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Another far-left nominee from President Joe Biden is drawing the ire of Republicans after a video has surfaced of him trashing the Senate and the electoral college as “anti-democratic” institutions.
Biden has nominated Dale Ho for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, but he’s not likely to get much support from GOP senators after remarks he made during a 2018 event about two cornerstones of American constitutional governance.
“We had obviously lots of practices that are anti-democratic, that entrench in some ways minority rule in this country, and I’m talking about things like, you know, the Senate, the Electoral College, and the maldistribution of political power that results from those institutions,” Ho said at the National Civic Leadership Training Summit.
Ho, who is the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights project, also noted during the summit that the U.S. ought to do more to make “voting easier,” going on to complain about “long-standing barriers” like “felon disenfranchisement” that take away “the right to vote from people because of a criminal conviction.”
WATCH: Biden federal district judge nominee Dale Ho calls the Senate and the Electoral College "anti-democratic" pic.twitter.com/vfOi3N6Et9
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 15, 2021
Republicans have already stoked up opposition to the nomination. During his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month, some GOP senators brought up past social media posts Ho wrote during former President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I very much regret the tone that I’ve taken on social media from time to time, particularly if it’s given anyone the impression that I wouldn’t be impartial,” Ho claimed during the hearing.
In particular, Republicans pointed to tweets in which Ho was critical of Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.); Mike Lee (Utah); and Tom Cotton (Ark.).
Lee took aim at one tweet in which Ho ripped Republicans for allegedly trying to rely on a Supreme Court majority so they could hold onto power, complaining that the “Electoral College, Senate malapportionment and extreme gerrymandering” were not enough for the party.
The Utah senator went on to say that he believes the tweet demonstrated an “open contempt for the Constitution” and thus, Ho shouldn’t be confirmed to the federal bench.
The nominee also caused a stir regarding comments from 2015 in which he suggested that voter ID requirements were akin to “chemotherapy.”
“Obviously, all of us are against voter fraud, right?” Ho said then. “The question that I think we have to ask ourselves is whether or not the mechanism that we’re using to try to prevent this problem is appropriate to the task.
“I’m against cancer, but I don’t think everyone in this room should get chemotherapy,” he added, Fox News reported.
Biden also took heat for nominating Saule Omarova to lead the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is the federal agency that oversees the banking industry.
Educated in the former Soviet Union, Omarova was blasted by Republicans and Democrats alike for hard-left views of the industry she would have led. Her nomination tanked after several Democrats informed Biden they would not support her.
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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