Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s First Year: Judicial/Constitutional
It has been a surreal year. Just when we think things can’t get any worse, lo and behold, a new tweet comes out. Or a new policy is introduced. Or a new world leader is so offended that we get closer to doomsday. Trump’s election has normalized and publicized the proverbial anonymous yahoo comments, and it’s hard to imagine that he still has a small but loud base of support and that people chose this narcissistic, sexist, racist sociopath consciously. He has exemplified our slow, subtle transformation from intelligent citizens to mindless consumers to salivating spectators who have a constant need for entertainment and outrage.
I always said that when voting for president, what we’re really voting for was the Supreme Court. I am going on record to say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are so many ways a president can be harmful other than by Supreme Court appointments. To be sure, judicial appointments are one major way that Trump is detrimental to the country, and it will take at least a generation to recover from those appointments alone. But this document shows that a president can do deep and lasting damage in many ways.
Although I vacillate between disgust and defeat and anger, I am trying very hard to channel all of those feelings into fighting against our spiral toward Idiocracy. The only way to do this is for everyone who is eligible to actually get out and vote in every single election. This November’s midterm elections will tell us if Americans are really ready for progress or if they’re apathetic enough to continue our moral, ethical, and constitutional decline.
There have been several year-end round-ups about Trump’s first year. Many of them are laughably revisionist. But there were some informative ones. Axios created a great chart of search trends for some of the biggest news events of the first year, showing how we’ve all jumped from one four-alarm news fire to another. Rolling Stone summarized the damage of Trump’s first year. And Roger Cohen with the New York Times editorialized our frightening reality in If This is America.
This piece is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of Trump’s first year as President of the United States of America (let that sink in). There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. Included are impacts from January 20, 2017, to January 31, 2018 (in some cases, February 1). There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are listed under 19 different categories:
3. Women & Families;
4. LBGT;
5. Judicial/Constitutional;
6. Ethics;
7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;
8. Health & Safety;
9. Consumer Protections;
10. Education;
11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;
12. Immigration;
13. Social Contract;
14. Business/Economy/Budget;
15. Military/Defense/Police;
16. World;
17. General Governance;
18. Character; and
19. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.
Of course, some of the impacts may fit under multiple categories. For example, does Trump’s encouragement of police to treat suspects violently fall under Health and Safety or Law Enforcement? Or maybe Ethics or Character? There are many such conundrums, and I have tried to categorize each example appropriately. Some may disagree on the categorization. And that’s OK. As a researcher, I’m still pondering good ways to visualize all of this data, but in the meantime, it’s listed here. Fair warning: This is long. The items may not necessarily be in chronological order.
Since this will take me months to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This fifth article is on Trump’s impacts on the judiciary and constitution.
I want to acknowledge Amy Siskind’s weekly list of subtle changes that experts in authoritarianism say to watch out for. Amy’s in-depth listings were invaluable, and a must-read itself.
Buckle your seatbelts.
Judicial/Constitutional
As mentioned in my opening, I have always considered judicial appointments to be the most important and most consequential aspect of the presidency. When republicans took over the Senate in 2015, they lived up to their identity of the “party of no” and party of obstruction. They successfully blocked not only all but 22 judicial appointments to the federal courts, but also a Supreme Court Justice — more than 100 in all, and broken records in their obstruction, confirming the fewest appointments since 1898. In fact, republicans obstructed so many judicial appointments that they caused a judicial emergency, leaving many individuals and businesses with little chance for any kind of justice since the courts are so backlogged. Interestingly, before President Obama, judicial appointments were always routine, regardless of the party controlling the Senate or in the presidency. All of these vacancies have given Trump huge power to shape the courts into final arbiters of issues affecting tens of millions of lives for generations to come. And he’s able to do since he’s relying solely on The Federalist Society, a right-wing organization, to name those judicial appointments. In doing so, he’s also rushing nominees through the process and breaking longstanding Senate practices by nominating judges without any consultation with Senate Democrats. In addition, Republicans have tried slipping controversial candidates into a packed agenda for a sneaky vote. All of this has added up to Trump meeting his goal to “end the progressive state” and impact American lives for generations. Some have estimated that Trump will fill about 30 percent of the country’s federal judges before the end of his first term! So far, we’ve seen exactly what types of people Trump has been appointing to almost a third of the judiciary, and it’s terrifying. Trump has made the judiciary a laughing stock with “comically unfit” judicial nominees. In the process, both Trump and AG Sessions have continuously called out specific judges and justices for making rulings that Trump disagrees with. As one example, in speaking to the conservative Heritage Foundation (which, as an aside, is helping to hand-pick judicial nominees), Sessions scolded federal judges who have ruled against the administration.
