The Daily Fuckup

By January 27, 2024, the Trump ballot-eligibility fight was no longer just a state election fight. Colorado’s Supreme Court had ruled on December 19, 2023, that Donald Trump was disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and should be excluded from Colorado’s 2024 presidential primary ballot. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows then removed Trump from Maine’s presidential primary ballot on December 28, 2023, citing the insurrection clause. Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in on January 3, 2024, and the Court granted certiorari on January 5, setting oral argument for February 8. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010524zr2_886b.pdf))

That mattered on January 27 because the legal clock was already running in public. The Supreme Court had not merely been asked to look at the dispute; it had already taken the case and put it on an expedited track. That meant the ballot fight was heading toward a definitive constitutional ruling on whether Trump’s conduct around the 2020 election and Jan. 6 could keep him off state ballots. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010524zr2_886b.pdf))

The immediate political effect was simpler: Trump was forced to fight the same issue in court while trying to run a campaign built around inevitability. Each ruling kept the Capitol attack and the 2020 election in the center of the 2024 race. Colorado’s certification announcement on January 5 made the point bluntly: the state was placing Trump on the ballot because the Supreme Court had accepted the case. ([sos.state.co.us](https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/newsRoom/pressReleases/2024/PR20240105BallotCert.html))

By late January, then, the story was not a fresh ballot shock. The shock had already happened. What remained was the fallout from the Colorado and Maine decisions, now folded into a Supreme Court case with a set argument date, a compressed briefing schedule, and a constitutional question the campaign could not simply message away. ([supremecourt.gov](https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010524zr2_886b.pdf))