Following former President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is running to regain the White House in 2024, left-leaning advocacy groups are mobilizing to block his candidacy under a little-known constitutional provision, based on his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

The provision — Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — says that “no person shall” hold any federal or state office who has previously taken an oath “to support the Constitution” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the United States.

Known as the “disqualification clause,” it was adopted after the American Civil war of 1861-1865 to prevent members of the vanquished Confederacy from holding office in the post-war period.

The clause went largely dormant after Congress passed the Amnesty Act in 1872, lifting the disqualification penalties against most former Confederates. 

But in the wake of the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, advocacy organizations and some constitutional scholars say the clause has taken on new relevance.

“I’m not sure the framers of the 14th amendment could have envisioned what the next insurrection might look like but in codifying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment they certainly gave Congress and gave the American public the tools to disqualify government officials who engage in insurrections by passing that amendment,” Donald Sherman, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a government watchdog, said during a Twitter Space conversation last week.

Sherman said CREW is prepared to “take appropriate legal or advocacy action” to ensure Trump is disqualified under Section 3. 

Within minutes of Trump’s announcement, two other left-leaning organizations — Free Speech for People and Mi Familia Vota — launched TrumpIsDisqualified.org, a campaign to urge state election officials to bar Trump from their ballots. 

“We believe he is constitutionally ineligible to run for office,” Héctor Sánchez Barba, the executive director and CEO of Mi Familia Vota, said in a statement. 

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with January 6, and conservative legal scholars see the attempt to disqualify him as a long shot.  

Noting that courts have largely rejected recent attempts to disqualify Trump-supporting candidates, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said, “I think that eventually it would get to the Supreme Court and be quickly swatted down.”

The wrangle over whether Trump is eligible to run for office again comes down to two key questions: whether what happened on January 6 constitutes an insurrection and whether the disqualification clause can take effect without an act of Congress.

In the nearly two years since January 6, 2021, Democrats have repeatedly asserted that the attack on the Capitol was “an insurrection,” arguing that it wasn’t just an assault on the U.S. seat of government but an attempt to subvert the constitutionally mandated process of certifying of presidential election results.

But Republicans, perhaps cognizant of the term’s legal implications, have rejected that characterization. Turley, who appeared as a Republican-invited witness during Trump’s first impeachment hearing in 2019, said January 6 was not an insurrection in a legal sense.  

“While it is very common for people to refer to the January six riot as an insurrection, it has not been legally found to be any such thing,” Turley said. “So, it’s not a particularly good fit for the disqualification clause.”

Just as contentious is the question of whether the disqualification clause can be applied without an act of Congress.

Referring to an 1869 court ruling involving the disqualification of a former Confederate official, some legal scholars argue that the clause is not “self-executing,” meaning it cannot be enforced without Congressional legislation.

For the act to take effect, these legal experts say, Congress must create a procedure for determining whether a candidate has committed a disqualifying offense. Congress hasn’t done that.

But others say no such action is necessary.

“You have a lot of people out there saying that there has to be federal legislation that creates a simple process for this provision to apply or to be operative, and we just disagree,” said Liz Hempowicz, vice president for policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, and co-author of a report that argues the disqualification clause can be applied today.

To contest Trump’s candidacy, challengers have any number of legal pathways, Hempowicz said. One is to ask secretaries of state in key states to not put Trump on any future ballot, she said. Another is to seek local court orders to prevent him from gaining ballot access.  

“It is a very complex system, and it will depend on the processes in 50 different states,” Hempowicz said.  

“In some states, it has to be somebody who was seeking that nomination themselves and didn’t get it,” she said. “In other states, it is broader and concerned citizens can challenge somebody’s candidacy.”

To block Trump’s candidacy, challenges “would certainly have to be more than one state, but I don’t think it would need to be all 50,” Hempowicz said.  

If any state moves to disqualify him, the former president could try to get courts to reverse the order, setting the stage for protracted court battles well before the next presidential election.  

