“Yet even if all 1,500 Confederate symbols across the country were removed overnight by some sudden supernatural force, the pernicious crusade to roll back voting rights would continue apace, with voters of color suffering its effects disproportionately. Pushing back hard against those who would purge voter rolls, demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess, and limit times and venues for voting — this should be a paramount cause for the Trump era.
In statehouse after statehouse where Republicans hold majorities, the playbook is well established, and the tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Mr. Trump’s voter fraud commission is at the vanguard of this crusade, and the fix is in. Its vice chairman, Kris Kobach, is the nation’s most determined, litigious and resourceful champion of voter suppression. Under his tutelage, the commission is likely to recommend measures whose effect will be that new obstacles to voting would be taken up in state legislatures. Millions of voters are at risk of disenfranchisement from this effort, and the knock-on effects of such a mass act of disempowerment are dizzying.
The events in Charlottesville and the president’s apologia for the right-wing extremists there should mobilize anyone passionate about civil rights. There would be no better target for their energies than the clear and present danger to the most fundamental right in any democracy: the vote.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
Sessions and his Civil Rights Division are supposed to be out there defending the right of citizens, particularly minorities, to vote. Instead, he has thrown the weight of the Justice Department to those GOP hacks seeking to suppress the vote. Meanwhile the Civil Rights Division is thinking of perverse ways to abuse Civil Rights laws by using them to promote white privilege and white supremacy.
Sen. Liz Warren was silenced by McConnell when she told the truth about Sessions’s continuing racism. She was right.
PWS
08-20-17