Three years after the Jan. 6 violent attack aimed to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s 2020 election and former President Trump, the man who inspired it, has yet to be held accountable for it even as he’s well on his way to being nominated for a third time by the Republican Party at its convention in July.

In fact, Trump has continued to have the around the clock protection of the U.S. Secret Service that’s successfully obscured  its own role in the incendiary events of Jan. 6 that continues to cast a long dark shadow on our collective future.

There’s a great tragic irony that the Republican Party, which came into being out of the pre-Civil War national aspiration to bind the nation together with what was at the time the radical moral aspiration of ending of slavery, should now be the vehicle for a man who has risen to power by fracturing that same union that so much blood was spilled to preserve.

Now, with Trump’s Iowa and New Hampshire wins secured, how we will define ourselves as a nation is playing out on three tracks via the due process of our court system, the administration of each states existing election laws, and the actual political campaign itself. And thanks to the U.S. Constitution, which rests the power to run our elections to the states—every one of the fifty states, including New Jersey, finds itself in the crucible of destiny.

Like an unavoidable existential census, each and every state has the legal and moral obligation to our forebears and unborn descendants to summon the moral courage to define for our age just who we are and what we stand for. And while Donald Trump’s qualifications, or disqualifications, are what state election officials must now evaluate as their own oath requires, how they execute their legal obligations also sets the precedent for the ages.

And as it turns out, here in New Jersey, unlike in other states, challenging Trump’s qualifications actually has to start with anyone one of us.

No doubt, this juncture where we stand in history is not dissimilar to where we as a nation stood just after the Civil War when the most ardent Republican abolitionists in Congress wanted to bar from office former political figures in the Confederacy that had taken up arms against the union despite having taken a previous oath to “protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution.

It was about the power of collective accountability as being the bedrock for individual liberty.

While Trump faces both state and federal prosecutions, Trump’s eligibility to run is being challenged in at least 16 states on the grounds his role in the events of Jan. 6 disqualifies him under the 14^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution because he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States after having sworn an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States.”

The 13^th, 14^th , and 15^th amendments where all framed in the aftermath of the Civil War to codify the end of slavery, ensure states not deprive “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and not be denied the right to vote based on their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” As part of Reconstruction, Congress also wanted to ensure that former members of the Confederacy were excluded from elective office.

Earlier this month, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump role in the insurrection disqualified him from appearing on that state’s ballot.. Before the Colorado decision, the Secretary of State of Maine was the first to disqualify Trump on the same grounds.  Maine’s primary is March 5. Both states determinations were appealed.

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on February 8.

“The nature and status of the challenges vary greatly state-by-state,” according to Lawfare, a non-profit website that covers national security. “In some states, disqualification challenges are being brought to election commissions and offices of secretaries of state, pursuant to state law, with appeals to state courts. In other states, cases are being filed directly in the court system.”

Earlier this month, Appleseed, a New Jersey based public interest law non-profit, wrote a 40-page brief to state officials responsible for drawing up the official ballot of the state’s June 2024 presidential primary urging they take proactive steps to prepare for the “likelihood” that a challenge to Donald Trump’s candidacy will be filed following the filing of his nominating petition on or before March 25, 2024.

Under New Jersey’s election statutes it’s up to the state’s Secretary of State, Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way, to determine “only upon a challenge” if a candidate for office meets the qualifications, according to Renee Steinhagen, an attorney, and New Jersey Appleseed’s executive director.

“What’s really important here is New Jersey does allow the Secretary of State—upon a challenge—and not independently– to determine the qualifications of a candidate before the election and even after the election, it can still be contested,” Steinhagen told InsiderNJ during a recent phone interview.

According to the NJ Appleseed analysis the Secretary of State “should prepare for such challenge now. The extremely tight timeframe in which such a challenge must be resolved, and the timing and other uncertainties associated with any U.S. Supreme Court ruling require the Secretary of State to be prepared to proceed under New Jersey election laws” and to that end the non-profit is also urging Way to seek a legal opinion from New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin on how to proceed.

