John Gore, an attorney who has worked to defend laws that critics say are designed to weaken the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, was selected by President Donald Trump to serve as a senior civil rights official at the Department of Justice.
Gore’s new role as Trump’s choice for deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is notable because he will lead the division that oversees civil rights laws, including voter suppression issues. Trump and his nominee to lead the Justice Department, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, are strong supporters of voting restrictions such as voter identification.
The appointment of Gore represents a dramatic break from the the civil rights legacy of the outgoing Obama Justice Department, which has filed suits against voter restrictions in Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina, and other states. Under Obama, the civil rights division was restructured to take on more cases, with former Attorney General Eric Holder describing the team as the agency’s “crown jewel.”
In stark contrast, Gore has worked to defend Republican redistricting laws in Virginia, South Carolina, New York, and Florida — including maps that opponents say were drawn to maximize Republican seats in Congress and frequently employed a strategy of packing African-American voters into a single district to dilute their voting power in neighboring districts.
In Florida and Virginia, Gore also intervened on behalf of Republicans to defend new voter ID laws, rules civil rights group have assailed for reducing participation rates among African-Americans.
In Virginia, for example, Gore was one of the main attorneys working to defend a 2011 Republican map that moved black voters from four different districts into Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, a majority African-American district held by a Democrat that encompasses the areas around Richmond, Hampton Roads, and Newport News. The strategy appeared designed to weaken Democratic chances in the four neighboring districts, all held by Republicans, by lowering the number of African-Americans, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates.
A brief filed by the local NAACP argued that the map’s “high concentration of African-American voters” represented a “racial gerrymander” that violated voters’ due process rights. The GOP legislature argued that politics, not race, was the motivating factor in drawing the boundaries.
Federal courts overturned the GOP map, creating new borders that added African-American voters to the 4th Congressional district, which was previously represented by a white Republican. In 2016 the district for the first time elected an African-American Democrat.
In 2015, a resident of Virginia challenged the state’s newly passed law requiring a photo identification to vote, arguing that because minority groups were less likely to have a photo ID, the law “disproportionately suppresses the vote of African-Americans and Latinos in Virginia.”
A legal team from the law firm Jones Day, including Gore, filed an amicus brief in support of the voter ID law. The brief claimed that although the voter ID law might lead to a “relative shortfall in minority participation,” the true difference was attributable to “different levels of electoral interest or underlying socio-economic disparities,” and therefore the state’s actions were legal.
In December 2016, a federal appeals court upheld the photo ID law, ruling that “there was no evidence to suggest racially discriminatory intent in the law’s enactment.”
As Buzzfeed reported, just hours after Jones Day announced that Gore would be leaving for the administration position, the Justice Department moved to delay a hearing sought by the Obama administration to challenge the Texas voter ID law, one of the strictest in the country. The Justice Department noted that it sought a delay “because of the federal government’s change in administration, which took place on January 20, 2017.”
On Monday, during his evening meeting with congressional leaders, President Trump reiterated the false claim that millions of undocumented people voted in the last election, costing him the popular vote.
Top photo: An election officer checks a voter’s ID in Ashland, Va., Nov. 4, 2014.
If only there was some way we could have avoided this! Oh wait. There was. The Intercept and other far-left publications could maybe have spent a little less time hammering Clinton once she was the nominee.
Ah well. Now you have Trump, so win, win from an editorial perspective. You’ll now have endless horrors to write about.
The racism on the left is growing out of control just like it did last century.
And their advocacy of cheating and election fraud is just as disgusting
Suppressing voting in a democracy is an act of terrorism.
ditto
This so very much, especially combined with the American Psycho’s other bigot-tastic goals.
I haven’t yet run out of reasons to smile, but it’s fast become easy to count them with fingers. I haven’t ran to a generic hole in the ground to just slump down and cry, though; that’s a poor way to resist, when the best way is to keep living and fighting for your ideals, and to ignore the short-tempered, strange-haired, egomaniac terrorist.
Whatever floats your fashy boat, guy.
So, the discrimination not being intentional negates or lessens the discrimination, making it OK, or of no concern? Of course not, and Gore’s firm’s claiming non-discriminatory intent, in lieu of explaining their actions, is a virtual admission (as if one was needed for anyone remotely interested) that it was indeed, intent, on their part to discriminate against minorities. I love it when they fess up, even in a round about way. It’s a character builder, provided there’s enough of that to work with.
