Page 2 The Skanner March 1, 2017
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Opinion
This Is Why Trump Is Lying about Voter Fraud and Crime
T
here are two subjects
in particular that the
Trump
Administra-
tion lies about the most:
crime and voting.
During a recent interview
on “This Week” with George
Stephanopoulos, President
Trump’s senior advisor Ste-
phen Miller lied about voter
fraud during the 2016 elec-
tions.
Miller said that, “And you
have 14 percent of nonciti-
zens, according to academic
research, at a minimum, are
registered to vote, which is an
astonishing statistic.”
That statement is simply
false. Miller couldn’t pro-
duce a single shred of evi-
dence when Stephanopoulos
pressed him on the subject.
But Miller was just repeat-
ing what his boss said shortly
before the election.
At a rally in Cleveland, Ohio
on Oct. 23, 2016, presidential
candidate Donald Trump said
that, “14 percent of nonciti-
zens are registered to vote.”
President Trump entered
office lying about voter fraud
and threatening an investiga-
tion.
Civil rights leaders have
called for an investigation
of voter suppression during
the 2016 presidential elec-
tion. More recently, the lying
crossed over into the topic of
an increased “crime wave”
Lauren
Victoria
Burke
NNPA
Columnist
that doesn’t exist. Now, the
lies about a vast American
crime wave and record levels
of illegal voting seem to be
coming together.
On Jan. 23, during a meeting
with members of Congress
and the White House, Presi-
dent Trump lied about voting
again.
Trump and his 31-year-old
aide Stephen Miller, who was
sent out on all the Sunday
“
al, former Alabama Senator
Jeff Sessions, had a history of
prosecuting African Amer-
icans, who were register-
ing too many other African
Americans to vote as an As-
sistant U.S. Attorney. Having
provided no explanation or
apology for his past prosecu-
tions, particularly that of the
late Albert Turner Sr., there’s
no reason to believe that Ses-
sions won’t pick up where
he left off in Alabama in the
1970s.
Even though, Sessions’ past
statements and actions as a
prosecutor in Alabama are
clear, the public perception of
Sessions the man is mixed.
Turner’s son, Albert Turn-
er, Jr., issued a statement en-
it’s voter ID, closing polling
places, cutting Sunday voting
and purging voting rolls.
The continued strategy used
by present day Republicans is
still the “Southern Strategy”
— they’ve just added Hispan-
ics to the list of targets. The
Immigration Customs En-
forcement (ICE) raids started
only two days after Attorney
General Sessions was sworn-
in.
“The crackdown on illegal
criminals is merely the keep-
ing of my campaign promise.
Gang members, drug dealers
& others are being removed!”
Trump tweeted on February
12.
Trump tweeted about his
“crackdown on illegal crim-
inals” a day
after El Paso
ICE spokes-
woman in El
Paso Leticia
Zamarripa
stated that, “ICE regularly con-
ducts targeted enforcement
operations during which ad-
ditional resources and per-
sonnel are dedicated to appre-
hending deportable foreign
nationals.”
Many immigrant rights ad-
vocates knew the raids were
not routine before anyone
communicated anything.
The Trump Administration would appear to
be laying the groundwork to justify a new law
that would make it harder for people to vote
morning talk shows on Feb-
ruary 12, appear to be lying
for two reasons. First, Trump
can’t come to terms with the
fact that Hillary Clinton re-
ceived almost three million
more votes than he did, and
second, the Trump Admin-
istration would appear to be
laying the groundwork to
justify a new law that would
make it harder for people to
vote, particularly minorities.
Trump’s Attorney Gener-
dorsing Sessions that said,
“I believe that he is someone
with whom I, and others in
the civil rights community
can work if given the oppor-
tunity.”
Still, American history of
the disenfranchisement of
African American (and other
minority) voters is also clear.
In the late 1800s, it was a poll
tax, literacy tests and other re-
quirements that Black voters
were unlikely to meet. Today
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Civil Rights Will Suffer under AG Sessions
Donald Trump’s first weeks
in office have left Americans
reeling from what Republican
speechwriter Peggy Noonan
called his “cloud of crazy.”
His cabinet nominees seem
intentionally perverse: an ed-
ucation secretary who has no
clue about public schools; an
energy secretary who want-
ed to eliminate the depart-
ment; a treasury secretary
from Goldman Sachs who ran
a home foreclosure factory.
So when a White nationalist
sympathizer, Sen. Jefferson
Beauregard Sessions III, was
confirmed to be Attorney
General, it passed by as just
another absurdity.
The coverage of the confir-
mation battle focused pri-
marily on Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell’s
outrageous muzzling of Sen.
Elizabeth Warren as she tried
to read a 1986 letter from
Coretta Scott King criticizing
Sessions.
The muzzling was an un-
forgivable indignity. Lost in
the furor was the thrust of
King’s letter. She was writing
to urge the Republican-led
Senate of the time to reject
President Reagan’s nomina-
tion of Sessions to the federal
bench because he had “used
the power of his office as U.S.
attorney to intimidate and
chill the free exercise of the
Rev. Jesse
Jackson
NNPA
Columnist
ballot.” Sessions had opposed
the Voting Rights Act, made
racist statements and falsely
prosecuted Black civil rights
leaders seeking to register
people to vote in Alabama. He
“
president boasted of doing
— assault. He is leading oppo-
nent of immigration reform
and supported Trump’s ban
on Muslims.
On civil rights he learned, as
Strom Thurmond’s late oper-
ative Lee Atwater put it, that
“you can’t say ‘n—–’ — that
hurts you. Backfires. So you
say stuff like … states’ rights
and all that stuff.” Sessions
remains a fierce advocate of
states’ rights over civil rights.
Even as he joined 97 senators
make voting more difficult
for African Americans and
the young. Striking down the
voter ID law in North Caroli-
na, the federal appeals court
found that the new provisions
“target African Americans
with almost surgical preci-
sion,” while providing “in-
ept remedies” for an alleged
problem of voter fraud that is
nonexistent.
Now Sessions will take his
states’ rights views to the Jus-
tice Department. He will have
more power than
George
Wallace
ever had. Wallace
had state power.
Sessions has na-
tional power with
a state agenda,
with
thousands
of lawyers under
his command. He
will help shape the Supreme
Court. And simply by inac-
tion — by refusing to enforce
the Voting Rights Act as states
act to restrict voting — he can
do more to undermine civil
rights than Wallace could by
standing in the schoolhouse
door.
Every senator who voted
for this nomination shares
the shame. He is in position to
poison the well of justice for a
long time.
By confirming Senator Jeff Sessions
(R-Ala.) to serve as the next Attorney Gen-
eral, Donald Trump and the Republican
Senate put in office someone who is com-
mitted to undermining that Constitution
was an ardent and unrelent-
ing opponent of civil rights.
The Republican Senate reject-
ed his nomination.
Sessions views have not
changed. He opposed Su-
preme Court decisions strik-
ing down laws banning ho-
mosexual sex and same-sex
marriage. He voted against
equal pay for women and
against reauthorizing the Vi-
olence Against Women Act,
and he argued that it would
be a “stretch” to call grabbing
a woman’s genitals — as the
in voting to reauthorize the
Voting Rights Act in 2006, he
gave a speech declaring its en-
forcement sections unconsti-
tutional. When the Supreme
Court’s conservative gang of
five gutted the law, he praised
their decision, saying prepos-
terously, “(I)f you go to Ala-
bama, Georgia, North Caroli-
na, people aren’t being denied
the vote because of the color
of their skin.”
Even as he was saying that,
states across the South were
preparing a raft of laws to
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