A constitutional crisis in progress Legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen argued a few weeks ago that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment means “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.” No “legislation, criminal conviction, or other judicial action” is necessary to invoke the post-Civil War amendment. It is not a dead letter. What is required of citizens at any level of government who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution is to declare Trump ineligible when the matter of his eligibility presents itself to them. What made the Baude-Paulsen analysis more impactful was that it came from scholars associated with the conservative Federalist Society. Now, J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe, a respected conservative former federal appeals judge and an emeritus Harvard constitutional law professor, concur in The Atlantic: Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war…