Lawyer who wrote racial voter suppression laws nominated to be federal judge
17 replies, posted
https://www.thedailybeast.com/thomas-farr-devised-ways-to-keep-blacks-from-voting-mitch-mcconnell-wants-to-make-him-a-judge
Donald Trump’s federal bench picks look like a MAGA rally. Of the 48 people he’s nominated to appellate courts, none are black or Latino. Thirty-nine of them are men. Eighty percent
come from the far-right Federalist Society, though only 4 percent of the nation’s lawyers are members.
But the cream of the ultra-white crop is being pushed through by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell right now: longtime Republican lawyer and political operative Thomas Farr,
up for a life-tenure judgeship in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“Even among dangerous Trump nominees Farr stands out for his decades-long crusade to disenfranchise African Americans,” the NAACP said in a statement Thursday. “He learned
how to intimidate Black voters from segregationist Sen. Jesse Helms and helped turn North Carolina into ground zero for voter suppression. His nomination is a travesty. His
confirmation would be heresy.”
The Senate vote on his nomination is scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving, which comes on the heels of an election in which voter suppression was a major issue in a half-
dozen other states, including North Carolina. Farr’s record is astonishing.
In 2016, a federal appeals court struck down North Carolina’s array of voting restrictions, finding that they “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision... The only
clear factor linking these various ‘reforms’ is their impact on African American voters.”
That was unprecedented language, and it was backed up with page after page of statistical evidence, legislative history, and data on the effects of the new rules. The main author of
the law was Thomas Farr. Farr also defended the law in court, disrespecting the circuit court by calling its landmark decision “ludicrous.”
Farr’s confirmation is by no means assured. In July, the White House withdrew the nomination of Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after racially charged articles he
had written as a college student came to light. That caused Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate’s lone black Republican, to withdraw his support. And with the Republicans’ razor-thin majority
in the lame-duck Senate, one defection was enough.
Along with Farr, McConnell has scheduled a vote on Jonathan Kobes, nominated by Trump to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Remarkably, Kobes was deemed “not qualified” by the
American Bar Association, which used to be a rare event until the Donald Trump-Leonard Leo nomination blitz began. (Six Trump nominees have been thus designated, a record.
None of President Obama’s nominees were rated not qualified.)
Notably, Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley rushed Kobes’s committee hearing through before the ABA had a chance to issue its designation, much as Grassley
rushed the Kavanaugh hearings through before his complete records could be redacted and released. As a result, senators were not able to learn more about the ABA’s decision beyond
the letter that they received.
get set for things to get worse, Graham is expected to take over the committee next year, guaranteed it will be a near constant shit show with him.
A lot of cunts are going to need impeachment when the orange is out.
Of course Bitch McCuntell wants to make him a judge.
Court packing at the appellate level then.
So what's to be done? Hope they just die?
Increase the size of the federal bench or use the DOJ to dig up dirt on them to make them resign. The fact the GOP is literally ignoring the American Bar Association means extreme measures must be taken.
Honestly I see 2020 as just 2008 again and in 2022 Republicans will take control again like 2010.
GOP need to evaporate...for the better of all of us.
Eighty percent come from the far-right Federalist Society, though only 4 percent of the nation’s lawyers are members.
Does this not technically make them a minority? this is a joke
Highly unlikely that happens. We'll most likely see a party transformation when all the alt right psychopaths get voted out of office.
But what if the S.S. Trump is already down in the water at that point? Who knows how many Republicans he'll take with him. We know how vast the scope of the Mueller investigation is at this point - he's investigating everyone from Boris Johnson to people who was pals with Dick Cheney. The reputation of the party may suffer such a huge blow that, while their idiotic base will probably keep voting for them, the rest of the country will be so united against them that they'll have serious trouble ever winning a major election again.
(I realize I'm being extremely optimistic here, but my ultimate point is that 2020 is not like 2008 at all. W may have been a fucking idiot and warmonger, but he wasn't a traitor allied with the Russians. And even if he had been, he still wasn't dumb enough to accidentally indict himself in an interview with the FBI. Trump, on the other hand? Well, at this point I feel it's only a matter of how long before he goes down, not if he goes down. Unless of course the Republicans declare martial law, which in that case we'll have a second civil war to worry about, so we'll be too busy trying to stay alive to worry about judges or elections.)
Every position of power needs term limits. End of.
We have a system of checks and balances but what good is it when one of those checks gets stacked to favor one side? (Indefinitely as far as a lot of people would be concerned) Suddenly the power isn't checked
Unfortunately the federal courts wouldn't be able to really work if the terms were less then like 20 years.
