In at present’s episode of The President Positive Can Decide’em! President Donald Trump has nominated to a federal judgeship a person who, in school, believed Individuals must be required to take literacy exams in an effort to vote, regardless of the historical past of literacy exams getting used traditionally to forestall Black individuals from participating within the nation’s electoral course of.
Meet Josh Divine, the solicitor normal of Missouri and director of particular litigation within the state lawyer normal’s workplace.
Trump has nominated Divine for “a lifetime federal judgeship on the U.S. District Courtroom for the Jap 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 college’s e-newsletter, The Mirror, arguing {that a} literacy take a look at 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 Individuals, which is how literary exams have been used till they have been banned below the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Within the Civil Rights Act, literacy exams have been banned as a result of they have been used as a type of discrimination in that they have been solely administered to a sure group of individuals, however literacy exams themselves aren’t a nasty factor,” Divine wrote.
“Individuals who aren’t knowledgeable about points or platforms — particularly when it’s so straightforward to develop into knowledgeable as of late — don’t have any enterprise voting, which is why I suggest state-administered literacy exams,” 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 exams don’t take a look at how properly persons are “knowledgeable about points or platforms.” Literacy exams take a look at literacy — how properly individuals can learn, write and comprehend.
Right here’s an fascinating query, although: May Trump cross both take a look at in 2025?
May the president who simply found the phrase “groceries,” insist on utilizing the phrase “interpose” though he has no concept what it means, and is demonstrably incapable of talking in full, coherent, grammatically right sentences cross a literacy take a look at if he needed to take one on the spot in an effort to vote in a U.S. election? If literacy exams did take a look at 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, cross?
What about Trump’s different Cupboard picks? Would they do properly on an examination that examined how knowledgeable they’re on the problems? May Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, who didn’t appropriately outline habeas corpus, cross? 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 exams for voters in a nation the place 54% of adults learn under a sixth-grade studying degree might be a nasty concept. And in the event that they have been required at present, they’d in all probability nonetheless be geared toward disenfranchising Black voters, very like Republican congressional maps and Trump’s factless claims concerning voter fraud within the 2020 election, a lie the president is nonetheless telling as lately as final week.
After all, Divine wrote his opinion piece in 2010, when he was in school. Who is aware of if he nonetheless feels that literacy exams must be required to vote in 2025? In spite of everything, 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 referred to 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 Courtroom Justice Clarence Thomas and served as chief counsel to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
“Josh Divine’s op-ed advocating for literacy exams on the polls and arguing towards the concept of democracy itself is without doubt one of the most annoying writings we’ve ever seen in a judicial nominee’s report,” stated Jake Faleschini, the justice program director at Alliance for Justice. “It must be unquestionable {that a} voter suppression device rooted within the racism of the Jim Crow South has no place in our democracy. He might 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 decide 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’