Former President Trump’s lawyers are set for a historic Supreme Court showdown Thursday as they appear before the justices in an attempt to demolish lawsuits challenging Trump’s ballot eligibility under the 14th Amendment. 

Thursday’s oral arguments are set to be the most momentous milestone yet in the patchwork of challenges seeking to prevent Trump’s return to the White House due to his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.  

Donald Trump and his opponents have embroiled the Supreme Court in this year’s election politics, and the Court’s first test comes Thursday when the Justices consider the Colorado Supreme Court’s decree barring the former President from the state’s ballot. The Justices can help democracy with a unanimous ruling against Colorado.

Donald Trump’s Iowa caucuses romp raises the stakes in Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court’s review of a Colorado ruling disqualifying him from the state’s ballot. Soon after the justices hear the case next month, Trump could be the presumptive GOP nominee. The meaning of the 14th Amendment’s disqualification-for-insurrection clause will cease being an academic hypothetical and start being a question of whether states can, in effect, block an unfolding presidential nomination process.

This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump v. Anderson, an appeal from the Colorado supreme court’s decision disqualifying former president Donald Trump from appearing on that state’s Republican presidential-primary ballot. Colorado’s highest court held that Trump is disqualified from becoming president because he “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Thursday about whether Colorado may keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot because of the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The justices should seek a ruling that is originalist, modest and respectful of America’s democratic federalism.

In particular, they should focus on two phrases: “the first insurrection of the 1860s” and “the fifty-state solution.”

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a Colorado case about whether former President Trump’s deep involvement in the deadly events of Jan. 6, 2021, should disqualify him from running again.

Sadly, I think it’s a good bet that the court’s conservative majority will side with Trump and allow his name on the ballot. It’s the least fraught way out for the court, mired in scandals of its own making and undoubtedly loath to throw more fuel on the raging election-year American partisan political fire.

Supreme Court oral arguments Thursday could shed light on what’s at stake for Congress in a case about a Colorado decision to bar Donald Trump from appearing on the state primary ballot based on the 14th Amendment.

The justices last month agreed to take up the issue but did little to clarify which of the numerous legal arguments might ultimately shape their opinion in an historic election dispute.

The left’s insatiable — and arguably quixotic — quest to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot is a team effort to be sure. But two well-funded leftist groups in particular are leading the charge in the campaign to take Trump down with a bogus reading of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.” 

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm a decision by the state’s high court to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, citing the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case next week after justices decided to take up Trump’s appeal.

Griswold said Colorado’s Election Code is designed in such a way that allows the secretary and state courts to set qualifications for candidates to appear on the ballot.