal charges. The Washington case focuses on Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. The case in Florida revolves around the mishandling of classified documents. The other case, in Georgia, also turns on Trump’s actions after his defeat in 2020.

If Trump’s Washington trial does not take place before the 2024 election and he is not given another four years in the White House, he presumably would stand trial soon thereafter.

But if he wins, he could appoint an attorney general who would seek the dismissal of this case and the other federal prosecution he faces. He could also attempt to pardon himself if he reclaims the White House. He could not pardon himself for the conviction in state court in New York.

The Supreme Court that heard the case included three justices appointed by Trump — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — and two justices who opted not to step aside after questions were raised about their impartiality.

Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, attended the rally near the White House where Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021, though she did not go the Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters attacked it soon after. Following the 2020 election, she called it a “heist” and exchanged messages with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to stand firm with Trump as he falsely claimed that there was widespread election fraud.

Justice Samuel Alito said there was no reason for him to step aside from the cases following reports by The New York Times that flags similar to those carried by the Jan. 6 rioters flew above his homes in Virginia and on the New Jersey shore. His wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was responsible for flying both the inverted American flag in January 2021 and the “Appeal to Heaven” banner in the summer of 2023, he said in letters to Democratic lawmakers responding to their recusal demands.

Trump’s trial had been scheduled to begin March 4, but that was before he sought court-sanctioned delays and a full review of the issue by the nation’s highest court.

Before the Supreme Court got involved, a trial judge and a three-judge appellate panel had ruled unanimously that Trump can be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6.

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the appeals court wrote in February. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who would preside over the trial in Washington, ruled against Trump’s immunity claim in December. In her ruling, Chutkan said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

“Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan wrote. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”

While we disagree with their conclusion, the justices are right that that could violate competing portions of the Constitution requiring that federal officers are responsive to all the people of America through a coordinated election process.

We are dismayed, however, that Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and to a lesser extent Amy Coney Barrett, would so quickly and with so little explanation abandon their literal adherence to the plain words of the Constitution — a legal world-view known as “originalism.”

Not only did the originalists use historical context to decide what the 14th Amendment says, but they also undermined the entire amendment with a sweeping and far-reaching ruling that Coney Barrett criticized.

“Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration,” write all of the conservative justices with the exception of Barrett, who wrote a short separate opinion. These men cry tears for an orderly election but couldn’t spare a moment for pregnant women suffering life-threatening health conditions.

Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas long ago swore it should not matter to good justices what bad outcomes might result from enforcing the Constitution as written, as long as they did not waver from the plain language. Roberts and Kavanaugh have never claimed to be true originalists but do lean in that direction.

Just how clear is the language of the Constitution when it comes to elected officials who have taken an oath of office and then supported a violent uprising against that very sacred document?

Amendment 14 Section 3 could not be clearer: “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 … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

Given Trump’s violent rhetoric, his aggressive orchestration of alternative electors following his clear loss in 2020 to President Joe Biden, and his subsequent efforts to prevent Congress from certifying the results as required in the Constitution, it is clear that Trump cannot “hold any office … under the United States.”

Rather than enforce this inconvenient truth in the Constitution, the justices have ruled that states cannot be the ones enforcing the 14th Amendment. They go so far as to rule that no one can enforce the 14th Amendment without legislation or other acts of Congress.

“This can hardly come as a surprise,” the majority quips as they shoot down the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump’s actions following the November 2020 election have rendered him unqualified for federal office.

Indeed, it is a surprise that states cannot enforce the 14th Amendment.

Who do these justices think brought the case Brown v. Board of Education to their bench in 1954? It was not federal prosecutors, using federal legislation to enforce desegregation of schools in the south. It was citizens, children to be specific, seeking “equal protection” under the 14th Amendment. One of the cases went to state courts, others through federal courts, but never did the Supreme Court deny a case because the state’s courts had no authority to enforce the 14th Amendment. In fact, in some states and some small towns, the wait would have been long for an end to segregation in schools if the Supreme Court had required federal action on the issue.

The court ruled in Brown: “Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In a similar fashion, earnest Coloradans who were convinced that Trump’s insurrection attempt disqualified him from office sought redress in Colorado courts to enforce the 14th Amendment. We wrote in November that these Coloradans obviously had standing to bring this case and that the courts were the appropriate place to litigate whether Trump’s actions met the definition of “insurrection.”

