Today’s Madison Cawthorn court hearing could focus on laws both for and against Confederate rebels

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On Friday morning at a federal courthouse in Wilmington, lawyers for Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn will make the case for why he shouldn’t be banned from running for re-election — no matter what actions he might have taken surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Congress.

Cawthorn might face a tough primary in May, as several other Republicans well-known in western North Carolina political circles (including one he previously endorsed) are gearing up to take him on. But before he can even get to that primary, he’ll have to survive a legal battle intended to keep him off the ballot entirely.

My colleague Danielle Battaglia and I have reported on several facets of Cawthorn’s time in Congress (as well as this challenge seeking to cut it short). If you have missed this saga so far, here are some links to help get you caught up, in reverse chronological order:

▪ The latest on Cawthorn’s district, following several shakeups due to redistricting lawsuits.

▪ Cawthorn’s lawsuit against the state, trying to end the challenge against him before it can start.

▪ The intra-GOP fight between Cawthorn and N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore.

▪ The initial news of the challenge against Cawthorn, and the full text of the filing for those who want the primary source.

Cawthorn filed his formal re-election papers on Monday, and quickly thereafter the challengers against him re-filed their own papers.

They want the N.C. State Elections Board to deem him ineligible to even run for office because of the 14th Amendment’s anti-insurrectionist clause. Passed in the wake of the Civil War, that piece of constitutional law was meant to keep politicians who fought for the Confederacy from returning to Congress after the Union won. But it’s worded broadly, and the modern-day challengers say it should apply to the Jan. 6 attack, too, not just the Civil War.

Not only did Cawthorn support the Jan. 6 attack, they claim, there are also allegations that he and several other far-right members of Congress actually worked with militia leaders and others to help plan it. Cawthorn denies the allegations, and tweeted that with the challenge, “Left-wing activists are trying to stop me from fighting for YOU THE PEOPLE!”

If the challengers get their way, however, Cawthorn would be forced to testify under oath. In the attack just over a year ago, supporters of then-President Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election by pressuring Congress to change the results from several key states and keep Trump in office even though he lost to Joe Biden — a Democrat who was sworn in a few days later.

Cawthorn, however, says the state’s entire apparatus for challenging candidates’ eligibility to run is unconstitutional. The burden shouldn’t be on him to prove he’s innocent, he said in his lawsuit that’s being heard on Friday, but rather should be on his challengers to prove that he’s guilty.

He also favorably cited a pro-Confederate law passed during Reconstruction that allowed some former rebels to run for Congress after all, despite the 14th Amendment.

The federal judge overseeing the case is Richard Myers, a former UNC Law School professor who was appointed by Trump.

More from our team

“Don’t compliment ‘mass murderer’ Vladimir Putin, NC’s Sen. Thom Tillis says” — Danielle Battaglia highlights the latest GOP rift between establishment Republicans and the party’s neoconservative wing, versus the pro-Russia wing that has emerged in recent years with support from Trump. Adding to the intrigue behind TIllis’ comments? In this year’s Republican primary to potentially join Tillis in the U.S. Senate, the two leading candidates, Ted Budd and Pat McCrory, are at odds on the issue.

“NC, party of none: Unaffiliated voters will soon become state’s largest voting group” — Dawn B. Vaughan takes a deep dive into why people are so eager not to call themselves either Democrats or Republicans, and what it means for the future of state politics.

What we’re reading

“Fort Bragg soldiers establishing safe havens for Americans fleeing Ukraine” — The Carolina Journal reports that the U.S. Army has sent 12,000 soldiers to Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine and has been taking in refugees following Ukraine’s invasion by Russia. Nearly half are from Fort Bragg in Fayetteville.

“Oral history project aims to hear the stories of the civil rights struggle in northeastern NC” — WUNC reports the state government is turning to this rural area of the state, where many small counties are majority-Black, to try to preserve the stories of an older generation whose civil rights struggles were often overlooked by local and statewide media at the time.

Thanks for reading. See you next week. In the meantime, tune into our stories, our tweets and our Under the Dome podcast for more developments.

— By Will Doran, reporter for The News & Observer. Email me at wdoran@newsobserver.com.