“In fairness to America’s voters, this argument ought to be resolved conclusively in court long before voters cast their ballots in 2024—and not on January 6, 2025, when Congress next meets to count electoral votes,” Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, wrote in a recent blogpost.
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The defense chiefs of rival powers China and the U.S. will both attend next week’s expanded meeting of Southeast Asian security ministers in Cambodia, opening the possibility the two will hold face-to-face discussions.

China’s Defense Ministry said Gen. Wei Fenghe will attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus from Sunday to Thursday.

The Department of Defense said Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III will also attend following stops in Canada and Indonesia.

Both officials plan to meet with participants on the margins of the main gathering of ministers from the 10-nation organization known as ASEAN.

While no formal bilateral meeting has been announced, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei appeared to hold that possibility open in a statement issued Sunday.

“China holds a positive and open attitude toward exchanges with the U.S. during the period of the ASEAN-Plus meeting and relevant departments of both countries are maintaining communication and coordination in this regard,” Tan said.

Their two countries are chief rivals for influence in the region, where China is seeking to smooth over disputes surrounding its determination to assert its claim to the South China Sea, including through the construction of artificial islands equipped with airstrips and other infrastructure.

The two countries are also at odds over Russia, which China has refused to condemn or sanction over its invasion of Ukraine, and the status of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory and threatens to attack.

China’s Defense Ministry said Wei would address the assembly and meet with heads of other delegations to discuss “bilateral cooperation and issues of regional and international concern.”

It said he would also hold talks with civilian and military leaders of close Chinese ally Cambodia, with whom it is working on expanding a port facility that could give it a presence on the Gulf of Thailand.

China and four ASEAN members share overlapping claims to territory in the South China Sea, home to vital shipping lanes, along with plentiful fish stocks and undersea mineral resources. China and ASEAN have made little headway on finalizing a code of conduct to avoid conflicts in the area.

While China’s capacities are growing rapidly, the U.S. remains the region’s dominant military power and, while it doesn’t officially take a stand on sovereignty issues, it has refused to acknowledge China’s blanket claims. The U.S. Navy regularly sails past Chinese-held islands in what it calls freedom of navigation operations, prompting a furious response from Beijing.

The U.S. also has a security alliance with the Philippines and strong relations with other ASEAN members, except for Myanmar, where the military has launched a brutal crackdown since taking power last year.

The U.S. Defense Department said that Austin would hold an “informal multilateral engagement” with his ASEAN counterparts and meet with officials from Cambodia and partner nations “to bring greater stability, transparency, and openness to the Indo-Pacific region.”

At a previous defense forum attended by both U.S. and Chinese ministers in June in Singapore, Austin delivered a speech saying China’s “steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan” threatens to undermine the region’s security and prosperity.

Wei said at the same conference that the U.S. is trying to turn Southeast Asian countries against Beijing and is seeking to advance its own interests “under the guise of multilateralism.”
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With the U.S. midterm elections over, the focus shifts to the 2024 presidential race. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
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From the APEC summit in Bangkok, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced that San Francisco will be the host city for next year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. She also met briefly with Chinese President Xi Jinping and repeated the message of maintaining open lines of communication. VOA’s White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has been covering Harris and brings this report from Bangkok.
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Let the sticker shock begin: The upcoming U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, a time when families and friends typically celebrate with groaning sideboards, a stuffed turkey, and a more-is-better-than-less attitude, is going to cost roughly 20% more than last year, according to estimates compiled by the American Farm Bureau Federation in an annual survey of grocery prices.

Blame it on the weather, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or corporations’ drive to maximize profits, all of which have had a hand in rising food prices, but this year’s jump is the largest since the Farm Bureau’s first Thanksgiving dinner cost survey in 1986.

Coupled with last year’s 14% increase, which was the second-largest, the price of a “classic” meal of turkey, stuffing, green peas, sweet potatoes, cranberries, rolls and pumpkin pie for 10 people has risen more than a third since 2020, at the outset of the worst U.S. inflation surge in 40 years, from $46.90 to $64.05.