Aside from judicial appointments, this administration has also been heading toward a constitutional crisis on many levels.
This is a packed section, so please let me know in the comments if I’m missing something!
· After unprecedented obstruction, Trump appointed, and the Senate confirmed, right-wing zealot Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch is known as a hardline conservative who sided with Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor in their fight against contraception coverage in the ACA. He wasted no time in affirming his staunchly conservative, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-consumer, pro-religion-in-government stance, opposing equal rights for same-sex couples, dissenting from the Court’s refusal to review a challenge to California’s concealed carry laws, and joining the Chief Justice in a decision that, for the first time, requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church. He also disagreed with the compromise that the Court came up with on Trump’s travel ban, wanting instead to let the travel ban take effect in its entirety rather than exempt exempted foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.
· Trump’s nominees have all been doozies, most of whom seem hostile to civil rights. His judicial picks are a Handmaid’s Tale in waiting! Here are some examples in no particular order (and note that Trump’s appointees are almost universally white men with a long history of anti-women decisions):
o John Bush, a right-wing blogger, was nominated (and seemingly reluctantly confirmed) for the 6th circuit court of appeals. Bush has been referred to as “the Donald Trump of judges.” He has a long history of making sexist and racist remarks, which, apparently in this brave new world, is an asset. He’s used the word “faggot” in a speech, referred to the Leader of the House of Representatives as “mama” and urged the congress to “gag her,” opposed admitting women into the Virginia Military Institute, and strongly opposed the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision outlawing sodomy laws and protecting same-sex couples. He also has used partisan rhetoric to oppose the ACA and has been a member of clubs that discriminate against women, people of color, and Jewish people. Bush’s more than 400 blog posts — usually under a pseudonym — relied heavily on right-wing “news” sites, many famous for focusing on conspiracy theories. For example, he buys in completely to the birther movement. He also claimed that “the two greatest tragedies in our country are slavery and abortion,” going on to state in his confirmation hearing, “I believe that [Roe] is a tragedy.” Also during his confirmation hearing, Bush appeared to not understand the Brown v. Board of Educationdecision, or any history of civil rights.
o Don Willett, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, was appointed to the fifth circuit court of appeals. Just like Trump, Willett is an avid tweeter, and has joked in his tweets about transgender students and opposing gay marriage. His right-wing ideology has even conservatives concerned, particularly his opinion in Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which “buys wholeheartedly into libertarian ideas that would dismantle much of American government.” As Ian Millhiser writes, “Much as conservative media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart have created an alternative universe of facts for their consumers, libertarian scholars have constructed an alternative history of the Constitution — some of it based in reality, much of it based in half-truths or outright misrepresentations. If mainstream lawyers and judges are not familiar with these alternative facts, they will be poorly equipped to rebut them when judges like Willett write them into opinions like Patel.” Further, The Leadership Conference, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations committed to promoting and protecting civil and human rights, wrote an open letter urging the Senate to oppose Willett’s confirmation due to his “right-wing agenda and extreme legal views,” including conservative bias, sex discrimination, LGBT discrimination, voting rights suppression, opposition to affirmative action, and open contempt for the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also met Trump’s — via the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society — litmus test of opposing abortion rights and gun safety laws.
