The presidency of Donald Trump has not been a successful one for him—except for the obscene amount of havoc and pain he has inflicted upon the most vulnerable people in our society. As part of his reign of terror, Trump has appointed a record number of conservative federal judges, many of whom hold absolutely frightening views on race, religion, and reproductive justice. In fact, their retrograde views seem to be a necessary qualification for becoming a judicial nominee under this administration.
As an example, Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation, has been universally supported in the legal community. It is considered to be beyond debate. Yet Trump has put forth at least ten judicial nominees in the past year who refuse to offer an opinion on Brown. As Mother Jones reports, earlier this month, Trump’s nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Neomi Rao, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is positioned to take the seat left vacant by Brett Kavanaugh when he was confirmed to the Supreme Court. In her hearing, Rao refused to answer whether she thought Brown was correctly decided.
Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) whether the court had made the right decision in Brown, Rao replied, “As a judicial nominee, I think it’s not appropriate for me to comment on the correctness of particular precedents.”
When pressed for a yes or no answer, Rao only replied that the case was “an incredibly important decision of the Supreme Court.”
You cannot make this stuff up. Donald Trump’s nominees to the federal bench actually refuse to acknowledge school desegregation as a good thing. This would almost seem unbelievable in 2019, but it is exactly what we’ve come to expect from this administration. It is also completely frightening, especially given that several of those people have already been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and will go on to receive a vote in the Senate.
Judicial nominees refusing to endorse Brown is unprecedented and pretty much unheard of. And this goes well beyond political party. Neither George W. Bush’s nor Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees had any trouble agreeing that this case represented progress in American society and was properly decided. Once again, we are in an era of complete madness, where everything we know to be sensible and just is becoming completely undone by the madman in the White House and his friends.
“Rao’s refusal to acknowledge that Brown was rightly decided is a serious flouting of democratic norms and a judicial dog whistle,” says Todd A. Cox, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund policy director, “signaling that Brown, its legacy, and all the progress flowing from it are potentially up for renegotiation.”
Remember when Hillary Clinton warned us that Donald Trump represented a grave danger to this country? She’s been proven right time and time again. It’s been said that one person alone, even if they are the president, can’t destroy our democracy thanks to our government’s system of checks and balances. But what about one person, his incredibly cruel and racist staff, his administration, and his entire political party? What happens then? Donald Trump and the Republicans are absolutely hell-bent on destroying every bit of progress toward equality we've made over the last six decades. It’s not only a disgrace; it’s also a huge disaster, and poses an enormous threat to all of us.