“That kind of increase we recognize is a burden on some families, no question about that,” said Roger Cryan, the Farm Bureau’s chief economist, though he noted that discounting as the holiday approaches may allow consumers to lower the bill.

U.S. consumer prices rose 7.7% on an annual basis in October and had been increasing by as much as 9.1% earlier this year, triggering a Federal Reserve effort to tame price pressures with aggressive interest rate increases.

Food prices, particularly items bought for home consumption, have risen even faster, hitting a 13.5% annual rate in August and still rising 12.4% annually last month, a shock to one part of the household budget where prices had dependably increased less than incomes.

As food prices have risen, a U.S Census survey showed the share of households reporting food scarcity rising from 7.8% in August 2021 to 11.4% as of early October.

“If you’re in the grocery store right now, you see it, in any grocery store you go to, people making tradeoffs,” San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said last week. “How many people can they invite? What are they going to serve? Are they going to trade down? Are we having a different kind of meal? Are we not having as many options?”

Skip the stuffing?

As with other goods and services, there is a broad set of forces behind the Thanksgiving food spike.

An outbreak of avian flu cut turkey flocks, and while supply is adequate the Farm Bureau said the harvest of smaller birds along with higher feed prices has raised the cost of that Thanksgiving centerpiece by 21%, to an average $1.81 per pound in the 224 stores where surveyors checked prices during the Oct. 18-31 period.

That accounted for about half of the $10.74 increase in the full price of the classic meal this year. The largest percentage rise was for packaged stuffing, up 69% to $3.88, while a 1-pound tray of carrots and celery was up just 8%, to $0.88, and the price of cranberries fell 14%, to $2.57 for a 12-ounce bag.

For food items generally, key inputs like fuel and fertilizer prices have skyrocketed, said Wendiam Sawadgo, an agricultural economics professor at Auburn University, with some fruit farmers in Alabama, for example, now spending $1,000 an acre on fertilizer compared to around $600 in 2018.

“A big chunk was Ukraine and Europe not having fertilizer production for a good while. That was a big problem,” he said.

Grocery store margins also rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. Net profit after taxes hit 3% in 2020 and 2.9% in 2021, compared with an average of around 1.2% from 2015 through 2019, according to data from the Food Industry Association. Those were the highest margins the association has seen in reports dating back to 1984.

Andy Harig, a vice president at the association, said high demand for food at home early in the pandemic, when restaurants were closed or in-person dining was considered risky, gave food retailers leverage to boost profits. He said consumers also bought more higher-margin products like seafood during the crisis, while changes in shopping — including the rise in food delivery — let stores trim labor costs.

But he also said the net profit figure is expected to fall back to the long-run industry average of between 1% and 2%.

“It’s a penny industry,” Harig said. With restaurants recovering and wages rising, margins are likely already declining.

Last-minute bargains

Still, the rising cost of necessities has been top of mind for U.S. officials, with consumer sentiment near a low point after a year when average gas prices reached $5 a gallon. Thanksgiving-related travel this year may at least be cheaper than it was, with airline and fuel prices having declined recently.

And there may be some respite on the food front as well.

Walmart Inc., for example, said earlier this month that it would leave prices for Thanksgiving staples unchanged from last year and keep them in effect through Christmas, including turkey for under $1 a pound.

Discounted turkey prices often lure consumers to grocery stores and supermarkets, and bargains intensify as the holiday approaches. The Farm Bureau noted that frozen turkey prices had fallen to 95 cents a pound as of this week.

Auburn’s Sawadgo said that shopping for alternatives can also bring down the cost, with one of his personal favorites, collard greens, selling right now at $1.14 a pound, down 3 cents from last year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Sawadgo recently priced the goods for a Thanksgiving dinner for six at about $70.76, up 19% from $59.50 for the same basket last year.

