Emergency orders issued by courts in North Carolina and Michigan on Friday prevented Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK)'s name from appearing on ballots in those states, marking a major victory for former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy gave up on a third-party presidential bid and endorsed Trump, sending shock waves through the political establishment, as the Kennedy family had been the dominant family in the Democratic Party.
While Kennedy cannot win the White House under any realistic scenario, polls show he has enough single-digit support in certain battleground states, including Michigan and North Carolina, to change the outcome of the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, depending on which major party candidate he can siphon more votes from.
Kamala Harris' political allies want to keep RFK on the ballot in these and other certain states, calculating that RFK would steal more votes from Trump than Harris would in those states.
The issue has taken on urgency in North Carolina, where the first absentee ballots are scheduled to be mailed to voters.
A North Carolina judge ruled to remove RFK's name from the state's ballot and ordered the court presiding over the matter to order the state elections board to print and mail ballots that did not list Kennedy as a candidate.
Harris' allies can appeal the order to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Michigan's absentee ballots have not yet been counted, so the issue is not as urgent, but it is still a major development and Democrats are likely to take the case to the Michigan Supreme Court on an emergency basis.
The first case is Kennedy v. North Carolina State Board of Electionscase number 24CVS27757, in the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Kurkowski is a former White House and Justice Department lawyer. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) Kenkrukowski.
