In in the present day’s episode of The President Certain Can Choose’em! President Donald Trump has nominated to a federal judgeship a person who, in school, believed People must be required to take literacy checks with a purpose to vote, regardless of the historical past of literacy checks getting used traditionally to forestall Black folks from partaking within the nation’s electoral course of.
Meet Josh Divine, the solicitor normal of Missouri and director of particular litigation within the state legal professional normal’s workplace.
Trump has nominated Divine for “a lifetime federal judgeship on the U.S. District Court docket for the Japanese and Western Districts of Missouri,” HuffPost reported.
In 2010, when Divine was a junior on the College of Northern Colorado, he wrote an opinion piece for his faculty’s e-newsletter, The Mirror, arguing {that a} literacy check isn’t such a nasty factor, in and of itself, so long as each American is required to take it, versus solely requiring it for Black People, which is how literary checks had been used till they had been banned underneath the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Within the Civil Rights Act, literacy checks had been banned as a result of they had been used as a type of discrimination in that they had been solely administered to a sure group of individuals, however literacy checks themselves aren’t a nasty factor,” Divine wrote.
“Individuals who aren’t knowledgeable about points or platforms — particularly when it’s so simple to turn out to be knowledgeable as of late — haven’t any enterprise voting, which is why I suggest state-administered literacy checks,” he continued.
Divine’s piece — which, unsurprisingly, particularly took goal at individuals who voted for former President Barack Obama — made little logical sense contemplating the truth that literacy checks don’t check how nicely persons are “knowledgeable about points or platforms.” Literacy checks check literacy — how nicely folks can learn, write and comprehend.
Right here’s an fascinating query, although: Might Trump move both check in 2025?
Might the president who simply found the phrase “groceries,” insist on utilizing the phrase “interpose” although he has no concept what it means, and is demonstrably incapable of talking in full, coherent, grammatically right sentences move a literacy check if he needed to take one on the spot with a purpose to vote in a U.S. election? If literacy checks did check political data, would the sitting commander-in-chief, who answered “I don’t know” to a reporter who requested him if he’s obligated to uphold the Structure, move?
What about Trump’s different Cupboard picks? Would they do nicely on an examination that examined how knowledgeable they’re on the problems? Might Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, who did not accurately outline habeas corpus, move? How about ICE director Thomas Homan, who thinks informing immigrants of their authorized rights is an arrestable offense?
On the finish of the day, requiring literacy checks for voters in a nation the place 54% of adults learn beneath a sixth-grade studying degree might be a nasty concept. And in the event that they had been required in the present day, they might most likely nonetheless be geared toward disenfranchising Black voters, very similar to Republican congressional maps and Trump’s factless claims relating to voter fraud within the 2020 election, a lie the president is nonetheless telling as just lately as final week.
In fact, Divine wrote his opinion piece in 2010, when he was in school. Who is aware of if he nonetheless feels that literacy checks must be required to vote in 2025? In any case, Vice President JD Vance — Trump’s favourite skilled butt-sniffer who spearheaded the propaganda about Haitian migrants consuming pets in Springfield, Ohio, — wrote a bit in 2012, whereas he was in school, criticizing the GOP for being “overtly hostile to non-whites” and alienating “Blacks, Latinos, [and] the youth.” Hell, in 2016, Vance known as Trump an “fool” and “reprehensible,” and in contrast him to Adolf Hitler.
Nonetheless, some judicial advocacy teams are already vital of Trump nominating Divine, who beforehand labored as a clerk for Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas and served as chief counsel to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
“Josh Divine’s op-ed advocating for literacy checks on the polls and arguing in opposition to the thought of democracy itself is without doubt one of the most annoying writings we’ve ever seen in a judicial nominee’s document,” stated Jake Faleschini, the justice program director at Alliance for Justice. “It must be unquestionable {that a} voter suppression software rooted within the racism of the Jim Crow South has no place in our democracy. He could have written a few of them in school, however school wasn’t very way back for Divine. He’s a radically younger nominee to be a lifetime choose and doesn’t have even near the minimal authorized expertise anticipated of federal judges.”
SEE ALSO:
Op-Ed: Unpacking Trump’s Factless Claims About ‘White Genocide’
Op-Ed: Trump’s New Nominee For Federal Judgeship Advocated For Literacy Assessments For Voters Regardless of Racist Historical past
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