o Kurt Engelhardt was nominated to the fifth circuit court of appeals. He currently sits on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Like Willett’s nomination, The Leadership Conference strongly opposedEngelhardt’s nomination, primarily due to how he’s handled sexual harassment and discrimination cases and his membership in The Federalist Society, a fringe group, and extremist anti-abortion group Louisiana Lawyers for Life. The Alliance for Justice also opposed the nomination, publishing a 20-page report on Engelhardt’s concerning rulings and affiliations. He has a history of ruling against women. In EEOC v. Rite Aid Corp, in which a woman experienced unwanted groping of her breasts and repeated suggestions of another employee going home with her and brushing up against her, Engelhardt ruled that repeated unwanted groping of a woman and sexually harassing remarks by a male colleague “were neither severe nor physically threatening, though quite unwelcome.” In Fleming v. Napolitano, he dismissed a case against a supervisor who allegedly harassed an employee and spread rumors that she had engaged in sexual activity with him. In Taylor v. Joton Paints Inc., Engelhardt dismissed a discrimination case in which a woman was fired two weeks after giving birth after being on bedrest for 16 weeks due to pregnancy complications. In that ruling, Engelhardt stated, “the fact that plaintiff’s absence was cause of pregnancy does not dispense with the general requirement that employees must show up for work,” even though Engelhardt was aware of the fact that a male colleague who had taken medical leave for 16 weeks because of a gangrene toe was not fired upon his return. He also praised Clarence Thomas’ dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws that targeted same-sex couples for criminalization. Engelhardt also has a history of putting corporations over consumer protections or the environment. In one of the most controversial cases he’s heard, the Danziger Bridge Case, in which police officers shot six unarmed black evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, killing two and shooting the arm off one woman, Engelhardt vacated the convictions of the officers involved in what the Washington Post called “a dereliction of justice far greater than the prosecutorial abuses he cited in his order.”
o Michael Brennan was nominated for the seventh circuit court of appeals. Brennan’s nomination is strongly opposed by several organizations, including The Leadership Conference, Alliance for Justice, and People for the American Way. Brennan’s confirmation hearing in and of itself is reason to oppose: For more than 100 years, confirmation hearings were only held for judicial nominees who had the support of both home-state senators, indicated by blue slips that these senators submit. Brennan does not, but chair of the judiciary committee, Chuck Grassley, decided to ignore that and move forward with hearings anyway. This despite the fact that under President Obama, Grassley refused to move forward any hearing without all blue slips turned in. That is not the only tradition that is being ignored in this nomination. Going back decades, the “Wisconsin tradition” requires a bipartisan commission with members chosen by the two Wisconsin senators to solicit applications and recommend finalists for judicial vacancies to the senators, who then decide which names to send to the White House for consideration. This process was ignored in this case. According to The Leadership Conference, Brennan “has a far-right judicial philosophy that includes a disrespect for the bedrock principle of stare decisis. In addition, he served for six years as the chair of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s judicial selection committee, and he helped appoint several judicial extremists to the state supreme court.” As chair of Governor Scott Walker’s Judicial Selection Advisory Committee, Brennan made recommendations to fill 75 state judgeships who were all ultraconservative and what The Leadership Conference describes as “out of the mainstream of legal thought.” These included one judge who stated, “One will be better off contracting AIDS than developing cancer, because those afflicted with the politically-correct disease will be getting all the funding. How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent victims of more prevalent ailments” and “the feminist movement [is] largely composed of angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family” as she blamed women for their own rapes. Another judge who Brennan admired and helped appoint to the state Supreme Court compared affirmative action to slavery. Brennan also suggested that the judiciary should ignore stare decisis and reverse decisions by “activist judges.” He conveniently neglected to define who those activist judges might be in that paper. But he clearly called out judges who affirmed the Violence Against Women Act as “activist judges” as he praised the judges who struck down struck down portions of that Act. It’s not only women who he detests. Brennan defended the Supreme Court’s decision holding that people with disabilities could not sue state governments for damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Brennan is also fond of archaic, draconian, harsh criminal sentencing, especially for young men of color, abolishing parole and increasing penalty ranges by 50 percent. Further, Brennan seems to think that constitutional protections such as habeas corpus should be applied discriminately. And during his confirmation hearing, Brennan refused to acknowledge that implicit bias exists, despite being given evidence in the moment.
