On January 16, U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi, an Obama appointee, issued a ruling in No Labels Party v Fontes, 2:23cv-2172.  It says that No Labels Party has a freedom of association right to bar anyone from running in its primary for congress or partisan state or county office.

In Arizona, all qualified parties nominate by primary.  Arizona is in the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit had ruled in an Alaska case that the Alaskan Independence Party could not prevent a particular person from running in its primary.  But Judge Tuchi distinguished that case from the current No Labels case, by saying that in the Alaska case, the state had an interest in preventing a corrupt party leadership from determining which individuals could run, which is different from an instance when a party has a blanket ban on anyone running for certain types of office.  Here is the ruling.  Thanks to Richard Grayson for this news.

This post at FrontloadingHQ shows the Iowa Republican caucus votes.  Click on any county on the map to see the results.  Former President Donald Trump carried every county except Johnson County.

On January 15, David E. Weisberg, a North Carolina attorney, filed this short amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court.  It deals with the issue of whether the Fourteenth Amendment, section 3, applies to the office of President.   Section 3 mentions eligibility to hold office in Congress, or as a presidential elector, or to those who hold offices under the United States or any state, but doesn’t mention President or Vice-president.

Weisberg argues that the authors of Section Three, who were anti-confederate, didn’t mention President or Vice-president because they were only interested in preventing ex-confederates from holding office within certain states.  He writes that they had no fear that an ex-confederate would be elected president, because in the 1860 census the states that did not secede had a population of 23,000,000, whereas the states that seceded only had a population of 9,000,000.  Furthermore the population of the states that seceded included 3,500,000 ex-slaves, who would not have wanted to elect an ex-confederate.  Thus Weisberg provides a rationale for why the Section Three authors didn’t bother to include President.

Another amicus that makes an argument that Section Three doesn’t apply to President was was also filed on January 15.  It is by Law Professor Kurt T. Lash .  See it here.