“If you are not someone who shops the ads, this might be the year to do that,” he said.
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Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

Nonimmigrant Visa Backlog Is Shrinking, State Department Official Says

The Biden administration has reduced wait times worldwide for nonimmigrant visa interviews, an official said Thursday. But the progress is disputed by an immigration policy analyst who follows the issue closely. VOA’s immigration correspondent Aline Barros reports from Washington.

Judge Delays End of Asylum Restrictions to Late December

A federal judge on Wednesday granted the Biden administration a five-week delay to end far-reaching asylum restrictions, writing in capital letters that he was doing so “WITH GREAT RELUCTANCE,” The Associated Press reports.

International Students Returning to US Since Pandemic Decline

International students are returning to the United States after a significant drop during the pandemic, according to the Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange (IEE). VOA’s immigration correspondent Aline Barros reports from Washington.

Cuba Agrees to Accept US Deportation Flights as Border Crossings Rise

Cuba has agreed for the first time since the pandemic to accept U.S. deportation flights carrying Cubans caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, three U.S. officials told Reuters, giving U.S. authorities a new but limited tool to deter record numbers of Cuban border-crossers, Reuters reports.

Report: US Border Agency Chief Being Forced Out

The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is being forced out of his job leading the nation’s largest law enforcement agency as agents encounter record numbers of migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico, according to two people familiar with the matter, The Associated Press reports.

US Extends Protected Status to Mid-2024 for 6 Nationalities

The United States has notified El Salvador that the temporary protected status of its citizens and those of five other countries will be extended through June 30, 2024, Salvadoran Ambassador to the United States Milena Mayorga said Thursday. The other countries are Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras and Nepal, according to a document filed Thursday by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The action means their temporary protected status (TPS) will not expire on December 31, 2022, as previously scheduled, Reuters reports.

Afghan Americans Voting With Eye Toward Afghan Refugee Issues

Some Afghan Americans who live in northern Virginia said they were determined to vote in the midterm elections and that U.S. foreign policy toward Afghanistan and immigration are most important to them. Matiullah Abid Noor and Shahnaz Nafees have the story. Roshan Noorzai contributed to this report.

Meta Layoffs Deepen Silicon Valley’s Jobs Losses

The widespread retrenchment in the U.S. technology industry has thrown thousands of workers in Silicon Valley out of work, a trend greatly amplified Wednesday by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, which announced it would eliminate 13% of its workforce, amounting to more than 11,000 jobs.

Immigration around the world

Being Black in Tunisia

Growing up in a working-class Tunis neighborhood, Zied Rouine didn’t think much about his skin color. Not when children insulted him at school, or when his football teammates nicknamed him Pele, after Brazil’s dark-skinned football legend. His athletic skills and the fierce protection of his lighter-skinned brother from persecutors were tickets to acceptance. Only years later, while attending an international forum on discrimination, did Rouine realize that something was wrong. Lisa Bryant reports for VOA from Paris.

England, France Join Forces to Stem Tide of Migrants Across English Channel 

Britain and France have joined forces to curb the tide of migrants crossing the English Channel into England. Under the new agreement, Britain is set to pay France $75 million to strengthen security that would prevent migrants and asylum seekers from navigating small vessels from France across the dangerous waterway, VOA News reports.

After Spat with Italy, France Takes in Migrant Ship

France has resolved a dayslong spat with Italy’s right-wing government by agreeing to take in a ship carrying more than 200 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea. The Ocean Viking is due to dock in the southern French port of Toulon Friday — but relations with Rome remain bitter. For the 234 migrants aboard the Ocean Viking, France’s agreement to take them in was the end of a long odyssey. Lisa Bryant reports for VOA from Paris.

German Aid Group: 89 Migrants Allowed to Disembark in Italy

A German humanitarian group said its ship docked in southern Italy early Tuesday and disembarked 89 people rescued at sea, ending one migrant rescue saga as others continue under Italy’s new hard-right government. Mission Lifeline posted videos on social media of the 25-meter (80-foot) Rise Above freighter docking in Reggio Calabria and said the “odyssey of 89 passengers and nine crew members on board seems to be over.” In a subsequent post, it said all 89 were allowed to disembark, The Associated Press reports.