o Damien Schiff was nominated to be the Court of Federal Claims, which oversees environmental and agency suits. People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, League of Conservation Voters, National Women’s Law Center, Lambda Legal, and others oppose his nomination. He has a horrendous record on judicial temperament, legal philosophy, corporate power, environmental protections, women’s rights, and LGBT rights. In one of his many blog posts, he called Justice Kennedy a “judicial prostitute.”According to an Alliance for Justice fact sheet, Schiff believes that the government should sell the national parks to private owners, and he supported the idea of selling Yosemite to the Walt Disney Company. He thinks that the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), which protects employees’ health and safety on the job and provides them with information, training, and assistance, is unconstitutional. Schiff has spent his career fighting against environmental protections while personally ridiculing and challenging the motives of environmentalists, as well as LGBT advocates, union organizers, and legal scholars. As one example of his inflammatory attacks against environmentalists, Schiff is against the Endangered Species Act, and wrote that environmentalists are using the Act to “push an agenda that has more to do with stifling productive human activity than fostering ecological balance.” As PFAW asked, “How could any litigant supporting regulations and actions protecting the environment [or anyone else who has been a target of Schiff’s ire] possibly believe they would get a fair hearing in a Schiff courtroom?” He has also written that he wanted a far-right Supreme Court that could “overturn precedents upon which many of the unconstitutional excrescences of the New Deal and Great Society eras depend.” Further, he believes that Citizens United was a good decision and that corporate money/speech “adds value to our democratic society” and that corporate spending in campaigns and elections “should be encouraged.” However, during his confirmation hearing, Schiff said that his interpretation of the Constitution is irrelevant to the Senate’s consideration and refused to discuss his own past statements on the matter. Schiff has compared affirmative action to slavery, Jim Crow, and Japanese internment camps, describing the described Grutter v. Bollinger case as “a historic mistake along the lines of Dred Scott, Plessy, and Korematsu.” He has written that those who favor legalized abortion are “gravely in error” and that “anti-abortion legislation is fully defensible on secular grounds.” He also believes that applying Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination, to school athletics is unconstitutional. In another blog post, he wrote about his gross distaste of Justice Holmes, how government should be bound by “natural law” and “divine law” rather than by the Constitution, and how the country’s only inevitable outcome is to adopt some form of moral fundamentalism. On that note, he opposes civil rights for LGBT people and opposes gay marriage. He also criticized the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Kansas, which struck down laws criminalizing consensual sexual conduct between same-sex adults. He has also criticized anti-bullying efforts in schools, characterizing them “teaching gayness in schools.”
