Trump's Insurrectionist Payout Scheme Violates the 14th Amendment

“But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States….”
– Section 4, 14th Amendment

By Sherrilyn Ifill, Sherrilyn’s Newsletter

Over the past two years, we have been witnessing a wholesale effort to nullify the 14th Amendment. Indeed the ideology at the very core of Trump’s presidency is a confrontation with the protections and promise of the 14th. From the Administration’s anti-DEI thuggery, its attack on birthright citizenship, the racist dismissal of Black public servants in positions of authority in the military and throughout the leadership of federal agencies, the attack on history and recognition of the contributions of Black people to this nation – all are policies undertaken in naked defiance of the language and spirit of the 14th Amendment’s guarantees.

Indeed Trump’s second go at the presidency – in defiance of Section 3 of the Amendment – is a product of Supreme Court-sanctioned opposition to the clear terms of the Amendment.

Trump’s latest caper – an effort to purloin nearly two billion dollars from the U.S. treasury to pay rewards to his followers who participated in the violent January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol – would directly violate the express terms of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment.

It is by now widely understood that the 14^th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, and protection from state interference with citizenship rights. The Amendment incorporates the concept of equality – racial equality – into our Constitution for the first time. In so doing the 14^th brings our Constitution into harmony with the core principle of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” The drafting and ratification of the 14^th Amendment constituted a stunningly ambitious act of constitutional repair and reconciliation.

But the Amendment does even more. For the first time, our Constitution confronted head-on the destructive forces that live in the DNA of our country that had been laid bare by the Civil War. The powerful force of white supremacist ideology would have to be cabined. But those founders recognized something else – that the strain of insurrection that led to secession and the creation of the Confederacy continued to run strong throughout the South, and it too would need to be disabled.

For these reasons, the 14th Amendment did more than guarantee equality. Section 2 of the Amendment contains a provision designed to punish southern states if they attempted to keep Black (men at the time) from voting. Section 3 bars those who participated in insurrection from serving in public office.

Section 4, excerpted above, bars payments to insurrectionists.