Supreme Court sounds broadly skeptical of efforts to kick Trump off ballot over Capitol attack

The Supreme Court on Thursday sounded broadly skeptical of efforts to kick former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot.

In more than two hours of arguments, both conservative and liberal justices raised questions of whether Trump can be disqualified from being president again because of his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election, ending with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The primary concern was whether Congress must act before states can invoke a constitutional provision that was adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office again. There also were questions about whether the president is covered by the provision.

Without such congressional legislation, Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who wanted to know “why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.”