Trump Concludes First Term Having Switched The Justice Department's Side In Every Voting Rights Case It Inherited, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Federal Government Had Been Defending The Right To Vote

WASHINGTON. The Department of Justice on Wednesday concluded four years of methodically reversing the federal government's position in nearly every significant voting rights case it had inherited from the prior administration, completing what officials described as a routine course correction back toward the long-standing departmental tradition of not being involved.

Beginning within weeks of the inauguration, the Sessions Justice Department withdrew its support for the legal challenge to Texas's voter identification law, switching the government's position from arguing that the law was discriminatory to arguing that it was not, despite no relevant facts having changed. The department subsequently switched sides at the Supreme Court in the Ohio voter purge case, filing in support of a practice the federal government had previously argued violated the National Voter Registration Act. It withdrew from racial gerrymandering challenges in North Carolina that career attorneys had spent years preparing, and allowed the decades-old consent decree restricting the Republican National Committee's poll-watching activities to lapse without objection in 2018.

"The Justice Department reserves the right to argue either side of any voting rights case, depending on what serves the public interest," said one administration official, who emphasized that the public interest was now understood to consist of fewer Americans voting. "We approach each case with an open mind toward whichever outcome involves the lowest possible turnout."

Inside the Civil Rights Division's voting section, career attorneys reportedly responded to each reversal by drafting internal objections, which were filed in a drawer. Several of the attorneys eventually departed for private practice, where they continued to argue cases against positions their former employer now formally held, occasionally noting the irony in footnotes. Sources within the administration said the departures were celebrated internally as evidence that the section was right-sizing.

At press time, the President had concluded his first term having entered office with a Justice Department understood by all parties to be the federal government's primary enforcer of the Voting Rights Act, and exited with one understood by all parties to be its primary spectator.