Rev. Barber on Tom Farr: “Trump’s Terrible Choice for Judge”

NYT oped:

mong President Trump’s worrisome nominees to the judiciary, perhaps none is as alarming as Thomas Alvin Farr, a protégé of Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator, and a product of the modern white supremacist machine that Mr. Helms pioneered.

Mr. Farr, nominated to serve on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, began his career as counsel for Mr. Helms’s Senate campaigns, where he participated in racist tactics to intimidate African-American voters. This alone is reason to reject his nomination, as is his apparent lying on the topic to the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Mr. Farr’s connections to Mr. Helms’s white supremacist causes and political network go much deeper….

African-Americans seeking to have their rights protected under federal law have much to fear if Mr. Farr takes the bench. This is particularly the case in the Eastern District of North Carolina, which covers an area where about half of the state’s African-American residents live and is often referred to as its Black Belt. The Eastern District has not had a black judge in its 145-year history. President Barack Obama’s attempts to desegregate this federal bench were obstructed by Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who blocked the vote on two highly qualified female African-American nominees and who now supports Mr. Farr’s nomination to the Eastern District.

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