The concurring opinion by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson made this exact argument while they dissented to the court’s reasoning: “Similarly, nothing else in the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment supports the majority’s view. Section 5 gives Congress the ‘power to enforce [the Amendment] by appropriate legislation.’ Remedial legislation of any kind, however, is not required. All the Reconstruction Amendments (including the due process and equal protection guarantees and prohibition of slavery) ‘are self-executing,’ meaning that they do not depend on legislation.”

Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson are arguing for judicial restraint. This isn’t the first time, nor the last time we fear, that the rogue conservative majority on the court will rule as broadly as they possibly can in pursuit of their desired outcome.

That four justices ruled narrowly against employing a novel legal argument on a state-by-state basis to keep an insurrectionist from running for president is being considered a win by Trump’s supporters.

That five justices ruled that the 14th Amendment cannot be enforced by states without federal legislation is a loss for America, a loss for liberty and yet another sign that this court is spiraling out of control with no leadership, no discipline and a clear uptick in partisanship.

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The justices seemed by turns reluctant to break up an exhaustively negotiated agreement, but also leery of somehow rewarding the Sacklers.

The agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims would provide billions of dollars to combat the opioid epidemic. The Sacklers would contribute up to $6 billion and give up ownership of the company, but retain billions more. The company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.

The high court put the settlement on hold during the summer, in response to objections from the Biden administration.

Justice Elena Kagan seemed to sum up the questions that were nagging at some of the justices.

“It seems as though the federal government is standing in the way of that as against the huge, huge, huge majority of claimants,” Kagan said.

But later, she also said that in bankruptcies, protection against lawsuits has a price.

“You get a discharge when you put all your assets on the table,” she said. “The Sacklers didn’t come anywhere close to doing that.”

Arguments lasted nearly two hours in a packed courtroom, its doors draped in black in memoriam to retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who died Friday. Chief Justice John Roberts offered a remembrance of the first woman to serve on the court. “She changed the world,” Roberts said.

Outside the court, a small but vocal group of protesters opposed the Purdue Pharma agreement. “Shame on Sackler,” one banner read. “No Sackler immunity at any $$,” read another.

The issue for the justices is whether the legal shield that bankruptcy provides can be extended to people such as the Sacklers, who have not declared bankruptcy themselves. Lower courts have issued conflicting decisions over that issue, which also has implications for other major product liability lawsuits settled through the bankruptcy system.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, contends that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.

Justice Department lawyer Curtis Gannon told the court Monday that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.

Proponents of the plan said third-party releases are sometimes necessary to forge an agreement, and federal law imposes no prohibition against them.

“Forget a better deal,” lawyer Pratik Shah, representing victims and other creditors in the bankruptcy, told the justices. “There is no other deal.”

Lawyers for more than 60,000 victims who support the settlement called it “a watershed moment in the opioid crisis,” while recognizing that “no amount of money could fully compensate” victims for the damage caused by the misleading marketing of OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller.

A lawyer for a victim who opposes the settlement calls the provision dealing with the Sacklers “special protection for billionaires.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed more inclined toward the opponents, saying the Sacklers’ insistence on a shield against all lawsuits is “causing this problem.”

By contrast, Justice Brett Kavanaugh sounded like a vote to allow the deal to proceed. He said the government was seeking to prevent payment to victims and their families, as well as money for prevention programs “in exchange really for this somewhat theoretical idea that they’ll be able to recover money down the road from the Sacklers themselves.”

OxyContin first hit the market in 1996, and Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of it is often cited as a catalyst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, persuading doctors to prescribe painkillers with less regard for addiction dangers.

The drug and the Stamford, Connecticut-based company became synonymous with the crisis, even though the majority of pills being prescribed and used were generic drugs. Opioid-related overdose deaths have continued to climb, hitting 80,000 in recent years. Most of those are from fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

The Purdue Pharma settlement would be among the largest reached by drug companies, wholesalers and pharmacies to resolve epidemic-related lawsuits filed by state, local and Native American tribal governments and others. Those settlements have totaled more than $50 billion.

