Democrats Try to Derail Judicial Nominee They Call a Vote Suppressor

A judicial nominee nearing a showdown vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee could be the test for Senator Jeff Flake’s vow to block judges until the Senate is allowed to vote on legislation to protect the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Democrats have united behind a bid to derail the district court nomination of a judge who defended a racially gerrymandered House map in North Carolina and helped draft the state’s voter ID law, efforts that federal courts found were specifically designed to disenfranchise African-American voters, in one case, “with almost surgical precision.”