Under New Jersey law with such a “contested case” the Secretary of State must loop in the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for a hearing before an administrative law judge who in turn will “prepare a recommended report and decision for the Secretary’s review,” according to NJ Appleseed’s analysis. “Therefore, even under a best-case scenario where an objection is filed on March 26, 2024, New Jersey law requires an administrative hearing, the preparation of an administrative law judge’s recommended report and decision, and a final decision by the Secretary to be accomplished in the space of eight calendar (six business) days. In addition, the Secretary’s final determination is subject to appeal to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court, which has exclusive jurisdiction to review all final decisions of any state administrative officer or agency.”

NJ Appleseed’s analysis continues. We would suggest that, in preparing the legal opinions that will guide the Secretary of State in dealing with any such objection, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General indicate its willingness to accept submissions from the public to assist it in reaching its determinations. These can take the form of letters, amicus briefs, documents, references to other state agency and court determinations, submissions made in other cases, or any other input which could potentially be useful to the Office of the Attorney General…… The important point is that this process must start now, in advance of the March 25, 2024 primary petition filing deadline, in order to assure a coherent process in the likely event of an objection to Trump’s candidacy at that time.”

Perhaps most disconcerting in the non-profit public interest law firm’s paper was the disclosure the New Jersey Secretary of State recently put out the form for the petition that’s required  2024 Presidential primary candidates file that  “unlawfully omits two requirements: (1) that the candidate ‘file a certificate’ attesting that he or she meets all of the criteria for holding the office of President, and (2) that the candidate annex an ‘oath of allegiance’ to support and bear true faith and allegiance to the Federal and State Constitutions.”

While Secretary of State’s press office confirmed receipt of InsiderNJ’s query, the office offered no comment.

It’s hard to  predict if the State of New Jersey has what it takes to stand up to America’s 21^st century post-Jan. 6 ‘reconstruction.’ Within our own Congressional delegation we have a Republican member of the House of Representatives Rep. Jeff Van Drew R-NJ-2^nd) who voted to reject the lawful 2020 election of Biden in 2020 after the violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

In last year’s Speaker of the House election all three of New Jersey’s GOP incumbents including Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ-4^th) and Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ-7^th) supported Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) who was the actual architect of the Congressional bid to overturn the 2020 election.  For some members of Congress, like Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ-9^th) members of Congress who signed on to the legal challenge to Biden’s election based on Trump’s BIG LIE before the events of Jan. 6 should themselves have been disqualified from holding office under the third section of the 14^th amendment.

“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress,” Pascrell wrote then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend. Consequently, I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.”

New Jersey as a border state relied heavily on slavery, had close ties to southern commerce and had more than its fair share of stridently racist elected leaders who enthusiastically endorsed turning over run-away slaves to bounty hunters. The Garden State was at best very ambivalent about the three Reconstruction amendments being pushed by the Congressional Republicans who not only wanted to dismantle slavery but extend the full rights of citizenship to the formerly enslaved population which Jersey Democrats saw as undermining the righteous hegemony of white men of property.

Our Reconstruction score card includes at first rejecting the 13^th amendment in March of 1865 and then, only after the Civil War was over and Lincoln was murdered, ratified it Jan. 23, 1866. On the 14^th amendment, New Jersey ratified it on Sept. 11, 1866 but then Trenton voted to rescind its ratification on Feb. 20, 1868 voting to override the veto of Gov. Marcus Ward, a Republican.

In his passionate and reasoned veto message Ward warned that without the 14^th amendment: “The insurrectionary States would elect members of the House of Representatives upon the whole number instead of three-fifths of their colored population, and in this way possess advantages which they have not heretofore enjoyed. It is against the plainest dictates of wisdom and right to make such a discrimination against the people of the States who have been faithful to the Union, and in favor of those who have so lately waged war to destroy it.”

Ward’s message continued. “It cannot be supposed that the people of this State are in favor of such a distinction; rewarding treason by increasing the political power of those who have committed it; entrusting in an enlarged and unprecedented manner the great interests of the nation, its public credit and well-being, to the decision of representatives whose recent efforts and wishes have been directed to the ruin of both.”

On the 15^th amendment, that would prohibit the denying of a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, well Trenton rejected it at first in February of 1870. A year later, Trenton ratified it, of course a year after the nation ratified it.

One hundred and fifty-three years later it’s our turn to define and defend democracy.