The Excerpt podcast: Maine removes Trump from ballot citing 'insurrectionist ban'

On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Maine removes Donald Trump from the ballot, saying he's disqualified by the 'insurrectionist ban.' The decision will likely be appealed. USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless looks at a Jan. 6 rioter who worked for the Trump administration. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un is preparing for war. USA TODAY National News Reporter Lauren Villagran looks at some of the latest news from migration and the U.S.-Mexico border. College football bowl season gets weird, with an edible mascot.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Friday, December 29th, 2023. This is The Excerpt. Today, Maine has blocked Trump from the 2024 presidential primary, though it will likely be appealed. Plus, we look at a Trump administration employee's role on January 6th, and North Korea's leader is preparing for war.

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The top election official in the state of Maine said yesterday that she will remove Donald Trump's name from the presidential ballot. The decision will likely be appealed along with a similar ruling in Colorado. Maine secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, announced the decision yesterday saying that the insurrection is banned in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution applies to Trump and the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021. In her decision, Bellows wrote that the insurrection, quote, "occurred at the behest of and with the knowledge and support of the outgoing president. The US Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government," unquote.

Still, Bellows said she would delay the actual removal of Trump's name from the main ballot until the courts finally rule on the question. That means Trump will probably still be on the state's Republican primary ballot on March 5th. The Trump campaign, denying that January 6th was an insurrection, condemned the Maine decision saying in a statement that Bellows is a leftist who has decided to interfere in the presidential election. The US Supreme Court is expected to have the final say on Trump's eligibility for state ballots sometime next year. The Maine move follows a decision earlier this month by the Colorado Supreme Court which said Trump is not eligible for public office because of the 14th Amendment. This past week, Michigan Supreme Court rejected a similar effort to keep Trump off the ballot in that state. Minnesota's high court has also refused requests to remove Trump's name from the ballot.

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Meanwhile, January 6th is back in the news surrounding a former GOP student leader who has links to a neo-Nazi website and worked for the Trump administration. I spoke with USA Today national correspondent, Will Carless, for more. Will, always good to chat. Thanks for hopping on.

Will Carless:

Hey, thanks for having me on.

Taylor Wilson:

Let's start here, Will. Who is Oliver Krvaric, and what's his backstory?

Will Carless:

Oliver Krvaric is a former head of the San Diego State University Republicans. He's been interviewed by Tucker Carlson. He's written op-eds in a couple of newspapers. He was largely seen as an up-and-coming young conservative Republican. He's also a former employee of the Trump administration. As far as our investigation goes, he also appears to have entered the US Capitol on January 6th and also to have posted some very troubling messages on a neo-Nazi website a few years ago.

Taylor Wilson:

Let's talk about that connection, Will, to the Trump administration. What exactly is the link there?

Will Carless:

Mr. Krvaric was hired in November 2020 to go and work for the Trump administration for the Office of Personnel Management. It's like a human resources department for the federal government, for federal agencies. He was specifically hired to work on a short-lived executive order that Trump announced in late 2020, right in the final months of his presidency, that essentially sought to go through federal agencies and rid them of certain diversity and equality training. This was right when the whole dust up over critical race theory and how employees, particularly federal and just public employees in general, were being trained on diversity. Trump, his view was that a lot of this stuff was kind of counterintuitive and wrong, and he hired some people to look into that, and one of them was Oliver Krvaric.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned that there are some new developments, Will, that really do place him inside the Capitol on that day. Can you explain to our listeners what we've learned here?

Will Carless:

The chain of evidence is rather complicated, but essentially what we have is we have videos of a man that was identified using facial recognition as Oliver Krvaric. Now, that man goes into the Capitol, he only goes in very briefly, but he enters a door, goes to an inner door, and then turns around and comes back. The facial recognition in and of itself is not definitive because the man never takes his mask off. However, there's lots of other evidence that shows that this is Mr. Krvaric. Particularly, he's wearing a pair of very distinctive pink shoes that he's been photographed wearing before.

When I confronted Oliver about the day, he initially completely denied being there. Then when I said, "Well, there are photos that appear to be of you," he said, "Well, I was at the rally, but I didn't go in the building." When I questioned him further about the video that appears to show him going in the building, I said, "Look, did you cross over the threshold?" and he said, "Well, what do you mean by the threshold?" That's kind of where we are in terms of the evidence showing him inside the building itself.

Taylor Wilson:

We mentioned the link to the Trump administration. Does this change how we view Trump's involvement with that day or just how deeply his staff might've been involved?

Will Carless:

I don't think it's fair to say that on the former, but possibly it is on the latter. When I put this, for example, to a former prosecutor at the DOJ who led a lot of the initial investigations into January 6th and brought a lot of the charges, he said, "Look, this isn't particularly surprising." There were a lot of Trump fans there that day. A lot of Trump fans and supporters worked for the Trump administration. So that one of them lost their head and decided to go into the Capitol on that day, I don't think is a huge surprise, and I don't think it's necessarily fair to read anything into Trump's involvement in this. I think what's actually much more interesting in terms of this individual and the fact that he was working for the Trump administration are his apparent links to this neo-Nazi website and some of the things that he was apparently posting on there.

Taylor Wilson:

What was he posting on there, Will? What have we learned about that?

