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Asshole judge trick number one: did someone you like (or don't want to hold accountable for whatever reason) do something upsettingly bad? Just don't talk about it! Flood the conversation with bullshit questions about hypothetical scenarios, and you'll be off to give your paid speech to the Legion of Doom about how Americans need to have more respect for the law in no time!

"We're going to make our decision on whether or not he can't be on the ballot due to the 14th amendment, but please do not talk about how he violated the 14th amendment."

They steered clear of it because SCOTUS is not a fact-finding court. That fact finding was already handled by Colorado courts. Trump did engage in insurrection.

SCOTUS answers questions of law, not questions of fact. In this case, it seems that they all came to the oral arguments looking for a way to justify what they already wanted to do: keep Trump on the ballot. There are a few justifications they may employ. (For the record, I think all of these are stupid, but I am not a Supreme Court Justice.)

• Section Three disqualifies an insurrectionist from holding office, not from running for office. (So if one wins the election, then what? This only kicks the can and makes it harder to address later on. It's a gamble that the insurrectionist will lose the election.)
• The President is not an "officer." (This is absolute nonsense, but there's a suggestion that it might go there.)
• Individual states should not be allowed to have a sort of "veto power" over presidential candidates. (There is already a patchwork quilt of procedures and qualifications for ballot access, and the Constitution grants States the sole power to manage federal elections.)

SCOTUS is going to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling barring Trump from the Republican primary ballot in that state, even though no federal entity has any authority over elections. What of Maine, then? Will the SCOTUS ruling mention or otherwise impact the Maine decision (which is itself still working its way through the Maine court system)? What about the other states that have challenges to Trump's qualification still pending? A problem that I see is that if the court finds that States do not have the right to disqualify candidates based on Section Three, it would seem that States also do not have the right to disqualify candidates based on age, natural born citizenship, or any other reason. Hell, a tortoise should run. Nowhere in the consitution does it say that non-human candidates are disqualified.

I frankly don't understand this court's obvious desire to order that Section Three be ignored for this candidate. I do see that a problem with Section Three is that it is written to be self-executing, but that it hinges on slightly subjective definitions of "insurrection" and "aid or comfort." This court's ruling will clarify that, but it will do it wrong.

if they are cover for his actions that makes them accessories in the insurrection

Bought-and-paid-for, treasonous coprophiles...isn't that right, Uncle Clarence?

How can they NOT see, and not be frightened, that by not holding him accountable, they are literally opening up the possibility that he will dissolve the SCOTUS on his "day one" of being dictator? That would be ironic and I wouldn't put it past him.

Frauds.

This was always going to happen. Leaving the enforcement of this very federal matter to the individual states would have terrible consequences. No one wants Abbot or DeSantis to have this power, because they would immediately abuse it by declaring anyone but trump unfit for the ballot based entirely on lies and fever dreams.

Of course the ultra shitty consequence is that we're stuck with the equally fucked-by-insane-people Congress's complete inability to act.