Jessica Huseman at Pro Publica tells us what they’re doing about that voting rights case in Texas.

Hours after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, the Department of Justice filed to postpone a hearing on the Texas Voter ID law. The request was granted. The DOJ had previously argued that the law intentionally discriminated against minority voters, but told the court it needed additional time for the new administration to “brief the new leadership of the Department on this case and the issues to be addressed at that hearing before making any representations to the Court.”

Chad Dunn, attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, expects Trump’s Department of Justice to reverse course. “I figure the government will spend the next 30 days figuring out how to change its mind,” he said, adding that now he expects the DOJ to argue on behalf of the state of Texas, which has held that there was no intent to discriminate against minorities. “The facts did not change – just the personnel.”

We now have an administration that favors voter suppression. Of course we do. Jeff Sessions will head the DOJ. Make voting hard for those pesky brown people!

The voter law, known as SB 14, sets strict requirements for what ID one must have to vote. While it includes such things as a driver’s license and a passport and a concealed handgun license, it leaves out things like student IDs. It is partially in effect now, and was in effect on Nov. 8.

In July, the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled that the law violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it disproportionately affected minorities. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi subsequently approved a compromise that allowed voters without appropriate ID to fill out an affidavit stating why they could not reasonably obtain one, which is how the Nov. 8 elections were carried out. The Court of Appeals remanded the discriminatory intent argument back to Judge Ramos for further review, and this was the argument that was set to happen on Tuesday.

In a previous 147-page ruling in October 2014, Ramos had written, “The Court holds that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.”

The DOJ had previously argued that the law violated the Voting Rights Act and was intended to directly impact the abilities of minorities to vote, as more than 600,000 of them lacked the ID necessary under state law to vote. Dunn now expects the agency to reverse course.

We now have an openly segregationist federal government.