o Mark Norris was nominated to the US District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. His nomination is opposed by many organizations, including AFL-CIO, The Leadership Conference, Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way, National Women’s Law Center, and 34 national, state, and local LGBT advocacy organizations. Like other Trump nominees, Norris has a partial Not Qualified rating from the American Bar Association. Norris has a despicable history in the areas of voting rights, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, women’s rights, and other right-wing issues. In fact, Norris’s anti-civil rights background took 20 pages to summarize. As a Tennessee state senator, Norris supported suppressive voter ID bills that exclude student IDs, and pushed for a law that would have required proof of citizenship with only a driver’s license, passport, or birth certificate to register to vote. Norris has been called out as the judicial nominee with the worse anti-LGBT record. As some examples, he refused federal guidance to allow transgender students to use the restroom of their gender identity at their schools, threatening to sue the Obama administration. Further, he voted for a bill that barred Tennessee cities or counties from passing local laws to protect LGBT students from discrimination. He strongly supported the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibited teachers from discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality in public schools and allowed school staff to out students to their parents. Related, he supported the “Hate bill,” which allows mental health counselors to discriminate against LGBTQ clients. Needless to say, Norris is ardently anti-same-sex marriage, and sponsored a joint resolution urging Congress to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment, defining marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman. He also supported legislation that prohibited Tennessee from recognizing same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships even if valid in another state. He was so outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriage that he tried to intervene in a same-sex divorce and custody case, arguing against treating them as a married couple for purposes of interpreting state child custody laws using a legal position that was in direct conflict with the Supreme Court precedent. Norris is also dangerously xenophobic. He sponsored a bill granting Tennessee highway patrol officers authority to detain, interrogate, and arrest undocumented immigrants and supported a requirement that the state driver’s license exam be available only in English. He also supported a lawsuit to stop refugee settlement in Tennessee, equating refugees with terrorists and saying that he didn’t want Sharia law in Tennessee. Speaking of law, Norris sponsored a bill that required criminal court judges to consider immigration status for sentencing and give longer sentences for those who are undocumented. Norris is also against the Deferred Access for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and against “illegals” in general. He also appears to hate women, regularly voting against reproductive rights, even in cases of rape or incest, and contraception coverage in insurance. He also wanted to grant legal rights to fertilized eggs, and supports unnecessary burdensome requirements on abortion providers, such as hospital admitting privileges and surgical standards, as well as banning abortion altogether after 20 weeks. Norris also appears to be against the separation of church and state. He cosponsored a resolution urging Congress to prohibit any federal court from reviewing a case against “acknowledging God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.” He is also an advocate for displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings, and cosponsored a bill to prohibit communities from removing Confederate monuments. Norris is also anti-union and against workers’ rights, supporting legislation that would prohibit passing a living wage ordinance and that would make it more difficult for injured workers to get workers’ compensation. Thankfully, the Senate has acknowledged Norris’s horrible record and may not confirm him.
[Editor’s Note: Kudos to all of the above organizations for finding all of this information. Tennessee “journalists” don’t seem to care much about many of these issues as there is not much, if anything, written in the local Tennessee news about many of these examples highlighted.]
o Kyle Duncan was nominated to the fifth circuit court of appeals. He is best known for his work at a right-wing firm that “defends religious liberties.” His record is “unquestionably ‘marked by ideologically driven positions.’” He worked to eliminate the ACA’s contraception mandate by arguing that for-profit corporations have rights to religious freedom. He also wrote an amicus brief for a far-right, anti-choice organization to support TRAP laws restricting abortion rights. He has also argued that the federal government should be allowed to give millions of dollars to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, a far-right religious organization that is notoriously anti-choice and anti-women, not to mention dangerously homophobic, encouraging parents to reject their transgender children. In addition, Duncan has argued that pharmacists who are Catholic should not have to follow state laws requiring them to fill prescriptions for contraception. He has also shown himself to be rabidly anti-LGBT rights. As an attorney, he spent his career trying to halt or regress all progress in the area of civil rights, supporting Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage