Northwoods UU Issues Resource Links: DEMOCRACY, THE BIG LIE, & SOCIAL MEDIA

Section 1
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Contemporary Sedition:

While the U.S. still criminalizes sedition in 18 U.S.C. § 2384, the First Amendment’s free speech protections limit the extent to which states and the federal government can criminalize sedition.

In 1969, a U.S. Supreme Court case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, created a test requiring that speech must directly or imminently likely produce violence.

Most modern seditious conspiracy convictions under § 2384 involve terrorist plots. For example, in U.S. v. Rahman, the Second Circuit upheld the convictions of the Muslim clerics under § 2384 who plotted "to bomb office building, tunnels, and bridges in New York City, to assassinate President of Egypt, and to assassinate Israeli citizen who professed militant Zionism." [Last updated in April of 2021 by the Wex Definitions Team]

Driving the news: Most of the charges have been to misdemeanors. However, three members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia have pleaded guilty to the federal charge of seditious conspiracy.