And, man, would I love to see the origin of the scientific inquiry they came up with that determined that blacks don’t vote because of “different levels of voter interest,” which is Trump for blacks don’t care enough to vote, or because of “social-economic disparities,” like not having a vehicle or transportation to a voting booth across town.
Hey, if blacks really wanted to vote, they’d get cars or move closer to the polls, whatyatalkin? Ain’t our fault.
Say, Lee Fang sounds very Asian. Let’s see your papers.
Ever watch “Born in East L.A.” w/Cheech Marin? Born here and still gets deported anyway.
Might get unfunny in a hurry.
Under Obama, there was a situation where Native American elders (I cannot recall of they were Navajo or Dine) were almost deported in Arizona for not having their papers.
Forget about defending Trump based on Eric Holder. WE MUST HOLD HIS FEET TO THE FIRE, IF HE IS EVERYTHING HE TELLS US. Do not imitate what Democrats have done for eight years. Support but Verify!
well gee wiz –
what better of a choice? would not a guy who focks you for a living be the best person to unfock you?
3rd WORLD USA
This definitely charges up Trump’s neo-Nazi base
This is like the Grand Wizard being picked to be the new leader of the NAACP. WTF. You can’t make this stuff up. Seems I’m going to be needing good walking shoes – they’ll come in handing for many protest marches ahead.
Disgusting. Continuing right wing social Darwinism rooted in bigotry, and failed CON-free market economic policies; sure cheeto twitter boy stopped the TPP, but he green-lit the DAPL pipeline and is pushing the neoCON destruction of every mildly leftist program at once. Total regressive failure.
And Sean Spicer lied on Day #2 when he said Trump and Pence were responsible for Carrier saving 1000 jobs. I thought the total was 800.
I can see that the media hasn’t made any course corrections or come up with new ways to treat these lies, misperceptions, alternate facts. They’re still reeling, also.
Trump Press Sec’y: 0 for 2.
Or 2 for 2, depending on your perspective.
I didn’t hear about day three yet.
>voting restrictions such as voter identification.
I understand there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and so little actual need for voter ID laws, but under these laws no one with a valid ID is restricted from voting.
Students with valid ID’s from another state are often prohibited from voting.
Requiring an ID to vote is a “solution in search of a problem” because the type of voter fraud Trump claims is non-existent, and simply their party’s political myth. It’s fearmongering to the simpleminded and easily lead astray. You register at a local level, they find you on the roll, you vote. Anyone can play THAT game, aka DEMOCRCACY. What’s REAL voter fraud is the discrimination against anyone who can’t afford the filing fees and paperwork costs and time/effort costs that go into purchasing these fucking useless IDs. Honest question, have you ever been that poor? Where you found yourself having to choose food or a constitutional right? If you haven’t, rethink your argument that “no one with a valid ID is restricted from voting” because you’ll see your assumption is flawed.
If the laws are anything like what we have in SC, it removes one secure form of ID and replaces it with different ones, often with less information. For example, here in SC, we used to be able to present three forms of ID. Now, we have more. All used to have addresses. Now, many (Passport, Passport Card, DoD CAC card, Military ID card, VA ID Card) do not. Plus, there is the fact that the Driver’s License can be faked.
But of course it goes over Lee’s head that Obama’s pick for AG was Eric Holder, who previously worked as a corporate lawyer to normalize Columbia and their death squads, so as to push for the Colombian free trade deal. I think the death squad method of ‘gerrymandering’ is both more effective and more alarming. But nary was an alarm raised.
Liberals in fascist houses shouldn’t throw Trumpian stones.
Really, I can literally do a google search and see that Lee has written at least a half dozen or more stories related to Eric Holder.
Here’s just one example.
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/06/eric-holder-returns-law-firm-lobbies-big-banks/
It’s really quite intriguing that your criticism of him is in his choice of topics.
Jamie only uses Google to look up pro-Trump stories.
Jamie doesn’t undertstand partisanship doesn’t work anymore.
Is there really such a thing? I can’t recall any media giving any positive stories about Trump. Seriously.
The Media, The Democrats & Republican leadership have all been 100% against him at literally every turn. Mostly due to Trump’s own stupidity.
carrier, yo
Ryan has been behind Trump on everything but Torture…even the Muslim ban today. The little evil mouse with his shit-eating grin dreams of tales of poor people without health carE or food on the table, fored to work 4 jobs below the minimum wage. He wants to get his agenda passed, and since Donald Drumpf is so ignorant and malable, he can accomplish that.
It’s Idiots on Parade, except with a lot of power to make everyone but the super-rich worse off.