But the Purdue Pharma settlement would be one of only two so far that include direct payments to victims from a $750 million pool. Payouts are expected to range from about $3,500 to $48,000.

Sackler family members no longer are on the company’s board, and they have not received payouts from it since before Purdue Pharma entered bankruptcy. In the decade before that, though, they were paid more than $10 billion, about half of which family members said went to pay taxes.

A decision in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, 22-859, is expected by early summer.

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Twin polls from Quinnipiac University and Gallup have recently confirmed the public’s historical disapproval numbers ratings. Gallup first started asking Americans to rate the job the court was doing in September 2000. At that point, 62% of Americans approved. Today, Gallup is at 40% and Quinnipiac is at 36%. Nearly 7 in 10 registered voters think the Court is mainly motivated by politics instead of the law.  And a whopping 63% surveyed would support limiting the number of years a justice can serve on the Court. Yes, please.

Meanwhile, back in their ivory tower, we have witnessed the rise of the most activist court in the past century as the six-member ultra-conservative majority has embarked on a radical path to restructure laws and life across the country by stripping away power from every political entity, but for the Court itself. The Court has shown it will even take sham cases to do so.

Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley’s article described the emergence of the “imperial Supreme Court” by saying, in part, that the Court has taken “significant, simultaneous steps to restrict the power of Congress, the administrative state, the states, and the lower federal courts. And it has done so using a variety of (often contradictory) interpretative methodologies.” Lemley asserts that the Court “has begun to implement the policy preferences of its conservative majority in a new and troubling way: by simultaneously stripping power from every political entity except the Supreme Court itself.”

That����ap a dangerous precedent for a court that could ultimately determine the future of our democracy after another contested presidential election challenge.

And, then, there’s the Court����ap corruption crisis. The Supreme Court is the only court in the federal judiciary that does not have a formal code of ethics. The justices have failed to create their own code, and the Senate is moving a bill that would compel it to do so, but that will not likely survive.

In response to a long overdue push for ethics reform on the court, rightwing Justice Samuel Alito has taken the controversial position that Congress didn’t create the Court and  “no provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” This claim lacks merit.

Congress clearly has extensive authority to regulate the Court in a plethora of ways, and, in fact,   Congress has long played a critical role in regulating the Court. For example, Congress has required justices to take an oath written by Congress; they have required them to recuse themselves from cases in certain circumstances; they have changed the size of the court, and have set certain disclosures of financial holding and other sources of income.

Alito failed to declare gifts from conservative billionaire, Paul Singer, after accepting a seat on his private plane, flying to Alaska for a luxury fishing trip. Alito justified his actions by noting that the seat would have been vacant had he not used it. Had Alito chartered the plane, it would have cost him more than $100,000. Putting aside the fact that this was not an acceptable gift, Alito failed to recuse himself from any of the more than 10 cases Paul Singer had before the court after the trip. But Alito would have us believe there is nothing to see here.

Not to be outdone, ProPublica recently reported that fellow rightwing justice Clarence Thomas’ extravagant lifestyle — which has largely been unreported — has been supported by uber-wealthy benefactors who share his ideological views. These benefactors have a strong incentive to keep these reliable votes on the court by making their lives easier rather than letting President Biden and Senate Democrats appoint someone more mainstream.

Thomas has reportedly been on at least 38 destination vacations, 26 flights on private jets, 8 by helicopter, a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events with seats in the skybox; two luxury resort trips in Florida and Jamaica; and, the list goes on.

Then there is his conservative friend (who has reportedly worked to move the judiciary to the right), Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow. Crow secretly bought Thomas’ Mother’s house, who still lives there, from Thomas and later made $36,000 worth of home improvements. Crow also paid for Thomas’ great nephew’s tuition payments for two years, who Thomas was raising as a son.

On Thursday, Thomas disclosed three more trips aboard Crow’s private plane, marking a sharp contrast to the other trips he took with Crow which were undisclosed.

Definitely, nothing to see here, either.

So, what tools do Americans have in their toolbox? First, let����ap not forget that Congress has the power to impeach and remove justices for bad behavior in much the same manner as the president.

Congress can do more than simply call for Thomas and Alito to resign. Second, the lack of transparency and oversight of this court is in stark contrast to every other branch of government.  If the Court won’t write their own code of ethics, it����ap time for Congress to do it for them.