Will Carless:

This was a very, very nasty out-there website called Iron March. Really, it wasn't a place that you went unless you were a white supremacist, a real far-out neo-Nazi. Our investigation shows apparently it looks like Oliver Krvaric did join in 2016. We found a number of posts that we believe are his where he's talking about, for example, deporting all non-white people from Sweden. He talks about admiring Hitler and other fascists. He has some Holocaust denial. He calls the LGBTQ community disgusting and uses derogatory terms. So there's some really troubling content in here for this young man.

Taylor Wilson:

Will, going forward, is the FBI investigating Krvaric at this point. What do these developments mean for him legally?

Will Carless:

The FBI will never comment and tell us whether they're investigating somebody. We do know that he doesn't appear on any of the FBI wanted lists. That's not particularly surprising. Those lists tend to comprise people who are caught in acts of violence and acts of destruction, and we don't have any evidence that Mr. Krvaric did anything destructive or violent on the day of January 6th. However, I will say that we've reported and named two people so far who were there on January 6th and who committed crimes on January 6th. They've both been arrested in the months after our investigation. So I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI are looking very closely at him.

Taylor Wilson:

Will Carless covers extremism and emerging issues for USA Today. Great insight, as always, Will. Thanks so much.

Will Carless:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, has ordered his nation's industrial and military sectors to prepare for war with the United States. He cited unprecedented confrontational activity by the US and its allies. Kim, speaking at a 2024 planning meeting yesterday of his ruling Workers' Party, said that an in-depth analysis indicated that a severe political and military situation on the Korean Peninsula had reached its limit, according to the country's state-run news agency. The news agency said the military industrial sector, nuclear weapons sector, and civil defense sector were urged to accelerate the completion of preparations for war. It's not the first threatening rhetoric from Kim in recent months, and last month, the country put a military spy satellite into orbit after two previous failed attempts. The US and its allies consider the satellite a breach of UN Security Council resolutions, though the US also uses spy satellites.

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It's been a busy end of the year when it comes to news surrounding migration and the US-Mexico border. I caught up with USA Today national news reporter, Lauren Villagran, for the latest. Lauren, thanks for making the time.

Lauren Villagran:

Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

Mexican officials have apparently cleared out a border camp amid pressure from US officials. Lauren, what are the recent political developments on this?

Lauren Villagran:

The US is putting additional pressure on the country of Mexico amid tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border. Around December 20th, President Biden called Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to have a conversation about the migration issue. This week, secretary of State, Antony Blinken, as well as Department of Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, traveled to Mexico City to talk to Mexico about ways in which the country could do perhaps a better job of slowing migration or stopping migration through Mexico to the US border. You also saw the US close key rail crossings with Mexico, which really put the pressure on because Mexico is a top exporter to the United States.

Taylor Wilson:

Lauren, you were on earlier this month talking about this new Texas immigration law, SB 4, that targets people for arrest who have crossed the border illegally. Can you refresh our listeners about what this is and what the latest is here?

Lauren Villagran:

SB 4 is the Senate bill in the state of Texas that makes it a crime, a state crime to cross the border unlawfully. Now, we know that immigration has historically been the purview of the federal government, and there is already a lawsuit on the part of El Paso County, Texas, here where I'm located, suing the state of Texas over this law saying that it's going to cost too much money to implement, that would require the construction of a new jail, a $40 million jail, and the legislation doesn't come with any funding. The ACLU filed suit against Texas earlier this month.

The law is set to take effect, though, in March. The proponents of the legislation say Texas has a right to enforce its border. The Department of Justice is warning the state of Texas and Governor Abbott that it believes SB 4 is unconstitutional. They say in this letter obtained by CBS News that it effectively, quote, "creates a separate state immigration scheme by imposing criminal penalties for violations of federal provisions." The federal government has historically had supremacy over immigration matters, in part because there's a foreign relations component. Immigrant advocates and others are concerned that it could lead to racial profiling. They say, "How can a state trooper know whether a person, for example, someone of Hispanic descent or an immigrant from Mexico who may be here legally, could they face being stopped by police just for being who they are?"

Taylor Wilson:

Finally, millions of migrants who hope to get asylum are already in the US waiting for their hearings. What's the latest on this for them, Lauren?

Lauren Villagran:

New data show that the immigration court backlog, Taylor, has hit three million cases. Even though the Biden administration has added hundreds of judges to the immigration courts, they've not been able to keep pace with the number of people who are entering the system. So what happens when migrants arrive at the border, if they are processed by Border Patrol and released, if they make a claim to stay in the United States, they're often being given a notice to appear in immigration court. I spoke to a family last week, Taylor, here in El Paso, Texas, from Mexico, who had notices to appear in a Florida immigration court in 2027. So there are both immigrant advocates as well as those who say people are making false claims, they're both upset about this because advocates say people are not getting their day in court in a timely fashion, and those who say that they may have a legitimate claim say they're gaming the system and getting an opportunity to stay in the United States without any judicial review.

Taylor Wilson:

Lauren Villagran covers the border and immigration for USA Today. Lauren, great insight as always. Thanks so much.

Lauren Villagran:

Thanks, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Kansas State took down North Carolina State last night in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. That set the stage for one of the more anticipated and hilarious celebrations in recent weird college football bowl history: the eating of the Pop-Tarts mascot. In the somewhat morbid celebration, the mascot was lowered into a giant toaster before a giant edible pastry popped out. That follows other bizarre bowl game celebrations and sponsors, including coaches dunked in mayonnaise and eggnog. You can catch up on all the bowl game news with USA TODAY Sports.

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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you use a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Excerpt podcast: Maine removes Donald Trump from ballot