Supreme Court to decide if Trump can be kept off 2024 ballots: Live

The Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee have filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court in support of Donald Trump.

“Once state courts begin purging candidates from the ballot, political opponents will begin picking each other off, harming confidence in our electoral processes,” the letter reads.

An historic ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court in December disqualified the former president from appearing on 2024 presidential ballots, teeing up a politically explosive case at the nation’s highest court, where three of the justices were appointed by Mr Trump.

The Supreme Court will now review the Colorado court’s ruling that Mr Trump is ineligible under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office.

The case – Trump v Anderson – follows more than a dozen lawsuits challenging Mr Trump’s eligibility to appear on 2024 ballots under the provisions of the 14th Amendment.

Read more about the case from Alex Woodward.

The US Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald Trump is not eligible to appear on the 2024 ballot.

Oral arguments will begin 8 February 2024, according to the announcement.

We will bring you more on this story as we get it.

The Louisiana woman who filed a 14th Amendment challenge to Trump’s ballot eligibility in that state has dropped the case after some procedural hurdles.

After the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State ruled Trump could not appear on the ballot of their respective states, Ashley Reeb filed a similar challenge in Louisiana.

Now, a Louisiana judge has dismissed her case after Ms Reeb acknowledged in a hearing that it contained multiple disqualifying errors, local outlet NoLa.com reports.

Read about Ms Reeb’s initial challenge to the former President from Bevan Hurley.

President Joe Biden used his first major campaign event of 2024 to speak about the events of 6 January 2021 and paint Donald Trump as a danger to American democracy.

“He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” Mr Biden said. “Our campaign is different. For me and Kamala, our campaign is about America. It’s about you. It’s about every age and background…it’s about the future we’re gonna continue to build together.”

Check out Andrew Feinberg’s recap of Mr Biden’s speech for more.

As he reached the final minutes of his speech, President Joe Biden said Donald Trump is running for “denier-in-chief,” referring to his unfounded denial of the 2020 election results.

“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Mr Biden said.

The President ended his speech with a call for unity before walking off the stage hand-in-hand with his wife, Jill Biden.

“I believe with every fibre there’s nothing beyond our capacity if we act together and decently with one another. Nothing, nothing nothing,” Mr Biden said. “I mean it. We’re the only nation in the world that’s come out of every crisis stronger than we went into that crisis. That was true yesterday, it is true today, and I guarantee you it will be true tomorrow.”

President Joe Biden compared Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany during his campaign speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

“He calls those who will oppose him, ‘vermin,’” Mr Biden said. “He talks about the blood of America has been poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.”

Mr Biden made a similar point last month, and in September 2020 he compared Mr Trump to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

“The topic of my speech today is deadly serious,” President Joe Biden said at the top of his speech Friday.

“Today we gather…just one day before January 6. A day forever seared our memory because it was on that day we nearly lost America, lost it all,” he said in a speech Friday afternoon in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. “Today we’re here to answer the most important questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”

Mr Biden minced no words in his speech, telling voters Donald Trump is willing to “sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power.”

“Trump did nothing, it was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history,” Mr Biden said of the former President’s actions on 6 January 2021.

Watch live from The Independent:

President Joe Biden is set to speak Friday afternoon at a campaign event in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania as the third anniversary of the Capitol riots looms.

Mr Biden will use his time to say that the issue of American democracy will be “what the 2024 election is all about,” according to excerpts released by his re-election campaign.

Andrew Feinberg has more on the President’s first major campaign event of 2024:

Three years after a violent breach of the US Capitol that stopped the certification of millions of Americans’ votes, nearly one-third of its elected members have denied the election’s outcome, including 127 sitting members of Congress who refused to certify the 2020 results.

Those members – who supported legal battles to reverse results, voted against them, or promoted election conspiracy theories – represent voters in 37 states.

They include 19 Senators and 152 members of the House of Representatives, including its Republican speaker, labelled “the most powerful election denier in Washington.”

The latest analysis from nonpartisan democracy advocacy group States United Action, one year before a joint session of Congress will reconvene to certify this year’s election, arrives before the anniversary of the January 6 attack, when a mob fuelled by Donald Trump stormed the halls of Congress.

Alex Woodward has more.