News Brief

— U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced in November it is accepting certain affirmative asylum applications online. USCIS continues to accept the latest paper version of this form by mail.

— The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released updated numbers showing a record number of migrant encounters at the U.S. Mexico border. “The total number of unique Southwest Border encounters in October 2022 was 185,527, a 1.5% increase over the prior month, driven by an increased number of asylum seekers fleeing authoritarian regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua,” according to CBP latest release.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Saturday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers a preview of a world where nuclear-armed countries could threaten other nations and said Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where “might makes right.” 

Austin made the remarks at the annual Halifax International Security Forum, which attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies. 

“Russia’s invasion offers a preview of a possible world of tyranny and turmoil that none of us would want to live in. And it’s an invitation to an increasingly insecure world haunted by the shadow of nuclear proliferation,” Austin said in a speech. 

“Because Putin’s fellow autocrats are watching. And they could well conclude that getting nuclear weapons would give them a hunting license of their own. And that could drive a dangerous spiral of nuclear proliferation.” 

Austin dismissed Putin’s claims that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia,” calling it a vision of “a world in which autocrats decide which countries are real and which countries can be snuffed out.” 

He added that the war “shows the whole world the dangers of disorder. That’s the security challenge that we face. It’s urgent, and it’s historic,” he said. 

Basic principles of democracy are under siege around the world, he added. 

U.S. President Joe Biden last month declared that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis; Russian officials have raised using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in their nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine. 

While U.S. officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine in the face of battlefield setbacks, Biden administration officials have repeatedly said nothing has changed in U.S. intelligence assessments to suggest Putin has imminent plans to deploy nuclear weapons. 

CIA Director Bill Burns recently met with his Russian intelligence counterpart to warn of consequences if Russia were to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. 

Austin said nuclear weapons need to be responsibly controlled and not used to threaten the world. 

“Ukraine faces a harsh winter. And as Russia’s position on the battlefield erodes, Putin may resort again to profoundly irresponsible nuclear saber-rattling,” he said.

Compares Moscow to China

Austin also compared Russia to China, saying Beijing is trying to refashion both the region and the international system to suit its authoritarian preferences. He noted China’s increasing military activities in the Taiwan Strait. 

“Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where might makes right, where disputes are resolved by force, and where autocrats can stamp out the flame of freedom,” he said. 

Austin called Putin’s invasion the worst crisis in security since the end of World War II and said the outcome “will help determine the course of global security in this young century.” 

Austin said the deadly missile explosion in Poland this week is a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war of choice” against Ukraine. 

“The tragic and troubling explosion in Poland this week reminded the whole world of the recklessness of Putin’s war of choice,” Austin said. 

Russia blamed for deaths in Poland

On Tuesday, two workers were killed when a projectile hit a grain-drying facility close to Poland’s border with Ukraine. While the source of the missile is under investigation, NATO officials have said they suspect it was fired from a Ukrainian missile battery in self-defense. 

Officials from Poland, NATO and the United States have blamed Russia for the deaths in any case, saying a Ukrainian missile would not have misfired had the country not been forced to defend itself against heavy Russian attacks that day. 

Russian officials have cast the conflict as a struggle against NATO — though Ukraine is not a NATO member even if it has been receiving aid from NATO member states. 

Austin said NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia. 

“Make no mistake: We will not be dragged into Putin’s war of choice. But we will stand by Ukraine as it fights to defend itself. And we will defend every inch of NATO territory,” Austin said. 

A Polish investigation to determine the source of the missile and the circumstances of the explosion was launched with support from the U.S. and Ukrainian investigators joined the probe on Friday. 

Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in an interview broadcast live at the forum that “It’s not right to say it’s a Ukrainian rocket, or a Russian rocket, before the investigation is over.” 

In its 14th year, about 300 people gather each year at Halifax International Security Forum held at Halifax’s Westin hotel, where about 13 Ukrainian refugees now work. 
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