Third, rather than adding more people to the Court, Congress should explore setting term limits for Supreme Court justices.

Each of these measures won’t be easily achieved, but perhaps if we the people, lead the call for these important reforms, Congress may ultimately follow. One day, the pendulum will swing back and conservatives will be calling for these reforms too.

Doug Friednash grew up in Denver and is a partner with the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber and Schreck. He is the former chief of staff for Gov. John Hickenlooper.

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The legislation, which the panel is debating on Thursday ahead of an expected vote, would set ethics rules for the court and a process to enforce them, including new standards for transparency around recusals, gifts and potential conflicts of interest. Democrats first pushed the legislation after reports earlier this year that Justice Clarence Thomas participated in luxury vacations and a real estate deal with a top GOP donor — and after Chief Justice John Roberts declined to testify before the committee about the ethics of the court.

Since then, news reports also revealed that Justice Samuel Alito had taken a luxury vacation with a GOP donor. And The Associated Press reported last week that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade.

Opening the committee meeting, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said the legislation would be a “crucial first step” in restoring confidence in the court. He said that if any of the senators sitting in the room had engaged in similar activities, they would be in violation of ethics rules.

“The same is not true of the justices across the street,” Durbin said.

Even though the ethics legislation has little chance of passing the Senate — it would need at least nine GOP votes to pass, and Republicans appear united against it — Democrats say the spate of revelations means that enforceable standards on the court are necessary.

The legislation comes after years of increasing tension, and increasing partisanship, on the committee over the judiciary. Then-President Donald Trump nominated three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, all of whom were confirmed when Republicans were in the Senate majority and with considerable opposition from Democrats. The court has as a result shifted sharply to the right, overturning the nationwide right to an abortion and other liberal priorities.

Republicans charged that the legislation is more about Democratic opposition to the court’s decisions than its ethics.

“It’s about harassing and intimidating the Supreme Court,” said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a senior GOP member of the panel.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, said Democrats are trying to “destroy” the court as it exists by tightening the rules around recusals and disqualifying conservatives from some decisions. Congress should stay out of the court’s business and mind the separation of powers, Graham said.

The bill “is an assault on the court itself,” Graham said.

The legislation would mandate a new Supreme Court “code of conduct” with a process for adjudicating the policy modeled on lower courts that do have ethics codes. It would require that justices provide more information about potential conflicts of interest, allow impartial panels of judges to review justices’ decisions not to recuse and require public, written explanations about their decisions not to recuse. It would also seek to improve transparency around gifts received by justices and set up a process to investigate and enforce violations around required disclosures.

Republicans on the committee offered a series of amendments to the bill, many of which were focused on boosting security for judges after a man was found with a gun, knife and pepper spray near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year. The panel rejected most of the amendments as majority Democrats said that Republicans were trying to distract from the ethics reforms.

Durbin pushed back on the notion that the legislation is about politics, noting he had introduced legislation on Supreme Court ethics reforms more than ten years ago, when the court was more liberal. “The reforms we are proposing would apply in equal force to all justices,” Durbin said.

The current push came after news reports revealed Thomas’ close relationship with Dallas billionaire and GOP donor Harlan Crow. Crow had purchased three properties belonging to Thomas and his family in a transaction worth more than $100,000 that Thomas never disclosed, according to the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. The organization also revealed that Crow gifted Thomas and his wife, Ginni, with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of annual vacations and trips over several decades.

Durbin had invited Roberts to testify at a hearing, but he declined, saying that testimony by a chief justice is exceedingly rare because of the importance of preserving judicial independence. Roberts also provided a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices that described the ethical rules they follow about travel, gifts and outside income.

The statement provided by Roberts said that the nine justices “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe in carrying out their responsibilities as Members of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The statement promised at least some small additional disclosure when one or more among them opts not to take part in a case. But the justices have been inconsistent in doing so since.

Roberts has acknowledged that the court could do more to adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct, but he didn’t elaborate and has not followed up publicly on that idea.

Besides Sotomayor’s push for book sales, the AP reported that universities have used trips by justices as a lure for financial contributions by placing them in event rooms with wealthy donors and that justices have taken expenses-paid teaching trips to attractive locations that are light on actual classroom instruction.

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