CNN’s Abby Phillip Worries Supreme Court Ruling Will ‘Eradicate’ Political Representation for ‘People of Color in the South’

CNN anchor Abby Phillip said she is worried the Supreme Court’s ruling that race-based gerrymandering violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act could ultimately “eradicate” political representation for Black Americans and other minority groups in the South.

Phillip shared her opinion before opening the discussion up to the panel on Table for Five on Saturday morning, a few days after the landmark 6-3 ruling. 

“I’m not sure people are fully understanding where this puts us. I think that the reality is that people will start to see states both red and blue start to look dramatically different from the way that they looked like before,” Phillip said. “And that if you are a person of color in the South, they may eradicate virtually all political representation for you in some of those states. That’s an extraordinary thing.”

Progressive SiriusXM radio host John Fugelsang agreed with Phillip — and warned the “aristocrats” on the Supreme Court were opening the door to blatant racism against non-White Americans.

He said:

These laws exist. The Voting Rights Act exists because people marched and protested and fought and bled and died for these rights. And this week, these six aristocrats took a look at that and said, ‘Okay, but it’s too much.’ We can’t have any kind of race consciousness when it comes to things like education, getting into school. We can’t have race consciousness when it comes to politics or to voting.

But when it comes to, you know, cops stopping someone when it comes to immigration policy, we can be as race conscious as we want. They only say colorblind when it’s a policy that helps nonwhite people.

They never pull that for a policy that hurts nonwhite people. And these justices, what they’ve done now is unleash it. We’re seeing all the all the red states are now trying to speed redistrict. And what it really is, is racist Photoshop. They’re putting it all through an Instagram filter to make everything whiter. And you’re going to see the Blue states come back in kind, saying, “We’re going to redistrict like Virginia did, like California did.”

Phillip added to Fugelsang’s point about the ruling coming back to bite Republicans in Blue states, saying this “Pandora’s box that has been opened up” could lead to 13 more Democratic seats in Congress. “We’re just spiraling at this point,” she said, after pointing out President Donald Trump called for Red states to revamp their congressional maps.

Pete Seat — a former spokesman for former President George W. Bush — then pushed back on Phillip and Fugelsang a bit. He said his understanding of the ruling was that it was “narrowly tailored” to a specific Louisiana district.

“I think any honest broker… if you looked at that district and did not know the political leanings of it or the racial demographics of it, and saw it snaking from Baton Rouge up to Shreveport, you would say ‘gerrymandered,'” Seat said. “It is the very definition on paper of a gerrymandered district.”

He added, “You keep using the word ‘represented.’ And I think this is really, really critical and key — as many become further entrenched in identity and ideology-first mindsets, we seem to believe that we are only represented when somebody has the same attributes as us. Whether that be race or gender or physical attributes or ideological leanings. But the goal of redistricting is to maintain communities of interest—”

Fugelsang then jumped in and said no, this whole thing was jumpstarted by President Trump trying to “rig” districts in Texas.

Watch above via CNN.

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