MSNBC’s Joy Reid welcomed The Nation’s justice correspondent and whatever the opposite of a voice of reason is Elie Mystal on to her Wednesday program for a uncalm and irrational discussion about how the Supreme Court’s skepticism towards the executive branch’s regulatory authority could lead to it reversing Brown v. Board of Education.
According to Mystal, those who favor giving broad lawmaking power to nameless experts had a rough day before the Court and conservatives are turning to the Court because they keep losing elections which led Reid to project her desire that the Court align with her predetermined outcomes onto the Court’s conservatives:
This is the reason that the idea of expanding the Court is starting to catch on even with people who originally opposed it because these guys have a political agenda and ending regulation other than the regulation they impose themselves, ending women's rights, ending women's rights to an abortion, ending civil rights, just basically rolling back the entire 20th century Supreme Court jurisprudence, they’re doing it so systematically that they’re not stoppable if you don’t expand the Court.
Because nothing says democracy like rule by anonymous technocrats. Reid and Mystal claim that Republicans are a pose to democracy and everything else that is good and decent, but as soon the Court signals that the Environmental Protection Agency may not be all powerful they go full anti-intuitionalist.
It is also simply a fact that the Court has not overturned civil rights or women’s rights, but that didn’t stop Mystal from claiming, “At this point the difference between a progressive justice and a liberal justice versus conservative or Republican justice is that the liberals believe in facts and the conservatives believe in vibes and they are reviving out right now. They are winning on the vibes and remaking the law back in their image of the 1950s and the 1850s.”
Keeping the unhinged hysteria going, Reid added, “Yeah, how long before they get to Brown v. Board or the case where it said, you know, segregation schools can't get tax cuts because that was what they were—”
The idea that the Court would overturn Brown is ludicrous to anyone who has spent five seconds talking to an actual conservative, but Mystal still engaged in the delusion that it might happen, “It’s on Clarence Thomas's list. As long as you leave Ginni alone, Clarence Thomas is interested in getting rid of that case.
Reid retorted, “Yeah, he not going to mess with interracial marriage, he’s going to keep that one because that’s his own family.”
Or maybe because, despite what MSNBC tells you, conservative justices actually do care about the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. They just don’t think it is a catch all term for “whatever Joy Reid wants.”
Here is a transcript for the January 17 show:
MSNBC The ReidOut
1/17/2024
7:51 PM ET
JOY REID: This is the reason that the idea of expanding the Court is starting to catch on even with people who originally opposed it because these guys have a political agenda and ending regulation other than the regulation they impose themselves, ending women's rights, ending women's rights to an abortion, ending civil rights, just basically rolling back the entire 20th century Supreme Court jurisprudence, they’re doing it so systematically that they’re not stoppable if you don’t expand the Court.
ELIE MYSTAL: At this point the difference between a progressive justice and a liberal justice versus conservative or Republican justice is that the liberals believe in facts and the conservatives believe in vibes and they are reviving out right now.
They are winning on the vibes and remaking the law back in their image of the 1950s and the 1850s.
REID: Yeah, how long before they get to Brown v. Board or the case where it said, you know, segregation schools can't get tax cuts because that was what they were--
MYSTAL: It’s on Clarence Thomas's list. As long as you leave Ginni alone, Clarence Thomas is interested in getting rid of that case.
REID: Yeah, he not going to mess with interracial marriage, he’s going to keep that one because that’s his own family.