and denying visitation rights and adoption rights to same-sex parents and a. He served as lead counsel for the school district that targeted transgender student Gavin Grimm, arguing that being transgender is a delusion, using junk science, and encouraging parents to “discourage transgender persistence.” He’s also spoken multiple times at the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has been classified as a hate group and supports criminalizing homosexuality around the world. He noted that the harms associated with recognizing same-sex marriage would be “severe, unavoidable, and irreversible.” To back that up, he has defended court clerkswho refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Duncan, along with Thomas Farr (see below), defended North Carolina’s voter suppression efforts requiring photo ID, eliminating same-day voter registration, reducing early voting, and prohibiting out-of-precinct voting. Upon striking down North Carolina’s law, the court described it as “the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.” He also unsuccessfully defended Texas’s repressive voter ID law. Duncan leaves enough hate in his heart for immigrants, too. He challenged the legality of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) executive order, which granted legal status to nearly four million undocumented immigrant parents whose children are either U.S. citizens or residents. He also challenged the constitutionality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Duncan’s record in limiting the civil rights of criminal justice defendants has been equally disturbing. He has argued against retroactively applying the Miller v Alabama rule, which prohibits life sentences without the possibility of parole for children, arguing that the ruling “very clearly says that life without parole is still a constitutional punishment for juvenile murderers.” (Hint: It doesn’t.) He also argued that severe prison overcrowding in California was not, in fact, unconstitutional. (Hint: It is.) Finally, he argued that a defendant does not have a valid claim of ineffective counsel when the defendant’s attorney did not inform the defendant that a guilty plea could result in deportation. (Hint: A defendant does.) Finally, he argued that prosecutors who withhold evidence, even in cases where false evidence sends people to death row, did not need any additional training. The crux of his argument in an appeal for an exonerated man was that “what happened to [this man] was so outrageous and illegal that the district attorney could not be held responsible [for withholding evidence].”
o Jeff Mateer serves as the first assistant attorney general of Texas and was nominated to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Thankfully, his nomination was withdrawn. But not before the public learned what Trump values in a judge. Mateer is staunchly anti-LGBT and has spoken at the “Kill the Gays” conference, an event organized by a far-right religious zealot who has advocated for the death penalty for gay people. He has also referred to transgender youth as “Satan’s plan” and supports conversion therapy. He also compared same-sex marriage to bestiality. Mateer argued that the separation of church and state is a myth, and has boasted about discriminating based on sexual orientation.
o Howard Nielson, Jr., is a partner at a conservative law firm in Utah and was nominated to the US District Court in Utah. He has an ardently anti-LGBT record, and more than 30 LGBT groups, among others, have opposed his nomination. Nielson is best known for his defense of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage (thankfully, temporarily). He argued that homosexuality is a choice, against all scientific evidence, and that being discriminated against as an LGBT person doesn’t lead to stress or mental difficulties. He continued to ignore all evidence by arguing that opposite-sex couples provide the optimal child-rearing environment. He also suggested that judges who are gay should not be able to sit on cases involving LGBT issues. He is also anti-women, supporting the TRAP laws in Texas, which subject abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not imposed on other medical professionals. Nielson has also argued against free speech, arguing that any recklessly false statements of fact made by public employees should not be protected under the First Amendment. In addition, he challenged subsidies on state-run exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, challenged enforcement efforts of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and challenged Colorado’s ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana. He also repeatedly represented the NRA in failed attempts to overturn firearm regulations and supported a ban on affirmative action. While at the Department of Justice, Nielson politicized the agency as part of a hiring committee that deselected for interviews those candidates with Democratic Party and liberal affiliations apparent on their applications at a significantly higher rate than applicants with Republican Party, conservative, or neutral affiliations. Perhaps most disturbingly, Nielson wrote at least one memo attempting to justify torture of US citizens, arguing that citizens detained outside of the US would not be protected by the Geneva Conventions. This memo appeared to provide arguments for future international conflicts.
o Matthew Peterson was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He has never tried a case and seemed to have very little knowledge about the law. He withdrew from consideration after he couldn’t form coherent or educated responses about basic law from the Senate judiciary committee.
