This one is hard to believe.  Perhaps it is a good sign, a sign of persistent optimism, a suggestion of semi-intact sensibilities, that this this one is so hard to believe.  

Just when we grow used to there being no moral standard apologists for America’s current president would not smash for the sake of a “win,” America’s current Senate majority leader crashes into a new low.  Mr. McConnell ostensibly serves the people of Kentucky and ostensibly leads the U.S. Senate.  As majority leader, of course he is also custodian of his party’s welfare in the legislature.  Soaring beyond stewardship, he places party over country, time and time again.  On Friday, McConnell filed cloture on Thomas Farr’s nomination to North Carolina’s Eastern District Court (04 NC-E).  Let’s parse what this horrifying possibility means.

District court: To serve on a district court means to be a judge who hears federal cases, including disputes about the constitutionality of federal laws.  Our country has 94 U.S. District Courts, which are trial courts, distributed across every state as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.  Appeals to district court decisions move on to U.S. Courts of Appeals, 13 of which sit just below the level of the Supreme Court, America’s highest court.  Our District Court Judgeships are lifetime appointments.  

The North Carolina Eastern District Court vacancy for which Farr has been nominated is over a decade old.  In December 2005, Judge Malcolm Howard changed to senior status, vacating the seat as a full time judge.  In 2009, Senator Richard Burr endorsed federal prosecutor Jennifer Prescod May-Parker as a potential nominee.  However, when President Barack Obama nominated May-Parker in June 2013, and again in January 2014, Senator Burr withheld the approval needed from him as a home state senator to move her nomination out of the Judiciary Committee.  Why Mr. Burr changed his mind about this judicial nominee is unclear.  We do know she would have been the first African-American to ever hold a seat on the Eastern North Carolina District Court, which serves a population in 44 counties that is nearly 30% African-American.  Mr. Burr also opposed Obama’s April 2016 nomination of former NC Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson, another African-American woman.  In 145 years, never a single African-American judge on this court.  Now the seat may instead go to Mr. Farr.  Read on, dear reader, read on.

Cloture: Filing a cloture motion means setting a timer for when the vote on a nomination (or other bill or motion) comes to the Senate floor.  This time limit means arguments and potential filibusters are no longer possible.  Invoking cloture is a process used to limit or end debate on an issue and essentially “force” a vote.  Currently, 60 Senate votes in favor of cloture establish a window of 30 hours until the floor vote must be held.  McConnell filed the cloture motion on Farr’s nomination Friday, 11.15.2018.  The Senate therefore is expected to vote incredibly soon.

Thomas Farr: Saving the worst for last, let’s examine who this nominee is for a lifetime appointment to the district court.  Remember North Carolina’s 2013 voting restrictions, called out in 2016 by a federal court for the “almost surgical precision” of their specific targeting of non-white voters?  That was Farr.  Remember Jesse Helms’ 1990 run against Harvey Gantt which honed racially biased voter suppression as campaign strategy?  That was Farr.  Farr has been nominated for this seat before, late in the George W. Bush administration.  He was not named to the seat after Senator Kay Hagan and President Barack Obama won election.  He’s back, and this is the second time the current president has put his name forward for 04 NC-E.

In case there is any doubt about the hypocrisy involved here, recall one of the most egregious party-over-country steps this Kentucky Senator has taken.  When then-President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia who had died, the Senate majority leader unilaterally elevated the Senate’s role from “advise and consent” to “prevent and refuse,” blocking Senators from even meeting with the Supreme Court nominee, and proclaiming that there would be no vote on the Garland nomination.  This forced the Supreme Court vacancy to last over a year, which cannot be construed as serving America’s best interests.  Allegedly the delay was due to a looming presidential election; the election was nine months away.  Now this same negotiator could not be in a bigger rush to get a lame duck Congress to put a demonstrable, accomplished bigot onto our state’s Eastern District Court for life.  This is the worst of what oppositional politics has become.  Manipulate the vote, rather than present a better idea?  That’s not politics, that’s spite.  That’s Mitch. 

Please contact our senators right away, and tell them (in spite of their pledged support for Farr) that you oppose this dreadful district court nominee:

Richard Burr (202) 224-3154 and/or (336) 631-5125

Thom Tillis (202) 224-6342 and/or (704) 509-9087

Keep in touch.  Keep the faith.