(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he plans to introduce legislation as soon as the next session begins to withhold funding from states that have arbitrarily redefined “insurrection” to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot.
Both the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows have threatened to exclude Trump from the GOP primary ballot, eliciting bipartisan backlash for their overtly partisan move, Axios reported.
“This is an egregious abuse of power,” the centrist Tillis tweeted Thursday night following Bellows’s decree.
Maine’s Democrat Secretary of State just removed Trump from the ballot. This is an egregious abuse of power and why I will be introducing the Constitutional Election Integrity Act as soon as Congress returns to session to stop these partisan officials and ensure any… https://t.co/evVu6bSv0H
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) December 29, 2023
All seven of the Colorado high court’s justices were appointed by Democrat governors. Bellows, a former activist leader with the far-left American Civil Liberties Union, was appointed by the state legislature rather than voted into office.
Tillis said the proposed bill would “stop these partisan officials and ensure any constitutional challenge is only decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Tillis’s bill would amend the 2002 Help America Vote Act by withholding federal election funding from those states “misusing the Fourteenth Amendment for political purposes.”
The 14th Amendment, which contains the rarely used Section 3 “insurrection clause” also established birthright citizenship and extended “due process” rights to the states,
Those sections of the 1868 amendment have lengthy history of being abused by the Left to support illegal immigration, remove prayer from schools and bolster the LGBT agenda.
In any case, the extralegal maneuvering by the Left is so egregious that even Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, an outspoken NeverTrump Republican, released a statement backing the GOP frontrunner’s right to appear on the Maine primary ballot.
“Maine voters should decide who wins the election—not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature,” Collins noted.
The decision, according to Collins, was particularly problematic because it “would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice.”
For that reason, she suggested, “it should be overturned.”
Meanwhile, some Democrats have attempted to defend the strategy, which is being spearheaded by the George Soros-funded leftist lawfare group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“The text of the 14th Amendment is crystal clear: anyone who participates in insurrection is permanently barred from public office,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said.
“Donald Trump incited a violent riot to overthrow American democracy,” Pascrell added. “Of course he should be banned from the presidency forever.”
The mostly peaceful Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol was dispersed within roughly four hours, despite efforts by U.S. Capitol Police, D.C. Metro police and others to provoke the demonstrators while exercising their First Amendment freedoms to assemble and petition the government.
Trump has never been criminally indicted or convicted of insurrection, despite leftist prosecutors having filed 91 other felony counts against him. He was acquitted by the U.S. Senate after partisan House Democrats impeached him for his role in Jan. 6.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