o Thomas Farr was nominated for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Coincidentally, this seat has been vacant for some time and had a highly qualified female nominee by President Obamawho was blocked in an effort to block all judicial appointments by President Obama. Farr’s nomination is opposed by many organizations, including the NAACP, Alliance for Justice, National Employment Lawyers Association, and others. He is best known for his ties to the far-right white nationalist movement and his connections to white supremacists. He has been referred to as “moral poison,” and his pick has been described as “tantamount to Hitler wreaking havoc.” Farr was nominated for the same seat by George W. Bush in 2006, but the Senate judiciary committee at the time didn’t advance his nomination due to his longstanding ties to racist politicians and his opposition to voting rights, workers’ rights, and economic equality. He represented Jesse Helm’s senate campaigns in what has been described as two of the most notoriously racist campaigns in modern American history. He helped create a racially biased and misleading ad campaign against a black senate candidate that showed white hands crumbling a rejection letter, saying, “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” In a subsequent campaign, Farr led voter suppression efforts so egregious that George Bush’s Justice Department filed a complaint against him for violating the Voting Rights Act. In that campaign, he sent 150,000 postcards to mostly black voters in North Carolina asserting that they were ineligible to vote and warning that voting could result in criminal prosecution. He drafted and defended North Carolina’s “monster” voter restriction law, which were ultimately struck down by the federal court because it “targeted black voters with almost surgical precision.” Farr also has longstanding connections to one of the most influential racist hate groups in history, The Pioneer Fund, which was founded to “pursue race betterment” and was one of the major funders of the fight against civil rights. Farr also defended North Carolina’s gerrymandered Congressional districts, which strongly favored republicans and were ordered by the federal court to be redrawn. Farr has an unfavorable opinion of workers’ rights as he does voting rights. He has championed limiting or eliminating legal protections for workplace discrimination, preventing workers from suing in state court for any claim of discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, age, sex, or disability. In one of many defenses of sex discrimination by a company, Farr said, “Women with children should be at home and not employed in the workplace.” He has also worked to undermine the enforcement of workplace safety protections and supports repealing employment laws. So far, Farr’s appointment has been blocked, but Trump may reappoint him in 2018.
o Steve Grasz is Nebraska’s chief deputy attorney general and general counsel to the Nebraska Republican Party. He is nominated to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Grasz is one of several of Trump’s nominees who has been deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association, whose reputation republicans have since tried to smear. Like nearly all of Trump’s appointments, Grasz has a disturbing history of anti-LGBT and anti-womensentiments and actions. He has defended conversion therapy and referred to Roe v Wade’s legacy as “moral bankruptcy.” Grasz is the director of the Board of the Nebraska Family Alliance, which has celebrated the mass closings of clinics that offer women’s reproductive services, condemned Supreme Court decisions that protect women’s rights, and falsely claimed that abortion rights put women’s lives at risk. He compared “personhood” of fetuses to the civil rights of Native and African Americans and fought to deny Medicaid coverage to a woman who sought to terminate her pregnancy because she had been raped as required by federal law. Grasz also advocated to amend the City of Omaha Charter to allow for discrimination against LGBT employees for religious liberty and served as legal counsel for Nebraskans for the Death Penalty.
o One of few female nominees, Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She has never served as a judge. Barrett is ardently anti-women. She said that Roe v. Wade was an “erroneous decision” and called the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit “an assault on religious liberty.” She also believes that she need not adhere to legal precedents if they conflict with her religious beliefs. She believes that that judges should be free to put their personal views ahead of their judicial oath to faithfully follow the law. Barrett is also part of a small Christian group called People of Praise, in which men are referred to as “heads” and women are “handmaids” and taught that husbands are the heads of their wives and should exercise authority over the family. And now she serves on the federal bench.
o Brett Talley was nominated and confirmed as a federal district judge. Not only has Talley never tried a case, but he has only practiced law for three years. He was rated Not Qualified by the American Bar Association. He is best known as a politically partisan blogger, denouncing “Hillary Rotten Clinton,” pledging support for the NRA, and criticizing “Never Trump” people. Further, during his confirmation hearings, Talley failed to disclose that he was married to a senior lawyer in the White House, a clear conflict of interest and a question that was specifically asked on the ethics form.
