When does the Trump White House send out a press release honoring a long-dead pioneering African American Democratic politician? When she said something convenient to Donald Trump on one issue: immigration. A press release “honoring” the late Rep. Barbara Jordan focuses exclusively on that issue, to the exclusion of a few others. So let’s look at what else the Trump press shop could have quoted if they wanted to honor Jordan.
Jordan not only fought to extend the Voting Rights Act, she fought to expand it to cover language minorities, with bilingual election materials required wherever more than five percent of the voting-age population was made up of Latinos, Native Americans, or Asian Americans.
Jordan became the national face for broadening the VRA. “Nearly all the forms of discriminatory voting practices suffered by blacks in the South are being suffered by Mexican Americans in the Southwest,” she said. [...]
“At that point, Mexican Americans were just not as visible on the national stage in any of the civil-rights groups,” said Patricia Villareal, a lawyer from San Antonio who helped draft the 1975 VRA amendments for Congressman Edwards. “So there was a lot of feeling among the more senior black leadership that Mexican Americans were newcomers. They thought, ‘What are you doing fooling around with our act?’”
The testimony of Chicano activists like Rodriguez, combined with Jordan’s relentless lobbying of her black colleagues, persuaded Congress to expand the VRA. “The involvement of Congresswoman Jordan made a tremendous difference,” Villareal said. “She took a very hard stance that it needed to be done.”
But she’s a lot more useful to Trump as an anti-immigrant tool. Another thing you won’t hear from Team Trump is that Jordan had a few things to say about the impeachment of Richard Nixon:
The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their public trust." Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will show he knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray the public trust."
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice. "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."
“Barbara Jordan was critical of immigration policy” may be the new “Abraham Lincoln was a Republican” for Republicans looking to make themselves look less bigoted. But let’s at least consider something closer to the totality of her record.