THE WAGES OF INSURRECTION:

A judge today removed a county official from office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the hoary post-Civil War provision that bars certain people from holding office if they have "engaged in insurrection" against the United States.

Judge Francis Mathew, of the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe, ousted Otero County (N.M.) Commissioner Couy Griffin, due to his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. According to lawyers who brought the case, it represents the first time a court has disqualified an official under Section 3 since 1869. (Congress refused to seat a U.S. congressman, Victor Berger, under the section in 1919.)

Mathew's 49-page ruling also marked the first formal judicial finding that the Capitol riot amounted to an "insurrection" within the meaning of that constitutional provision.

The decision could have enormous repercussions for the nation's next presidential race, as advocacy groups have vowed to try to bar Trump from appearing on state ballots on the grounds that his role in instigating the Capitol riot disqualifies him from holding federal office.

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