· Trump’s judicial appointments could have ramifications at the state level, too. The Texas governor recently signed House Bill 3859 into law, which allows foster parents and organizations to refuse to place children with same-sex or non-Christian foster or adoptive parents and also gives foster parents and organizations license to refuse vaccines, deny contraception, and send children to anti-LGBT conversion therapy. And Alabama’s new modern-day poll tax has barred thousands of people from voting.
· Judges and justices are the only people who Trump gets to appoint. He also appoints US Attorneys. And in a potentially unethical move, Trump met with one of his US Attorney picks, Jessie Liu, as part of her interview process. This is frowned upon because leads to the appearance of political influence in federal prosecutors.
· Appointments are the only way that Trump is abusing the third branch of government. He is forcing judges around the country to drop their full dockets and head to the border to speed up deportations. This has not only exacerbated the backlog in local courts, but reports found that these reassignments both increased the U.S. immigration court backlog and left many judges on these short-term assignments with little to do.
· Those court backlogs could get even bigger if Jeff Sessions has his way. Sessions is staunchly antimarijuana and once said that he considered the Klan to be OK guys until he found out they smoked pot. He wants to regress and revert back to a time when our courts and prisons were inundated with pot smokers. Sessions views marijuana as a “dangerous menace” and wants to let the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment expire. The amendment prohibits the Justice Department from wasting resources prosecuting medical marijuana sellers and users who are protected from state laws. Further, Sessions plans on rescinding President Obama’s Cole memo, which instructed federal prosecutors to not charge marijuana offenses in states where marijuana is legal.
· Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the disgraceful and convicted former sheriff of Maricopa County, AZ, who used racial profiling.
· In the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Trump is backing the discriminatory baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.
· Trump is chipping away at the constitution in other ways, too. He vowed to “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.” The Johnson Amendment regulates what tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, can say or do in the area of politics. As Emma Green wrote in the Atlantic, the Johnson Amendment isn’t about free speech, it’s about cash and putting even more money in politics. The religious right has been trying to dismantle the Amendment for years, and tried using it as a bargaining chip in the tax bill. Thankfully, Trump failed to repeal the Amendment. For now. But Trump DID sign an executive order loosening restrictions on churches getting directly involved in political campaigns and making it easier for employers claiming religious objections to deny employees contraception coverage in their health care plans.
· One direct ramification of this the Supreme Court refusing to hear two caseschallenging a Mississippi law that allows businesses and government employees to deny services to LGBT people based on their religious beliefs.
· This administration has little respect for the constitution in many ways. AG Sessions stated in a speech that religious expression overrides civil rights, and that his Justice Department is “focused on defending traditional Christianity against a ‘hostile’ cultural climate.”
· Sessions also rescinded a letter from President Obama to local courts advising local courts to “be wary of imposing stiff fees and penalties on poor defendants.” This is in line with Sessions’ advocacy of a debters’ prison. He has rescinded more than 25 legal guidance papers.
· Sessions also took a rare step of asking the Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s ruling and allow the Trump administration to dismantle the DACA program that provides work permits to undocumented immigrants raised in the United States.
· The head of Trump’s “election fraud commission” previously wrote a law in Kansas that resulted in people with disabilities losing their voting rights.
· Trump has been sued by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washingtonand National Security Archives for violating federal and constitutional law that prohibits destruction of presidential records for deleting 22 tweets, including one noting a meeting with military brass at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
· From the beginning, Trump has been referred to as a one-man constitutional crisis, making statements and policy proposals that would blatantly violate constitutional rights. As just a few examples, he pledged to deport over 11 million undocumented immigrants, to ban Muslims from entering the United States, to surveil American Muslims and their houses of worship, to torture again, and to revise libel laws. As ACLU National Director Anthony Romero has pointed out, these pledges alone would violate First, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution.
The next article in this series will be on ethics. Stay tuned!
