Trump's DOJ nominee refuses to say he supports school desegregation
Jeffrey Rosen, Trump’s nominee to replace Rod Rosenstein at the DOJ, won’t say whether he thinks Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided.
Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools, is one of the pillars of American jurisprudence. But Trump’s pick for Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, Jeffrey Rosen, won’t even agree that it is settled law.
Rosen was tapped by Trump to replace Rod Rosenstein, who is stepping down.
At his confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked him whether he agreed that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided, Rosen bobbed and weaved: “What I would agree with is that it’s the precedent of the Supreme Court for better than 40 years now and unless and until that changes, it’s the law.”
Dodging questions about Roe v. Wade is a longstanding pastime for Republican judicial nominees. Brett Kavanaugh did it during his confirmation hearing, as did Samuel Alito. When Bill Barr was up for AG, he waffled on Roe as well.
Rosen wasn’t content to only cast doubt on well-settled abortion law. He’s unwilling to even weigh in on Brown, which is absurd. The idea that a lawyer who will be second in command at the Department of Justice is wobbly on the legitimacy of desegregating schools is unbelievable, but here we are.
When Blumenthal tried to ask Rosen about it, it seems likely that Blumenthal was expecting a standard and noncontroversial answer that Brown was a landmark case that was profoundly just and well-settled.
Instead, Rosen simply refused to answer: “Senator, I don’t think that it would be a productive exercise for me to go through the most–thousands of Supreme Court opinions and say which ones are right and which ones are wrong.”
It’s incredibly easy to simply agree that yes, the case in which the Supreme Court struck down the notion of “separate but equal” in education was correctly decided. Sadly, Rosen couldn’t even do that.
If Rosen’s racism really does run that deep, he’ll be a perfect fit for the Trump administration.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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