The recent decision made by an Illinois judge to prevent former President Donald Trump from being included on the state’s 2024 ballot was revealed to have been made by a judge with limited experience in election and constitutional matters. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie R. Porter, as reported by Forbes, had a brief stint as a lawyer for the Office of the Solicitor in the U.S. Department of Labor in the 1990s before transitioning into private practice and academia. She was appointed to a traffic court position in 2021 and only secured her election to a full term on the court in 2022. The outlet also noted her strong involvement in left-wing politics and policy.
“She has written law review articles on the the school-to-prison pipeline, voter rights and mortgage short sales, according to the Cook County Democratic Party, and her professional associations include the Chicago Bar Association, American Bar Association and Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago, where she was a former member of the board of directors,” Forbes added.
Porter’s decision follows the unanimous ruling by the Illinois State Board of Election in January allowing Trump to stay on the 2024 ballot. Despite losing similar challenges in other states, five voters represented by the left-wing group Free Speech For People successfully appealed to Porter’s court, resulting in Trump’s removal under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection” clause, even though he has not been charged or convicted of the crime.
In a statement, Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, mentioned that they will promptly file an appeal.
“Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions,” Cheung said, calling it an “unconstitutional ruling.”
In her extensive ruling, Porter acknowledged that her decision may not be final, as higher courts will have the opportunity to weigh in, according to WBEZ.
The arguments presented to exclude Trump from Colorado’s ballot seem weak, and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to make a decision on the matter soon. With Colorado’s primary election scheduled for Tuesday, the highest court in the nation is racing against time.
Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito contended last week that Colorado’s restriction on former President Donald Trump’s presidential eligibility is “quite strict” during a hearing to determine the constitutionality of removing him from the state’s 2024 ballot under the pretext of “insurrection.”
In a hearing before the highest court in the nation last week, Alito questioned Trump’s lawyer, Jonathan Mitchell, about whether Colorado was trying to establish a law that could be enforced in other states.
“Suppose there is a country that proclaims again and again and again that the United States is its biggest enemy, and suppose that the president of the United States, for diplomatic reasons, thinks it is in the best interest of the United States to provide funds or release funds so that they can be used by that country, could a state determine that person has given aid and comfort to the enemy and therefore keep that person off of the ballot?” Alito asked.
Mitchell stated that Colorado does not adhere to the legal principle of collateral estoppel or issue preclusion, preventing a party from re-litigating a matter already decided in a prior court case, thus not setting a precedent for other states.
Version 1: Trump appears confident that the three Supreme Court justices he nominated, among others, would decide in his favor, enabling him to stay on the ballot in Colorado.
“We put on three great justices, and you have some other great justices up there, and they’re not going to take the vote away from the people. I’m sure the Supreme Court is going to say, ‘We’re not going to take the vote away from the people,’” Trump said, charging that President Joe Biden is the real “threat to democracy.”
