In today’s episode of The President Sure Can Pick’em! President Donald Trump has nominated to a federal judgeship a man who, in college, believed Americans should be required to take literacy tests in order to vote, despite the history of literacy tests being used historically to prevent Black people from engaging in the nation’s electoral process.
Meet Josh Divine, the solicitor general of Missouri and director of special litigation in the state attorney general’s office.
Trump has nominated Divine for “a lifetime federal judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri,” HuffPost reported.
In 2010, when Divine was a junior at the University of Northern Colorado, he wrote an opinion piece for his school’s newsletter, The Mirror, arguing that a literacy test isn’t such a bad thing, in and of itself, as long as every American is required to take it, as opposed to only requiring it for Black Americans, which is how literary tests were used until they were banned under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“In the Civil Rights Act, literacy tests were banned because they were used as a form of discrimination in that they were only administered to a certain group of people, but literacy tests themselves are not a bad thing,” Divine wrote.
“People who aren’t informed about issues or platforms — especially when it is so easy to become informed these days — have no business voting, which is why I propose state-administered literacy tests,” he continued.
Divine’s piece — which, unsurprisingly, specifically took aim at people who voted for former President Barack Obama — made little logical sense considering the fact that literacy tests don’t test how well people are “informed about issues or platforms.” Literacy tests test literacy — how well people can read, write and comprehend.
Here’s an interesting question, though: Could Trump pass either test in 2025?
Could the president who just discovered the word “groceries,” insist on using the word “interpose” even though he has no idea what it means, and is demonstrably incapable of speaking in complete, coherent, grammatically correct sentences pass a literacy test if he had to take one on the spot in order to vote in a U.S. election? If literacy tests did test political knowledge, would the sitting commander-in-chief, who answered “I don’t know” to a reporter who asked him if he’s obligated to uphold the Constitution, pass?
What about Trump’s other Cabinet picks? Would they do well on an exam that tested how informed they are on the issues? Could Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who failed to correctly define habeas corpus, pass? How about ICE director Thomas Homan, who thinks informing immigrants of their legal rights is an arrestable offense?
At the end of the day, requiring literacy tests for voters in a nation where 54% of adults read below a sixth-grade reading level is probably a bad idea. And if they were required today, they would probably still be aimed at disenfranchising Black voters, much like Republican congressional maps and Trump’s factless claims regarding voter fraud in the 2020 election, a lie the president is still telling as recently as last week.
Of course, Divine wrote his opinion piece in 2010, when he was in college. Who knows if he still feels that literacy tests should be required to vote in 2025? After all, Vice President JD Vance — Trump’s favorite professional butt-sniffer who spearheaded the propaganda about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, — wrote a piece in 2012, while he was in college, criticizing the GOP for being “openly hostile to non-whites” and alienating “Blacks, Latinos, [and] the youth.” Hell, in 2016, Vance called Trump an “idiot” and “reprehensible,” and compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Still, some judicial advocacy groups are already critical of Trump nominating Divine, who previously worked as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and served as chief counsel to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
“Josh Divine’s op-ed advocating for literacy tests at the polls and arguing against the idea of democracy itself is one of the most disturbing writings we’ve ever seen in a judicial nominee’s record,” said Jake Faleschini, the justice program director at Alliance for Justice. “It should be unquestionable that a voter suppression tool rooted in the racism of the Jim Crow South has no place in our democracy. He may have written some of them in college, but college wasn’t very long ago for Divine. He’s a radically young nominee to be a lifetime judge and doesn’t have even close to the minimal legal experience expected of federal judges.”
SEE ALSO:
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Op-Ed: Trump’s New Nominee For Federal Judgeship Advocated For Literacy Tests For Voters Despite Racist History
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