Trump's Judicial Nominee Wanted Literacy Tests For Voters

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In as we speak’s episode of The President Positive Can Choose’em! President Donald Trump has nominated to a federal judgeship a person who, in school, believed People ought to be required to take literacy assessments so as to vote, regardless of the historical past of literacy assessments getting used traditionally to forestall Black individuals from partaking within the nation’s electoral course of.

Meet Josh Divine, the solicitor common of Missouri and director of particular litigation within the state legal professional common’s workplace.

Trump has nominated Divine for “a lifetime federal judgeship on the U.S. District Court docket 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 publication, 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 People, which is how literary assessments have been used till they have been banned underneath the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“Within the Civil Rights Act, literacy assessments 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 assessments themselves will not be a nasty factor,” Divine wrote.

“Individuals who aren’t knowledgeable about points or platforms — particularly when it’s so straightforward to change into knowledgeable lately — don’t have any enterprise voting, which is why I suggest state-administered literacy assessments,” 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 assessments don’t take a look at how properly persons are “knowledgeable about points or platforms.” Literacy assessments take a look at literacy — how properly individuals can learn, write and comprehend.

Right here’s an attention-grabbing query, although: Might Trump move both take a look at in 2025?

Might the president who simply found the phrase “groceries,” insist on utilizing the phrase “interpose” regardless that he has no thought what it means, and is demonstrably incapable of talking in full, coherent, grammatically right sentences move a literacy take a look at if he needed to take one on the spot so as to vote in a U.S. election? If literacy assessments did take a look at political information, 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 properly on an examination that examined how knowledgeable they’re on the problems? Might Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem, who didn’t 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 assessments for voters in a nation the place 54% of adults learn under a sixth-grade studying stage might be a nasty thought. And in the event that they have been required as we speak, they’d in all probability nonetheless be geared toward disenfranchising Black voters, very like Republican congressional maps and Trump’s factless claims relating to voter fraud within the 2020 election, a lie the president continues to be telling as 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 assessments ought to 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 chunk 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 essential 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 assessments on the polls and arguing in opposition to the concept of democracy itself is among 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 ought to 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 decide and doesn’t have even near the minimal authorized expertise anticipated of federal judges.”