Trump’s Justice Department has dropped part of its legal objection to Texas’s strict voter ID law, which appeals courts have ruled illegally discriminates against blacks and Hispanics and violates the Voting Rights Act. Obama’s Justice Department had sued Texas as part of an ongoing lawsuit against Texas’s 2011 law, which created a list of IDs required to vote that skewed heavily toward IDs carried by whites, such as concealed carry permits, while excluding IDs often carried by people of color, such as government employee IDs and public university IDs. Obama’s Justice Department claimed Texas had a discriminatory intent in enacting the law. But under the direction of Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has now dropped the discriminatory intent claim. Sessions has long opposed the Voting Rights Act, and major civil rights groups, including the NAACP, had protested his confirmation as attorney general.